For a week, we spent our days alone, toiling in paddocks and debating what to do with grass long past its prime. Ren’s frustration grew thanks to the lack of care since we’d been gone, and his determination to take on the workload now that John could no longer handle it burned with need.
He announced war on nature, pulling up weeds that hadn’t been there before, liming entire meadows and harrowing others.
For seven days, we didn’t discuss what had happened when we’d first arrived at Cherry River, nor touched more than a sweet hug to go to sleep. There was always either someone too close or something more pressing to deal with.
Somehow, my request to keep our relationship hidden had backfired, and without thinking, walls were built and timelines crossed, so there was nothing to hide, after all.
No kisses to secret. No sex to avoid.
Cassie’s suspicions faded as more days passed, and Ren and I acted no different than we had when we were thirteen and twenty-three.
Plus…I was worried.
God, I was so worried.
Ren’s coughing hadn’t stopped.
And I didn’t know what to do.
I did my best not to hover or freeze when a small cough sounded and was almost glad of something else to think about when Cassie shared her own pain, revealing how Patricia had died of a sudden stroke.
No warning.
No signs.
Just woke up one morning, made breakfast as usual, and by the afternoon, she was gone.
She also confided in me about Chip and her daughter, Nina.
To say it was a shock hearing she had a daughter was an understatement.
I was angry she hadn’t told me.
Hurt that after years of messaging, she’d kept her a secret.
But then again, I had no right to be jilted. I’d done the same to her.
I hadn’t told her about me and Ren. I’d kept us a secret, too.
I’d spent my childhood knowing she was in love with him, just like I was.
I’d spent countless nights in tears while she touched him, just like I wanted. And, although we were all adults now and I knew Ren was mine, that sort of fear was deep-seated and nonsensical even as age made me wiser.
So, you can see why I asked Ren to keep our relationship hidden. Yes, I didn’t want to hurt Cassie at her mother’s funeral, but I also needed time to figure out how to apologise for thinking the worst of her all those years apart.
To admit that I was weak enough to be threatened by her.
She was the only one who truly understood what it was like to love Ren and not have him, and we would always share that in common.
But keeping the truth quiet was never going to work.
And on the seventh night, we were caught.
In more ways than one.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
DELLA
* * * * * *
2020
I’D BEEN DRINKING.
Not a lot, but a couple of glasses of wine with Cassie had made my fears over Ren amplify until I sat on the pushed together single beds in our bedroom to wait for him.
Seething.
Stewing.
Spiralling into terror that the reason he hadn’t touched me in a week was that he remembered what he had with Cassie. He remembered me as a little girl. He remembered too much to be with me.
Time had strange properties here. It had taken the seven years when Ren and I had lived alone and folded it so the two ends touched, forming a bridge from past to now and blurring everything in between.
I’d grown up a lot in the two years since Ren had claimed me. I’d grown to like myself more and stand up for the things I believed in. I’d blossomed into someone worthy of him, and I hated, positively hated that confident Della now bowed to a less confident one.
That my fears over his coughing made me mad at him.
That my concerns over his blasé attitude made me rage.
I knew what was happening.
My anger was founded entirely in terror, but it didn’t make ignoring it any easier.
I’d started the week off blaming Cassie for my doubt, but sitting in the dark waiting for Ren, my heart showed the truth.
I loved Ren with every fibre of my being. There was no part of me that would survive if anything ever happened to him. My entire life he’d been everlasting and indestructible.
And to have that faith punctured every time he coughed…to have panic fill me, drop by drop, until I was close to overflowing…it made my hands ball and heart quake and an almost manic desperation to have him touch me, hold me, convince me that my mind was running away with me and everything was fine.
I’d tried voicing my fears before, but Ren didn’t tolerate my mother hen routine and he’d just kiss me, smile, and brush me off as if it were me with the problem.
However, this morning I’d woken with a new resilience and spent the day working beside him, holding oil cans and rags as he maintained the tractor’s decrepit engine, helping thread the twine through the baler when it snapped on the overly thick grass, and generally proving to him that I wasn’t a child he needed to be afraid of or a kid who couldn’t handle life.