She owned me heart and soul, but she needed more than me.
She’d always needed more than me, and the countless times we’d grown up together, the many incidents that proved just how much I lacked and she excelled, meant my determination to do the right thing was a vicious dictator.
I’d been with her every step—literal and figurative.
I’d stolen a lot of her independence.
I’d been the one smothering her, and of course, her feelings toward me would morph into something neither of us could have.
She hadn’t had the freedom to learn who she was without me there to teach her. I’d screwed her up. I hadn’t been fair. I’d been selfish and possessive, ensuring I was the most important person to her—just like she was to me.
That was wrong.
I saw that now.
John Wilson was right. I’d ruined any chance at keeping her as my sister, and now, I couldn’t have her at all.
I’d promised to raise her to the highest heights she could achieve, and I’d sacrificed everything I could to achieve that.
That was all this was.
My final sacrifice to ensure she’d forget about this puppy crush, delete her teenage confusion, and find true happiness.
She’d no longer be brainwashed or subconsciously pick up on my corrupt thoughts. She’d be free to make up her own mind.
That resolution gave me enough willpower to turn and finally leave the city lights behind. Tree silhouettes welcomed me, looking like a ribcage where my empty heart hung lifeless and torn.
Della had a crush.
That was all.
But my feelings…they were deeper than a crush, harsher than a fling. My feelings were dark and complicated and yet another reason why I had to leave.
I strode quicker with heavy boots, turning my back on Della, vanishing into the forest I would always call home and the only place that could make me miss her even more.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DELLA
* * * * * *
2018
EYES.
Yep.
Eyes.
I feel them on me.
Everywhere.
At the supermarket, at college, at the park—even at David’s house.
It’s been four months since Ren left, and I’m going insane. I think I catch a glimpse of him, but nothing’s there. I smell him in the air, but no one’s around. My skin prickles like it did whenever he was close, but I’m all alone waiting for the bus to school. I’m in class, and my fingers trail across my paper as if touched by a phantom caress. I’m in bed, and my body heats as if worshipped by sinful lips.
I feel him everywhere.
I think about him all the time.
And yes, that had to be in bold because it’s a nightmare I can’t stop.
I thought I’d accepted his disappearance. I thought I was stronger than this.
But, I’m not.
If anything, I’m getting worse.
Instead of feeling alone like I once did—utterly abandoned and unwanted and lost, I feel…connected.
The scattered pieces of me are re-centring, thanks to the illusion of him watching me.
Every night for a month, I’ve called his cell-phone.
I’ll wait until David is in the shower so he doesn’t see me feeding my addiction and send Ren a message. A simple: ‘Where are you?’ Followed a few hours later with silent tears: ‘I miss you.’
No call has been answered.
No message delivered.
Ren is still out of range, still deep in his beloved forest, as far away from me as possible.
So, these eyes I’m feeling?
They’re not his.
They can’t be.
But it doesn’t mean I’m not constantly aware of something. Perhaps my heartbreak has infected me and made me sick? Maybe my mind has finally snapped, and instead of choosing to forget him, it’s making up stories to keep him close.
Either way, I hate it.
I can’t win.
I wanted to be so much braver than this. So much stronger.
David and Natty moved on when their hearts were broken, so why can’t I?
Why can’t my dreams of him returning home and falling to his knees in forgiveness stop haunting me? Why can’t I exist one day—just a single day—where I don’t want to tell Ren what happened at school, or laugh with him about something stupid, or ask his advice on something important?
He was a part of my life ever since I can remember.
And I have to give myself some slack.
I haven’t just lost a lover, because we were never lovers. I haven’t just lost a friend, because he was never just a friend. I’ve lost a parent, a home, the only person I ever loved and relied on and my grief is crying out for all of them.
But, at the same time…my grief is changing.
I know I pushed him away.
I’m the one who needs to ask for forgiveness, not him.
But I am angry.
God, I’m angry.
Burning, growling, fist-shakingly angry.
Summer is well and truly here, and it’s the hardest season because it’s Ren’s favourite. It was the time of returning to the forest—either permanently or just for weekends away. It was swimming together, and picnics, and horse rides, and hay baling, and browned skin, and sweat, and long nights with just a sheet, side by side in bed.
These days, summer means nothing special, and my routine of school, homework, and chores remains the same.
However, David asked me a few weeks ago when my birthday was. He knows enough about me that I was honest and said I didn’t know the exact date. That Ren would pick one during summer and we’d go out for burgers and fries to celebrate a long-standing tradition of sharing an unknown birthday.
My heart stabbed me with its well-honed blade, only to patch itself up with yet another hastily applied and totally ineffective Band-Aid when David took my hand, smiled in sympathy, and said he’d take me out to dinner himself to celebrate.
He’s willing to be a substitute.
He knows how much I miss Ren.
I tell him.
And if I don’t, he hears it in my voice and sees it in my eyes.
He’d be blind and stupid to think I wasn’t trawling the streets with my heart on a platter, looking for its rightful owner to come claim it.
I have another confession to make.
