Every night during the school holidays, we headed to the hay loft where we’d first slept and sat on hay bales while I pulled out the box full of old work-books and texts that Ren insisted we keep.
I sharpened a pencil for him, gave him my brand-new eraser, and stumbled over how to teach a twenty-year-old boy primary grade English and math.
It took a few nights to find our groove.
I flew too fast through equations, and Ren grew frustrated.
I went too slow, and Ren felt like I babied him.
We bickered and squabbled about right terminology, and we ended for the night with clenched teeth and stiff posture from doing our best to work with each other while struggling with yet a new dynamic.
By the end of the second week, we had a system where Ren would read the text he could, point to the ones he couldn’t, and wait patiently while I gave him what he needed.
I didn’t try to interfere or pre-empt, and our scuffles gave way to happy cohabitation, hunched over workbooks, quietly studying side by side.
For most of my life, I’d believed I was special—mainly thanks to Ren’s perfection at raising me, ensuring I was solid in the knowledge that I walked upon the stars in his eyes. My teachers had further cultivated that mind-set by encouraging me and being awed at my easy progress through the grades.
However, sitting beside Ren as he memorized and problem-solved, I felt the first kernel of lacking.
I’d always known he was unique.
I’d loved him far too deeply and for far too long not to believe he was magical and immortal and every prince, knight, and saviour I could ever need.
But I’d always envisioned him as a boy in dirty clothes, sun-browned and field-worn rather than a neat gentleman with glasses, all library-kissed and book-learned.
Ren Wild was all those things, but now he was something more to be looked up to.
He had a quick-fire intelligence that made me proud and envious—two sins in one.
He might not have had the chance to learn such things, but it wasn’t from lack of cleverness. Even at his age and being fairly stuck in his ways, he soaked up numbers and letters as if he’d been thirsty his entire life for such knowledge.
And that was where my second deadly sin started to manifest.
Instead of going to bed frustrated at being teacher to a student far surpassing her, I fell asleep with pride tinting my smile that I was the reason Ren went from counting on his fingers to effortlessly reciting the times tables.
Without me, he still wouldn’t be able to spell or read the words he used on a regular basis such as tractor, paddock, and twine.
Now he could spell all manner of things, and I beamed like a proud parent as we held spelling bee standoffs in the hay loft, testing each other, blowing raspberries when we got it wrong and giving high fives when we got it right.
Pride.
Pity it felt so good because every time Ren nudged me with his shoulder in gratitude or read aloud a text that would’ve caused his cheeks to pink and anger to rise with the unknown, I suffered more and more pride.
I glowed with it whenever he chuckled over a simple word with a strange spelling. I beamed with it whenever he surprised himself by adding up two large numbers and getting the total correct.
For three solid years, our routine never changed.
Some nights, especially in high-summer when Ren pulled fourteen and sometimes sixteen-hour days to get all his work done, we fell exhausted into bed without a lesson, but most of the time, we both looked forward to hiding away, just the two of us, and trading information.
Because what I taught him, he taught me in return.
He taught me how to drive a tractor on my eleventh birthday and sat me on his knee for the first time in a very long time as my legs were too short to reach the rusty pedals.
He taught me how to drive the Land Rover on my twelfth birthday, and even accompanied me to the movies with Cassie and some of my friends when I said I’d love to go see something with him because he’d never come into town with me before.
It was like asking a bear to leave his comfortable den and enter a world full of chaos and calamity.
His eyes never stopped darting. His ears never stopped twitching. His body always on high alert and ready to maul an enemy or protect a friend.
But he did it.
For me.
He happily drove me there, took me out for a burger and fries just like our first official birthday together, and sat beside me while we watched some animated cartoon that I caught him rolling his eyes at but gushed about afterward for my benefit.
He even refused to hang out with Cassie’s entourage even though she practically begged him to go clubbing with them once I’d been deposited back home. She claimed he needed a birthday night too; her voice syrupy sweet with that hateful twinkle in her eye that reeked of sex.
She had no right to look at Ren that way, especially as she’d been dating some guy called Chip for six months, and Ren was far too good to be sloppy seconds.
The familiar wrath suffocated me, and it didn’t fully go away even as Ren shook his head, escorted me back to the Land Rover, and drove home with me.
I didn’t sleep that night, constantly checking his single bed was lumpy with him beneath the covers and not smooth with his absence.
During the midst of winter, we hired movies that we both enjoyed and held book discussions over reading material I brought home from the school library.
For three years, life didn’t change too much.
We focused on learning, farming, and family.
And all the while, my girlhood slowly slipped away beneath teenage hormones. I forgot how to be innocent Della Ribbon. I forgot how to be anything, if I’m honest. I didn’t know if I wanted to be sweet or sour or kind or cruel. I didn’t know if I wanted my handwriting to be cursive or block. I didn’t know if I wanted to be a rebel like Cassie or stay true to Ren and his many morals.
The constant war inside stripped me of my childhood values, and that was when the true sins began.
