There hadn’t been any rope or knot binding me to her as I packed my bag and left the apartment that awful night, but there was now.
An invisible lasso that tightened every time I tried stepping farther away, yanking me back, keeping me firmly stuck.
Was this limbo or purgatory?
Was it punishment for leaving her so callously when she needed me the most?
Those questions kept me company on my long treks through the forest until I’d memorised every trail and recognised every tree.
More questions came at night. Questions I had no right to ask.
Was she with someone?
Was she happy with someone?
Had she forgotten about me when I could never, ever forget about her?
But it was the questions that sprang on me, heavy with guilt, festering with shame that meant I would never be able to move forward.
Not like this.
Not without checking on her.
Not without convincing myself that she didn’t need me anymore.
I would rather be crushed knowing she’d deleted me from her world, than forever wonder if she was okay.
I couldn’t handle the unknown, the never ending need to see her, the almost manic desperation to clear the air between us and somehow find closure to this entire convoluted mess.
I’d lost weight.
I’d forgotten how to breathe.
My bones were glass and my chest a forge.
True love was a vicious monster, feeding on my reserves, breaking me beneath its resolve to either kill me if I didn’t obey or destroy me if I did.
I was glad the forest didn’t have mirrors because heartbreak had not been kind to me.
But just because I’d made a mistake by leaving, and it’d taken me three months of mentally punishing myself for all the misguided, impure thoughts I’d been having, I could finally admit what I couldn’t before.
Away from the city, free from society’s judgment, I had no choice but to be honest with myself.
I wished I could stop it.
I begged for it not to be true.
But…the reality was, I was in love with Della.
Not just platonic, parental, brotherly, friendship love but bone-crunching, heart-pounding, air-stealing, delicious fucking love that broke me down until I no longer knew who I was.
All I knew was I couldn’t keep doing this.
I couldn’t keep living without her.
I needed her in my life in any capacity that she’d let me.
Even if it meant I’d have to walk her down the aisle as she married some undeserving prick, I would do it.
I would take whatever she gave.
I didn’t make a conscious decision to pack up my tent that morning or turn toward the city instead of away. I didn’t mean to leave my campsite or haul my possessions onto my back.
I wanted Della, but I still didn’t know how to deal with that even as I struck off on different paths, passed unfamiliar trees, and weaved my way from wilderness to city.
The closer I got, the more my worry escalated.
Was she even there?
Was she still at our apartment, or had she moved?
Had she sought out Cassie’s help and returned to Cherry River?
My boots travelled faster as scarier questions chased me.
What if she’d been hurt? What if she’d been taken or sold or abused while I’d been having a personal crisis? What if I’d put myself first, and she’d suffered because of it?
I would die.
By my hand or heartbreak’s if that was the case.
How could I say I loved her when I’d done the exact same thing to her as my mother had done to me?
My mother had sold me because I was worth more to her as dollars than I was as her son. And I’d walked away from Della because I chose propriety and martyrdom instead of burying my own pain and focusing on giving her everything I had left to give.
I’d been so fucking selfish.
And I stopped walking.
I ran.
I ran as fast as I could.
I ran all the way back to the apartment, to Della, to fix this.
* * * * *
She wasn’t there.
For two weeks, I stalked the street where we used to live, returning to the dilapidated shed Della and I had slept in when we first arrived in town, watching for any sign of her.
No one entered our apartment.
No landlord or new tenant.
No Della.
Rain or shine, I’d leave my temporary shack and travel into the congested suburbs and find a place in the shadows to watch.
And every day, my heart would sink a little more.
I’d focused on the wrong questions.
I hadn’t stopped to ask the most important one.
If Della had moved on and left…where had she gone, and how could I find her? Would it be as simple as turning on my cell-phone and calling her? Would she talk to me? Or had she changed her number?
I’d left every dollar I had on the coffee table when I’d gone, so I had no funds to purchase credit for my phone. And for now, I had no intention of finding a job. I could hunt what I needed to eat or I’d steal if long hours in the city meant game was scarce. Not that I had an appetite these days.
I ran purely on confusion and regret.
Money didn’t matter to me, and besides, I couldn’t stop watching the apartment, hoping against hope that someday, some hour, she’d turn up.
On the fourteenth day, when she still didn’t show, and no one else entered the space, I crossed the street, checked I went unnoticed, and descended the stairs to the claustrophobic basement apartment.
It took fifteen minutes, but I managed to pick the lock with the two knives from my boot, and my steps sounded criminal as I crossed over the threshold for the first time since saying goodbye to the love of my life.
The first thing that hit me was the smell.
Must and un-use and un-want. Dust bunnies sat together in corners as if the unsealed windows had encouraged a breeze to enter and do some cleaning. The kitchen tap dripped like it always did into an empty sink. Dishes sat on the rack waiting to be put into the paint-chipped cupboards.
