Ren and Della: Boxed Set (Ribbon Duet Book 3)

by Pepper Winters

  Thank you to my hubby, for putting up with me and for letting me write even when I got sick with pneumonia (nothing could keep me away from writing this book).

  And finally, thank you to Ren and Della, for popping into my head when I had a case of writer’s block and pouring your tale through my fingers in just one month.

  I’m so incredibly lucky to have the chance to write a story like this and it will forever be a favourite of mine.

  I hope it will be one of yours, too.

  THE GIRL AND HER REN

  Book Two of the Ribbon Duet

  BLURB

  “What do you do when you write down all your secrets? No…that’s not enough. What do you do when you write down all your secrets and the one person who should never read them does?

  I’ll tell you what you do.

  You hope.”

  REN

  Ren didn’t know the meaning of love until he took Della for his own.

  To begin with, he hated her, but as the months bled into years, he learned the opposite of hate, dedicating his life to giving her everything.

  Every sacrifice, every gift, he gave wholeheartedly.

  But then love turned to lust and ruined everything.

  DELLA

  I was stupid to write down my secrets, but I’d been stupid before, so it was nothing new.

  I couldn’t blame him, hate him, fix him.

  I tried to move on without him.

  But no matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to delete the secrets I’d written.

  Until something happened.

  Until he came back and read my stupid secrets.

  And nothing was the same after that.

  PROLOGUE

  DELLA

  * * * * * *

  2032

  FIRST, I WANT to say thank you.

  Thank you for falling in love with Ren just as much as me. Thank you for allowing me to share our journey. Thank you for forgiving my youth, my jealousy, my possessiveness; but most of all, thank you for understanding what our story has always been about.

  It wasn’t about two children falling for each other.

  It wasn’t about sex or hunger or selfishness or want.

  It was about love.

  True love.

  Love that spans decades, infects souls, and turns you immortal because, when you love that deeply, nothing can ever die.

  It transcends time, space, distance, universes.

  A love like this isn’t confined to pages or photos or memories—it’s forever alive and wild and free.

  Love.

  That is what our story is about.

  Romance comes and goes, lust flickers and smoulders, trials appear and test, life gets in the way and educates, pain can derail happiness, joy can delete sadness, togetherness is more than just a fairy-tale…it’s a choice.

  A choice to love, cherish, honour, trust, and adore.

  A choice to be there when arguments occur, and agony arrives, and fate seems determined to rip you apart.

  A choice to choose love, all the while knowing it has the power to break you.

  A choice, dear friend, to give someone your entire heart.

  It’s not easy.

  No one ever said it was.

  Some days, you want it back, and others, you wish you had more than just one heart to give.

  Love is the hardest thing we’ll ever have to do because love, as miraculous and wonderful as it is, is also cursed and soul-breaking.

  Because of love, life is a war of moments and time and bargaining for more of everything.

  But in the end, love is what life is about.

  And love is the purpose of everything.

  So, thank you.

  Thank you for sharing our love.

  Thank you for living, for choosing, for being brave enough to fall.

  CHAPTER ONE

  REN

  * * * * * *

  2018

  WHEN I RAN from the Mclary’s, took a baby that wasn’t mine, and chose to keep her against all odds, I never stopped to wonder…how.

  How did we survive all those years?

  How did I keep myself alive, let alone baby Della?

  How did one choice change my entire world—not only giving me a family of my own, but teaching me, before it was too late, that not everyone was evil.

  Della Mclary successfully stopped me from going down a very dark and lonely path by forcing me to know the opposite of hate. I supposed, if someone were to judge the kid I was against the man I became, they’d say she saved me.

  They’d say, without her, I would be a very different person.

  Probably one a lot less forgiving, understanding, and most likely violent, angry, and dangerous.

  They’d be right.

  Those tendencies were still there, born from being abused and unwanted, forever a part of me whether I wanted to admit it or not. But I was also so much more, and those parts, the better parts, were stronger.

  I chose kindness over cruelty, honour over disgrace, and propriety over indecency.

  And it was the last one that made me leave.

  The last one causing my current state of unhappiness.

  It also made all those previous wonderings of how, completely irrelevant. Because who cared how it happened? Only that it did, and it was the best thing that could’ve ever happened to me.

  But now I had nothing, and I couldn’t stop scratching at the scars, wondering what caused me to deserve seventeen years of heaven with a girl I’d give everything for, only to endure the worst thing I’d ever imagined by giving the greatest sacrifice I could.

  Her.

  She was my greatest sacrifice.

  And I did it to protect her from so many, many things.

  But the question was back. Taunting me. Tormenting me.

  How.

  How did she get into that backpack in the first place?

  It was night. She was a baby. I didn’t know where she slept, but surely, she had a crib with bars or a room with a door. The backpack was discarded where it always was by the door. It wasn’t a plaything for a child and it wasn’t sanitary for a baby.

