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

by Pepper Winters

  But my ears hated the sound and my heart twitched like a frightened rabbit every time he did.

  Just like I never told him what I went through with the ectopic pain, I didn’t confide my growing concerns over his own health.

  To look at him, he glowed with vitality and hardiness…but when that cough appeared?

  The shadow inside me grew bigger.

  I was used to not having a sounding board to share my concerns, so our separation from society was nothing new, but sometimes I did wish I had someone to assure me that from here on out, life would be kind to us and grant long healthy days and never ending happy nights.

  Despite the fact I kept a few things from Ren, and my worries chewed like tiny mice inside me, winter was great fun in that rambling, ramshackle mansion.

  Ren had always been a hard worker, and that part of him came out loud and proud as he took it upon himself to renovate the entire property and not just the long list Mrs Collins had provided.

  One month turned to two, then three; snow fell, ice formed, and we stayed warm thanks to physical labour. Some days, we’d focus on the bedrooms, lugging timber up the stairs to rebuild rotten walls, both of us learning how to plaster so it didn’t look like Play-Doh slopped on the wall, and figuring out that paint didn’t dry in the cold and caused ugly streaks that meant we had to sand and try again.

  Other days, we cleared the overly cluttered living rooms of old magazine boxes and discarded dresses from a century ago, ready to rip up threadbare carpets and buff ancient floorboards beneath.

  I loved every second because it meant Ren and I were together, like always.

  Life couldn’t get any more perfect.

  Until spring arrived, of course.

  And then it just got better.

  We stayed far longer than usual, but whenever I brought up the subject of returning to the forest, Ren refused.

  What he’d said at the Bed and Breakfast still governed him, and he was determined to provide more than just a tent even though that was all I really wanted.

  Just him and long, hot days of freedom.

  Summer came knocking with a vengeance, giving us an easier job of tackling areas of the house we’d left until last. And as ramshackle slowly became regal once again, the urge to move on returned, despite not knowing where we would move on to.

  That traveller’s itch and wanderlust was vicious once it arrived, and it hung a countdown clock over our heads, tick-tocking for a departure.

  Almost as if she heard our growing restlessness, Mrs Collins left us a neatly penned note in the repaired letter box asking for a tour in one weeks’ time.

  We’d stayed longer than any place in two years, but even though Ren didn’t want to make me homeless again, another reason we hadn’t traded walls for trees was that he felt as if he hadn’t done enough.

  The house was immaculate compared to the state it was in when we first arrived. The roof was solid and watertight. The bedrooms rodent and pigeon free with fresh paint, beautifully sanded floors, and furniture that I’d painstakingly washed, waxed, and restored.

  The downstairs was just as impressive with its polished chandeliers, spotless—if not still ancient—kitchen, and the lounge had a full makeover with new walls, re-tiled fireplace, replaced chimney flu, and an emerald rug the size of a small country we’d found in the attic and spent weeks airing out.

  We were officially down to almost nothing in our wallets, but I didn’t think I’d ever been so happy. Ren had even stopped coughing as often, thanks to having a proper house to protect us and regular vegetables in our diets.

  Things were good.

  Better than good.

  But by the time Mrs Collins arrived for her tour, Ren and I grew nervous about showing her around.

  It was her home, after all.

  The photo album of her youth and scrapbook of her twilight years. Had we trespassed on those memories?

  To start with, she’d listened as Ren explained what we’d done and nodded as we showed her room after room. Toward the end, though, her nods turned to trembles and the curt replies from a gruff woman became silent tears from a grateful widow.

  We feared she hated what we’d done. That somehow, we’d overstepped.

  But of course, we worried for nothing.

  It took two hours and forty-three minutes to show her around, bypassing the gardens and tennis courts that we hadn’t had time to tackle, and as we all stood on the repaired front veranda with peach roses perfuming the muggy breeze, she pulled out her cheque book and wrote us a figure that, even if we could’ve cashed the cheque, we wouldn’t have felt comfortable taking.