After living so free in the forest where nature decorated with sunsets and moonlight, the space was abysmal and poky.
How had we lived so long in this small place?
Then again, everywhere seemed better when Della was around. We were happy in a garden shed or under the stars as long as we were together.
Rubbing at the sudden blistering burn where my heart lived, I strode through the tiny home. My hands clenched as my eyes fell on the coffee table where the note I’d scribbled Della still sat unfinished.
She hadn’t moved it.
The cash was missing but that was the only thing changed in the entire room from its faded brown couch to its ugly striped curtains.
No noise came from the bathroom or Della’s bedroom, but I couldn’t stop myself from following the corridor—memories of Della naked haunting my every step.
I sucked in a painful breath as I pushed open the partially cracked door to her bedroom. Her bed was unmade, like usual. Her bedside table droplet-stained from glasses sipped sleepily in the night.
Prowling to her wardrobe, I wrenched it open. Sucking back another pained breath, I noticed the clothes she favoured and often wore were no longer there.
One of the only signs that she no longer lived here.
Her toiletries in the grout-stained bathroom were gone. Her subtle scent of petals and flowers from working at the florist no longer noticeable in the stale air.
She hadn’t been here in a while.
Yet she still paid rent; otherwise, our furniture would’ve been evicted and a new tenant living in our home.
Why?
And if she still paid rent but didn’t live here, where was she?
My boots echoed off the corridor walls as I headed back toward the living room, and my eyes
fell on the front door.
A sequence of events unfolded in rapid fire.
Of Tom arriving that Halloween to take Della to the dance.
Of her kissing him in the dark amongst witches and vampires.
Of my jealousy finally starting to make me notice my feelings for Della were changing.
Of yet more jealousy and absolute excruciating heartbreak as she called me the night she lost her virginity.
Of me storming over there, snatching her as if she were mine to snatch, and beating up the guy she’d chosen over me.
I couldn’t remember his name. I couldn’t remember much about that night other than my roaring agony.
I didn’t know what I’d do if I saw him again.
Wait…
Something inside me bellowed with possession. Something that whispered the answers to my questions.
Where is she?
I knew.
I didn’t know how.
I didn’t know why.
But I knew where to start looking.
I bolted out the door.
CHAPTER NINE
REN
* * * * * *
Current Month
I’D BEEN CALLED many things in my life.
A boy.
A belonging.
A bastard.
But this was a new low.
I was a pervert, a peeper, an obsessed watcher who didn’t have the power to stop.
For two weeks, I stalked Della every second of every day.
I knew her schedule. I knew her friends. I knew she had English on Mondays and lit class on Wednesdays. I knew she studied until late and watched movies with the guy she’d slept with—who I remembered was called David—and some black-haired girl I didn’t know.
I knew she slept alone in her own room in a new bed, new sheets, new pyjamas, and genuinely laughed when David whispered in her ear at breakfast and smiled softly when he clutched her hand goodbye.
I knew she was sad and lonely and angry.
I recognised the tightness in her shoulders, the blaze in her blue eyes, and the stiffness of her step.
We’d been apart longer than we’d ever been, but I knew her better than I knew myself.
I might not be fluent in many things, but when it came to reading Della, I was a master. Every nuance and twitch, I understood. Every flick of her hair and sniff of her petite nose, I read the hidden message.
And the language she shouted was of serious rage.
She was a part of me, and her anger became my anger because I understood it.
I felt it, too.
I was angry that I’d driven us to this point.
I was angry that, until a month ago, I had full intentions to track her down, approach her, and get on my knees in apology. I had an entire script planned, written in my mind not on paper, burned into my memory as if scribed in fire.
I was going to pledge myself to her all over again.
I was going to beg her forgiveness for breaking my promise never to leave her like I did when she was a baby playing on that comfy rug with glittery goldfish and opinionated cats.
I’d left her even when I promised I wouldn’t.
I’d done that.
She hadn’t asked me to go, and despite the mess between us, my leaving was inexcusable.
But my carefully planned speech had faded the longer I watched her.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her, loving her the way I was meant to with pride for her excelling at life without me, joy that she was studying something she loved, affection for the messy blonde curls, and warm-hearted sentiment for the ribbon fluttering in her strands.
The first day of watching her went too fast and, before I knew it, my stalking reached creepy levels until I couldn’t leave unless her bedroom light went out and sleep meant she’d be in bed for the rest of the night.
I’d slink off, hidden in my shadows and shame, crawling into a sleeping bag and dreaming inappropriate dreams full of need, love, and passion.
At dawn, I’d return to her, an itch in my blood commanding me to be close after so long apart.
The next morning, I found her hugging David goodbye on the stoop of the white picket fenced house I could never afford, and her bare legs flashed me where I hid in the trees across the street.
