This is a life story.
And life includes good times and bad.
It includes birth and growth and…yes, even death.
This is a story of truth.
This is a story of my heart.
A story we all go through because eventually…we all die.
Some before others, some quick and fast, some in their sleep far from now.
But before you give in to those tears and believe you know our ending, stop.
Keep reading.
Keep enduring.
Because I can promise you, the ending…it’s better than you think.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
DELLA
* * * * * *
2021
I SHOULD HAVE been on cloud nine.
Ren had proposed.
Ren had a birth certificate.
Ren wasn’t arrested.
Ren was also lying.
His eyes lied. His voice lied. His body lied.
And it hurt.
So much.
Funny, how hiding the truth could hurt more than a fist or cruel word. Funny, how a person you trusted above everything could suddenly become so dangerous.
He was lying.
I knew.
I knew the signs because I’d lied to him often enough while he still cared for me as a sister. I knew how a lie festered inside you. How it sunk its hooks in, dragging you deeper into its web, whispering in your ear that your lies came from a good place, a worthy place, a place of protection.
Ren was lying.
And because of that, my heart that was normally so open toward him fashioned a little gate—not a door blocking him out, but a small barrier that wasn’t there before.
I hated it.
I hated him for making it happen.
I grew up faster in two months than I ever did in two years. I felt it happen. My rosy outlook on life, the childish belief that nothing could tear us apart, the idealistic notion of perfect happiness…they’d been threatened, questioned, and found wanting.
All those ‘errands’, those ‘work’ phone calls—they were poisonous barbs digging into my skin, layering me with pain, punishing me for loving someone so much when they were only hurting me.
At least I knew he wasn’t cheating on me. At no point did such a ridiculous thought enter my mind. Ren was mine. He was still mine. Even if he was being a bastard lately.
Did he think I was stupid?
Did he think I was too weak to know?
I didn’t need a degree to know his lies stemmed from his cough.
A cough that, to start with, I’d hoped was just bad allergies. Ren, after a lifetime of dealing in grass and animals, had built up an immune system that didn’t often feel the tickle of hay fever, but occasionally, if the wind blew in a different direction or if the season had grown a different spore within the grass, he’d have a few days of watery eyes and a stuffy nose.
It never lasted long.
It left as quickly as it arrived.
But this…it hadn’t.
It had gotten worse.
It’d morphed into a cough that woke me up at night and made me cry silent tears in the dark.
I supposed it was my fault that he believed he could get away with such fibs. I didn’t push him to see a doctor even though terror chanted in my blood every second of every day. I didn’t sit him down and stare him in the eye and ask point-blank what he was keeping secret.
It was my fault as much as his; he didn’t tell me because he was protecting me. And I didn’t hound him because in a way…I wanted protecting. I wanted to continue believing in the fantasy that he was invincible.
But I also wanted him to trust that I wouldn’t break, that I wouldn’t leave, that I was strong enough to carry whatever burden he dealt with.
Of course, I didn’t share my worries with anyone, and, as I slipped from the farmhouse where Cassie and I had been calling contractors and arena surface companies for her equine set-up, my shoulders rolled with tiredness.
I hadn’t been sleeping.
I was sick of pretending.
My smiles were fake, and my tears hidden when Ren held me close last night and whispered about making me a legally married woman. His murmurs of togetherness and forevers were full of hypocrisy, and I’d turned my back on him.
I was tired.
So, so tired and I couldn’t pretend anymore.
I just wanted the truth, so my mind could stop conjuring nightmares.
Pushing open the barn doors, I strode into the comforting shadows where splinters of light danced with hay dust and horse hair.
I wanted to go for a ride to clear my head, but as I moved toward the tack room, a voice caught my ears.
A voice I knew better than my own.
“…and when will you know?” Slight pause. “Ah.” Another pause. “Yeah, okay.”
My steps turned to tiptoes as I crept toward the stables and ducked behind some stacked bales. Through the stalky, golden grass, I spotted Ren.
My heart kicked like it always did.
He was so handsome with jeans slung low on narrow hips, a grey and black plaid shirt rucked up to his elbows, and boots that had travelled miles covered in dirt. He had one thick glove on his left hand and the other tucked into his back pocket as he held his phone with his right.