Until that day.
I love you.
Forever and ever.
For always.
Ren.
EPILOGUE
DELLA
* * * * * *
2033
ANNIVERSARIES CAME IN so many different forms.
Happy and hard and horribly sad.
Today was an anniversary.
The day I lost the air in my lungs and the life in my heart.
The day I lost my Ren.
Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days without him.
Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days of soul-deep sorrow.
But I wasn’t a girl left behind with the luxury of grief. I was mother to the best son in the world, and for him, I woke in the morning even when the darkness was acute. I kept living even while my sadness was constant. I helped Cassie with her horse business. I rode often for mental and spiritual health. I learned how to run our acreage and hire help when required.
And John was true to his vow to Ren, always there for me when the loneliness of missing a soulmate became too much.
Life had been gentle even after being so cruel.
And through it all, I had a contract with love.
A contract I did my best to uphold.
I never dared pity myself or begrudge my grief.
I was never angry that I’d loved the best man in the world and lost him.
Ren had given me his legacy, and together, me and Jacob would be okay.
Every day, I spoke to Ren as if he were there beside me.
He was in the sun, the sky, the meadow, the forest.
He was in everything. Waiting. Loving. Watching. And I lived every day for him because I knew a time would come when we would find each other again, and I’d have the honour of regaling a lifetime of tales.
I accepted each new sunrise without Ren. I endured each new sunset without Ren.
I chose to continue because that was what he wanted and that was what I owed.
After a lifetime of sacrifice, it was now my turn.
My turn to keep moving, keep fighting, keep living.
And I did.
I accepted I’d had my epic love story.
I was one of the lucky ones.
And I didn’t want another.
My heart was Ren’s—no matter where he was—and it would stay his until we met again.
At least, my family understood that.
No one dared murmur I would get over him.
No one dared encourage me to put my past behind me and open my heart for another.
No one dared because they knew the truth.
The truth that a love like Ren and I had…it was once in a lifetime.
And it wasn’t over yet.
The five stages of grief didn’t matter.
There were no five stages for me.
And I didn’t want there to be.
I didn’t want the wound to heal because I never wanted to be anything less than Ren’s. I still touched him in my dreams, kissed him in my thoughts, and accepted that I might endure in a world without him, but I would see him again.
I knew that.
And I could be patient.
“Mom!” Jacob’s voice rang through the sun-dappled house. “Moomm!”
“What is it?” I pressed a hand to my forehead, pushing aside my melancholy thoughts, tucking them into the pocket of my heart where yearning was a regular friend.
“Package for you. Need you to sign!”
Abandoning my laundry folding, I cut through the living room to the front door where a deliveryman stood on the veranda and held out an e-tablet. “You Mrs Wild?”
I’d long stopped scolding myself at the sharp intake of breath whenever anyone called me that. I both loved and despised that name. “Yes. I am.”
“Sign here, please.”
I took his tablet, scribbled on the scratched screen, and passed it back to him. “What is it?”
“Dunno, but it’s heavy. Need help carting it inside?” He raised an eyebrow beneath his red cap.
Jacob ducked to his haunches, testing the large box. “She doesn’t need help. She has me.”
I chuckled under my breath, running my fingertips over his dirty-blond head as he stood and huffed. “Ugh, it’s too heavy.”
“We’ll do it together,” I said.
“Leave you guys to it.” The delivery guy tapped his cap in farewell and bounded off the veranda. My eyes tracked him as the sun glinted off the windscreen of his van, obscuring him just enough to show a tall man running through the garden, giving me a millisecond fantasy that it was Ren.
Tears welled.
Pain manifested.
And I closed the door on the illusion.
“Wait. The package.” Jacob rolled his dark chocolate eyes at me, so much like Ren’s I sometimes forgot he was part of me and merely saw the boy who’d saved my life.
In a way, he had saved my life…just like his father.
Without him, I wouldn’t have continued trying.
Ren had saved me when I was a baby.
And his son had saved me when I was a woman.
Two boys of ten years old.
Two boys of my heart.
Charging toward the kitchen, he came skidding back with a pair of scissors.
My hands clamped on my hips. “What have I told you, Jacob Wild? No running with sharp implements.” Just like his father, he always had a knife on his person for slicing through ropes and other farm necessities. I was surprised he’d chosen scissors instead of the Swiss Army blade in his pocket.