DELLA

* * * * * *

Present Day

 

 

 

A WHILE AGO, I mentioned I’d committed all seven deadly sins starting with wrath when I hated Cassie at first sight.

I was hoping I could skip over the others as I don’t really want to reveal just how awful a person I became, but I don’t think I have a choice. Not because I’m actually rather normal and felt nothing that someone else hasn’t before me, but because I committed the rest of them all in a three-year period.

Clever, huh?

I went from innocent child to terrible human being all in the space of a few short years.

The first one I’ll mention is pride.

And that one was Ren’s fault.

I was taught at school that it was okay to be proud of achieving high marks if you’d studied hard and deserved it. It was okay to be proud of a drawing or accomplishment because that was the reward for striving to be better and succeeding. As long as you didn’t brag or boast, a bit of self-praise was encouraged.

So, armed with that free pass, I already had a complex relationship with the meaning of pride seeing as I’d flirt with the feeling on a regular basis thanks to my love of learning and ability to recall most things that the teacher said.

I had a good circle of friends—only a few who I can remember names now—but I do remember a group bullying me and calling me a teacher’s pet. Funny how I didn’t mind. I was rather glad because if I was a teacher’s pet that meant I was loved more because I did the right thing.

Or at least, that’s what I figured it meant seeing as a pet was a family’s pride and joy—not that Ren and I had one, and the barn cats that lived at the Wilsons were there as hunters to keep the grain nibble-free rather than to be cuddled and pampered.

Anyway, I’m digressing…these tangents I keep chasing are becoming worse the longer I write. If I wasn’t just going to delete this entire thing, I’d have some serious editing to do.

Anywho…

Pride.

Ren.

That’s right…get back to the story, Della.

Where can I start?

Ren was my superstar. He was my hero in all things and never more so than the day when my eyes were no longer blinded by self-obsession. The day I helped him count hay bales and tally payment was the moment I grew up a little.

I didn’t judge him or ridicule him for his lack of knowledge. I didn’t laugh like the kids at school did when someone couldn’t give an answer or screwed up a teacher’s question. I didn’t pity him or scoff that a boy so much older than me couldn’t do simple math.

It made me sad.

It hurt my heart.

Because, all this time, I’d never stopped to think about what he’d given up to grant me my dreams. He’d stayed in a place so I could learn. He’d worked in a job so I could play.

He’d never had a childhood.

Never had a week off.

Never been given the gifts that he’d given me so often and so generously.

My offer to teach him what he’d made possible for me to learn wasn’t something pure or offered out of the goodness of my heart.

No.

It was because of guilt. It was because of a child epiphany that I was literate and book smart all because of what Ren had sacrificed to make it happen.

And it hurt.

Because I’d been so selfish and only now seen the reality of what it had cost him.

I owed him. Big. Huge. Massive. So, for the next three years, I paid off that debt by teaching him everything I knew.

Every night during the school holidays, we headed to the hay loft where we’d first slept and sat on hay bales while I pulled out the box full of old work-books and texts that Ren insisted we keep.

I sharpened a pencil for him, gave him my brand-new eraser, and stumbled over how to teach a twenty-year-old boy primary grade English and math.

It took a few nights to find our groove.

I flew too fast through equations, and Ren grew frustrated.

I went too slow, and Ren felt like I babied him.

We bickered and squabbled about right terminology, and we ended for the night with clenched teeth and stiff posture from doing our best to work with each other while struggling with yet a new dynamic.

By the end of the second week, we had a system where Ren would read the text he could, point to the ones he couldn’t, and wait patiently while I gave him what he needed.

I didn’t try to interfere or pre-empt, and our scuffles gave way to happy cohabitation, hunched over workbooks, quietly studying side by side.

For most of my life, I’d believed I was special—mainly thanks to Ren’s perfection at raising me, ensuring I was solid in the knowledge that I walked upon the stars in his eyes. My teachers had further cultivated that mind-set by encouraging me and being awed at my easy progress through the grades.

However, sitting beside Ren as he memorized and problem-solved, I felt the first kernel of lacking.

I’d always known he was unique.

