Chapter 4
RHETT
The eastern sky was just beginning to lighten as I pulled into the small gravel lot at the trailhead to Yellow Branch Falls.
A thin mist hovered over the ground, lending an ethereal quality to the familiar landscape.
I was early, deliberately so, needing the quiet moment to collect my thoughts before Moses arrived.
If he arrived.
Part of me still feared he might have second thoughts and leave me waiting, just as he had twenty years ago.
I stepped out of my rental car, breathing in the fresh mountain air that carried the scent of pine and damp earth.
The trail to the falls was just how I remembered it—narrow, winding, bordered by ferns and rhododendrons that glistened with morning dew.
As I moved down the path, memories washed over me, so vivid they nearly took my breath away.
I was young, reckless with desire and the intoxicating freedom of a summer night.
Moses had suggested the falls, knowing they would be deserted at that hour.
We’d stumbled down this very path in the dark, hands intertwined, stopping every few yards to press each other against tree trunks for hungry, desperate kisses.
By the time we reached the falls, we were both trembling with need.
The moonlight filtered through the trees, casting silver ripples across the pool at the base of the falls.
Moses had never looked more beautiful, his dark curls wild, his eyes reflecting the starlight, and his smile was full of promise and want.
“Are you sure?” I whispered, even as my hands had already begun tugging at his shirt.
His answer was to pull me closer, his lips finding mine with a certainty that banished all doubt.
I shook my head, clearing away the memory before it could lead to the inevitable physical reaction. These woods had witnessed our most intimate moments, our rawest confessions. Coming here was both a pilgrimage and punishment, a return to the site of profound joy and subsequent heartbreak.
The gentle roar of the falls grew louder as I approached, and then I emerged into the clearing. Yellow Branch Falls cascaded down a series of rock shelves, white water catching the first rays of dawn light. The pool at its base was calm despite the constant flow, deep and clear and inviting.
This was where it had all begun for us. And where it had ended, too, in its own way where our last meeting took place before everything fell apart.
The sound of footsteps on the trail behind me made me turn. Moses stood at the edge of the clearing, slightly out of breath, his expression a complex mixture of wariness and something softer, more vulnerable.
“You came,” I said, unable to keep the surprise from my voice.
He offered a half-smile. “I said I would.”
“You’ve said that before,” I reminded him gently.
Pain flashed across his face. “Fair enough.”
He moved forward, stopping at the edge of the pool, his eyes taking in the falls with a kind of reverent nostalgia, just like I had.
In the soft morning light, with mist swirling around his ankles, he looked like something from a dream, my dream, specifically, one I’d had countless variations of over the past twenty years.
“It hasn’t changed,” he observed quietly.
“Some things don’t,” I replied, moving to stand beside him, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from his body but not close enough to touch.
We stood in silence for a long moment, watching the water tumble down the rocks, each lost in our own memories. Finally, Moses sighed, running a hand through his curls in that familiar gesture that told me he was wrestling with difficult thoughts.
“I don’t know where to start,” he admitted, still facing the falls rather than me.
“The beginning would be nice,” I suggested. “Or the end. Or anywhere in between. I just want the truth, Moses.”
He nodded slowly, then surprised me by lowering himself to sit on a large, flat rock at the pool’s edge. I joined him, maintaining that careful distance that felt both necessary and torturous.
“Do you remember the night of the statue?” he asked, his voice barely audible over the sound of the falls.
“Hard to forget,” I replied dryly. “The night you vanished from my life without explanation.”
He winced. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” I countered, an edge creeping into my voice despite my best efforts. The hurt was still there, just beneath the surface, ready to rise at the slightest provocation.
“Not always,” Moses said, his eyes meeting mine with an intensity that made my breath catch. “Not when someone has leverage over you that could destroy everything you care about.”
I frowned, trying to make sense of his words. “What are you saying?”
Moses took a deep breath, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small object that glinted in the morning light. Soren Hayes’s school pin. He held it out to me, and I took it, feeling its weight in my palm.
“I found this the night of the statue incident,” he explained. “Near the broken pieces. At first, I didn’t think much of it, just a lost pin. But then I realized whose it was.”
