I was only eight years old when my parents first brought me to their new vacation home in Balsam Grove. They promised a picturesque cottage in the mountains, sitting among tall, rolling foothills, dirt paths that led to a plethora of waterfalls, hiking trails we would traverse as a family, and the guarantee of making new friends. It was a promise of perfection. Quality time. Adventure. And I believed their lies. Every single one of them.

A war waged on between my parents for years due to my father’s schizophrenia and his refusal to seek treatment. I wasn’t as oblivious as they thought, and eventually, their fighting became harder to ignore. The arguing was bad, but the silence was worse. Their emotional distance stretched canyons, and the tension became a constant, a void weighing down the cottage to damn near suffocation.

I was fifteen when I experienced the first rise of a panic attack, though I didn’t understand what was going on with me at the time. But when the walls began to cave in around my heart and squeeze my chest, I knew I couldn’t take another second of their hate-filled voices. I flung the wooden dowel from the sill, slid open the window, and slipped into the darkness.

I ran, losing air with each step, but instead gaining something more valuable. Peace. I chased it, stumbling on the twigs and rocks my flashlight failed to warn me of. I let it wrap me in its embrace, dodging trees and branches that seemed to spring from nowhere, traveling along the river and letting my flashlight guide me to the one place I knew would bring me back to life.

Hollow Falls is one of the many hidden jewels in Balsam Grove. It was a popular hangout for the local high school kids, but even they were respectful and cleaned up after themselves after a late night of partying. I may have watched them from a distance a time or two, thanks to a particular neighbor boy who held my interest.

But that night, I was alone. Hollow Falls belonged to me. I stepped onto a rock perched above the water, testing its sturdiness. I’d jumped from the same rock before—only ten feet high compared to the lip of the falls at thirty-five feet—but never when surrounded by so much darkness.

Before I could lose my nerve, I stripped down to my underwear, took a deep breath, and jumped.

The crisp bite of the water awakened something in me, bringing me to the surface and giving me that first deep breath after nearly drowning back at the cottage. That breath—it saved me, bringing clarity when my eyes finally opened to the wading body of Jaxon Mills. I swallowed against the instant thrumming in my chest. The boy I’d only spoken to a handful of times, who I’d often watch from afar, was now watching me. Waiting.

I’d known him for years, though our four-year age gap made friendship seemingly impossible. He spent most of his time working for his parents, anyway, moodily tending to the rental cottages at all hours of the day. As far as I could tell, Jaxon rarely made time for friends. Even when he was surrounded by others, he somehow seemed to be alone.

But there he was, outlined by the moon, beads of water rolling down the deep crease between his eyes as starlight gleamed off the tops of his cheeks. His full lips were masked with a thin coat of river, and the attractive slope of his nose scrunched as if there was an itch he didn’t dare scratch. His exhale was long and slow as he assessed me, the intruder to his quiet night.

“Your parents know you’re out here?” His tone carried curiosity, but it wasn’t at all threatening.

My cheeks warmed as I laughed to mask my shame of being far too young to traverse the woods alone. I was sure that was what he was thinking. He saw me as a child with a curfew. Still a little girl, though my curves spoke differently.

If only Jaxon knew how I saw him. If only he could feel how my heart slammed the walls of my chest at his nearness. My gnawing crush on Jaxon that began when I was only eight years old never faded, but it was easier to manage when I wasn’t treading water mere inches from him. Temptation lashed at me like an untrained beast. Boys didn’t look like Jaxon in Durham. They weren’t made from the mountains like he was. They were scholars, bred from the wealthiest families. They were clean-cut, meticulous in their appearance. They were phonies in comparison to what I saw in this boy with few words.

Embarrassed to be caught, I righted my stance and leveled him with my eyes, trying to project confidence I didn’t own. “They were preoccupied when I left. Are you going to tell them?”

Silence stretched and rippled between us, the stillness of the night balancing me. I knew in that moment, despite the awkward run-in, everything was just as it should be.

“No,” he said, and I released a light breath in relief. “But it’s dark. Anything could happen, and no one would know where to start looking for you.”

He was right, but my pride refused to let him know it. I huffed in annoyance, pulled my eyes away, and focused instead on the thirty-five foot drop at Jaxon’s back.

He didn’t ask me to leave. In fact, he didn’t ask me any other questions that night. We swam slow circles around each other while an understanding grew through a comforting silence. And in that silence, an invisible line was drawn between us. An admission that there was something sparking that shouldn’t be. A piqued interest. A mutual curiosity.

Although my fear of water had diminished once I’d learned how to swim, I knew I was already in way too deep. And I wasn’t sure if Jaxon was someone who would let me drown, or someone who would save me.

