The Boy and His Ribbon (The Ribbon Duet, #1)(33)

Della scrunched up her face. “A wish? What’s that?”

Even with the catalogue of words she asked me to give her on a daily basis and the TV, she still lacked so many. I hadn’t thought to teach her what a wish was because to me, it was the constant urge to leave humans behind and hide in untouched wilderness.

And when I still belonged to Mclary, a wish was a desire for the long days, starving nights, and harsh punishments to stop.

A wish was hope, and hope killed you faster than anything. A wish was running away, and I didn’t want Della to go anywhere.

The waitress gave me a strange look before answering. “A wish is asking for something you want so badly but don’t know how you’ll get it. It’s a request for something you don’t think will come true but believe in with all your heart anyway.”

I gritted my teeth as Della nodded solemnly. “Oh.” Her intelligent blue eyes met mine, studying me as if forming a wish full of complications and tough requests. “I wish for Ren to always be mine. To take me everywhere. And to give me more birthdays.” Her white teeth flashed as she beamed at the waitress. “Do you make my wish come true now?”

“No, sweetie.” The waitress giggled. “Now you blow out the candles, and it will come true by the power of pink icing and vanilla sponge!”

Della leaned closer and spat all over the cupcakes, blowing raspberries instead of air.

Not one stopped flickering with its mocking fire. I swallowed down my laughter as her joy deflated, and she looked at me forlorn. “Does that mean my wish won’t come true, Ren?”

Ugh, this was what I didn’t want.

Della lived in reality.

She knew the cost of hunting because she helped me kill what we ate. She knew the cost of shelter because she helped maintain the house we’d borrowed. But now she knew the cost of wishing for fantasies and the heartache when they didn’t come true.

She didn’t need a stupid wish to make her requests become real. I had no intention of ever leaving her again—I’d learned that lesson years ago. The next time we were apart, it would be because of her. She would leave me when she was ready. I would be the one heartbroken when she woke up one day and decided she needed more than what I could offer.

For now, though, she was still mine, and I wouldn’t let her think for a moment she couldn’t have everything she ever wanted.

Yanking her onto my lap—now that I was back in control of my thoughts and reactions—I dragged the cupcakes closer. “It only means the wish comes true faster and stronger.” Giving her a smile, I said, “If we blow them out together, it will mean we’re never apart. Want to do that?”

“Yes!” She bounced on my thighs. “Yes, please.”

My chest ached that even in the middle of something as new as blowing out candles for the first time, she remembered her manners—the same manners I hadn’t been raised with but learned were just as important as respect and discipline.

“Ready?” I puffed out my cheeks. “One, two, three…”

We blew out every candle.

We helped ourselves to our very first taste of sugar that didn’t come from fruit and left the diner thirty-four dollars and ninety-one cents poorer.

Our crazy sugar high kept us chuckling and racing around the farm’s fields, cannonballing in the pond, and playing with our dairy cow named Snowflake until the moon and stars appeared and we retreated into the house, exhausted.

*

Della watched me clean my teeth with a look in her eyes I hadn’t seen before.

Scrubbing away the remnants of our overindulgence today, I spat mint into the sink and rinsed my mouth. She’d already cleaned hers thanks to the second brush I’d stolen her a few months ago.

Drying my hands on my shorts, I brushed past her to enter the corridor and head to our bedroom. She padded after me in my t-shirt without the baling twine belt—her version of pyjamas—still silent and staring at me with an intensity that made my skin crawl.

We shouldn’t have had that nap on the couch before. She seemed just as wired now as she did when she’d stuffed a full-size cupcake in her tiny mouth.

“What?” I barked, climbing into bed and pulling the unzipped sleeping bag over me. She didn’t crawl in beside me like usual. Instead, she stood by the foot of the mattress, crossed her twig-like arms, and announced, “I want to go to school.”

I sat bolt upright, my heart racing. “School?”

She nodded, her button nose sniffing importantly. “Yes. I’m old now. I’m fifteen. I need to know what fifteen-year-olds know.”

“I’m fifteen, and you know as much as I do.”

“I want to know more than you do.”

I fought the urge to crumple. I’d known this moment would come—I was thinking on it just a few hours ago at the diner—but to happen so fast?

Rubbing the sudden ache in my chest, I growled. “It’s not safe. You know that.”

“You keep me safe.”

“I can’t keep you safe in school.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to go, and even if I did, we’d be in different classes.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re different ages.”

She stomped her foot. “We’re the same.”