Things like accepting John’s invitation to stay and for Ren to resume his role running the fields.
We had no place else to be and no rush to leave and really, Ren had been searching for an answer to our future, and found a temporary one by brushing off his skills to work the land.
That first afternoon when he cleaned the rusty tractor from its cobweb jacket, greased ancient gears and cranks, and kicked her into a growling, diesel-coughing start, my heart fluttered with so many memories of him. So many memories of so many different Rens. Child Rens, teenage Rens, early twenties Rens, right to the thirty-year-old man I adored.
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.
As always, we’d fallen into a comfortable pattern working together, and by evening we were so tired it didn’t take much convincing for Cassie to get us to dinner.
The dining room looked the same as all the other times with one key thing missing.
Patricia’s place setting and presence.
It was a wound that still bled, and conversation stuck safely on subjects of the farm.
Adam had returned to his wife and two children, and Liam had stayed in town with his girlfriend. So it was just the four of us, and John kept looking at where Patricia would sit, and Cassie kept looking at her father.
Once our meal was finished, I stood with renewed purpose, ready to tackle my concerns with Ren, but John asked for Ren’s opinion on a new grass seed, and Cassie dragged me to her room where I learned yet more about her on and off again relationship with Chip the accountant.
From proposals to pregnancies to births and break-ups, I saw how much she cared for him and how glad she was they were giving it another chance.
The entire time she spoke, all I could think about was Ren. How he’d never once let me down, even when things weren’t perfect between us. How he’d always put me first, even when we’d had nothing to our names.
And how, here in a place that meant so much to both of us, everything that we’d created had been threatened, all because the past dared mingle with our present, making me wonder and worry.
And so, I’d had a third glass of wine before bolting from the farmhouse and cutting across the driveway—the same driveway I’d run across so many times before—and paced our bedroom, needing to end whatever distance was between us.
I missed him.
I missed him more than I could stand.
For twenty minutes, I’d paced before resorting to sitting on the beds.
I’d been waiting for an hour.
Waiting for a way to stop feeling so lost and alone and cast aside.
The door opened fifteen minutes later, swinging wide as Ren prowled in with a hand buried in his hair as if already stressed about sleeping in a room with me.
“You’re back.”
My voice wrenched his eyes up, squinting in the dark. I hadn’t bothered to turn on a light as dusk steadily became night. I knew I seemed creepy, sitting cross-legged, hands tightly linked in my lap, my heart terrified and temper fuming, but I couldn’t help it.
I’d reached my limit and we needed to talk.
“Della, what the hell are you doing?” Ren flicked on the overhead light, shutting the door behind him. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”
“I’ve been waiting for you.”