“Then maybe we’re at an impasse.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“Ren! You’re meant to convince me—”

“Convince you of what?” I interrupted. “Sounds like you both want each other to change and that doesn’t make for a healthy relationship.”

“I remember when I was sitting with you in that cafe talking about Ash,” she declared.

“How the times change,” I replied dryly.

“Uh oh, that doesn’t sound good. Everything okay in paradise?”

There was no use hiding it from Josie. She was my best friend, and I trusted her, but she had this inbuilt radar that pinged when I was trying to avoid something. She’d just work me until I spilled.

“He asked me what I thought about us getting married,” I said with a sigh.

“Oh my god!” Josie practically screeched down the line, and I had to hold the phone away from my ear or suffer permanent hearing loss. “What did you say?”

“I said I didn’t need a bit of paper to be with him.”

“Ren, seriously? It’s a miracle he asked at all. When men talk about stuff like that, it’s serious business.”

“You think he actually wants to? I mean, grand declarations, in the traditional sense, aren’t really him.”

“Why not? It actually seems like the sensible thing to do.”

“Sensible?” I snorted at the irony. Nothing had been sensible about our relationship. It was all passion, lust and power. We both had plenty of money, so it wasn’t about the financials. I knew I’d been right the other night when I thought it was because of his past. I knew all about abandonment.

“You guys love each other, so what’s the problem?”

“It just seems so…” Dare I say it? “Big and final.”

“Ren,” Josie complained. “You guys are going to be together forever anyway, so why not put a ring on that?”

She was right. I loved Ash more than I knew was possible. I needed him like I needed air to breathe. He was my family, my friend, my lover and my rock. If getting hitched was what he really wanted, I should probably listen.

“I guess,” I muttered, playing with a serviette.

“Think about it a little,” she went on. “And talk to him.”

“And you talk to Hamish,” I said firmly.

“I will if you promise—”

“I promise.”

“Pinky swear?”

I could hear the laughter in her voice, and I rolled my eyes. “Goodbye, Josie.”

“Goodbye, Ren.”

Hanging up the call, I curled my hands around the cup of coffee, my gaze drawn outside once more.

Marriage. It was such an alien word, and considering how it went down for my parents, I wasn’t sure if it had hostile connotations attached to it. Maybe that was why I was turned off by the idea. It was about much more than just wearing a ‘flooffy’, white dress and caked on make-up in front of a bunch of people. That would be totally shallow of me to say no because I didn’t like wearing dresses.

Truthfully, I’d never thought about getting married before because what Ash and I had now was enough for me. It had never occurred to me that it might not be for him.

Sighing, I resolved to think about it first before bringing the notion back up. I had to get my head on straight before I tackled that mountain.

Yeah, I’d think about it.

Seven

Ash

I guess I was waiting for the perfect moment.

I couldn’t lie. The ring that sat hidden in the drawer of the side table in the living room was beginning to burn a hole. I had no one to talk to about my intentions with Ren, no one but Violet and she’d go absolutely crazy. The good kind of crazy where she’d offer to help plan the entire thing alongside Josie. Then Ren would definitely get her ‘flooffy’, white dress. I was happy just to elope.

Me and Ren. Ren and me.

I didn’t know why it meant so much to me. I already had her. Shit, I loved her more than anything, so why did this stupid little thing bother me so much?

Family. That’s what it came down to. My family had abandoned me when I needed them most and so had Ren’s. Surely she got that part at least. We were already a family, but I guess I wanted it on paper before I could believe it was real. Paper was tangible.

Maybe I should go find my parents, tell them my intentions with Ren and tell them how well Violet was doing now that she was in Sydney. Would they even care? Would they just slam the door in my face the moment they saw me standing on the stoop? It had been six or seven years, give or take, and there was no telling where they were now.

Ren kicked her legs across my lap and smiled at me. We were sitting on the couch in our living room, the TV humming in the background. She was watching some reality show while eating a bowl of ice cream. Some random flavor she’d found at the supermarket. Fairy Floss.

“What’s up?” she asked, setting the bowl on the coffee table.

“Nothin’,” I muttered.

“Ash,” she complained, moving against my side.

How could I tell her that I wanted to go find my parents and not let slip that I’d bought her a ring when she specifically told me that she wasn’t interested? On their own, both of those things were a can of fuckin’ worms, but together, they spelled the end of humanity as we knew it. She’d searched for her dad after her mother had died, but I know she’d only done it because her mum had asked her to on her deathbed. You can’t ignore shit like that. I doubted she would’ve cared if not for that last request.

The more I thought about it, the more I knew that I needed to go find my parents. I had to close that door and get over their baggage before I could open another with Ren. I’d keep the ring and ask her once I’d worked it out.

“You’re totally spacing out,” Ren said, leaning her head against my shoulder.

“Am I?”

She stared up at me with her big doe eyes. “What you thinkin’ about, Maverick?”

“Just somethin’ I’ve gotta do tomorrow.”

“Yeah, like what?”

I took a deep breath, my chest rising and falling. “Nothin’ special.”

How would I go about finding someone that didn’t want to be found? Maybe they hadn’t really bothered to disappear. The last time I saw them, they’d given me the impression that they’d go off the grid to rid themselves of me, but I knew my dad didn’t have the smarts to pull off something high-tech like that.

“Ash.”

He was a big bloke just like I was, but he wasn’t a trained fighter. He’d given me a few bruises over the years like the bully he was, but the difference now was that I wasn’t afraid of retribution. I knew I got my anger issues from him like some sort of poisonous genetic mutation and that made the man a hypocrite. I was a bad influence on Vee? Maybe I deserved it after all the shitty things I did as a teenager, but look what they did to her. She was perfect compared to me.

“Ash, for fuck’s sake,” Ren declared.

“Huh?” I blinked hard, focusing my attention onto her.

“What’s the matter?”

She was looking at me with a hint of anger in her eyes, but I couldn’t tell her about this. This was my shit to deal with.

“Nothing’s the matter,” I said, thoroughly annoyed.

“Are you still pissed about the marriage thing?” she asked, her gaze searching mine.

Fuck. “No, I wasn’t pissed about that at all.”

“Really? Because I—”

“Ren, it’s cool,” I interrupted. “Don’t worry about it. I brought it up out of the blue.” I shrugged. “It wasn’t a proposal.”

Her brow furrowed, and instantly, I knew I’d said the wrong thing.

She snatched up the remote and turned the TV off. “Was it important to you?”

I shrugged. It was very fucking important to me, but I wasn’t ready to go down that road just yet. Talk about premature ejaculation.

“Stop shrugging and use words,” she huffed.

“Ren, let it go, okay?”

“I know you’re not telling me everything,” she said, moving her legs from my lap.