The Boy and His Ribbon (The Ribbon Duet, #1)(43)

I chuckled at her impersonation of a cartoon skit she’d seen. I wasn’t the best one to teach her what love meant. To be fair, I wasn’t sure how to describe it apart from I felt for her the exact opposite of what I’d felt toward the Mclarys.

The cartoon explained love was when you wanted to do everything for the other person without needing anything in return. Love was simple with one rule: if you hurt the person you love, it would be as bad as hurting yourself.

I sighed heavily. “You’re right. I do love you.”

She wriggled under the unzipped sleeping bag, her little legs kicking mine. “Yay!”

A smile quirked my lips even while, for some inexplicable reason, I’d gone sad. Sad because I loved something? Sad that loving someone terrified me? Or sad because she was the first, and I’d missed out on loving the people who created me?

Either way, she didn’t let me wallow, poking me in the cheek again. “I love you too, Ren Wild.”

And that, right there, that made those few months back in the wilderness the best months of my life.

Nothing came close after that.

Nothing was ever that simple.

Nothing.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE





REN



2005




WINTER HELD OFF longer than I anticipated.

Some days, we didn’t bathe as the thought of diving into icy water and walking back over frosty bracken wasn’t exactly enticing. Some days, we went hungry due to animals snuggled up warm in burrows and towns too far away for a day’s hike in the first snow fall.

Until the last week, it was liveable.

However, we’d stayed in the forest longer than we should. I knew that. I’d steadily grown more aware of how fragile we were as the weather became cooler.

If it was up to me, we would have found another abandoned building or some other alternative to survive the upcoming freeze.

But we were still here…alone.

No one knew we existed.

No one cared if we survived or died.

It was just me and Della, and Della had decided she didn’t want to go back.

I’d rubbed off on her too much. I’d proven what a wondrous place simplicity could be, and she’d fallen in love with the life that had always lived and breathed in my heart.

But even I knew what we could overcome and what we couldn’t. This was her fault we sat shivering in the tent, too lethargic and exhausted to do anything but try to stay warm.

Every time I mentioned we needed to find warmer, better shelter—that even though I agreed with her and didn’t want to leave, we had to be smart and find a place to ride out the upcoming blizzards and heavy snow—Della would shake her head and pout.

She’d stomp her foot and snap her refusal, and that would be the end of it.

Until I brought it up again and again…and again.

For days, I tried to convince her. Until finally, I didn’t pussy-foot around. I didn’t tell her gently of my plan to head down the hill toward the small town we saw glittering through the trees at night. I didn’t tell her to help me pack or to dress warmly for the journey.

What I did do was dismantle the tent with her still inside and wait until she crawled out in a huff before commanding her to move.

We were leaving.

This was stupid.

I wasn’t about to let her freeze to death after keeping her alive this long.

Our dynamic was simple. I was older and in charge. Normally, she bowed to those points of authority, and our arguments were short and sharp, then gone.

But this time?

She threw a tantrum that gave wing to shocked crows, screams that ricocheted around the hillside and left her out of breath and hiccupping. She’d thrown a few tantrums as a two-year-old, but this was the first since then.

I’d done my best to refrain from yelling back, but after thirty minutes of her shout-sobbing that she never wanted to go back to a city, promising she’d hate me for eternity if I took her from this place, and vowing with snapping little teeth that she’d run far away and leave me, I lost my temper.

I shouted back louder. I stomped around harder. I cursed her with every swear word I deliberately refused to use. I dared her to run because if she ran in this, she would die without me to warm her at night and feed her by day.

She’d screeched that she hated me.

I’d roared that I hated her more.

She’d pummelled my belly with stinging little fists, and I’d held her hands until she’d torn away from me then threw her moss-stuffed sock snake in my face.

After that, I shut down.

I marched over to her, snatched her damn ribbon, and held it ransom until she calmed the hell down.

It took a while.

It took all day while I led the way from wilderness to civilization. Her disapproval stabbed me in the back as she followed, her newly returned ribbon clutched in frozen fingers and lips pressed tight together.

My anger faded with every mile we travelled, and by the time we reached the outskirts of town, my chest ached with regret.

I waited for her to catch up, her shoulders no longer stiff with temper but rolled with tiredness. She refused to make eye contact, and the ache in my chest wrapped tight around my heart and squeezed.

We’d never had a fight that lasted longer than a minute or two.

This grudge was new, and I hated it.