Martin looked taken aback but slowly nodded. “Fair enough.” Clearing his throat, he said, “Oh, I almost forgot.” Reaching into his briefcase again, he pulled out a thick bunch of papers. “This is yours.” Sliding it to Della, he waited for her to read the title and glance up.
“Did you read it?” Her fingers traced the words The Boy & His Ribbon by Della Wild.
“Yes.”
I winced. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to arrest me for falling in love with a minor or incest.”
He chuckled. “No. As much as society thinks we’re out to ruin lives, we know when we come across good people, and you are good people. In fact…” His hand disappeared a final time into that damn briefcase, coming out with a framed piece of parchment. A matte black frame and simple glass, but as he pushed it toward me, it became my most precious thing in the world.
Utterly priceless because it finally allowed me to do what I’d been wanting to do for years.
It gave me a wish before I could have no more.
“I-I don’t understand.” I didn’t dare touch it.
I couldn’t.
Is it real?
Della started to cry. John welled up again. And I just kept staring, afraid, ecstatic, disbelieving.
“It’s not going to bite you, Ren.” Martin laughed. “It’s legitimate. You have my word. It also means you’ll have to start paying taxes now we know you exist.”
“I-I don’t know what to say.” My hand tentatively stroked the glass, the reflection of the lights above dancing over the letters below.
“Don’t need to say anything. You deserve it. I’m sorry it took almost thirty-one years to have one.” He cleared his throat when no one said anything, adding, “You guys love each other. It’s obvious to anyone who meets you. I suggest you do something about making the name Mclary a thing of the past.”
Standing, he picked up his briefcase and strode to the door. “Oh, I also took the liberty of doing something I overheard about birthdays. I hope you don’t mind.” Tapping his temple, he smiled. “I’ll let myself out. But if you ever need anything, you know where I am.”
I barely managed a goodbye before my attention locked back on the birth certificate in front of me.
My birth certificate.
The birth certificate registered and legal in the name Della gave me.
Ren Wild.
And his birthday?
27th of June.
The same day as Della’s…just as it should be.
For a second, all I could do was stare.
I was legal.
I was real.
I never believed something so simple could be so damn bittersweet.
I had permission to marry, all while serving a death sentence.
Pressure wrapped around my lungs with black affliction, but then my heart drowned it out with red affection. I was still alive, here and now. I still had Della, today and tomorrow. I still had a future, shortened but valued.
Time was never on our side.
It didn’t matter then, and it didn’t matter now.
Nothing mattered but us.
In a rush of daring, reckless true love, I stood so fast my chair toppled to the floor.
Eyes widened at my explosive behaviour, then gasps fell as I sank to one knee before the ribbon-hearted girl I’d loved forever.
Her blue eyes became twin puddles of tears as I grabbed her hand, kissed her knuckles, and whispered, “Della Donna Mclary…”
She flinched in my hold, and John’s hands curled on the table.
My voice caught as I couldn’t hold back my desperate, desperate need to have her as my own. Selfish, yes. Sad, absolutely. I would make her a widow before long, but even that couldn’t stop me.
She was mine.
It was written in the stars and scribed in the galaxies, and nothing on earth could change that.
This was true inevitability, utter undeniability.
I didn’t even need to ask a question.
“Marry me.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
DELLA
2034
DO YOU HATE me?
Do you hate me for taking you on this journey, making you fall in love with Ren, all while knowing how it ends?
Do you hate me for telling the truth?
Believe me, I’ve often wondered if I should change our ending. If I should lie and create the perfect happily ever after—just like Ren wanted me to.
But…whenever I type a chapter full of happy fakery, it seems so forgetful, so cliché, so counterfeit.
At least, I gave you a warning. If you read the words I chose and saw the message I shared, you’d know.
You’d know more than I ever did.
In fact, you know more than I did back then, and I sympathise with the pain you’re going through.
Ren.
My Ren.
The answer to my puzzle, the conclusion to my journey, the man I was always meant to belong to.
He wasn’t immortal, after all.
But…I have to be honest. I have to make you see.
This was never that sort of tale.
This wasn’t a romance—I was blatant about that from the start.
This wasn’t even a love story—even though love is the only thing that matters.
This is a life story.
And life includes good times and bad.
It includes birth and growth and…yes, even death.
This is a story of truth.
This is a story of my heart.
A story we all go through because eventually…we all die.
Some before others, some quick and fast, some in their sleep far from now.
But before you give in to those tears and believe you know our ending, stop.
Keep reading.
Keep enduring.
Because I can promise you, the ending…it’s better than you think.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
DELLA
2021
I SHOULD HAVE been on cloud nine.
Ren had proposed.
Ren had a birth certificate.
Ren wasn’t arrested.
Ren was also lying.
His eyes lied. His voice lied. His body lied.
And it hurt.
So much.
Funny, how hiding the truth could hurt more than a fist or cruel word. Funny, how a person you trusted above everything could suddenly become so dangerous.
He was lying.
I knew.
I knew the signs because I’d lied to him often enough while he still cared for me as a sister. I knew how a lie festered inside you. How it sunk its hooks in, dragging you deeper into its web, whispering in your ear that your lies came from a good place, a worthy place, a place of protection.
Ren was lying.
And because of that, my heart that was normally so open toward him fashioned a little gate—not a door blocking him out, but a small barrier that wasn’t there before.
I hated it.
I hated him for making it happen.
I grew up faster in two months than I ever did in two years. I felt it happen. My rosy outlook on life, the childish belief that nothing could tear us apart, the idealistic notion of perfect happiness…they’d been threatened, questioned, and found wanting.
All those ‘errands’, those ‘work’ phone calls—they were poisonous barbs digging into my skin, layering me with pain, punishing me for loving someone so much when they were only hurting me.
At least I knew he wasn’t cheating on me. At no point did such a ridiculous thought enter my mind. Ren was mine. He was still mine. Even if he was being a bastard lately.
Did he think I was stupid?
Did he think I was too weak to know?
I didn’t need a degree to know his lies stemmed from his cough.
A cough that, to start with, I’d hoped was just bad allergies. Ren, after a lifetime of dealing in grass and animals, had built up an immune system that didn’t often feel the tickle of hay fever, but occasionally, if the wind blew in a different direction or if the season had grown a different spore within the grass, he’d have a few days of watery eyes and a stuffy nose.
It never lasted long.
It left as quickly as it arrived.
But this…it hadn’t.
It had gotten worse.
It’d morphed into a cough that woke me up at night and made me cry silent tears in the dark.
I supposed it was my fault that he believed he could get away with such fibs. I didn’t push him to see a doctor even though terror chanted in my blood every second of every day. I didn’t sit him down and stare him in the eye and ask point-blank what he was keeping secret.
It was my fault as much as his; he didn’t tell me because he was protecting me. And I didn’t hound him because in a way…I wanted protecting. I wanted to continue believing in the fantasy that he was invincible.