Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
The breakfast hall was alive with noise when I slipped inside.
Laughter and conversation swirled from every corner of the room.
Silverware clinking against plates, chairs scraping against wood.
Long tables were crowded with Dean’s aunts, uncles, and other family.
Trisha threw her head back with boisterous laughter, while Blair poured orange juice into a row of mismatched glasses.
My heart ached as I scanned the room, searching for Dean. I’d taken the long route, looping back though the cabins until I was sure I wouldn’t run into him. Which allowed me time to calm down… to process. To hide the fact that I’d heard everything.
He should be here by now. He should have—
And then I saw him.
Across the room, surrounded by his family but standing on his own, as though not a part of it—his eyes roamed, as though searching, looking for—
The instant they landed on me, something shifted in his expression. As though the weight he carried lifted. For a beat I felt it—like maybe I was the air he needed.
He didn’t hesitate. Long strides carried him through the crowd until he was in front of me, and before I could even speak, his hand was reaching up, plucking a twig from my hair with a grin that made my chest ache.
“Don’t tell me George got out again.”
I bit my lower lip, holding back a smile that trembled at the edges. God, how could he be so calm when I knew the storm he was carrying inside? I wanted to laugh with him, but the lump in my throat made me feel like crying instead.
So I did the only thing I could think of. I hugged him. Hard.
He stiffened for half a second, startled, then wrapped his arms around me.
“Woah,” he murmured against my hair. “Are you okay?”
I nodded against his chest. “I’m fine. How are you?”
He pulled back just enough to search my face, his brow furrowing as his hand lifted to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. His thumb lingered at the edge of my jaw, soft and grounding.
“What do you say we get out of here?”
But before I could answer, his fingers threaded through mine, and he was tugging me toward the double doors that led to the kitchen.
We didn’t stay for breakfast. Instead, Dean snagged a brown paper sack off the counter, and filled it—with muffins, apples, still-warm biscuits which he wrapped in cloth, and a few bottles of water—and led me out the back door in a hurried rush. Like if we didn’t run away, we’d be caught.
“Where are we going?” I asked, slightly out of breath when the lodge was finally out of view.
“You’ll see,” he said, his smile boyish and charming.
The path we followed wound upward, through a bed of pine needles that released the most heavenly scent.
My hand stayed firmly in his as we climbed.
His thumb brushed my knuckles every so often, as though to remind himself I was still there, as though telling me not to let go, no matter what happened.
For a while, we didn’t talk, which was fine with me.
I was having a hard enough time breathing.
I was wearing the wrong shoes for this, the wrong everything, but so was he.
On multiple occasions I thought about asking to turn back, to change into something more appropriate before we set off on this adventure, but something about this felt sacred.
Like if I said anything at all, the spell between us would break.
After a while Dean glanced at me, his expression relaxed. As though this had been exactly what he’d needed to clear his mind from this morning’s events.
“You know,” he said, swinging the bag in his other hand as though it weighed nothing, “the first time Grandpa brought me here, I was maybe eleven. He woke me at sunrise, shoved a canteen in my hands, and told me we were going to hike to the falls. I didn’t even know what the hell ‘falls’ meant.
I thought we were heading to some death drop off a cliff. ”
I laughed under my breath, already picturing him—skinny-legged, probably too serious even then. “And?”
“And,” he continued, his eyes brightening with the memory, “I complained the whole way. Every root, every rock, I swore he was trying to kill me.” He chuckled, shaking his head at himself.
“I wanted to turn back about ten times, but Grandpa just kept walking. Wouldn’t even look at me.
And then we got there, and for the first time I saw why.
It was as if we’d stepped into another world.
I remember thinking, ‘This is why he didn’t stop.
This is why he kept pushing.’ It was like this hidden paradise in the middle of nowhere. ”
Something tugged in my chest as I pictured him—gangly and frustrated, standing in front of something wild and beautiful, learning that some things were worth the fight to get there.
“And then,” Dean added, his grin widening, “I twisted my ankle on the way back to the lodge. Made it about a mile before I couldn’t go any farther.