  Ten thousand dollars.

  Probably her entire retirement kitty, judging by the patched-up blazer she wore.

  Obviously, we insisted we couldn’t take it.

  Not just because it was too much, but because we had no way to cash it. No bank would touch us, no loan office would trust us—not without identification.

  But even though it was a gift we couldn’t accept, there was something special about being offered that cash.

  Ren and I stared at the cheque all evening after Mrs Collins had gone, and somehow, in that moment of feeling worthy and valued, we turned to each other and said, “It’s time to go.”

  The next day, we called to let her know the annex was free, and it wouldn’t take a gardener much to tidy up the outside in order to sell the old girl for a tidy sum.

  We left with freshly packed backpacks and aired out sleeping bags, leaving the cheque on her kitchen bench with a simple note saying thank you.

  We were penniless and homeless, but our happiness made us richer than we’d ever been.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  DELLA

  * * * * * *

  2020

  “ARE YOU SURE, Della?”

  I leapt into Ren’s arms right there in the tiny office of Lo and Ro’s Fruit Picking. “I’m sure. But only if you’re sure.”

  He chuckled into my hair, holding me close, making my legs dangle off the ground. “Well, we just spent our last dollar, so unless you want to be in love with a thief, I suppose we don’t have a choice.” Letting me go, he smiled at Lo—a middle-aged woman with a baby boy tugging at her skirt and a sun-burned button nose. “We’ll take the job. How long was it for again?”

  Lo—short for Loraine—pushed a clipboard toward us with a pen. She, along with her husband, Ro—short for Ronald—owned a farm that grew apples, pears, and berries.

  “Five to six weeks, depending on how quickly we strip the orchards before working on the greenhouse berries. We like to pick later in the season because we can charge more as fruit gets scarce with colder weather.”

  “Makes sense,” Ren said as I grabbed the clipboard and began hastily filling in the boxes. Names? They were easy. Phone number? We had one of those. Date of births? Fine, we could fudge that. Most details were easy apart from three things.

  “Eh, Lo?” I looked up, tapping the pen against the form. “We don’t have a bank account or an address, and recently we were robbed, and they took our driver’s licenses, so we don’t have any I.D. Is that going to be a problem?”

  I hated lying. I also hated how not having a piece of paper with our name on it had become a hazard in day-to-day living. But I wanted this job, and Ren needed some cash in his pocket in order to feel as if he was taking adequate care of me, so I fibbed and hoped for the best.

  Lo looked us up and down, judging our tale.

  I’d never been the best liar and hated to do it to a woman who’d caught us counting our last coins on the dusty highway where she had a small wooden stall selling freshly picked apples and pears. She’d taken pity on us when we’d settled on buying three instead of four, mentioning if things were tight, she had a few fruit-picking jobs open.

  We’d only been on the road a couple of days since leaving the manor house, and we’d yet to embrace the thicker forest as we didn’t have the cash to fill up our backpacks with supermarket
food. As comforting as it was to know Ren could hunt enough to keep us alive, I wanted more to my diet than just meat and the occasional wild vegetable.

  When I’d seen the fruit stand, my mouth had watered, and I couldn’t stop myself tugging Ren across the road and drooling over a gorgeous pear.

  “Ah, gotcha. You’re one of those.” Lo finally nodded.

  “One of what?” Ren asked, his hackles rising, a slight cough falling from his lips.

  My heart instantly froze, and I studied him.

  Searching.

  Seeking.

  Desperate to know why he coughed, so I could stop it once and for all.

  Perhaps it was just allergies.

  Maybe it was from living in storms and traipsing through snow for so many years.

  “Backpackers.” Lo pointed at our well-used bags. “I’ve had a fair few from overseas come through and want to be paid in cash as it violates their visa.”

  Sighing, she picked up her baby son from the floor and plonked him on the small desk amongst the boxes of pears, blueberries, and apples. “Okay, I can do cash. And your hourly rate will be a dollar more, seeing as I don’t have to pay tax. I’ll pay you every Sunday, cash in hand. Got it?”

