I needed to be steady for him.
To be the one thing he didn’t have to worry about.
If all I could give him was support… then that’s what I’d do.
Even if it meant silencing the part of me that wanted more.
So, I straightened my shoulders, drew a trembling breath, and kept walking toward the lodge.
Twenty-Eight
The breakfast hallwas 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 knucklesevery 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 wasmaybeeleven. 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?”
