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

by Pepper Winters

  I didn’t know myself anymore.

  I only knew a canyon of vast quaking emptiness with a river of the roughest, churniest despair.

  Ren swallowed again, chewing on tears. “I’ve had two treatments with a drug called Keytruda. It’s been proven in other studies to be very successful. Some even call it the miracle drug, and it doesn’t cause as many side effects as chemo.”

  He struggled to continue, before clearing his throat and saying matter-of-factly,“It’s an active immunotherapy method that stimulates my own immune system to work harder. It gives it a new code…kind of like a computer update to seek out the cells that are bad and attack. I’ve read forums of people who had cancers reduce—positive responders, they’re called. There are some people called total responders, who, after treatment, show no sign of having cancer at all.”

  He squished me close. “I’m hoping to be one of those.”

  My voice caught in my throat. I had so many questions, but I was weak; sobbing silently into his chest, feeling his heart pound, hating it and its limited beats.

  “I go again soon and want you to come with me. I’ll be re-tested…we’ll know then if there’s hope.”

  There were so many things I wanted to know, but I couldn’t think of a single one. Only the worst thing. The thing I didn’t want an answer to, but suddenly was desperate to know.

  Inhaling his smoky, wild smell, I asked around my tears. “How long?”

  Ren groaned, rubbing his hand up and down my arm. “I don’t want you worrying, Della. I want you to focus on the fact that I’m going to outlive every prediction. You have my word I’ll—”

  “And I’ll support you every step of the way. But…how long, Ren?” Looking up, I stared into his deep, sorrow-filled eyes.

  And he stared back at the heartache in mine. “Twelve to twenty-four months.”

  I gasped.

  One to two years?

  That was nothing!

  That was torture.

  That couldn’t be allowed.

  “Finding it at stage one is rare, so I’m already ahead of the game. No one really knows how long I’ll have. I’m unusual, and that’s why I’ve been given access to this trial even though the drug has already been approved. I promise you I’ll have longer than two—”

  “Stop.” I shook my head, my hair sticking to the sleeping bag and crackling with static electricity. Electricity that I’d feed into his blood if it meant it could eradicate every inch of whatever disease was inside him.

  Three seconds ago, I’d been broken beyond repair, destroyed and drowning beneath the knowledge that I couldn’t handle this—I wouldn’t be able to watch Ren die and stay strong.

  But now…now I had a timeline.

  I had an enemy.

  I had the name of the weapons we’d use to fight it.

  Kissing him, I filled with resilience, tenacity, hope. “No.”

  “No?” he whispered into my mouth.

  “No.” I nuzzled close, already planning healthy food regimens, study, research, and second opinions. My mind no longer had time for tears. I had a lover to save and ensure he became one of those total responders because there was no other ending for us.

  “Not so soon. I won’t let you leave me so soon.”

  He grinned softly. “I’ll do everything in my power to obey.”

  “You better, Ren Wild.” Grabbing his hand, I planted it on my stomach and, with a conviction that came from somewhere else, somewhere all-knowing and elemental, I vowed, “I’m pregnant with your child. And I refuse to raise him or her alone. You got me into this mess, and together, we’ll find a way for you to survive it.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  DELLA

  * * * * * *

  2032

  THE SIGNS WERE obvious…now I knew where to look.

  The hints that we’d been given too much happiness and now deserved a dose of despair.

  I wish I could put your mind at rest.

  I want to shout ‘surprise’ and announce a nasty, practical joke.

  But it isn’t a joke…it never was.

  Life had banished us into the struggle of fighting to stay together, and even if we’d seen the signs earlier, we wouldn’t have been able to change fate.

  Just like it’d been fate that made us fall in love.

  It was fate that would ultimately kill us.

  We weren’t miracle workers or immune to normality. Our love didn’t make us safe from adversity…if anything, it made us more susceptible to catastrophe.

  Our hearts were linked.

  If one went, so would the other.

  If one hurt, both felt it.

  A ripple effect that wouldn’t just end when Ren died but would continue to haunt me until the day I died, too.

  As we lay together after Ren told me, I swung between bravery and cowardice.

  I wanted to head to the doctor’s straight away and demand every treatment, drug, and trial. I wanted to assure him that I would be strong, and he could lean on me—that he wouldn’t face a single piece of this alone.

  But I also wanted to stay in that forest and never leave. I wanted to hand my hope to the wind and beg it to rewind time to when Ren was eight and he was never sold to my parents.

  I was willing to give up an entire lifetime with him—to prevent us ever meeting, to stop true love from forming, to end all of it—if it meant he would never have been exposed to asbestos.

  I would accept he’d love another, marry another…that was how frantic I was to heal him.

  I was willing to exist and grow up in that hell-house with a murdering mother and raping father if it meant Ren survived. Because, at least that way…I would never have known what I was about to lose as I wouldn’t have had him to start with.

  Was that selfless or selfish?

  Selfless to want him to live or selfish not to want to face the pain?

  No matter what happened in the future, I would keep fighting. I would keep clearing the carnage and carrying a sword into battle.

  There was no other way.