  Ren cleared his throat, hiding any remnants of his tension. “Wow, thanks. We appreciate it.”

  “Meh, don’t mention it. Government takes too much these days and doesn’t do anything worthwhile with it. Rather help out people who need it.” Taking my unfinished clipboard, she scanned it. “Married, huh? So you want a co-cabin with no one else?”

  Ren stiffened. “You mean, you offer accommodation, too?”

  Lo smiled. “’Course. We’re expecting dawn wake-ups and out in the orchard plucking by seven a.m., lot of transient folk don’t want to pay for motels seeing as fruit-picking isn’t exactly a long-term thing or pays the big bucks.” Bending down, she rustled below the desk before pulling up a key with a carved apple keychain. “Cabin six. It’s the only double free. Some people don’t like it as it’s the farthest from the communal showers and kind of on the forest edge. Heard it gives some tender-hearted folk the heebie-jeebies, but me? I love wildlife, and there’s nothing to be scared of.” Dangling the key, she raised a dark eyebrow. “So, you want it?”

  Ren looked at me, and I looked at him.

  This was entirely his choice.

  I would happily live in the tent farther in the treeline if that was his preference, so he surprised me when he held out his hand and waited until Lo dropped the key. “We’ll take it. Happen to like wildlife too, so think it’s the perfect fit.”

  And it was.

  For the final weeks of summer, we tackled yet another kind of job, and Ren—who seemed to glow with the dawn—relaxed back into the wild, serious, incredible man I knew and loved.

  Together, we’d pluck ripe, plump produce and sneak one or two on our way to the weighing and packing station. By day, we’d work with other staff—some young, some old—and by night, we’d walk the rows between the orchard trees, inhaling the scent of life, lying on our backs in the grass and watching the stars with the songs of cicadas serenading us.

  Occasionally, if we stayed out late and crept back through a sleeping, silent farm, Ren would snag my hand and pull me into the massive greenhouse. There, surrounded by strawberries and raspberries and every other berry imaginable, he would push me into the shadows, press me against a wall, and hoist up my skirt to slip inside me.

  For a man who loved waking with the sun, his nocturnal activities never failed to steal my heart and make me melt. His kisses were as hot as the greenhouse, his fingers coarse from picking fruit, his harsh breath as sweet as the sugary berries around us.

  Together, we’d rock in the dark in perfect harmony, faster and harder as bodies demanded more, and fingers bruised, and teeth nipped, and hands clamped on mouths to silence our moans.

  We were completely untamed and unashamed.

  Utterly in tune and bonded.

  Even with long hours and early wake-ups, Ren and I smiled often, laughed regularly, and fell into a pattern that only comes from being with someone for so long. We’d always been able to finish each other’s sentences, but now, we barely needed to talk.

  I knew with just one look if he needed a drink or quick massage to loosen the knot in his back. He knew with just a glance if I needed a kiss in the shade or more sun cream on my skin.

  The long days equalled blissful dead-to-the-world sleep. I even grew accustomed to the delightful ache of hard work in my lower back and moaned in gratitude when Ren massaged the cramp in my hands from twisting apples off branches all day.

  Our tiny cabin was perfect in its basicness with its whirring mini fridge, lumpy queen bed, and small discoloured sink.

  Lo didn’t just give us a job; she gave us something incredibly raw and pure, teaching us the ease of working the land and cultivating. Eating straight off the trees, sharing our skills to help each other, working our muscles until sleep was no longer a luxury but a necessity.

  Not that Ren wasn’t a master of that already with his past, or me, thanks to my chores of helping on a farm in my childhood, but this was something else.

  This was Ren and me in Utopia.

  It was how humans were supposed to exist.

  I could’ve lived in fruit-picking paradise forever, but unfortunately, our life had a few bumps up ahead.

  If I had known what was about to happen, I would’ve prepared myself.