“Soren Hayes,” I said slowly, the pieces beginning to click into place. “The mayor’s son.”
Moses nodded. “I confronted him just before I left. Told him I knew he was behind the vandalism, that I had proof. I thought he’d confess, make things right.” A bitter laugh escaped him. “I was naive.”
“What happened?” I asked, though I was beginning to see the outline of the story.
“He threatened me,” Moses said simply. “Said if I told anyone, he’d make sure everyone in town knew about us. About me. He had photos, Rhett. Of us. At the falls.”
My blood ran cold. “Photos? How..."
“Remember Brad Collins? The photography nerd who was always lurking around with that long-range lens. Apparently, we weren’t as alone as we thought that night.”
I felt sick, imagining our most private moments captured without our knowledge, and then used as leverage. “So, you took the fall for the statue to protect us. To protect me.”
Moses looked away, his profile sharp against the mist. “No,” he said quietly. “I took the fall to protect myself.”
The admission hung in the air between us, painful in its honesty.
“I was scared, Rhett. Terrified. This was twenty years ago in small-town South Carolina. My dad was on the town council. The business was just getting transferred over to me. If word got out...” He trailed off, swallowing hard.
“I couldn’t face it. Couldn’t face you. So, I did what Soren asked.
I confessed to vandalizing the statue, the fine, and the public shame. Then I left as soon as I could.”
I absorbed his words, feeling a tangle of emotions, I couldn’t quite sort through; relief at finally knowing the truth, anger at Soren Hayes, hurt that Moses hadn’t trusted me enough to confide in me, and beneath it all, a profound sadness for the young man who had felt so trapped.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked the question that had haunted me for two decades, finally spoken aloud. “We could have faced it together. I would have stood by you.”
Moses turned to me then, his eyes bright with unshed tears.
“Would you? Really? Your family was even more conservative than mine, Rhett. Your father was the pastor at First Baptist. Your mother headed the Ladies’ Auxiliary.
Would you really have been ready to come out at eighteen, to face the entire town, to risk your future, your family, everything? ”
The question hit me like a physical blow because I knew the answer, and it wasn’t the one I wanted to give.
At eighteen, I had been just as afraid as Moses, just as unready to face the consequences of our relationship becoming public knowledge.
I’d been devastated when he’d confessed to the vandalism, that he’d pulled away from me and left, but had I fought for him?
Had I demanded answers? No. I’d let him go, had accepted the convenient narrative that he’d simply had a rebellious breakdown.
“No,” I admitted quietly. “I wouldn’t have been ready. But I would have understood, Moses. I would have kept your secret. We could have figured something out.”
“Maybe,” he conceded. “But I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was terrified and ashamed, not of us,” he clarified quickly, seeing my expression, “but of my own cowardice. It was easier to run than to face you knowing what I’d done.”
We fell silent again, the weight of two decades of pain between us. The sun had risen higher, the mist beginning to burn off in the growing warmth of the day. In the distance, a bird called to its mate, the sound echoing across the water.
“So now you know,” Moses finally said. “I’m not the villain of the story, but I’m not the hero either. Just a scared young guy who made a choice he’s regretted ever since.”
I turned the pin over in my hand, studying the milliped emblem and the Blue Mountains behind it. “Does Soren know you kept this? That you’ve displayed it at the bar?”
A ghost of a smile touched Moses’s lips. “That’s a recent development. Bronwyn put it out when she heard he’d be at the reunion. Small act of rebellion.”
“Bold,” I commented, impressed despite myself. “Though I imagine the statute of limitations on vandalism has long since expired.”
“True, but small towns have long memories,” Moses replied. “And Hayes is still a powerful name in Gomillion.”
I handed the pin back to him, our fingers brushing in the exchange. The brief contact sent a jolt of awareness through me, and from the way Moses’s breath caught, I knew he felt it too.
“So, what now?” I asked, letting my hand linger near his for a moment longer than necessary.
Moses pocketed the pin, his eyes meeting mine with a question in their depths. “That depends on what you want, Rhett.”
The directness of his response surprised me. “What I want?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “Now that you know the truth, what do you want to happen next?”