I’d loved him far too deeply and for far too long not to believe he was magical and immortal and every prince, knight, and saviour I could ever need.

But I’d always envisioned him as a boy in dirty clothes, sun-browned and field-worn rather than a neat gentleman with glasses, all library-kissed and book-learned.

Ren Wild was all those things, but now he was something more to be looked up to.

He had a quick-fire intelligence that made me proud and envious—two sins in one.

He might not have had the chance to learn such things, but it wasn’t from lack of cleverness. Even at his age and being fairly stuck in his ways, he soaked up numbers and letters as if he’d been thirsty his entire life for such knowledge.

And that was where my second deadly sin started to manifest.

Instead of going to bed frustrated at being teacher to a student far surpassing her, I fell asleep with pride tinting my smile that I was the reason Ren went from counting on his fingers to effortlessly reciting the times tables.

Without me, he still wouldn’t be able to spell or read the words he used on a regular basis such as tractor, paddock, and twine.

Now he could spell all manner of things, and I beamed like a proud parent as we held spelling bee standoffs in the hay loft, testing each other, blowing raspberries when we got it wrong and giving high fives when we got it right.

Pride.

Pity it felt so good because every time Ren nudged me with his shoulder in gratitude or read aloud a text that would’ve caused his cheeks to pink and anger to rise with the unknown, I suffered more and more pride.

I glowed with it whenever he chuckled over a simple word with a strange spelling. I beamed with it whenever he surprised himself by adding up two large numbers and getting the total correct.

For three solid years, our routine never changed.

Some nights, especially in high-summer when Ren pulled fourteen and sometimes sixteen-hour days to get all his work done, we fell exhausted into bed without a lesson, but most of the time, we both looked forward to hiding away, just the two of us, and trading information.

Because what I taught him, he taught me in return.

He taught me how to drive a tractor on my eleventh birthday and sat me on his knee for the first time in a very long time as my legs were too short to reach the rusty pedals.

He taught me how to drive the Land Rover on my twelfth birthday, and even accompanied me to the movies with Cassie and some of my friends when I said I’d love to go see something with him because he’d never come into town with me before.

It was like asking a bear to leave his comfortable den and enter a world full of chaos and calamity.

His eyes never stopped darting. His ears never stopped twitching. His body always on high alert and ready to maul an enemy or protect a friend.

But he did it.

For me.

He happily drove me there, took me out for a burger and fries just like our first official birthday together, and sat beside me while we watched some animated cartoon that I caught him rolling his eyes at but gushed about afterward for my benefit.

He even refused to hang out with Cassie’s entourage even though she practically begged him to go clubbing with them once I’d been deposited back home. She claimed he needed a birthday night too; her voice syrupy sweet with that hateful twinkle in her eye that reeked of sex.

She had no right to look at Ren that way, especially as she’d been dating some guy called Chip for six months, and Ren was far too good to be sloppy seconds.

The familiar wrath suffocated me, and it didn’t fully go away even as Ren shook his head, escorted me back to the Land Rover, and drove home with me.

I didn’t sleep that night, constantly checking his single bed was lumpy with him beneath the covers and not smooth with his absence.

During the midst of winter, we hired movies that we both enjoyed and held book discussions over reading material I brought home from the school library.

For three years, life didn’t change too much.

We focused on learning, farming, and family.

And all the while, my girlhood slowly slipped away beneath teenage hormones. I forgot how to be innocent Della Ribbon. I forgot how to be anything, if I’m honest. I didn’t know if I wanted to be sweet or sour or kind or cruel. I didn’t know if I wanted my handwriting to be cursive or block. I didn’t know if I wanted to be a rebel like Cassie or stay true to Ren and his many morals.

The constant war inside stripped me of my childhood values, and that was when the true sins began.

After pride came envy and my complex relationship with Cassie was no longer just black and white. I no longer just liked or hated her. I was twisted with awe and wanting to be her and dirtied with spite with wanting to be what Ren sought.

Over the years, Cassie finished high school and attended a local university. She was a middle-of-the-line student, but thanks to her background in horses and farming, she landed a full scholarship for Equine Science and Stable Management degree.