The night Jaxon and I found ourselves swimming together beneath the falls became the first of many. A friendship budded there. An unspoken understanding. A forbidden attraction.

From that night forward, he stopped glaring at me when we’d spot each other in the woods. Instead, he’d invite me along from one cottage to the next as we tended to his list of duties. He didn’t mind that I talked his ear off about philosophy and my desperation to spend a summer in Italy under the Tuscan sun. He simply smiled at the way I lit up about my dreams and continued with his chores in silence.

Until one day when everything changed again.

“What is all this?” I asked him as I climbed off his motorcycle and assessed the backpack he made me carry as we zoomed through the woods.

We’d arrived at a small clearing on the other side of Hollow Falls. There was a hill there with unique branches and vines that fell over a round clearing, like a secret alcove beneath the trees. He set up a canvas, and suddenly it made sense. He wanted to paint. But when it came time to sit down and begin mixing the colors as I’d often seen him do, he handed the brush to me instead.

“I’ll teach you.”

My heart quickened in my chest. My eyes batted between him and the blank canvas. I shook my head, already terrified of failure. “Me? I’ll mess up.”

“You can’t possibly mess this up, Aurora. I promise.”

I moved forward despite my fears and took the brush from him anyway, excited to try. Trusting in his promise. He smiled, knowing all too well what was going on in my head.

And so it began: my first art lesson. It stretched for hours as he taught me the basics of painting. He taught me how to translate the scene before me onto canvas in a way that had always seemed like magic when I’d watched him do it. And when my brush hit that canvas for the first time, I was hooked.

He treated me as if I was meant to be there, in turn creating an impossible feat for my heart. I couldn’t combat my attraction, but I managed it well…at first. But as the days blended into nights, and the nights back into days, I found my control slipping. I became a pebble in a stream, facing an impossible river after the heaviest storm. My only hope was that Jaxon would be there to greet me once I finally fell.

But he wouldn’t.

 

 

By the end of the summer, I had fallen for Jaxon completely. And with five days left before my family ripped me from the woods to head back to Durham, I wanted every extra second I could get with him. But while I was trying to get closer to him, he was subtly pushing me away.

I should have taken the first hint when he walked straight past me during my morning walk upstream toward his house. Without a word, without a look, he kept walking.

Had I done something? Said something? Become too annoying for him to handle? I had no idea, but I was far too in love to give up the chase after such a perfect summer. Surely, despite our age difference, he felt it too.

But then the next clue came, and then the next. Until we were down to the final week of our stay, and I was beginning to itch with anxiety, every nervous emotion becoming too much to stifle.

One day in town, I ran into Jaxon’s best friend, Danny. He was home from college for the summer and let it slip that there would be a party that night at Hollow Falls. Desperate to see Jaxon again, I asked if I could come along. Danny, being the nice guy he was, said okay.

That night, Danny and I met at a crossing in the trail where a path to his house joined mine and walked the rest of the way there together. His eyes kept darting to me suspiciously. “You and Jax have been hanging out a lot, yeah? That’s what I’ve been hearing, anyway.”

My cheeks heated, and I shook my head. “Not so much lately.” My eyes shot to his. “Who’s been talking?”

He gave me a wry smile, like I could have easily guessed. “Tanner’s been running his mouth, of course. He doesn’t like the idea of you two together, Little A. Anyway, just warning ya. The last thing you both need is his dad catching wind of whatever’s going on.”

Danny was referencing Tanner’s dad, Sheriff Brooks. An old fashioned gentle giant of a man who’d struck up a friendship with my father. But my heart sank with his words. “Nothing’s going on, Danny. Honest.” I hated how true that was. “We were just friends.”

“Were?”

I shrugged, feeling I’d said enough.

“You think Jax will be okay with you coming tonight? I mean, you are pretty young and there’s going to be booze—”

My laugh was loud, cutting him off. “How old are you again?” My challenging smirk made him laugh and nod in concession.

“Alright, well don’t say I didn’t warn you. It might get kind of wild out there tonight, and I’m sure you have a curfew or something.”

I hated the regret in his tone. The urgency to get me to change my mind like I was the little sister he never had.

“It’s fine,” I assured him. “Let’s just go.”

From there, I could see the party at a distance. It was nearing sunset, the skies crisp with a blend of orange and purple tones filling the horizon, but the party was already well-lit by a half-dozen floodlights hooked up to a generator that surrounded the pool of the falls.

Danny didn’t argue with me again, though he did walk a few steps ahead of me so he could enter the scene of the party first. As if he didn’t even know I was there.

When Jaxon saw me, his expression filled with shock and anger. His eyes darted between Danny and then me, narrowing when he realized his best friend must have invited me.

