by K. K. Allen
“You want me to come back to Balsam Grove? You don’t even want to be there. Why are you still there, Jaxon?”
“I’m there for you. I’ve stayed for you.”
“I never asked you to.”
I know immediately this was the wrong thing to say. I can see it in his pinking cheeks, in the rough fingers that push through his hair and grab the back of his neck as he struggles to find his words.
“You didn’t. You’re right. You would never ask me to stay, which is exactly why I made the decision without you. You’re so damn strong, Aurora, and so incredibly selfless. But I would have never regretted my decision.”
His words are a chain wrapped around my heart, and every pleading, soft-spoken syllable feels like he’s tugging and tugging, as if force will eventually make me learn to follow him on my own.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. You’re my life.” His voice cracks as he takes another step, but he stops just as fast, assessing my reaction. When I don’t protest, he closes the distance and takes my face in his palms. I let him touch me. My conflicted heart wants him to touch me. But what I want doesn’t change the facts, especially the most painful one of all—that Jaxon is part of the reason my father was convicted of crimes too horrifying to believe.
“Come home.” It’s a passionate, desperate request that first fills my heart, then breaks it into a million pieces. My knees weaken, and it would be easy to fall to the floor. I can’t take this anymore. Nothing feels right. No matter what I choose, it will be wrong.
“I don’t have a home,” I remind him, my voice thick with emotion.
Jaxon’s face crumbles as he leans his forehead against mine. His skin is soft and warm.
“Your home is with me. Anywhere you want it to be. We don’t have to go back. We can go anywhere. We can change our names if you want. Disappear forever. You’re eighteen now. There’s nothing tying you down.”
God, how I wish he wouldn’t feed me such tempting offers. To disappear. To be someone else. To be with Jaxon. It all sounds too good to be true, which means it probably is.
I shake my head and focus on the reality we’re standing in. My eyes catch on the defendant’s desk where my father stood not thirty minutes ago.
“What about my father? He’ll be alone. I’ll need to visit him—”
Jaxon releases me and pushes himself up to full height, a deeper shade of red taking over his expression. “Jesus, you’re still doing it. You’re still protecting him.”
“He’s my father!”
Jaxon steps back, an incredulous look on his face. “The man took a plea deal today in admission to abducting you. You were there. I watched you when they announced his sentence. Who the hell cares what his mental state is. How can you want to be anywhere near him after that?”
Wrapping my arms around my waist as if the pressure could hold in the ache, I shiver. “He didn’t admit to taking those girls.”
Jaxon’s face falls. “You can’t be serious. How is it obvious to everyone but you?”
“If it were obvious, then there would have been enough evidence to convict him. I shake my head hard, forcing a swallow over the lump in my throat. “I can’t accept that he did it. I can’t even bear to think it.” I blink back tears, my eyes hot and stinging. “And if you still do…” I shake my head, unable to finish my sentence, but I don’t have to. One thing I know for certain about Jaxon Mills; he knows me better than anyone.
“So, now what?” he says on an exhale. “You can’t hold on to your father’s innocence forever. You’ll never move forward if you do. What will it take, Aurora?”
One year ago, we could barely keep our hands off each other. We’d overcome the distance and time that had kept us apart for two years before finally getting our chance. We surpassed the awkwardness of our first summer together—the summer I was much too young for him but much too in love to care. After that, every moment was as precious as the last grain of an hourglass. As if we knew our time was running out.
Our time has run out.
The door opens behind Jaxon, revealing the concerned face of Scott, my best friend from childhood, from when I led a happy, normal life in Durham, North Carolina. His eyes flick between the two of us. Jealousy has festered between them for years, but Scott has only ever been a friend in my heart.
“You okay, Aurora?”
“Of course she’s not okay,” Jaxon snaps.
I shoot him a warning glance, then turn to Scott, my face softening. “I’m coming. I just need another minute.”
Scott’s worried glance drifts between me and Jaxon, his lean frame blocking the view of the hallway behind him. His freshly cut, sandy blond hair is perfectly styled atop his head, a complete contrast to Jaxon’s tanned and rugged appearance.
“Okay.” He hesitates for another second before sighing, then stepping out and shutting the door behind him.
“You’re not seriously going to leave with that guy. I thought—”
Jaxon looks genuinely confused right now, and so damn hurt. Part of me wants to fix it. I’ve only ever wanted to fix everyone. But clearly, I’m the worst person for that job.
“You thought what, Jax? That my father would be convicted and everything would go back to the way it was before? You think Sheriff Brooks will allow me to step one foot back into that town without a challenge?” I scoff. “Even my father’s best friend thinks he’s a monster.” I shake my head, trying to rid the memory of the town’s angry eyes watching me as I entered the courtroom earlier today.
“This isn’t about the town. This is about you and me.”
I cringe, knowing this conversation will only take us in the same circles, and neither of us is ready to end the loop. I charge toward the door, but I have to pass Jaxon to get there. As I do, he wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me in, his hot breath heavy with desperation against my ear. “Don’t go.”