Her dream job was to event and scoop up the mega prize pools. In the meantime, she was wise enough to know she needed pieces of paper to her name to ensure a paid gig while she schooled herself and her horses to greatness.

Liam started high school in a county over being a year older than me, and I was left in the past, just waiting for my life to begin.

It also didn’t help that my choices in TV shows and movies switched from feel good Disney to romantic comedies and everything in-between. Soap operas with brooding men and hurting socialites. Dirty kisses and naughty groping…anything to do with sex and connection was my kryptonite, and Ren often caught me starry-eyed and obsessed with a terrible show, crushing on the hero, my mouth tingling for kisses like they indulged in and wondering what it would feel like to have a boy touch me in places like the girls on the screen permitted.

The more I watched, the more envious I became and not just of Cassie.

I became envious of anyone with a boyfriend.

I tried to coax Liam into kissing me again, but he turned me down. I wasn’t interested in him as anything more than a river-swimming, meadow-exploring friend, but it still hurt for him to wrinkle his nose and laugh about kissing me.

I wanted to shout that I was sure his worm hadn’t grown any, but I was still nice enough to hold my tongue on hurtful things. Just because my tits hadn’t grown past tiny bee stings didn’t mean I should tear into his self-consciousness like mine chewed me every day.

My malice made me teeter on a knife-edge of tears whenever I caught Cassie flirting with Ren. Especially as he reshod her horse in the stable on a hot afternoon, bent over and shirtless, his torso glistening with sweat from hammering nails with harsh clangs into her latest warmblood cross.

He was so damn beautiful.

All muscle and masculinity, moving in that effortless way that used to make me feel safe but now just made me lick my lips and hide my gathering confusion.

Watching him was torture. Not because he made me feel things I’d only felt for movie heroes but because my mouth dried up, my heart pounded, and I hurt so much because I wanted something.

Something that made me itch and yearn. Something that made me snappy and hot-tempered whenever Ren gave me the smile reserved just for me and tried to gather me close to his sweaty bare chest in a joke.

Instead of slotting into his side where I belonged, I pushed him away because something inside no longer wanted innocent, carefree hugs.

It wanted what Cassie got.

It wanted more.

But how could I want it from Ren?

He was Ren!

Why suddenly did my eyes see him differently, my nose smell him differently, and my heart act like a cracked out raccoon whenever he came close?

I was thirteen and more confused than I’d ever been in my life.

The pain and hunger were excruciating when Cassie dragged a fingertip along Ren’s back and rubbed her pads together, smearing his sweat and smiling that secret adult smile, making me want to tear her pretty brown hair out.

I hated this new vibrant painful world my emotions had thrust me into. I missed the simple days of girlhood where happiness came from riding Domino, doing well on a test, then hitching a ride with Ren on the tractor while he baled.

These days, I could do something I adored and still find ways to feel wrath and pride and envy.

And if it wasn’t those three terrible sins, it was the other four.

Greed I often felt, especially around kids who had things I wanted.

Girls with boyfriends.

Girls with horses.

Girls with short hair or dyed hair or the freedom to paint their nails or dress with low-cut tops and high-waisted shorts.

Those girls attracted the boys.

The ones who were edgy and cool and smoked cigarettes stolen from their parents’ private stash.

I was still the cute little good girl, and no one wanted her.

So yes, greed was a regular companion just like slothfulness. On hot summer days after a long day at school and a complicated day of soaring and plummeting emotions, I found myself hiding more and more from chores and farmyard duty.

Before, I’d bolt off the bus to wherever Ren was, desperate to help him, eager to be of service and earn his wonderful treasured smile. These days, I slinked off the bus and found a shady spot and curled up beneath stencil patterns of leaves. I’d stare at the sunny sky and lament about all the ways my life wasn’t perfect.

In other words, I transformed into the brat who no one likes, and I look back now and wish I had the ability to reach through time and slap myself.

I want to shake my thirteen-year-old self and scream, ‘Get over it! Your life was perfect. You were perfect. You had everything you were envious of and greedy for right beneath your stupid little nose, but you ruined it. You made it all disappear, and it was all because of the last deadly sin.’

Lust.