  Because I was Ren’s.

  Yesterday, tomorrow, for always.

  By the time night had fallen, casting us in moon glow and star shadows, Ren and I were steady enough to venture outside and cook a simple meal.

  Watching him boil water for pasta and use his knife to whittle a stick into a stirrer, I made up a story of enchantment where he was part seraph and indomitable—where the inescapable power of age held zero sway.

  And that was the moment that I knew, just knew that love would be the hardest thing I’d ever have to endure.

  It wasn’t my origins or the fact I was never meant to exist. It wasn’t seeing what my parents did or the dead children they’d tortured.

  It was something only a lucky few enjoyed.

  Something that was said to be worth any pain or price.

  Love.

  I was no longer a silly girl who idolized her prince and saviour.

  I was a woman born to darkness and now, I bargained with that darkness for hope. Hope for the boy I was created for.

  A boy I wanted to marry.

  A boy I did marry.

  A simple, perfect marriage that was the third largest incident of our lives.

  Three out of five moments.

  Wonderful moments.

  Horrible moments.

  Moments that make up a life.

  One, two, three, four, five.

  One, Ren was arrested, which led to a domino river of birth certificates and closure.

  Two, Ren told me he was dying and began a nightmare we would face together.

  Three, Ren married me a week after and made me the happiest and saddest girl alive.

  Four…?

  Well, four arrived eight and a half months later, bringing joy and sorrow in equal measure.

  And five?

  Ugh, five...

  Five will come last.

  Once our story is over.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIXr />
  REN

  * * * * * *

  2021

  THERE WERE MANY things I’d experienced in my thirty or so years.

  Some mundane and some uncommon, but I’d never felt more aware of my fragility and timelessness than when I said, ‘I do.’

  When I joined the ranks of husbands.

  When I entered the community of marriage and swore my life to serve, protect, and adore.

  Up until the moment I’d heard the word ‘incurable,’ I’d been a patient man.

  I didn’t rush. I weighed up the pros and cons before I leapt. I enjoyed knowing every outcome before I committed.

  But now…

  Now, I was the opposite of patient.

  I was thirsty and unrepentant and impetuous.

  And I didn’t wait for anything.

  Not that Della wanted to. She was just as hasty as me to bind our souls together.

  After a few days in the forest, both discussing and skirting the subject of my impending demise, we returned home as a united front and braved the storm of telling Cassie and Liam together.

  John had helped.

  Tissues had been used.

  Curses had been uttered.

  Hugs had been given.

  John was right when he said this would be easier with people by my side, and I stood a little taller, a little braver for tomorrow.

  It also meant things got done a hell of a lot faster.

  Between all of us, we arranged a simple gazebo in the garden and a reverend to marry us. I gave up my concepts of marrying Della in a simple meadow, relinquishing planning to the grandiose ideals of Cassie and letting her invite Adam and his family.

  While she plotted our wedding, Della and I visited oncology and the doctor who’d kindly put me on the off-label trial of Keytruda.

  Rick Mackenzie was an old Scot who’d been away from home for decades but still had a burr of Scottish accent. He’d been gentle, explaining what I couldn’t to Della, and answering her unsteady questions.

  I’d held Della’s hand, flinching when she flinched and soothing her when she cried.

  I chose to have another treatment of Keytruda before my tests to see if I’d improved, and Della hissed between her teeth as the nurse pricked me with the needle and began the thirty-minute siphon of man-made magic into my body.

  Once again, claustrophobia clawed, but it was thirty minutes of hell for hopefully a lifetime with my wife.

  Afterward, with no side effects to speak of, Rick arranged for another CT scan, blood work, and X-ray, and also took samples from Della…just in case.

  Our results were due any day now, and it’d been the hardest thing not to get my hopes up about my own prognosis and keep all fear away from Della’s.

  On our way back from the hospital—only a couple of days before our wedding—I pulled into town and parked, and just like that day in the junk store in a town I didn’t remember, I had the undeniable urge to buy Della a ring.

  A ring she would wear for the rest of her life.

  “I need to go shopping.” I turned to her, my hand on the steering wheel.

  “I think I can guess what for.” She smiled, opening the door. “No peeking?”

  “No peeking.” We climbed from the vehicle, and I locked up. “Meet back here in an hour?”

  An hour had turned to two as I couldn’t find the perfect ring.

  My budget was tight and my wishes too lofty.

  But at least, in the end, I got something that would hopefully trump her milky, fake sapphire.

  I coughed a little, clearing my throat as Nina appeared at the top of the silver-carpeted aisle, scattering flower petals and dragging my mind to the present.

  Wedding.

  Marriage.

  I was getting hitched today.

  The fire-haired little girl Cassie had created with an equally fire-headed country boy. When we’d first been introduced, Nina had been shy and scuffed her sneaker into the dirt. That childish uncertainty reminded me so much of Della growing up that my heart had overflowed with echoes from my past.

  Of Della smacking a kiss on my lips in the fields when she was nine.

  Of Della squealing as I’d blown raspberries on her stomach when she was eight.

