The perfection of long summer evenings and cosy winter nights. The innocence of growing up without fences and traffic lights.
I missed sharing a bedroom with Della.
I missed birthday picnics and cherished handmade gifts.
I missed holding her close on a freshly harvested meadow and hearing the birds roost in the willows.
I would’ve given anything to be a farmhand again.
And I knew, over the course of the two years while we lived in a city I didn’t care about, and life maintained a steady stream of work, school, and evenings together, that something had to give.
Something had to change.
Otherwise, I was going to go insane.
I wasn’t cut out for a job where I hated the crew and the labour.
I wasn’t cut out to live in a tiny claustrophobic basement apartment.
But each spring, when the ground thawed and Della murmured that we should go back to the forest, I forbid it. She had to finish school. That was my commitment to her to pay for her education and her commitment to me to learn it.
Despite our constant desire to leave, I was eternally grateful when a letter arrived for me this time, not for Della.
A letter from John Wilson.
There was no fluff or word wastage, just a short message letting me know a friend who owned a farm not far from where we lived had recently lost his head milking harvester. His dairy herd numbered in the hundreds, and he needed someone trustworthy to start immediately.
Della wasn’t home from school yet, but I caught a bus as close to the city limit as I could and walked the rest of the way to his sprawling acreage.
The farmer, an elderly gentleman with yellowing teeth and balding head called Nick March, offered me a job on the spot if I could start at four a.m. every day.
The pay was double what I was earning, and I’d get to be around animals and open spaces again.
I didn’t even think.
I shook his hand and celebrated with Della that night with an expensive tub of ice cream that I couldn’t really afford.
And that was how two years bled into three, and slowly, our newfound routine faded in favour of upcoming complications.
And our lives got a lot more difficult.
CHAPTER FIFTY
REN
* * * * * *
2016
SWEET SIXTEEN.
I’d never wanted to deny Della a birthday before, but this one…I wished we could skip right over it.
Not because she’d transformed overnight from skinny to curvy. Not because she laughed with a depth and richness that made my heart skip a beat. And not because she’d taken to wearing clothes that revealed her perfect figure, announcing to horny teens and asshole males that she was no longer a kid.
Believe me, I knew she wasn’t a kid anymore.
Living with a stunning teenager when I’d turned into a surly, angry twenty-six-year-old wasn’t easy. She seemed to grant life whenever she walked into a room and steal it whenever she left.
If she got pissed at me, I felt as if my world would end.
If I got pissed at her, I wanted nothing more than to punish her so she never misbehaved again.
Our dynamic became more explosive as age both bridged us closer and cracked a wider ravine. Outside appearances might have ensured she matched me almost in adulthood, but our opinions and thoughts remained divided.
She had an uncanny way of wanting to touch and hug when I wanted nothing to do with softness and connection. I hadn’t been with a woman since Cassie, and it had been a long few years sleeping in a house with a girl who’d managed to flip my world upside down with a simple kiss.
I hated the fact that I still guarded myself against her when all I wanted to do was relax.
I despised the fact I’d become afraid of dreaming because, without fail, whenever I started to trust Della’s lovely smile or thaw from her innocent embrace, I’d dream that night of kissing a stranger.
Of chasing her.
Of catching her.
Of kissing her until my body ached and I woke with a desperate growl for more.
I didn’t know who I dreamed of. I never saw her face. And I would never admit to myself that because of what Della had done that night, I’d forever stitched her to the sensation of feeling at home the moment I kissed my dream-stranger or the heart-shattering horror when I woke up feeling dirty and wrong and in serious need of punishment.
I was desperate to taste that sensation of wonder. I craved to relive the magic of falling so deeply and quickly, I’d belonged entirely to my dream figment in a single heartbeat.
But whatever my issues were, I never let Della see.
When we first slept in separate rooms, I’d been obsessed with checking on her—making sure she was safe and no monsters climbed through her bedroom window.