And yet…she’s written it all down.
Every sordid, broken, pure, delicious thing.
I couldn’t stop my shakes or urgency as I grabbed the paper, tossed off the lighter, and ripped over the first page.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
REN
* * * * * *
2018
I’D NEVER BEEN the best reader—no matter how much time Della spent teaching me—yet reading that manuscript, I absorbed the words through my fingers as well as my eyes.
The story leapt from the pages, latching sharp fangs into my heart. Every emotion and carefully fabricated lie ripped apart my life, dousing me in blistering honesty, pouring its black and white truth into the wounds it left behind.
It wasn’t just words that sliced me, but Della’s voice. Her vibrant honesty. Her fierce tenacity reading aloud the secrets she’d written.
…that was what he did to me, you see? He made my entire life a jewellery box of special, sad, hard, happy, incredible moments that I want to wear each and every day.
*
I can honestly say Ren is my favourite word.
I love every history attached to it.
I love every pain lashed to it.
I love the boy it belongs to.
*
To me, Ren was magical.
He might not have been able to read and write, but he was the smartest person I knew.
*
I wish I could paint a better picture of how much I looked up to him.
How much I worshipped him.
How much I loved him even then.
*
Amazing what love can make someone do, right?
In my toddler brain, I associated him calling me Ribbon with his admittance of loving me. He’d accepted me as his own. He no longer needed to remind himself that I wasn’t born to be his.
*
Sometimes, and don’t judge me for this, but sometimes, I would do something naughty just to have him yell at me. I know it was wrong, but when Ren yelled, he drenched it with passion.
*
How many times do you think a person can survive a broken heart?
Any ideas?
I would like to know because Ren has successfully broken mine, repaired it, shattered mine, fixed it, crushed mine, and somehow glued it back together again and again.
*
I was jealous that he was close to another when I was supposed to be the only one. I was angry that he turned to another for comfort and didn’t come to me. But most of all, I was in shattered pieces because I wasn’t enough anymore.
*
I’m in love with Ren Wild.
It looks even worse in bold, doesn’t it?
It looks like a life sentence I can never be free of…which, in a way, is exactly what it is.
*
But what I do know is I will always love Ren.
I will always be in love with Ren.
And I also know I will never have him.
*
Why do I do this to myself?
Why do I insist on slicing through the sticky tape on my constantly breaking heart and stabbing it over and over again?
Can you answer me because I’m honestly at the end of my limit.
*
The next time Ren and I ran, I wanted it to be for good. I never wanted to tie him to a new place so I could go to school. I never wanted him to feel as trapped as I did. I wanted to be free because maybe, just maybe, away from people and rules and constant reminders, Ren might slip enough to realise he loved me, too.
*
That was my true performance because he never knew how much I sobbed the moment he closed the door, promising to be home soon.
I sobbed so much I couldn’t breathe, and my tears were no longer tears, but great heaving, ugly convulsions where hugging myself didn’t work, where lying to myself didn’t work, where promises that it would get better definitely didn’t work.
I’m sure you can probably guess what I did next?
If you can’t, then you’ve never been in love with someone who was off making a future with someone else.
My breath roared in my ears. My limbs turned shaky and liquid.
I only had minutes to read, but I skimmed as fast as I could, absorbing letters of pain, heartache, and confusion.
I recognised the moments she wrote about.
I remembered the attitude she gave me around Cassie. The jealousy she tried to hide. The possessiveness she never stopped nursing. The obsession of keeping our family just us and no one else.
I had no fucking idea her withdrawal and moods were because she thought I’d replaced her with Cassie. I was so naïve to think she hadn’t seen me sneaking off to make out time and time again.
Fuck.
Even with the kiss she’d given me when she was thirteen, I’d believed her when she said it was purely growing pains and learning what attraction was.
An experiment, she called it.
I’d believed her when she lied point-blank to my face.
I’d chosen to trust what she said rather than focus on what her body language told me. What her eyes screamed. What her sighs whispered.