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: