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

by Pepper Winters

  I couldn’t fight her body from hurting her.

  But I could fight—

  “Ren.” Della noticed my unravelling self-control. How could she not with my pacing and jumpiness and longing looks out the window?

  “Ren, come to bed.”

  Bed? Lie down? Sleep? Let my guard down when other people slept so close? In the same building as us?

  “Can’t.” I flung myself into the high-backed chair with an orchid decorated ottoman, swallowing a cough.

  The meagre supplies I’d brought with us meant we’d at least been able to clean our teeth after the landlady kindly brought up some ham sandwiches and a few chocolate cookies as an evening snack.

  She seemed nice enough, but so did anyone who wanted to lull you into a false sense of security.

  “Ren, the door is locked. We’re safe.”

  I narrowed my eyes at the flimsy lock and the flimsy door and its flimsy hinges. If someone wanted to come in, they could. No problem.

  Conversation was good, at least. It gave me something else to think about instead of the undying need to scream at Della.

  She huffed as if she didn’t quite understand me even though she should. Of all people, she should understand exactly what I was struggling with.

  She cocked her head. “You didn’t have a problem sleeping at the Wilsons, and they were just across the driveway.”

  I clutched the armrests hard, forcing myself to stay on this subject and not yell a totally different one. “To start with, I was sick and didn’t have a choice. And by the time I was better, I’d learned to trust them.”

  “Well, trust that nothing will happen here. We’re just guests like everyone else. We’ll checkout in the morning, and everyone will go their separate ways. No one cares who we are.”

  I did my best to relax, but the tingling anxiety continued to zoom in my veins. Needing to change the subject—to prove to myself I wasn’t a monster who screamed at Della when she wasn’t well—I asked gently, “How are you feeling?”

  Her face fell as she plucked at the pansy bedspread with its copious amounts of pillows.

  “I’m okay. I just keep hearing the words ‘you’re pregnant.’ You know?” She shrugged, a gleam of tears springing from nowhere. “I thought I’d feel happy if I ever heard those words. But all I felt was terror. The pain…if this is what it feels like to be pregnant, I don’t know if I can—”

  “Stop it.” I leaned forward, digging my hands into my temples and wedging fingers into my hair as if could prevent her from speaking. “Just…go to sleep.”

  Her gasp spoke volumes of how I’d shocked and upset her. “What do you mean? Wait. Are you angry with me?” Shifting higher in the pillows, dressed in just her t-shirt and underwear, she demanded, “Why are you acting like this?”

  “Like what? Pissed off that you’re in pain and there’s nothing I can do about it?”

  Stop it, Wild.

  Just stop it. Before you go too far.

  “Forget about it.” I raked my fingers through my hair and let them fall to my knees. I’d been the one to work myself up. I’d made myself feel sick and out of control. Not her. “I’m sorry. Go to sleep, Della. Get some rest.”

  A long pause before she muttered, “I won’t be able to sleep unless you get into bed with me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can. It’s just a bed, Ren. They’ve washed the sheets. They’ve—”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what is it because your temper is driving me—”

  Swooping to my feet, I growled. “I can’t touch you. I can’t lie beside you. I’m the reason you’re in agony. Why did I put so much responsibility on you, huh? To not even bother supporting you with taking the pill at the right time every day, making sure you were okay, ensuring that things like this didn’t happen. You’re so fucking young. Far too young to get pregnant, let alone a complicated one. What does that even mean? Is it because I carted you out to the wilderness and thought I could keep you healthy and happy? Is it because I didn’t give you what you needed as a kid and your body is all messed up now? What?”

  My roar found every corner of the room and bounced back amplified. “I mean it, Della. You’re only nineteen. How did I think it was right to touch you? Let alone sleep with you?! I’m sick. I’m perverted. I’m the reason you’re in agony and…and, I don’t know how to make it right.”