  Of Della always there, always gorgeous, always mine.

  It made standing at the top of the aisle beneath a flower coiled archway—a groom waiting for his bride in a new pair of jeans and white shirt—all the more poignant because finally, finally my dreams had come true.

  I no longer had to fall asleep to find her. She was there in my every waking moment.

  Raising Della had been my biggest challenge and my greatest honour and, as she appeared—blonde hair loose and simple white dress kissing her ankles, her tattoo blue with its ribboned R—I fell even more.

  My heart no longer resided in my chest.

  It made a home in her hand.

  It settled content in her hold.

  And it would stay there, even when the rest of me was gone.

  My mouth went dry as she drifted toward me, looking ethereal and so damn young.

  I never wanted to forget.

  Not a single thing.

  Not a fraction of a moment.

  I’m so sorry, Little Ribbon.

  So sorry for marrying you with an ending already close.

  I should annul this marriage, never consummate it, and leave her untouched so she never knew the pain of being a widow.

  But there were things I could do and things I couldn’t…and this was one I couldn’t.

  I had to marry her.

  I’d wanted to marry her since I’d found her.

  John walked beside her—our joint father who’d adopted us heart and soul—while Cassie trailed behind her—a sister to us both.

  Funny, how the two women who’d been in my life the longest had switched roles.

  Once, Della had been my sister, while Cassie was my lover.

  Now, Della was my almost-wife, and Cassie was my family.

  And when Della arrived before me and John gave her to me with a smile and a look that cleaved my contaminated chest in two, I’d never been so happy or so sad.

  All my dreams had come true and, because of that…my life was almost over.

  I clutched her hand as we faced the reverend together. We shook equally, afraid and eager, nervous and sure.

  The reverend smiled and nodded and spoke about the sanctity of our union.

  I didn’t listen.

  I couldn’t.

  My entire attention locked on the stunning girl beside me, on the perfect way her hand fit in mine, and the knowledge that after this, she would no longer be a Mclary.

  She’d be a Wild.

  Her five-year-old suggestion no longer fake but so, so real.

  With our eyes joined and love flowing, the reverend gave us state regulated verses and offered up church approved vows, waiting for us to parrot them after him.

  Simple and uncomplicated.

  No penned poems or scripted sonnets.

  Just the bare essentials to bind us.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes off her as she repeated after him, “I, Della Mclary, choose you, Ren Wild, to be my lawfully wedded husband. For richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, for as long as we both shall live.”

  Sickness.

  The worst one.

  The one I was about to drag her through.

  I’m so sorry, Della.

  My voice shook as I struggled to hold myself together. “I, Ren Wild, take you, Della Mclary, to be my lawfully wedded wife. For richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, for as long as we both shall live.”

  Disguising the grief in my throat, I pressed a kiss to her ear, closing my eyes on the tears that threatened. “And long past that. Forever, Ribbon. Forever.”

  She shivered and laughed quietly as I pulled the ring I’d bought from my pocket. Her eyes widened at the solitaire diamond with an italic inscription inside:

  Wild for
ever and always. I love you.

  She shook her head, another emotional chuckle falling free. “I-I can’t believe this.”

  I brushed aside a curl, imprinting the feel of her soft cheek. “What can’t you believe?”

  “That once again, we shared the same idea.” Opening her palm, she revealed a glossy gold band with the same promise from my dinged-up leather bangle stamped inside.

  DW RW4EVA

  I wanted to curse.

  To swear.

  Profanity seemed the only cure to release the overwhelming pressure and love inside me, but with God watching us become man and wife, I just drew her close and kissed her deep, all while John chuckled, and Cassie swooned, and the reverend cleared his throat with reprimand.

  “You’re supposed to wait until after you’ve said the words ‘I do.’”

  With Della’s lips on mine, we smiled and laughed, teeth clacking as we both murmured, “I do.”

  “I do.”

  My fingers fumbled on hers, switching her chipped sapphire to her other hand and sliding the diamond over her wedding finger. Once I’d trapped her with vows and jewellery, she trapped me.

  I never thought a piece of precious metal could transfix me, but as that ring settled cold then turned warm, I no longer felt alone.

  I felt an overpowering sensation of home and heart and hearth.

  “You may kiss the bride.” The reverend clasped his hands and stepped back.

  There would be many things I remembered on my death bed.

  So many wonderful things.

  But that kiss?

  That first kiss where Della was my wife would always be the brightest.

  That kiss was our beginning, middle, and end.

  That kiss bound us past life and death, sickness and health.

  That kiss was life itself, never ending, forever existing, two souls entwined…

  …for eternity.

  * * * * *

  “Are you sitting down?”

  My fingers tightened around my phone, my eyes tracking Della as she packed a few clothes for us to return to the forest for a small honeymoon.

  Only a couple of days, just enough to consummate—more than once—and to forget our future. If we could.

  “No. Should I be?” My voice was gruff, belying the injection of panic.

  Rick Mackenzie, my oncologist with his Scottish calmness, said, “Let’s get the important stuff out of the way, shall we? Let’s start with Della Mclary.”