  But that was the thing about life.

  You didn’t know what to expect until it happened.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  REN

  * * * * * *

  2020

  THE PHONE CALL came on a Sunday.

  I knew it was a Sunday—unlike most of my life when I had no idea what day or even month it was—because we’d just been paid for our fifth week of fruit picking, and I’d agreed to take Della out to a diner down the road to celebrate having some cash saved up again. Plus, we hadn’t enjoyed our shared birthday yet, and that tradition was one we did our best not to break—especially as she was no longer a teenager, and I was officially thirty.

  I was old.

  And some days, I felt it.

  Especially when I recalled a TV show we’d watched a few years ago with men who claimed their first million before they were thirty. The show interviewed entrepreneurs and successful business owners, making me doubt I had what it took to be anything more than what I was.

  I’d never been number savvy or have any desire to be rich.

  I was rich.

  I had Della.

  But just because I had everything I ever needed, didn’t mean Della did, and that put pressure on me to find a way to be more.

  At least we had some cash again—not much, but enough to fill our backpacks with food, and travel in the final patches of warmth before winter arrived all over again.

  We were late hitting the road, and we still didn’t have a clue where we were going. I’d tentatively thought of finding another farmhand job or a milking foreman position—something I knew I was good at and paid fairly well—but I didn’t know how to go about finding those.

  Of course, those worries became obsolete the moment the phone rang, diverting our journey onto a totally different path.

  I had a razor in my right hand and a face cloth in my left, staring into the grainy mirror in our fruit-picking cabin, combating terrible lighting to shave the couple-of-month-old beard that I hadn’t trimmed in far too long.

  Poor Della earned red lips instantly from kissing me these days, and I was sick of itchy cheeks when I got too hot from working.

  Della looked up from where she sprawled on the bed, already to go in a black flower print dress with her gorgeous hair loose and curly.

  The phone rang again and again in her hand, all while she continued to stare at it rather than answer.

  “You going to get that?” I asked, swishing my blade in the sink, ridding the hair it had already shaved from
my throat.

  “It’s Cassie.”

  I spun to face her. “Why would she be calling?”

  She shrugged. “We messaged last week. She said everything was fine. Just shot the breeze about unimportant stuff.” She bit her lip, nerves dancing over her face as if she didn’t trust Cassie even now.

  The phone seemed to ring louder. “Maybe you better get it.”

  Swallowing, she shot me a look and pressed accept. “Hello?”

  Instantly, her skin eradicated all colour, leaving her white. A hand plastered over her mouth. “Oh, God, Cas. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Abandoning my razor, I rubbed off the soap from my cheeks and crossed the room to her side. The tinny voice of Cassie drifted from the phone. She was crying, but I couldn’t understand what she said.

  Della’s eyes welled with tears, spilling over and hurting my heart. Clutching her hand, I sat heavily on the mattress as she sniffed and nodded. “Yes, of course. We’ll be there.” Shaking her head at whatever Cassie had mentioned, she said firmly with a little wobble of tears, “No, not at all. We’re family. We want to be there.”

  Another few seconds ticked past before Della sniffed again and straightened her back. “Okay, let me talk to Ren. I don’t know where we are exactly or how long it will take to get back to you. Just…let me talk to him, and I’ll let you know, okay?” Her eyes shot to mine, then more tears fell onto our joined fingers. “Okay, sure. Here he is.”

  With a shaking hand, Della passed me the phone. “She wants to talk to you.”

  I wanted to ask what had happened, but I had no time as I took the heavy cell and held it to my ear. “Cassie?”

  Instantly, her cries became sobs, and the part of me that cared deeply for her sprang into an all-out blaze. “What is it? You okay? What can I do to help?”

  I winced, glancing at Della, afraid she’d be jealous or hurt that I’d leap to Cassie’s aid if she needed me. It wasn’t romantic entanglement; it was purely friendship, and the knowledge that I owed her family not just my life, but Della’s, too.