  I stalked to the door, then back to the window, needing open spaces and trees. My lungs begged for fresh air. “I’m furious at you for putting yourself in danger this way, but it’s me I should be angry at.”

  Punching myself in the chest, I seethed, “All me. I knew getting involved with you would be a bad idea. I’m ten years older. I should know better. Maybe it was me, huh? Maybe it was my screwed-up sperm that made you pregnant where it can kill you. Goddammit!”

  Breathing hard and struggling, I stood in the centre of the room, desperate to pick up the confessions I’d just littered all over the floor, but unable to move.

  Most of my issues didn’t even make sense. All I knew was I was horrified, terrified, and pissed off at everything.

  Della sat stonily in bed, her chin high and eyes bright. “How can you say that? How can you say any of that? Loving me was a bad idea? Screw you, Ren. It’s not your job to make me swallow a damn pill every day! It’s not your fault that the pregnancy is ectopic. None of this is your fault!”

  “I didn’t say loving you was a bad idea. I said sleeping with you was.”

  “And I said screw you!”

  “Della—” My heart punctured for how my worry twisted my words. “Look, all I’m saying is, I should’ve kept myself in check. I shouldn’t need you the way I do. I shouldn’t expect to have you every day. Sex is a health risk. Especially when you’re still so young.”

  “If you say I’m young again, we’re going to have a serious issue, Ren Wild.” Della sat on her knees, the blankets discarded. “Girls have babies when they’re fifteen, for God’s sake. Sometimes even younger. I’m not young. I’m fully grown, and you’re forgetting it’s not just you who wants sex every day. I initiate as much as you do. It’s not your job to treat me with silk gloves and hold me at arm’s length when you need me as much as I need you!”

  My temper roared back into cyclonic heat. “No, Della, it’s my job never to send you to the goddamn hospital!”

  “And you didn’t! What happened is a freak thing. Even the doctor said these things happen randomly with no rhyme or reason. It’s not your fault.”

  “Not my fault?” My temper coiled and snapped. “Not my fault? Okay, let’s just see what isn’t my fault.” Holding up my fingers, I counted on them as I spat, “You grew up with no parents. You lived a lot of your childhood totally homeless with a kid who knew nothing about nutrition or health. You trusted everything I did when most of it was wrong—”

  “Why the hell are you re-counting the past now? This has nothing to do with any of that!”

  “Shut up and let me goddamn finish, Della!” My snarl was the harshest I’d ever been with her, but I couldn’t control it anymore. We’d been together for a year and a half, and in that time, I’d remembered the past often. Most of the time, I loved thinking of her as younger and older. Proud rather than disgusted to have the privilege of loving her in so many different ways.

  But now?

  Now that reality had slapped me in the face, I crippled beneath blame.

  Heavy, terrible blame.

  I’d always believed my choices had been made with her best interests at heart. I’d always put her first. Always fed her over me if there wasn’t enough food. Always wrapped her in my jacket if hers wasn’t warm enough.

  I’d screwed up many times raising her, but I’d like to think I’d been honourable and true.

  But…I hadn’t.

  My choices had always been about me.

  And that had never been more obvious.

  “You were happy at your creative writing course. Y
ou were working on your future. You had everything I wanted you to have, and what did I do? I took you away from all of it!”

  Pacing again, I struggled for air. “I didn’t ask if you wanted to live in a goddamn tent. I didn’t discuss with you what you thought about abandoning everything. I ran the moment it got hard between us, and I snatched you for mine the moment I knew I couldn’t survive without you.”

  Della shifted again, her forehead furrowed, and hands balled.

  I didn’t know if it was from pain or anger, but I had no hope of stopping everything I’d bottled up. These dirty, awful conclusions that had whispered cruelly in my ear as I’d sat in the doctor’s waiting room. Waiting and not knowing if I’d be told good news or bad. Waiting and not knowing what was wrong with my Della and what I’d done to cause it.

  Because it had to have been me.

  Because I should’ve known better and not been so fucking selfish.

