For years, I’d refused to get undressed around her. I’d ensured I dressed in the bathroom after a shower and only swam in board shorts rather than skinny-dip.
She should follow those same rules.
But for some reason, I struggled to tell her to hide when it wasn’t her with the problem but me.
Her innocence at strolling from the steaming bathroom with just a towel wrapped around her breakable, beautiful body made my eyes avert and heart stop because it wasn’t right for me to look.
Not anymore.
Her growth from child to almost-woman should’ve been the first hint that things were about to change.
Drastic things.
Things we could never undo, and things that would ruin any future we might have had at Cherry River Farm.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
DELLA
* * * * * *
Present Day
OKAY, I’VE SLEPT on it, and I think I’m ready to tell you how I screwed up.
I’ll tell you about our third separation.
My hands are shaking on my keyboard. My heart is rushing. My head’s a mess with everything I did and everything I should’ve done differently.
Or better yet, never done at all.
I destroyed everything.
I was the idiot that took paradise and tore it to pieces.
How do I begin this?
I can’t just jump in and say I ran away…because…well, you don’t have context and will be wondering what the hell was there to run away from?
You’ll shake your head and call me stupid, and I’d totally agree with you. Even knowing why I ran makes me shake my head and call myself stupid, so you’re not alone.
If only I hadn’t done what I did, I wouldn’t have had to.
But I did, and I’ll never forgive myself.
And he’ll never forgive me, either.
Okay, assignment-that-will-never-be-turned-in-and-is-just-an-exercise-in-agony, let’s do this.
Let’s start two days before I ran away, shall we?
No wait, it was three days…no, you know what? I need to start at least four days before I ran.
Cassie.
Funny how it’s always freaking Cassie.
I’m going to fast forward what happened until the important stuff.
I got up. I kissed Ren goodbye. I went to school. I learned stuff. I got back on the bus. I came home. I hung with Patricia in her kitchen. I had dinner with Ren. We studied a little. We went to bed.
A perfectly normal day. Innocent. Sweet. No incredibly idiotic screw-ups to deal with.
However, this perfectly normal day wasn’t so normal. While I helped Patricia make rhubarb jam in her cosy kitchen, my lower belly started to ache. My head started to hurt, and by the time I’d finished my homework while Ren read my last terms textbooks, the ache had morphed into a terrible throb, radiating down my legs, my inner thighs, even up my back.
I did my best to sleep, but the discomfort never went away, and I woke up cranky and sore and with a zit the size of Antarctica on my forehead.
Ren kissed me goodbye as spring was a busy season with harrowing and replanting, and he started with the dawn.
I waved him away, doing my best to conceal the awful red spot destroying my confidence and was glad he disappeared because it meant I could curl up on my bed and nurse the terrible tummy ache I suffered.
Because I was normally a diligent student, no one suspected I didn’t go to school that morning. No one came to check on me. And I spent the day alternating between great big wracking tears and hunching over in the bathroom as I endured a nightmare.
Blood.
Everywhere.
In my knickers, down my legs, on my sheets.
The pain intensified to the point where I grew light-headed with agony, moaning under my breath with every belly squeezing ache.
I knew what it was.
I’d read the books.
I’d devoured the articles online about what classified a girl from a woman and how they had to start menstruating to be called a proper adult.
My breasts ached and tingled.
My head crushed and pounded.
And my moods didn’t know if they wanted to be angry with the mess, rage at the pain, or be grateful that I was no longer a kid.
It was one of the longest days of my life, and I didn’t dare leave to get food because I couldn’t risk running into Patricia or John.
I loved food, but the embarrassment at how disgusting my clothes and bedding had become meant I didn’t move a muscle. I tortured myself with scenarios of Ren arriving home and seeing the bloodbath I lay in. Of him asking awful questions. Of him knowing that blood was coming out of me in places that I never wanted to discuss.
More tears came on the tailcoat of those thoughts, knowing I should get up, swallow some painkillers, and strip my bed and body of dirty things.
But the pain continued, and I just didn’t have the energy.
I didn’t know the time, but eventually the sound of Cassie’s Corolla crunched on the driveway, and I hunched deeper into my pillow.