The Boy and His Ribbon (The Ribbon Duet, #1)(83)

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 workbooks 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.