  “I love you, Della. And I’m so fucking sorry I did this to you. I’m sorry I have no money to keep you healthy. I’m sorry I have no career to build you the house you deserve. I’m sorry I somehow got you pregnant and now you’re sick and in pain and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. I’m sorry for all of it, but you should know that when it comes to you, I’m useless. I wanted you, so I stole you. I loved you, so I kept you. I didn’t stop to think that by making you mine, I owed you more than I ever did before. I owe you a life that everyone else has. I owe you a stable environment. I owe you a man who can fucking provide and who isn’t afraid of humanity, for God’s sake!”

  “Ren, stop—”

  “No!” My eyes narrowed to sniper scopes, a cough exploding from my lips. “Let me finish.” My chest rose and fell, spikes stabbing my lungs as I inhaled with even worse admittances. “With you, I’m the rawest form of myself. I obey no laws, I follow no rules. If someone hurts you, I will hurt them back, ten times worse. No, a thousand times worse, because you mean more to me than anything. I would kill for you, Della. My entire purpose on this earth is to love and take care of you. I’ve been doing it for almost twenty years, and I plan on doing it for another twenty and beyond. But how the fuck can I mean that when I’m the problem? All this time, I believed I was protecting you from them when I should’ve been protecting you from myself!”

  Dragging a hand over my mouth, I shook my head as a future I’d always wanted incinerated into dust with reality. “What if we do end up having a family, huh? What happens when you’re in labour and about to give birth? Do I expect you to suffer on your own and deliver in a forest that hides your screams? Do I think I can just drop you off at the hospital when it’s time with no I.D or money, and a few hours later, we’ll walk back to our tent with a goddamn new-born? A new-born who needs shelter and safety and a mother who is healthy and happy and has a bed and a shower and a fridge and a roof—”

  “Ren!” Della climbed off the bed, flinching as another wash of agony worked through her. “Enough. None of that matters. We’re not having children yet. It’s fine—”

  “But don’t you see? It’s not fine. It’s shown me just how precarious all of this is. How I’ve been so fucking blind and wrapped up in this fantasy that we can stay wild and not suffer any consequences. How did I not see this? How did I not understand that this life can never be permanent? It’s too risky. I need a job. I need to provide for you. I need to stop being a creature who thinks a tent is a suitable home and be a man instead and build you the life you deserve—build you a future we both want and a future we can’t have unless I grow the fuck up.”

  My pacing ended by the chair, and I collapsed into it, all my rage depleted. All my terror shared. All my worries tainting the air just like they’d tainted my mind.

  Pinching the bridge of my nose, I murmured, “I just can’t stop thinking that I did this to you, and you’re the one paying for my mistakes. That this would never have happened if we’d just stayed in our old apartment and figured this out in a place where humans are meant to live, not drag you halfway across the country with nothing.”

  “Ren.” Della cut in. “Ren, look at me.”

  It took a monumental effort, but I did.

  She sat on the side of the bed, whitewashed and tear-streaked.

  Our eyes locked, and the love I felt for her poured free in painful waves, obliterating my anger, commanding I go to her.

  I couldn’t fight it.

  I’d never been able to fight it.

  I needed her as much as she needed me, and I’d fucking shouted at her while she was ill.

  Christ, I’m a bastard.

  Storming toward her, I climbed onto the mattress—boots, knives, and all—and pulled her into my arms. Tucking her back under the covers, I kissed the top of her head and breathed in her delicate scent of pine and earth and air. “I’m sorry, Little Ribbon. I didn’t mean to say all that. I’m just…I’m so scared of losing you.”

  Snuggling into me, she wiped her tears on my chest. “I know this is hard for you. I guess it would be hard for anyone when they first hear they’re pregnant and what it all means. But you can’t believe that you took me into the forest against my will, Ren. I love our life. I love our tent and simplicity and freedom. If I didn’t, I would tell you.”