“Go home, Aurora,” he demanded from his rock a few feet away.

Embarrassment radiated through me, causing my throat to tighten with emotion. All dozen or so pairs of eyes seemed to be on us. And if that wasn’t enough, the raven-haired girl with the tiny black bikini and perfectly bronzed skin who was sitting beside Jaxon giggled.

Was that why he had been avoiding me for the past week? Because his friends were home? Did I embarrass him? Or was he just busy spending all his time with someone else? Someone older. Someone prettier. Someone who could give him things he thought I couldn’t. Things I could only dream about.

My chin trembled as I avoided the blaze of his eyes, fearing his next words would be just as fiery.

“It’s late. Go home now while you can still find your way.” This time he spoke gentler, like he cared.

I stepped forward, ignoring his request, and ignoring the hurt that stirred within me. “I think I’ll stay for a while.” He tensed as I stepped onto the rock and sat beside him, opposite the girl whose name I didn’t care to learn.

Eventually, everyone started partying. Cans of beer were passed around, music played from someone’s speaker, and everyone was in the river. Everyone except for Jaxon and me. We were still perched on our rock, the lights filling the space below us and the trees blanketing us in the shadows of the night.

Danny’s distant voice reached us from where we sat. “You sure your old man won’t be sneaking up on us tonight?” he asked Tanner as he approached him in the water.

Tanner rolled his eyes and shook his head. “No way. Not tonight. There’s some block party going on in town, so he’ll be hovering around Main Street all night.”

Relief left my chest in a soft sigh. I didn’t need my parents finding out I was partying in the woods with a bunch of college-age kids.

“You really shouldn’t have come.” Jaxon’s words broke through my quick second of peace—his regret apparent.

“Why?” I asked it boldly, wanting the no-bullshit answer. The one I doubted Jaxon would give.

He remained silent.

“I leave in a week.” The hurt in my tone reeked of desperation, I knew it. I looked at him, trying to read his expression in the dark, but his profile was all I got. “I don’t want the summer to end. I don’t want to leave.”

His head dropped as a sadness filled the air.

That’s when I knew it wasn’t just me. Jaxon would miss me too. Maybe he’d been keeping me away because he knew I was going to leave anyway. Everything ached—my heart, my soul. Everything felt so clear, yet so wrong at the same time.

I swallowed my nerves before reaching for his hand, just the tips of his fingers to mine. He allowed it—the touch innocent—but the look he gave me next wasn’t. He stared at me in a way that pinned my heart to the walls of my chest. His fingers wove through mine, fully, pure with intention, and they squeezed.

And then he leaned in, eyes darting to my mouth as I wet my lips in anticipation. I’d waited eight summers for this moment. For that kiss that would change everything. For my feelings to be returned. It didn’t matter that there was a river filled with Jaxon’s closest friends below us. It didn’t matter that The Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling” wasn’t the most romantic soundtrack to our first kiss. All that mattered was that his lips touched mine, my eyes fell shut, and I let Jaxon take my very first first.

My insides exploded with fireworks, leaving me light-headed and quivering with nerves as I leaned in for more. I was aching for him and wanting him to know. “Jax,” I murmured against his lips.

I wish I had known that my voice was all it would take to break the spell. I would have happily become mute. Suddenly, he was ripping his mouth from mine and pulling his hand away like he’d been burned. “Shit. What the hell are we doing?” he hissed. “We can’t, Aurora. Fuck. You’re too young.”

My eyes stung with unshed tears. “Who cares?”

“I care!” His angry whisper zipped across the space between us, stinging me with his poison. He growled and shook his head. Then he ripped off his shirt and stood. “Go home, Aurora.” He leapt, arms first, body arched, fingertips piercing the water first.

That splash was like a sledgehammer to my gut. And that wasn’t even the worst part. When he surfaced, he swam straight for the pretty girl with the perfectly bronzed skin whose name I’d learned was Presley. Time slowed as my heart hardened, preparing to be shattered as he sidled up to her. She giggled, oblivious to the girl in the shadows who he’d just kissed, and wrapped her arms around his neck as his gaze shot up at me, signaling his final farewell.

This time I listened. This time I left.

I arrived back at the cottage in tears, hiccupping each breath as it came. I slid through my window at close to two in the morning, just as my mom burst through the door, her eyes ablaze with anger.

“I don’t even want to know where you’ve been, young lady. It doesn’t matter. Pack your things. We’re leaving first thing in the morning.”

She retreated with a slam of my door.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I learned the reason for her outburst and for our early departure. My parents sat me down to announce their separation and that my father would be staying in Balsam Grove, alone, while I returned to Durham with my mother.

Those two days should have been the worst days of my life. Unfortunately, the worst was yet to come.