So why is there this inability to move on?
Why do I keep distance between David and me?
Why do I cringe whenever he takes my hand?
And why…why did I push him away when he kissed me last week? Why did I freeze on the stairs as he caught my wrist, pushed me against the wall, and apologised just before pressing his lips to mine?
We’ve kissed before.
We’ve slept together once, yet he apologised as if he knew what he was doing wasn’t what I wanted.
Home life has been a little strained since then.
Natty knows what happened because I told her. She encouraged me to go for it. That David was a good guy: sweet, kind, loving.
I’d laughed and faked interest.
While she was encouraging me to jump into bed with David, I wasn’t picturing the boy she spoke about, but the boy from my past. I lived in my little fantasy where the man I went home to at night—the one I kissed in the dark and let enter my body—wasn’t a sweet, kind boy like David but a tortured, determined man like Ren.
So, you see?
That’s why I’m writing to you for the first time in a month.
David is taking me out for my birthday tonight, and I already know what he’s going to ask.
He’s going to see if we can go from room-mates to lovers.
And…
And this is so hard to admit…but I know what answer I’ll give him.
Are you judging me?
Do you know what you’d do in my shoes?
Would you forever pay rent on an unlived-in apartment just because it’s the only thing you have left of a boy who would forever own your heart? Or would you terminate the lease, accept the inevitable, and try to find happiness in any place you could?
I’ll tell you what my answer is going to be.
It’s yes.
I’m going to move on.
Or at least, I’m going to try.
If only it wasn’t for those eyes.
The eyes that follow me.
The eyes that know me.
The eyes that somehow, somewhere, belong to the boy I’ll never be free from.
CHAPTER EIGHT
REN
Previous Month
I TRIED LEAVING for three interminably long months.
Every morning, I’d pack up my tent, snuff out my fire, and stride from camp toward the horizon. And every evening, I’d end up at the same ash-scattered, tent-crushed earth I’d left nine hours before.
A perfect boomerang—unable to break from the forgone conclusion that I couldn’t take another step farther from Della.
I was bound to her in sickness, health, love, and distance, and I physically couldn’t survive with more miles between us.
After the initial few weeks of mindless wandering, I didn’t even bother packing up the tent anymore.
I’d leave my belongings and hike all day, exhausting my body so I might find some reprieve in sleep from the never ceasing desires and mistakes in my head. I’d deplete every ounce of energy, so I didn’t turn my cell-phone on and climb the largest tree for reception. I’d barely hunt or eat, so I didn’t have the energy to message her things I should never say out loud.
I ate my secrets, and my unpermitted desires sustained me…barely.
Away from Della and free from the authoritative position I held in her life, I allowed myself to remember her in so many different ways.
I smiled when I recalled her as a baby, and her stubborn attempts to copy me.
I grimaced when I remembered her as an eight-year-old, desperate to know about sex and the terribly uncomfortable talk we’d shared.
I sighed when I relived the perfection of the long nights when she’d help me learn in the hay loft, and we’d sit so close, laughing by starlight, studying until she fell asleep against my side.
Innocent memories.
Memories I was permitted. Memories I was proud of because back then…I’d been true in my love for her. I’d been allowed to touch and kiss her because there was nothing more than the everlasting need to make her happy and keep her safe.
It was the years after that had me tossing in my sleep and dreaming things I wished I could stop.
The dream goddess who always opened her arms to me.
The blonde woman I wanted more than anything who always kissed me as deeply as I kissed her, who tumbled to the forest floor, who ripped off my clothes with the same gut-shredding passion I felt and cried out as I filled her violently.
Those dreams woke me hard and hurting and more tormented than I’d been in my entire life.
I only wanted to remember her as my Della, yet my mind kept plying me with fantasies that she could be my future, too. A future I’d never contemplated until the day she’d kissed me. The day she’d tangled herself up with my dreams and my heart—my stupid, stupid heart—shed its capacity at only seeing her as a child and saw her as so much more instead.
“Fuck!”
The trees were the only ones who heard my distress, who witnessed my disgrace as I fisted myself and worked out the disgusting desire from my body. I felt sick to my stomach as I came, not because I masturbated, but because my mind fixated on Della and that was a line I should never fucking cross.
Even though I struggled with two memories of baby Della and sexual Della, I knew in my soul there was only one journey I could take.
It was as if Della had an invisible hold on me.
There hadn’t been any rope or knot binding me to her as I packed my bag and left the apartment that awful night, but there was now.
An invisible lasso that tightened every time I tried stepping farther away, yanking me back, keeping me firmly stuck.
Was this limbo or purgatory?
Was it punishment for leaving her so callously when she needed me the most?
Those questions kept me company on my long treks through the forest until I’d memorised every trail and recognised every tree.
More questions came at night. Questions I had no right to ask.
Was she with someone?
Was she happy with someone?
Had she forgotten about me when I could never, ever forget about her?
But it was the questions that sprang on me, heavy with guilt, festering with shame that meant I would never be able to move forward.
Not like this.
Not without checking on her.
Not without convincing myself that she didn’t need me anymore.
I would rather be crushed knowing she’d deleted me from her world, than forever wonder if she was okay.
I couldn’t handle the unknown, the never ending need to see her, the almost manic desperation to clear the air between us and somehow find closure to this entire convoluted mess.
I’d lost weight.
I’d forgotten how to breathe.
My bones were glass and my chest a forge.
True love was a vicious monster, feeding on my reserves, breaking me beneath its resolve to either kill me if I didn’t obey or destroy me if I did.
I was glad the forest didn’t have mirrors because heartbreak had not been kind to me.
But just because I’d made a mistake by leaving, and it’d taken me three months of mentally punishing myself for all the misguided, impure thoughts I’d been having, I could finally admit what I couldn’t before.
Away from the city, free from society’s judgment, I had no choice but to be honest with myself.
I wished I could stop it.
I begged for it not to be true.
But…the reality was, I was in love with Della.
Not just platonic, parental, brotherly, friendship love but bone-crunching, heart-pounding, air-stealing, delicious fucking love that broke me down until I no longer knew who I was.
All I knew was I couldn’t keep doing this.
I couldn’t keep living without her.
I needed her in my life in any capacity that she’d let me.
Even if it meant I’d have to walk her down the aisle as she married some undeserving prick, I would do it.
I would take whatever she gave.
I didn’t make a conscious decision to pack up my tent that morning or turn toward the city instead of away. I didn’t mean to leave my campsite or haul my possessions onto my back.
I wanted Della, but I still didn’t know how to deal with that even as I struck off on different paths, passed unfamiliar trees, and weaved my way from wilderness to city.
The closer I got, the more my worry escalated.
Was she even there?