  But somehow, she’d ended up in it.

  How had Della been in that bag at the exact same time I decided to run?

  Was it purely coincidence? Did fate know far more than we did, understanding that Della wasn’t born for the Mclary’s but for me? For me to learn how to love. For me to have someone to hold. For me to protect and treasure and focus on rather than spiral into a place I shouldn’t go?

  Or…had Mrs Mclary put her there?

  Had she seen my test run the night before, watched me steal the meagre rations I’d managed, and somehow put her darling daughter in the stuffy, weathered ex-army bag?

  And if she did, that changed my question from how to why.

  Why did she give up her only blood?

  Why did she tell her husband to shoot me and specifically mention what I could have in my stolen bag as I ducked and bolted through their cornfields?

  The only two answers I could come up with were:

  One, she wanted me and Della dead and figured she could kill two birds with one stone, blaming me when they walked to my gunshot body and noticed the bullet that killed me also killed their daughter.

  Or two, Mrs Mclary wasn’t as evil or as complacent as I thought. Maybe she knew I was about to run and figured I was a better chance for Della than her husband ever was. The same husband who raped young girls when he believed his wife was upstairs asleep. The same husband who went to church and sang before God and donated at least an acre of produce every season. The same husband who was pure filth decorated in small town trust and lies.

  Regardless of my questions, it didn’t change the fact Della ceased being theirs that night and became mine instead.

  Every year from the first to the last, I loved that girl as if she were my very own blood, sweat, and tears. Girl made from my bones. Child made from my heart. Woman made from my soul.


  The perfect mirroring piece that reflected everything I’d never had, loving me as unconditionally as I’d loved her, making me believe that questions didn’t matter when it came to us.

  We were too important. Too perfect for one another. Too connected.

  There was no argument. No denying. No elaborating the absolute truth. It didn’t matter if she was six or sixteen; our bond was unshakeable.

  Which was why leaving her was worse than the worst thing I could do. Why walking away wasn’t just painful, it was suicidal.

  I’d come alive the day Della became my family, and I died the day she ceased to be.

  And it was my fault.

  For so many years, I’d told myself my love was innocent.

  I’d clutched onto my lies.

  I’d hoped I could keep her, regardless of how my heart silently changed from protector to traitor.

  But then, I woke up.

  I saw the truth.

  I understood the facts.

  I tore out my godforsaken heart.

  And my questions didn’t matter anymore.

  Because all I knew, all I wanted, all I could bear was redemption from everything I’d done wrong.

  And for the first time in my life, I wished she’d never been in my backpack, after all.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DELLA

  * * * * * *

  2018

  LET ME ASK you a question.

  Why exactly are you still here?

  Didn’t I vow never to write in you again? Didn’t I close your document, bury the file, and shove aside all memory of Ren Wild and the secrets I was stupidly sharing with you?

  Yet…here you are, still lurking on my desktop, a judging little icon begging me for an ending.

  But I manage to ignore your taunting. I keep my mouse pointer well away from your pain and open a new file labelled Assignment Version 2.0.

  Or that’s what I did for the past little while, at least.

  I earned an extension when I had nothing to hand in to Professor Baxter. I blamed the flu—which normally wouldn’t be a homework-delayable excuse—but I have a bit of a reputation at college, you see.

  The reputation of being a quiet, diligent student who enrolled the very afternoon she finished her high school exams. The moment I was free, I walked out of those halls and marched to the university a few blocks away. They weren’t open for new admissions yet, and I didn’t have my results from English, math, and science—not to mention any legal identification.

  But that didn’t stop me.

  I practically got on my hands and knees for a chance to attend. To know I had a place to go, an institution to hide in because I no longer had anyone to call my own.

  They were strict on no special treatment, but something in my desperation must’ve swayed them because my pleas were answered nine days later, and I was accepted into the creative writing course that I’d coveted for a while.

  And, thanks to skills used to fibbing about our truth, I was able to extend the deadline for providing personal documentation, enrolling without proving who I was.

  All I cared about was a new adventure that would keep my thoughts far from Ren—for however long it lasted.

  Not that anything had that power…but I had to try.

  The second I entered campus, I gathered a reputation that stuck.

  I was known as the earliest arrival and last to depart. I studied with sheer-minded focus. I never answered back. I was hardworking and didn’t make trouble.

  Along with an academic reputation, people made assumptions about me as a person. They knew me as slow to smile and last to laugh. A reputation for being a loner who would rather celebrate her upcoming eighteenth birthday on her own, rather than risk her heart by asking friends to fill up the hole inside her.

  They say I’m lonely. They call me sad. They murmur sympathies when they find out I’m almost eighteen, live alone, and have no family—

  Anyway…why did I even open your file?