She wore flip-flops, and wrapped around her ankle was the same tattoo I’d paid for on her seventeenth birthday. The one with its matching blue ribbon trailing into its capital R.
A year old and the ink was just as bright, just as damning as the night I cupped her foot and demanded an explanation—begging her to put me out of my misery, all the while knowing she was about to condemn me even more.
The tattoo sucker-punched me with so many things, and I didn’t have the courage to approach her that day. Instead, I drowned beneath everything I’d done wrong and everything I didn’t know how to fix.
The day after that, David kissed her.
It’d been the slap to the face I needed.
It woke me out of the trance I’d fallen into, shaking me with truth that I’d left her for months, but she wasn’t a wilting flower entirely reliant on me to thrive. She was tenacious and brave and fiercely independent. Always had been—always looking after me just as much as I looked after her.
Of course, she wouldn’t wait for me.
Of course, her anger would drive her to find other things…other people.
My insides wanted to curl up and die, but I refused to be weak. I refused to think of myself as the injured party when I’d been the one to walk away.
I’d done this.
I’d pushed her to find comfort from some other man. A man she’d already given herself to. A man who had every power to destroy me, and he didn’t even know it.
When he kissed her, every muscle seized.
She didn’t exactly kiss him back—not the way she’d kissed Tom at the Halloween party—but she didn’t push him away, either.
She nodded to something he said while they stood on the garden path, and he cupped her pretty cheeks like I wanted to, her eyes glowing with a mixture of affection and tears.
I wanted to kill him.
But I was also grateful because he’d kept my Della safe when I had not. I wanted him gone, but I wouldn’t hurt her again.
She’d chosen him.
I had to respect that.
That was my punishment.
I returned to my borrowed shack on government land, unable to stop reliving her kissing him. Kissing the boy she’d lost her virginity to.
Just like when I’d run, I was only thinking of myself.
I should be happy she wasn’t writhing in matching misery.
She was alive.
She was healthy.
She was living.
Who was I to ruin that all over again?
If she’d moved on, then I would do everything in my power to spare her any more pain.
So, I settled in to watch, to study, to make sure what she’d said to me that night—the way she’d stared, and stripped, and kissed me—had been what I’d feared all along: a puppy crush. A silly infatuation. Nothing more than innocent flirtation that I’d turned into something messy and untrue.
I needed to see that so I could let go of these tragic needs driving me into an early grave.
But…if she loved me the way I was learning I loved her…could our relationship evolve? Were our foundations strong enough, our morals good enough, to risk losing everything just for the hope of something more?
A few months ago, my answer had been no. I wasn’t willing to risk it.
But now…now, I knew I’d fucked up everything and lived with the daily torture of what it was like to exist without her.
I wanted her back.
Emotions had been the glue that sewed us together, and I refused to let them be the crowbar to pry us apart.
I’d lost Della the moment I’d walked out the door. I’d decimated her trust, her faith, and her affection, all because I wasn’t brave enou
gh to admit I felt something, too.
And now, watching her kiss men from a distance was all I had left, and as much as I despised myself, I couldn’t stop.
I just could not stop.
I couldn’t be away from her.
I couldn’t survive not seeing her.
I wasn’t proud of it.
I knew she’d become a sick addiction.
And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t fighting to better myself but letting myself slide into a deep, dark place I didn’t know how to climb out of.
Even at Mclary’s, I’d never let self-pity destroy my hope that one day I would be free—either in death or by running away.
I knew what I should do.
Leave.
Like I said I would.
Stop this madness and let Della find her place in the world without me messing it up even more.
But…I couldn’t.
I gave in.
I kept watching.
The days became a blur.
I couldn’t stop myself trailing her to school, to the coffee shop, to the pricey house she shared with David and the girl.
My heartache robbed me of yet more weight because I couldn’t tear myself away to eat. I had no money for vitamins I sorely needed. My body didn’t feel right…it felt sick.
I truly was the villain and slid into even worse territory for stalking her.
It all became much worse the night of a muggy summer’s evening when David led her from the house dressed in baby blue shorts and white open-necked shirt, holding my Della’s hand as her cream sundress with a lacy collar fluttered around her bare legs.
Once again, her ribbon plaited in her hair and inked around her ankle reached into my chest and tore out my pathetic heart.
She was so fucking beautiful.
He led her to a Chrysler parked in the driveway, opened her door, then hopped into the driver’s seat and drove off.
I couldn’t follow them, so I waited in the street-shadows, wishing for something to chase away the time, bowing beneath the weight of constant jealousy, plaguing myself with worry about what she was doing.
I wasn’t a smoker or a drinker, nor did I have money for cigarettes or alcohol, but I would’ve gladly given away every worldly possession to have something to numb my self-inflicted pain.
They returned a couple of hours later, the warm breeze blowing scents of grease and bacon across the street as they climbed from the car, laughing at some joke they shared.