CHAPTER NINE
REN
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Current Month
I’D BEEN CALLED many things in my life.
A boy.
A belonging.
A bastard.
But this was a new low.
I was a pervert, a peeper, an obsessed watcher who didn’t have the power to stop.
For two weeks, I stalked Della every second of every day.
I knew her schedule. I knew her friends. I knew she had English on Mondays and lit class on Wednesdays. I knew she studied until late and watched movies with the guy she’d slept with—who I remembered was called David—and some black-haired girl I didn’t know.
I knew she slept alone in her own room in a new bed, new sheets, new pyjamas, and genuinely laughed when David whispered in her ear at breakfast and smiled softly when he clutched her hand goodbye.
I knew she was sad and lonely and angry.
I recognised the tightness in her shoulders, the blaze in her blue eyes, and the stiffness of her step.
We’d been apart longer than we’d ever been, but I knew her better than I knew myself.
I might not be fluent in many things, but when it came to reading Della, I was a master. Every nuance and twitch, I understood. Every flick of her hair and sniff of her petite nose, I read the hidden message.
And the language she shouted was of serious rage.
She was a part of me, and her anger became my anger because I understood it.
I felt it, too.
I was angry that I’d driven us to this point.
I was angry that, until a month ago, I had full intentions to track her down, approach her, and get on my knees in apology. I had an entire script planned, written in my mind not on paper, burned into my memory as if scribed in fire.
I was going to pledge myself to her all over again.
I was going to beg her forgiveness for breaking my promise never to leave her like I did when she was a baby playing on that comfy rug with glittery goldfish and opinionated cats.
I’d left her even when I promised I wouldn’t.
I’d done that.
She hadn’t asked me to go, and despite the mess between us, my leaving was inexcusable.
But my carefully planned speech had faded the longer I watched her.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her, loving her the way I was meant to with pride for her excelling at life without me, joy that she was studying something she loved, affection for the messy blonde curls, and warm-hearted sentiment for the ribbon fluttering in her strands.
The first day of watching her went too fast and, before I knew it, my stalking reached creepy levels until I couldn’t leave unless her bedroom light went out and sleep meant she’d be in bed for the rest of the night.
I’d slink off, hidden in my shadows and shame, crawling into a sleeping bag and dreaming inappropriate dreams full of need, love, and passion.
At dawn, I’d return to her, an itch in my blood commanding me to be close after so long apart.
The next morning, I found her hugging David goodbye on the stoop of the white picket fenced house I could never afford, and her bare legs flashed me where I hid in the trees across the street.
She wore flip-flops, and wrapped around her ankle was the same tattoo I’d paid for on her seventeenth birthday. The one with its matching blue ribbon trailing into its capital R.
A year old and the ink was just as bright, just as damning as the night I cupped her foot and demanded an explanation—begging her to put me out of my misery, all the while knowing she was about to condemn me even more.
The tattoo sucker-punched me with so many things, and I didn’t have the courage to approach her that day. Instead, I drowned beneath everything I’d done wrong and everything I didn’t know how to fix.
The day after that, David kissed her.
It’d been the slap to the face I needed.
It woke me out of the trance I’d fallen into, shaking me with truth that I’d left her for months, but she wasn’t a wilting flower entirely reliant on me to thrive. She was tenacious and brave and fiercely independent. Always had been—always looking after me just as much as I looked after her.
Of course, she wouldn’t wait for me.
Of course, her anger would drive her to find other things…other people.
My insides wanted to curl up and die, but I refused to be weak. I refused to think of myself as the injured party when I’d been the one to walk away.
I’d done this.
I’d pushed her to find comfort from some other man. A man she’d already given herself to. A man who had every power to destroy me, and he didn’t even know it.
When he kissed her, every muscle seized.
She didn’t exactly kiss him back—not the way she’d kissed Tom at the Halloween party—but she didn’t push him away, either.