  I have no ending to give you.

  He hasn’t come back.

  It’s been two whole months since he left.

  One graduation in the past.

  One birthday in the future.

  And no one to love or kiss or—

  You know what? That’s not important.

  What is important is I didn’t die when he walked out the door.

  Bet you thought I slept through him leaving. Did you picture me waking up after a good night’s rest thinking everything would go back to normal after I’d stripped naked and kissed him?

  Are you insane?

  Of course, I didn’t sleep that night.

  I know Ren. Or at least, I knew Ren.

  I knew I’d pushed him to his limit and there were only two places he could go.

  One, he would stew all night. He’d weigh the pros and cons. He’d blame himself, his parenting skills, his lack of discipline, and beat himself up for doing something wrong. And if, by the dawn, he hadn’t figured out there was something between us that wasn’t mere unconditional love, then he wouldn’t have been able to look at me again—for fear of what he’d become—and he’d leave.

  Or two, he’d watch my naked body stroll bravely away after kissing him, and think for a moment. Just a moment. A delicious awareness-crackling moment when he realised he loved me too. And not in just a brother-sister kind of way, but an earth-moving, I-have-to-have-her-right-now kind of way. He’d run after me, shove me against the wall, and his lips would taste so sweet because it would be the first kiss he bestowed instead of the other way around.

  Two options.

  But I knew in my heart which one he’d choose.

  And I’d known the instant the door clicked, and I padded in my cupid pyjamas to stare at the money left on the coffee table, the unfinished note explaining nothing, and the woodsy, broody smell of Ren fading in the air, that I was right.

  He’d chosen option one.

  My heart didn’t know how to beat anymore. My lungs didn’t understand what air was.

  But tears?

  They’d vanished.

  Not one droplet escaped as I stared at the door, wishing, begging for him to return, and gather me in his arms.

  I waited all night until the sun slipped through the curtains, gently kissing everything awake. Its kiss wasn’t kind to me though, because it gave me the first day of many without him.

  If someone had touched me that first dawn, I wouldn’t have been able to keep it together. I would’ve broken on the outside as spectacularly as I broke on the inside.

  But there was no one to touch me.

  No one to tell me it would be okay.

  I couldn’t be a child and scream until my heart stopped suffocating. I couldn’t destroy everything so I could purge the destruction inside me.

  All I could do was cling to routine and head to the bathroom for a shower. I dressed in my school uniform. I ate some peanut butter toast with the crusts cut off. I gathered my school bag and walked the three blocks to school. I paid attention in class. I smiled at fellow students. I escaped the moment the bell rang. I slung my backpack up my shoulders and strolled to the supermarket close to our—my—apartment. After I chose a two-day-old lasagne that was discounted in the deli, one packet of Oreos, and an iced coffee, I walked back home. I ate, I watched TV, I did some homework, and I went to bed.

  I did all that.

  I, I, I.

  Me, me, me.

  And not once did anyone suspect that my world had just fallen apart.

  Not once did I cry.

  Not once did I scream.

  I bottled it all up—the heartache, the agony, the bone-deep cracking—and I swallowed it down like a pill I didn’t want to take.

  And there it sat—a breathing, seething thing dark in my belly, blocking my usual appetite for adventure, food, and love.

  Blocking me from feeling.

  Blocking me from screwing up again.

  The next day, I repeated the day befo
re.

  And the tomorrow after that.

  And the tomorrow after that.

  Until a week had passed and I hadn’t died.

  My worst nightmare of Ren leaving me had come true, and I was still alive.

  And I hadn’t cried.

  Not once.

  Not even a little bit.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DELLA

  * * * * * *

  2018

  I CAN’T SEEM to go on my computer without somehow clicking on your icon and exposing a nightmare.

  I should’ve deleted every word I ever typed, but last week, when I wrote to you against my wishes, I slept a little better.

  I didn’t wake drenched in sweat, fearing someone had stolen into the apartment while I rested. I didn’t lie in bed in the morning, frozen solid with the thought of yet more faking, more living, more existing without him.

  It was as if I had a friend again.

  Two months and one week is a long time to be on your own with no one to talk to. I’d started this assignment with a new lease of hope. I’d stupidly believed by writing about him, I could make him come back. Every day I gave you my secrets, I clung to a fantasy that he’d somehow feel me spilling our life story and come back to reprimand me.

  But when the due date with Professor Baxter came and went, and I claimed the flu to write a hasty tale of a girl with two parents who weren’t monsters, I shut up all that pain again.

  And I suppose you caught my lie, right?

  I said I never cried.

  And I didn’t.

  Unless you count the times I cried while writing this stupid assignment.

  Anyway, I don’t have the energy to type anymore today.

  These memories are too painful. My tale too familiar.

  I’m no longer part of a pair.

  I’m singular.

  Just Della.