After pride came envy and my complex relationship with Cassie was no longer just black and white. I no longer just liked or hated her. I was twisted with awe and wanting to be her and dirtied with spite with wanting to be what Ren sought.
Over the years, Cassie finished high school and attended a local university. She was a middle-of-the-line student, but thanks to her background in horses and farming, she landed a full scholarship for Equine Science and Stable Management degree.
Her dream job was to event and scoop up the mega prize pools. In the meantime, she was wise enough to know she needed pieces of paper to her name to ensure a paid gig while she schooled herself and her horses to greatness.
Liam started high school in a county over being a year older than me, and I was left in the past, just waiting for my life to begin.
It also didn’t help that my choices in TV shows and movies switched from feel good Disney to romantic comedies and everything in-between. Soap operas with brooding men and hurting socialites. Dirty kisses and naughty groping…anything to do with sex and connection was my kryptonite, and Ren often caught me starry-eyed and obsessed with a terrible show, crushing on the hero, my mouth tingling for kisses like they indulged in and wondering what it would feel like to have a boy touch me in places like the girls on the screen permitted.
The more I watched, the more envious I became and not just of Cassie.
I became envious of anyone with a boyfriend.
I tried to coax Liam into kissing me again, but he turned me down. I wasn’t interested in him as anything more than a river-swimming, meadow-exploring friend, but it still hurt for him to wrinkle his nose and laugh about kissing me.
I wanted to shout that I was sure his worm hadn’t grown any, but I was still nice enough to hold my tongue on hurtful things. Just because my tits hadn’t grown past tiny bee stings didn’t mean I should tear into his self-consciousness like mine chewed me every day.
My malice made me teeter on a knife-edge of tears whenever I caught Cassie flirting with Ren. Especially as he reshod her horse in the stable on a hot afternoon, bent over and shirtless, his torso glistening with sweat from hammering nails with harsh clangs into her latest warmblood cross.
He was so damn beautiful.
All muscle and masculinity, moving in that effortless way that used to make me feel safe but now just made me lick my lips and hide my gathering confusion.
Watching him was torture. Not because he made me feel things I’d only felt for movie heroes but because my mouth dried up, my heart pounded, and I hurt so much because I wanted something.
Something that made me itch and yearn. Something that made me snappy and hot-tempered whenever Ren gave me the smile reserved just for me and tried to gather me close to his sweaty bare chest in a joke.
Instead of slotting into his side where I belonged, I pushed him away because something inside no longer wanted innocent, carefree hugs.
It wanted what Cassie got.
It wanted more.
But how could I want it from Ren?
He was Ren!
Why suddenly did my eyes see him differently, my nose smell him differently, and my heart act like a cracked out raccoon whenever he came close?
I was thirteen and more confused than I’d ever been in my life.
The pain and hunger were excruciating when Cassie dragged a fingertip along Ren’s back and rubbed her pads together, smearing his sweat and smiling that secret adult smile, making me want to tear her pretty brown hair out.
I hated this new vibrant painful world my emotions had thrust me into. I missed the simple days of girlhood where happiness came from riding Domino, doing well on a test, then hitching a ride with Ren on the tractor while he baled.
These days, I could do something I adored and still find ways to feel wrath and pride and envy.
And if it wasn’t those three terrible sins, it was the other four.
Greed I often felt, especially around kids who had things I wanted.
Girls with boyfriends.
Girls with horses.
Girls with short hair or dyed hair or the freedom to paint their nails or dress with low-cut tops and high-waisted shorts.
Those girls attracted the boys.
The ones who were edgy and cool and smoked cigarettes stolen from their parents’ private stash.
I was still the cute little good girl, and no one wanted her.
So yes, greed was a regular companion just like slothfulness. On hot summer days after a long day at school and a complicated day of soaring and plummeting emotions, I found myself hiding more and more from chores and farmyard duty.
Before, I’d bolt off the bus to wherever Ren was, desperate to help him, eager to be of service and earn his wonderful treasured smile. These days, I slinked off the bus and found a shady spot and curled up beneath stencil patterns of leaves. I’d stare at the sunny sky and lament about all the ways my life wasn’t perfect.
In other words, I transformed into the brat who no one likes, and I look back now and wish I had the ability to reach through time and slap myself.
I want to shake my thirteen-year-old self and scream, ‘Get over it! Your life was perfect. You were perfect. You had everything you were envious of and greedy for right beneath your stupid little nose, but you ruined it. You made it all disappear, and it was all because of the last deadly sin.’
Lust.
CHAPTER FORTY
REN
* * * * * *
2013
2013 STARTED LIKE all the rest.
Cassie tried to tempt me out to a local party where sex was guaranteed and liquor was compulsory. Even though I was twenty-three and of legal age to drink, fuck, and do all the stupid shit adults do, I still had responsibilities. I still had a girl dependent on me. I still had a life I valued and secrets I needed to keep secret.
So, just like all the other times, I declined.