  My breath still came fast and haggard, but the crazed terror faded a little as I hugged her harder. My heart stopped its fanatical beating, slipping back into a rhythm I knew.

  She kissed my t-shirt, whispering, “You didn’t do this to me, and you do provide for me. You’ve provided for me all my life, and no one could’ve done it better. So please don’t worry about the future, Ren. And please don’t think you’ll ever lose me because you won’t. I promise.”

  “How can you promise something like that?”

  “Because I know love transcends blood and bone. Yes, eventually we will die, but we’re bound to one another. For eternity.” Kissing my t-shirt again, she worked her way to my collarbone and whispered into my feverish skin. “You have my word if, heaven forbid, anything happens to me, I’ll wait for you to join me. Death isn’t our ending, Ren. Promise me you won’t stop sleeping with me or prevent us from having a family one day because you’re afraid of life itself. And all the rest of it—the house and money and things—it will work out. You’ll see.”

  I held her for a long time, her heart thudding against mine, imprinting her shape and curves against me, allowing our connection to eradicate my fury and accept that I wasn’t truly angry, just petrified.

  Finally, I kissed her hair. “Thank you.”

  “You don’t have to thank me.”

  “I do. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  She smiled up from my arms. “Well, lucky for you, you’ll never have to find out.”

  Echoes of her promising that we’d always be together, even past death, made me clutch her as hard as I could.

  She squeaked a little in protest, but I tipped her chin up with my knuckles and kissed her lips. I’d wanted to keep the kiss tame and sweet, but the moment I tasted her, my tongue crept into her mouth and hers met mine in invitation.

  A quick kiss turned into a sensual make-out, our lips gliding, tongues dancing, hearts kicking.

  And when I finally pulled back, my chest burned with the same promise she’d given me. “You have my word in return. If anything happens to me, I’ll wait for you to join me. You’re mine, Della. Always will be.”

  She relaxed, breathing easier. “Good.”

  “Fine,” I murmured, like we usually did at the end of an argument, releasing the final tension.

  Reclining into the pillows still fully dressed, I waited until Della found a comfortable position with her head on my chest and body spooning my side before I stroked her hair with shaking fingers. “Now, go to sleep, woman. I’m not going anywhere.”

  It was a promise I kept all night.

  I didn’t undress, and I didn’t sleep, but as I held the girl who was my everything, and she slipped into slumber and her body
went lax against mine, I whispered into her moonbeam painted hair, “I hope to be the man you deserve, Della Ribbon. I hope I can give you everything your heart desires. And then, when we’ve lived a life rich in so many things, I hope I die before you. Because if I don’t, I know I won’t survive a day without you. I can’t.”

  My voice hovered like smoke as I sucked in a gasp with how true that was. It wasn’t an empty sentence. It was every truth imaginable, and, in some inexplicable way, I hoped whatever rules of fate governed our lives heard me and understood how deadly serious I was.

  It was my prayer.

  My penance for taking Della all those years ago.

  She gave me a life and taught me how to be happy. And if she left me, I would no longer want that life without her.

  It was selfish and cruel to wish such a thing, but I knew who was stronger out of the two of us, and it wasn’t me.

  Cradling her in the moonlight, I looked out the window at the stars.

  I was her watcher and protector.

  And I never let her go…all night.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  DELLA

  * * * * * *

  2031

  THAT WAS THE turning point for us.

  The moment where life got in the way of our fantasy, bringing us both back to earth with a crash.

  Still, to this day, I get mad at myself for ruining such an idyllic existence.

  I wish I could rewind time and remember to use alternate protection. I should’ve told Ren that we might not be safe.

  An honest mistake was the biggest catalyst of our lives.

  But really…it turned out for the best.

  Things were about to happen that meant our past and future blended in a way we never expected.

  Surprises that we never wanted inched closer to being known.

  Wishes would come true and promises would be kept.

  And one of those life-changing five incidents crept ever nearer.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX