I forced a smile. “I’m not giving up, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I wouldn’t dare think that. Out of any case I’ve seen, you have something unique tying you here that will prove to be better than any surgery or drug.”
“Oh?” I raised my eyebrow, coughing softly. “What’s that?”
“Love.” He smiled. “True love has its claws in you, and I doubt it will ever let go. Fight for that. Live for that. And we’ll make sure to buy you enough time to watch your son grow.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
DELLA
* * * * * *
2023
THAT FIRST YEAR with a new-born and a husband fighting the worst kind of unfairness, I couldn’t lie…it was the hardest year I’d ever endured.
After the initial wash of endorphins in the hospital with Ren and me kissing, watching baby Jacob as if he was the most fascinating thing we’d ever seen, and living in a cocoon of delight, life interrupted and sped up far too fast.
There was no time to tell Ren how shit-terrified I’d been when he’d collapsed.
No space to yell at him and tell him to take it slow.
He already knew he’d screwed up, and I didn’t need to drag yet more sadness into our tentative world.
So, we buckled down and fought.
God, we fought.
We fought so hard I don’t remember anything else.
All I remembered was the exhaustion from a baby thrust into a world of sad instability and eyes that were permanently swollen from all the tears I refused to shed.
While I nursed a grizzly baby, Ren had treatments every other week. One week, he’d be subjected to Keytruda—a drug I was fond of as it had helped him before. And one with chemo—a drug I was not fond of as it made him sick.
Even with the pills that Rick Mackenzie gave him to counteract the side effects, Ren had a rash where the chemicals entered his skin and complained of bone aches so bad, he submitted to taking painkillers on top of all the rest.
By the fourth session of chemo, his cheekbones were more defined and his body more sinew than muscle. He hadn’t lost weight exactly but tightened, somehow. The parts of him that made him so dependable and capable sucking deep within to fight.
By the second month of Jacob being home and the builders kindly racing to finish our house, even while we lived there, Ren became allergic to sunlight.
His eyes couldn’t handle the brightness, even with sunglasses. His skin burned instantly, even with sun cream. Whatever the doctors had injected into him had done something to his biological makeup, and it was hard not to smash apart everything in our newly finished house.
It was hard to stay strong for him when I was so helpless.
It was hard to keep Jacob happy when I didn’t know the meaning of the word myself anymore.
It was in those moments—those life-sucking, abyssal moments—that I carried my child to the willow grotto and sat amongst their fronds.
I’d allow myself to be sad, only for a moment.
I’d allow myself to talk to Jacob about things no baby should know about their terminally-ill father, piecing myself back together again to be brave.
Even dealing with so much, Ren never let me down.
We took turns bathing Jacob and putting him to bed. We’d tell stories together, finding laughter amongst so many heartaches when we relived our own tales of childhood.
John hired an out of town contractor to finish the baling and, on the days when the chemo hit Ren bad, Cassie became a godsend by babysitting Jacob while I held Ren on the bathroom floor as he shivered and vomited and apologised for ever letting me see him that way.
Like I said, that first year was the hardest I’d ever endured.
But even though our life was a sequence of tough and tougher moments, I never regretted for a moment having Jacob.
As he grew from toothless babe to inquisitive bright-eyed creature, I could see why Ren had both hated and loved me when I was young.
I hated not knowing what I was doing. Hated the lack of rest, the loud crying, the struggle to learn a language I didn’t know. But I loved, loved watching him develop a personality. I loved being responsible for his learning, growth, and the fact that he blossomed in weight, happiness, and joy even while his parents lost those things.
We’d been given the gift of life with our son, and the payment seemed to be the cost of his father’s soul. And as much as I loved Jacob, I honestly didn’t know if I could afford the price.
My heart broke on a minutely basis.
That was until Jacob’s fourth month and Ren’s oncologist announced he was happy with his results and took him off chemo.
The tumours hadn’t shrunk like last time, but they had stabilised, and he was given a positive outlook again.
It was all agreed that Ren would stay on Keytruda…for the rest of his life. And slowly, as the chemo side effects left his body, he put back the weight he’d lost and ventured outside again where the sun was no longer his enemy.
We’d walk together over the meadows with Jacob in his arms, and we’d soak in the beauty of a sunset, imprinting the memory, clutching it tight for the day when they’d be no more.
Luckily, by the time Christmas arrived, no one would guess Ren was sick.
His smile was broad, strength impressive, and attitude toward life still as vicious and possessive as before.
When summer returned, there was no argument about who would work the fields, and Ren took his place on his beloved tractor, sucking hay, tipping his hat, his skin tanned and glowing.
On our son’s first birthday, he made love to me with such passion and power, he convinced me what we’d lived through was just a nightmare.
A nightmare we’d woken from.
A nightmare we wouldn’t have again.
As his body thrust into mine and his lips cast a spell over my mind and heart, I threw myself into a better dream.
One where Ren would be around to watch his son have his own sons and daughters.
A dream where we grew old together.
And for a while…it came true.
* * * * *
2024
Jacob turned two, and we spent the day with the Wilsons in the old farmhouse.
Cassie helped me bake a cake with two Spiderman candles, and John bounced his honorary grandson on his knee while Ren shared a drink with Liam and Chip on the couch.
So far, 2024 had been the opposite of 2023.
Ren was healthy—in relative terms—and happy.
Jacob was walking and into everything.
And Cassie’s horse business—that she’d named Cherry Equestrian—had been running for six months. So far, she’d broken in three horses and entered one local show-jumping contest where she came second. The prize money was enough to buy more tack and a new saddle.
After an afternoon of birthday presents and eating cake, Jacob passed out as Ren carried him across the field to our house.
Occasionally, he’d cough, but thanks to Keytruda and painkillers, Ren was almost as content as the year when I’d been pregnant and he’d made the impossible possible by building a house, marrying me, and becoming a true Wild.
“By the way, I did what Rick suggested.”
Ren’s voice settled around our feet as the moon cast him in quicksilver shadows.
I looked up, my heart skipping a beat at the sharp lines of his jaw, slight stubble, and perfect lips. His brow was drawn and eyes dark, but his hair danced to its own beat with the slight breeze over the paddock.
“Oh?” I reached out and squeezed Jacob’s tiny foot. It was too irresistible, dangling from his father’s embrace, encased in a miniature sneaker. It constantly amazed me that manufacturers could make adult apparel in toddler sizes.
“About the lawsuit.”
“Ah, right.” I nodded.
Rick had mentioned it to me, too. He’d told me alone, actually. Mentioning the god-awful subject of after.
After Ren was gone.
>
After.
I hated, hated that word.
Apparently, due to having his life cut short by unnatural means, Ren was fully within his right to claim compensation. There were claimants and lawsuits toward the asbestos company numbering in the thousands, but the successful pay outs were either while the victim was still alive or the person left behind filed within one to two years.
After that, it was too late.
Letting Jacob’s foot go, I shuddered. “I don’t like the thought of benefiting from your…” I swallowed, cursing the familiar sting in my eyes.
Ren shuffled Jacob to one arm, then reached for my hand. His grip was warm and dry and strong. “If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be going anywhere for a very long time.” His voice hardened. “You know I hate charity, but this…it isn’t like that. This is justice. They killed me when I was ten years old, Della. The least they can do is compensate you and Jacob.”
“I’m not taking money from those monsters.”
“But I will.” He squeezed my fingers. “I’d do anything for you. Rick’s already filed my case with a lawyer who has a few active claimants. He said there’s better success in numbers, so he’ll wait for a couple more to come forward and then take it to trial.”
I sighed heavily, kicking at weeds and pulling up the roots out of habit. “When will you know if you win a settlement?”
“Not sure.” He kissed Jacob’s downy blond head. “But hopefully not too long.”
He didn’t say it, but he didn’t need to.
These days, there were conversations flying around all the time that weren’t said.
Hopefully not too long.
Hopefully before I’m dead.
* * * * *
2025
Christmas was whiter than usual with a blizzard that meant the tractor was used as a plough, fashioning a pathway between our house and the Wilsons.
Ice laced window frames, and trees were sacrificed to burn to keep the chill at bay.
This year, with Jacob three and Nina eleven, we opted to have Christmas at our place where the sparse amount of furniture meant opening presents and reaping season carnage wasn’t nearly as destructive as in John’s house with its over-packed bookcases and rooms that held more than just mementoes; it held entire lifetimes.
Ren and I had yet to create that amount of clutter, and the main point of decoration was a small pine tree Ren had cut down, potted, and taken me shopping to buy as many gaudy baubles as I wanted.
I had to admit, I’d gone a bit overboard with the tinsel.
But watching our son laugh and rip into brightly printed paper, revealing a remote-control car, books that could be read in the bath, and a set of miniature diggers to play in the dirt, it was worth it.
“I still remember our first Christmas,” Ren murmured, slotting himself beside me as I leaned against the kitchen bench after serving warm apple and cinnamon muffins. We’d had a big lunch of roasted veggies, turkey, and all the trimmings, so appetites weren’t all that hungry.
I wrapped my arms around his waist. “I remember it, too.”
I remembered how Cassie had come into our room and made fun of me for sleeping in the same bed as Ren. How her tone had been weird, and I didn’t like it whenever she looked at the boy who was mine.
“You kissed me under the mistletoe.” He chuckled as Jacob fell over the plush rug by the fireplace, chasing his remote-control car as Nina careened it into things, kamikaze style. “Remember?”
I didn’t actually.
My five-year-old brain had been obsessing about Cassie and the strangers I didn’t like, rather than the comforting presence of my beloved brother. I scrunched up my nose, pretending I did. “I think it was you who kissed me, not the other way around.”
He pursed his lips, his excellent memory that would’ve made him worthy of any scholar or doctor or any profession he chose whisking through time to a different Christmas and snowy night.
“You know…you’re right.” He turned me to face him, planting possessive hands on my hips. “I scooped you up and asked you to kiss me.” His face glowed with fondness. “I gave you my cheek, but you smacked my lips instead.”
“Like this?” I stood on tiptoes, pressing my mouth to his.
But this time, I didn’t smack like a child.
I kissed like a wife.
And there was nothing innocent about it.
He groaned, his body tensing for more. “Exactly like that.”
We laughed together, enjoying our inside joke of five-year-olds kissing fifteen-year-olds—both totally unaware what existed in their future.
Our lips parted, tongues touched, and later, once everyone had left and Jacob was asleep in his bed, Ren took me in all the ways he could.
It was the best Christmas present even though he’d bought me a new laptop and I’d bought him a new oil skin jacket.
Every touch was precious.
Every thrust was infinite.
Every year more treasured than the last.
* * * * *
2026
We hadn’t celebrated our shared birthday in a while, thanks to parenthood, hospital visits, farm running, horse businesses, and all the other things that made up a hectic life, but on 27th of June—our official date of creation (even if Ren had borrowed it from me)—we asked Cassie to babysit our monster four-year-old and headed to a local diner for our tradition.
The meal of greasy food and naughty but oh-so-delicious burgers was a flashback to a lifetime of togetherness.
Halfway through the meal, Ren tugged at the ribbon holding my braid together, unravelling it with a look of intensity.
I gulped, burning up in the coffee fire of his gaze, then tears welled as he pulled a fresh string of blue from his pocket. “I’m afraid I’ve been rather slack on replacing your ribbon the past few years. This one is looking a little faded.” With swift fingers—used to tying bows from my childhood—he retied my braid with new, bright cobalt, then went back to eating as if nothing had happened.
I’d wanted to pounce on him there and then, but it was almost a game to him. A game to see how much he could seduce me by not even touching me.
By the time we’d polished off a chocolate brownie for dessert, I was ready to fool around in the back of the second-hand pick-up truck we’d bought two years ago.
However, Ren took my hand and guided me down Main Street.
My skin itched for his touch. My lips watered for his kiss. My patience was stretched with need.
“Are we ambling aimlessly, or do we have a plan?” I asked. “Because I need you and a bed and alone time, stat.”
He chuckled. “Stat, huh?”
“Immediately.”
“Well, you’ll have to be patient. I’m looking for something.” Ren smiled, the street lights casting his handsome face in shadows and illumination. I was seriously the luckiest woman in the world to love someone so beautiful inside and out.
I wanted to leap into his arms and force him to take me, but I ordered myself to be a grown-up. “Looking for what?”
He grinned wider, tugging me down a side street with a single glowing sign still on at this time of night. “That.”
“Jill’s Quill?”
“Yup.” He nodded. “For your seventeenth birthday present, I bought you ink that teases me every day you slide out of bed and every moment you walk barefoot toward me. I don’t think I ever told you how much that ribboned R means to me. Didn’t really know how. So…I figured, why bother telling you when I could show you?”
Coughing once, he dragged me toward the tattoo parlour and through the glass door.
“Ah, you must be my nine o’clock.” A spritely woman looked up with colourful tatted sleeves and a stretched hoop in her ear. “Sit. Let’s get started.”
Ren didn’t give me time to ask what the hell was going on before he pushed me toward the black pleather couch and took a seat on the plastic wrapped recliner in front of the artist. “You got the design I em
ailed?”
“Yup.” The artist, who I assumed was Jill, snapped on a pair of gloves and grabbed a stencil already printed and ready to go from the table beside her. “Where do you want it?”
Ren pointed to his forearm. “There.”
“Alrighty.”
I had no idea what it was or how this had happened so suddenly.
Nerves bubbled in my belly the entire time the tattoo gun buzzed.
Afterward, Ren ordered, “Pay the woman, Della Ribbon. This is, after all, your birthday present to me.”
Laughing under my breath, I rolled my eyes at the craziness of my husband. I slipped cash from my purse, waited until Jill rung me up, then turned to face him with a hand on my hip. “Okay, enough of the secrets. Show me.”
With a soul-stealing look, he came toward me, holding out his arm. “It’s not a secret that I love you.”
My eyes locked on his fresh ink.
Blue, the same colour as mine.
A ribbon wrapping around his arm instead of my foot.
A ribbon that looped into a J before finishing in a D, just like mine finished in an R.
He was right.
Telling me how much my tattoo meant to him would’ve been useless.
Because nothing could describe the tidal wave of lust, love, and loss that filled me.
He’d marked himself forever.
He’d take me and Jacob wherever he went.
He was mine, not death’s or pain’s or time’s.
Mine.
The permanent ink said so.
* * * * *
2027
“I can’t believe you’re making me do this.” Ren laughed, hoisting five-year-old Jacob onto his hip.
The past few years had been a whirlwind of Ren teaching his son everything he could. From camping trips in summer, to tractor snow ploughing in winter, and even sitting with him and doing ‘homework’ like I’d done even though Jacob only attended preschool.
Ren was besotted with his son, just like I knew he would be.
Ren and Della: Boxed Set (Ribbon Duet Book 3) Page 85
