We were completely untamed and unashamed.
Utterly in tune and bonded.
Even with long hours and early wake-ups, Ren and I smiled often, laughed regularly, and fell into a pattern that only comes from being with someone for so long. We’d always been able to finish each other’s sentences, but now, we barely needed to talk.
I knew with just one look if he needed a drink or quick massage to loosen the knot in his back. He knew with just a glance if I needed a kiss in the shade or more sun cream on my skin.
The long days equalled blissful dead-to-the-world sleep. I even grew accustomed to the delightful ache of hard work in my lower back and moaned in gratitude when Ren massaged the cramp in my hands from twisting apples off branches all day.
Our tiny cabin was perfect in its basicness with its whirring mini fridge, lumpy queen bed, and small discoloured sink.
Lo didn’t just give us a job; she gave us something incredibly raw and pure, teaching us the ease of working the land and cultivating. Eating straight off the trees, sharing our skills to help each other, working our muscles until sleep was no longer a luxury but a necessity.
Not that Ren wasn’t a master of that already with his past, or me, thanks to my chores of helping on a farm in my childhood, but this was something else.
This was Ren and me in Utopia.
It was how humans were supposed to exist.
I could’ve lived in fruit-picking paradise forever, but unfortunately, our life had a few bumps up ahead.
If I had known what was about to happen, I would’ve prepared myself.
But that was the thing about life.
You didn’t know what to expect until it happened.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
REN
* * * * * *
2020
THE PHONE CALL came on a Sunday.
I knew it was a Sunday—unlike most of my life when I had no idea what day or even month it was—because we’d just been paid for our fifth week of fruit picking, and I’d agreed to take Della out to a diner down the road to celebrate having some cash saved up again. Plus, we hadn’t enjoyed our shared birthday yet, and that tradition was one we did our best not to break—especially as she was no longer a teenager, and I was officially thirty.
I was old.
And some days, I felt it.
Especially when I recalled a TV show we’d watched a few years ago with men who claimed their first million before they were thirty. The show interviewed entrepreneurs and successful business owners, making me doubt I had what it took to be anything more than what I was.
I’d never been number savvy or have any desire to be rich.
I was rich.
I had Della.
But just because I had everything I ever needed, didn’t mean Della did, and that put pressure on me to find a way to be more.
At least we had some cash again—not much, but enough to fill our backpacks with food, and travel in the final patches of warmth before winter arrived all over again.
We were late hitting the road, and we still didn’t have a clue where we were going. I’d tentatively thought of finding another farmhand job or a milking foreman position—something I knew I was good at and paid fairly well—but I didn’t know how to go about finding those.
Of course, those worries became obsolete the moment the phone rang, diverting our journey onto a totally different path.
I had a razor in my right hand and a face cloth in my left, staring into the grainy mirror in our fruit-picking cabin, combating terrible lighting to shave the couple-of-month-old beard that I hadn’t trimmed in far too long.
Poor Della earned red lips instantly from kissing me these days, and I was sick of itchy cheeks when I got too hot from working.
Della looked up from where she sprawled on the bed, already to go in a black flower print dress with her gorgeous hair loose and curly.
The phone rang again and again in her hand, all while she continued to stare at it rather than answer.
“You going to get that?” I asked, swishing my blade in the sink, ridding the hair it had already shaved from my throat.
“It’s Cassie.”
I spun to face her. “Why would she be calling?”
She shrugged. “We messaged last week. She said everything was fine. Just shot the breeze about unimportant stuff.” She bit her lip, nerves dancing over her face as if she didn’t trust Cassie even now.
The phone seemed to ring louder. “Maybe you better get it.”
Swallowing, she shot me a look and pressed accept. “Hello?”
Instantly, her skin eradicated all colour, leaving her white. A hand plastered over her mouth. “Oh, God, Cas. I’m so, so sorry.”
Abandoning my razor, I rubbed off the soap from my cheeks and crossed the room to her side. The tinny voice of Cassie drifted from the phone. She was crying, but I couldn’t understand what she said.