And just like all the other times, Cassie promised she’d be back later and would give me my New Year’s Eve kiss. It didn’t matter she was getting serious with Chip. She believed that because I’d been in her life for so many years, I wasn’t classified as cheating.
However, I was done being the other man.
I was done sleeping with her period.
Frankly, I’d grown tired of her games and immaturity a few years ago, but because I had no desire to find another girl to sleep with, I allowed my cock to keep me in an arrangement that offered no other satisfaction apart from a cheap release. But even that couldn’t compensate for the shame I felt afterward, knowing some poor schmuck was in love with her and this was how she treated him.
Instead of doing the usual soul-crushing hook-up, I stayed in my room with Della and stayed up far too late laughing at some stupid TV show and falling asleep amongst chip packets and lolly wrappers.
We hunkered down through winter, believing nothing would change and our content, happy lives had nothing to fear.
For months, we continued to study by night and go off to our separate lives by day, and Della continued to transform into a stunning young woman.
As much as I would like to, I couldn’t call her a girl anymore. Sure, the softness in her eyes still said child rather than woman. Sure, the roundness of her cheeks when she smiled hadn’t given way to the incredible sharpness of her cheekbones just waiting to sweep up and steal her forever from childhood.
Her body had hips with the fledgling hint of breasts. Her stare was full of both heartache and innocence, and sometimes, just sometimes, when she’d flick her hair and the rippling gold cascaded over her shoulders, I’d have to suck in a breath because I lost sight of the kid and only saw a beauty that I’d have to keep locked away so she wouldn’t be devoured by hungry men.
She was far too beautiful, and it made me uncomfortable.
I cursed morning and night when she’d change in front of me.
Before, I didn’t care if she’d strip off her top beside her single bed and slip into a nightgown. I didn’t think anything of it when her jeans slid down her legs and she kicked them across the room with all the care of a teenager who didn’t believe in housework.
For years, I’d refused to get undressed around her. I’d ensured I dressed in the bathroom after a shower and only swam in board shorts rather than skinny-dip.
She should follow those same rules.
But for some reason, I struggled to tell her to hide when it wasn’t her with the problem but me.
Her innocence at strolling from the steaming bathroom with just a towel wrapped around her breakable, beautiful body made my eyes avert and heart stop because it wasn’t right for me to look.
Not anymore.
Her growth from child to almost-woman should’ve been the first hint that things were about to change.
Drastic things.
Things we could never undo, and things that would ruin any future we might have had at Cherry River Farm.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
DELLA
* * * * * *
Present Day
OKAY, I’VE SLEPT on it, and I think I’m ready to tell you how I screwed up.
I’ll tell you about our third separation.
My hands are shaking on my keyboard. My heart is rushing. My head’s a mess with everything I did and everything I should’ve done differently.
Or better yet, never done at all.
I destroyed everything.
I was the idiot that took paradise and tore it to pieces.
How do I begin this?
I can’t just jump in and say I ran away…because…well, you don’t have context and will be wondering what the hell was there to run away from?
You’ll shake your head and call me stupid, and I’d totally agree with you. Even knowing why I ran makes me shake my head and call myself stupid, so you’re not alone.
If only I hadn’t done what I did, I wouldn’t have had to.
But I did,
and I’ll never forgive myself.
And he’ll never forgive me, either.
Okay, assignment-that-will-never-be-turned-in-and-is-just-an-exercise-in-agony, let’s do this.
Let’s start two days before I ran away, shall we?
No wait, it was three days…no, you know what? I need to start at least four days before I ran.
Cassie.
Funny how it’s always freaking Cassie.
I’m going to fast forward what happened until the important stuff.
I got up. I kissed Ren goodbye. I went to school. I learned stuff. I got back on the bus. I came home. I hung with Patricia in her kitchen. I had dinner with Ren. We studied a little. We went to bed.
A perfectly normal day. Innocent. Sweet. No incredibly idiotic screw-ups to deal with.
However, this perfectly normal day wasn’t so normal. While I helped Patricia make rhubarb jam in her cosy kitchen, my lower belly started to ache. My head started to hurt, and by the time I’d finished my homework while Ren read my last terms textbooks, the ache had morphed into a terrible throb, radiating down my legs, my inner thighs, even up my back.
I did my best to sleep, but the discomfort never went away, and I woke up cranky and sore and with a zit the size of Antarctica on my forehead.
Ren kissed me goodbye as spring was a busy season with harrowing and replanting, and he started with the dawn.
I waved him away, doing my best to conceal the awful red spot destroying my confidence and was glad he disappeared because it meant I could curl up on my bed and nurse the terrible tummy ache I suffered.
Because I was normally a diligent student, no one suspected I didn’t go to school that morning. No one came to check on me. And I spent the day alternating between great big wracking tears and hunching over in the bathroom as I endured a nightmare.
Blood.
Everywhere.
In my knickers, down my legs, on my sheets.
The pain intensified to the point where I grew light-headed with agony, moaning under my breath with every belly squeezing ache.
I knew what it was.
I’d read the books.