I thought Grandpa was going to be disappointed—I hated to let anyone down—but he just picked me up, threw me over his shoulder, and carried me the whole way—and we never spoke of it again. ”
I smiled softly, realizing how special their relationship had been from the very start. “He sounds like a wonderful man,” I said gently.
Dean’s gaze dropped to the ground ahead of us, his voice softening in a way that made my heart ache. “He is. When everything else fell apart, he was the one thing that never moved.”
We walked in silence for a while after that, the trail narrowing as the sound of rushing water began to rise through the trees. But I carried the image of that boy with me—the one who had tripped and stumbled, and then been carried by a man who’d helped raise him.
The rush of water grew louder with every step, a steady roar threading through the air until it swallowed the quiet between us. Dean glanced back once, a knowing look in his eyes, before pushing aside a curtain of low branches.
And then we were there.
The forest opened into a hidden clearing, and the world seemed to fall away.
A sheet of water poured from a jagged rise of rock, crashing down into a wide pool of water in front of us.
Mist hung in the air, catching the sunlight and painting rainbows.
And the sound—God, the sound—was so powerful and alive.
The air was cooler here, damp and fresh, wrapping around my skin like a second breath.
I stopped dead, my mouth parting. “Dean… it’s beautiful.”
His lips curved faintly, but he didn’t look at the falls. He looked at me. “First time I saw it, I thought it was magic. A part of me still does.”
He set the paper sack down on a flat boulder and sat, gesturing for me to join him.
I lowered myself beside him, stealing glances at the boy I could almost see layered beneath the man—the eleven-year-old with skinned knees and stubborn pride, standing here for the first time, watching the water crash down as though it came from the heavens.
Dean leaned back on his hands, the mist dampening his hair at the edges.
“Grandpa told me once that places like this are anchors. You find them young, and you carry them your whole life. And when the world gets too heavy… you come back. You let it remind you that some things are still bigger than you.”
I swallowed hard, my chest aching. It wasn’t just a story. I could hear the truth stitched into his voice—the weight of what this place meant to him.
The roar of the falls sent vibrations through my body, and for a while we just sat there, shoulder to shoulder, watching the water crash and churn and rise again.
Then Dean moved. He tugged his shirt over his head in one smooth pull and dropped it carelessly onto the rock.
My brows shot up. “What are you doing?”
He stood, grinning in a way that made him look younger, freer. “What do you think?” And before I could blink, he kicked off his shoes, stripped down to his boxers, and waded into the lake.
Before long he dove in, surfacing a moment later, close to the base of the falls, slicking his dark hair back, and called out to me. “Come on! You didn’t hike all the way just to sit on a rock, did you?”
I laughed at his expression, though my pulse was racing. He looked so at ease, like the entire lake belonged to him. And God help me, I wanted to belong there, too.
Before I had time to talk myself out of it, I slipped out of my dress, folded it carefully beside his shirt, and waded into the water wearing only my bra and panties. The shock of the cold stole my breath, but then his voice carried across the water—warm, teasing, urging me forward. “Come on!”
So I dove.
The water swallowed me whole, and when I surfaced, he was already there waiting, grinning like a fool. His hands caught my waist, steadying me in the current, and the laugh that tore from my throat was half joy, half disbelief.
We drifted closer to the falls, the current nudging us toward the curtain until the roar deafened everything else. Mist clung to our skin, cool against the lingering heat of the sun, beads of water catching in my hair, sliding down my cheeks.
Dean’s hand skimmed along my side, steadying me as the water churned near the drop. His eyes caught mine, the blue-gray light around us shifting with the spray, and for a breathless second the world slowed.
The sound of the falls became a living heartbeat, pounding through my chest. The air tasted sharp with minerals, damp and wild, but all I could feel was the closeness of him.
Then he leaned in, slow enough that I knew he was giving me the chance to turn away—slow enough to make my pulse trip over itself. His forehead brushed mine, mist settling between us, and when his lips finally covered mine, everything else vanished.
The cold of the water didn’t matter. The noise didn’t matter. It was just him. His mouth on mine, coaxing, steady, stealing the breath from my lungs until I didn’t know if it was the current or the kiss that left me weightless.