I’m still living at David’s, but I moved into the spare room where boxes have been pushed against the walls and the gym equipment relocated to the garage. I didn’t bother bringing my own furniture over, and I bought a cheap bed and dresser on sale that David helped transport home for me.
The apartment I shared with Ren is my dirty little secret.
David thinks I terminated my lease and sold everything I didn’t need.
I lied.
I go there on the days when the loneliness and anger hurt the most. I sit on the couch where Ren kissed, hugged, and wiped away my tears, and rock around the never ending ball of sick, sick sorrow.
The rent money Ren left behind has been diligently used to ensure the space remains untouched by others.
I don’t know why I do it.
I know he’s not coming back.
It’s a waste of money to hold on to something I haven’t lived in for months.
So why is there this inability to move on?
Why do I keep distance between David and me?
Why do I cringe whenever he takes my hand?
And why…why did I push him away when he kissed me last week? Why did I freeze on the stairs as he caught my wrist, pushed me against the wall, and apologised just before pressing his lips to mine?
We’ve kissed before.
We’ve slept together once, yet he apologised as if he knew what he was doing wasn’t what I wanted.
Home life has been a little strained since then.
Natty knows what happened because I told her. She encouraged me to go for it. That
David was a good guy: sweet, kind, loving.
I’d laughed and faked interest.
While she was encouraging me to jump into bed with David, I wasn’t picturing the boy she spoke about, but the boy from my past. I lived in my little fantasy where the man I went home to at night—the one I kissed in the dark and let enter my body—wasn’t a sweet, kind boy like David but a tortured, determined man like Ren.
So, you see?
That’s why I’m writing to you for the first time in a month.
David is taking me out for my birthday tonight, and I already know what he’s going to ask.
He’s going to see if we can go from room-mates to lovers.
And…
And this is so hard to admit…but I know what answer I’ll give him.
Are you judging me?
Do you know what you’d do in my shoes?
Would you forever pay rent on an unlived-in apartment just because it’s the only thing you have left of a boy who would forever own your heart? Or would you terminate the lease, accept the inevitable, and try to find happiness in any place you could?
I’ll tell you what my answer is going to be.
It’s yes.
I’m going to move on.
Or at least, I’m going to try.
If only it wasn’t for those eyes.
The eyes that follow me.
The eyes that know me.
The eyes that somehow, somewhere, belong to the boy I’ll never be free from.
CHAPTER EIGHT
REN
* * * * * *
Previous Month
I TRIED LEAVING for three interminably long months.
Every morning, I’d pack up my tent, snuff out my fire, and stride from camp toward the horizon. And every evening, I’d end up at the same ash-scattered, tent-crushed earth I’d left nine hours before.
A perfect boomerang—unable to break from the forgone conclusion that I couldn’t take another step farther from Della.
I was bound to her in sickness, health, love, and distance, and I physically couldn’t survive with more miles between us.
After the initial few weeks of mindless wandering, I didn’t even bother packing up the tent anymore.
I’d leave my belongings and hike all day, exhausting my body so I might find some reprieve in sleep from the never ceasing desires and mistakes in my head. I’d deplete every ounce of energy, so I didn’t turn my cell-phone on and climb the largest tree for reception. I’d barely hunt or eat, so I didn’t have the energy to message her things I should never say out loud.
I ate my secrets, and my unpermitted desires sustained me…barely.
Away from Della and free from the authoritative position I held in her life, I allowed myself to remember her in so many different ways.
I smiled when I recalled her as a baby, and her stubborn attempts to copy me.
I grimaced when I remembered her as an eight-year-old, desperate to know about sex and the terribly uncomfortable talk we’d shared.
I sighed when I relived the perfection of the long nights when she’d help me learn in the hay loft, and we’d sit so close, laughing by starlight, studying until she fell asleep against my side.
Innocent memories.
Memories I was permitted. Memories I was proud of because back then…I’d been true in my love for her. I’d been allowed to touch and kiss her because there was nothing more than the everlasting need to make her happy and keep her safe.
It was the years after that had me tossing in my sleep and dreaming things I wished I could stop.
The dream goddess who always opened her arms to me.
The blonde woman I wanted more than anything who always kissed me as deeply as I kissed her, who tumbled to the forest floor, who ripped off my clothes with the same gut-shredding passion I felt and cried out as I filled her violently.
Those dreams woke me hard and hurting and more tormented than I’d been in my entire life.
I only wanted to remember her as my Della, yet my mind kept plying me with fantasies that she could be my future, too. A future I’d never contemplated until the day she’d kissed me. The day she’d tangled herself up with my dreams and my heart—my stupid, stupid heart—shed its capacity at only seeing her as a child and saw her as so much more instead.
“Fuck!”
The trees were the only ones who heard my distress, who witnessed my disgrace as I fisted myself and worked out the disgusting desire from my body. I felt sick to my stomach as I came, not because I masturbated, but because my mind fixated on Della and that was a line I should never fucking cross.
Even though I struggled with two memories of baby Della and sexual Della, I knew in my soul there was only one journey I could take.
It was as if Della had an invisible hold on me.
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.