I crumble instantly, his arms my only chance of standing. I’ve missed his hold and his sweet, whispered words that ignite a heat between us no extinguisher could ever dissipate.
“We need more time to figure this out.”
My eyes flutter closed, relishing in his embrace one last time. How easy it could be to fall victim to our love once more, forever. But I can’t.
“Let me go, Jax.”
He does, and the move is so quick, my lungs deflate with the loss of him.
Jaxon has always been the wild rush of the creek barreling by, a force powerful enough to alter even the sturdiest of landscapes, and he halted me with his eyes. Icy gray orbs with a stormy finish. And I wanted to fall. To let his rapids carry me and take me over the edge.
I wanted to live in his waterfall.
Not drown in his cascade.
Stale air whirls amid a buzz of the fluorescent lights as we hold our gaze and cling to this moment, prolonging our goodbye. That’s what this is, isn’t it? If we can’t be together…if I can’t return to Balsam Grove…if I can’t forgive him. Goodbye is the only way forward.
The shrill ring of my cell phone comes through the car speakers, breaking through the heavy silence. Scott’s name lights up on my dash and my entire body cringes, unprepared to face the consequences of leaving home. Of leaving him.
I tap ignore, and the car is awash in deafening silence again. My heart races and my hands shake as I grip the leather steering wheel. I can’t believe I’m only minutes away from the one place I swore I would never go again.
Maybe it was my father’s suicide that prompted my decision to return to Balsam Grove. Maybe it was the unease that crept in when I thought about a romantic future with Scott. Maybe it was a combination of the two. All I know is I’ve been caught in a riptide for years, fighting, never knowing which way to swim. And now that the wind has died down, I can finally relax and trust in the current.
My grip tightens on the wheel as I turn onto US-64 and follow the main road up the winding mountain. I’ve be
en driving for over four hours on a mission to haul ass out of Durham, North Carolina. When I left, I hadn’t considered that it would be dark when I finally arrive at my destination. Street lights are scarce through mountain terrain. The only extra light comes from a gas station off the main road that looks like it was plucked straight from the seventies. It’s dimly lit, its walls and windows cluttered with signs, masking the building’s wear. If it weren’t for the neon sign blinking Open in the window, I wouldn’t consider it serviceable.
Is this an indication of what the town has become? Discarded history, abandoned, useless…lost? I force myself to take deep, steady breaths to avoid another panic attack and focus on my drive. There’s no way I’m turning back now.
Nestled within Pisgah National Forest in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, Balsam Grove is lightly populated, maintained more for the passersby than locals. Waterfalls, rivers and creeks, camping sites, and hiking trails make up most of the town. In Balsam Grove, everyone owns land, tourists are a necessity, and everyone knows everyone. At least, everyone thinks they know everyone.
Eight more miles and I’ll be at the cottage in the mountains where I vacationed with my parents every summer growing up. Where my father decided to make his permanent home after my parents separated when I was fifteen. Where I moved two years later, after my mother was killed.
Balsam Grove.
Whenever I think about this place, the memories of my time here rush over me, and in some cases, drown me completely. It’s part of the reason I’ve avoided any thought of the small town for so long. A coping mechanism, my therapist called it, and I accepted it then. But I’ve been fighting the current for too long in an effort to stay still. I lost so much in that town, but there was good there too.
Memories are a fragile thing—how they come and go and distort themselves into something they’re not. How they have the power to light us up or cripple us in a flash. As someone who’s suffered through short-term memory loss—or dissociative fugue, as the doctors labeled it—the memories I lost during and surrounding the three days of my abduction are a curse and a blessing.
I’ve come to realize that what’s lost shouldn’t always be found.
For starters, the three days I was taken and held captive by my own father. My body shakes at the acceptance of this truth that, for years, I couldn’t make sense of. But that’s another gift that came with therapy—the knowledge that insanity cannot be justified. Whether controllable or not, my father’s actions were wrong.
It’s taken countless therapy sessions and the six years since my father’s trial to make peace with the court’s verdict. Not that I’ve come to terms with what happened that dreadful November, nor do I have any wish to remember those three days missing from my memory. No. As far as I’m concerned, those three days are buried six feet under rock and soil with my father, with no hope of returning. I’ve wished them their peace. But that doesn’t erase the rest of my time in Balsam Grove.
What I do remember about the town now, after years of suppression, comes in small, blurry doses.
Rolling terrain that stretched for miles as my feet pounded against the rocky earth. Splashing water from a nearby creek and skipping rocks across the river. My rubber soles slipping as I hopped across a high stack of chopped wood. The happier memories filter in through a sheet of fog, obscuring the rest from view. But they’re still there, fighting to come to the forefront.
I shiver at the memory of Jaxon, at the way I left him standing in that courtroom. His plea still rings between my ears. Come home. It still hurts to think about, especially because he was once my happy place. Being with him made everything feel larger than life as he encouraged me to experience all the things nature had to offer.
No responsibilities. No expectations. Just adventure.
I want to feel that again, the whimsical freedom of my childhood before my world turned upside down. Before I lost everything—including myself.
I’m almost there. Moss-covered spruce trees line every dip and curve of the road as they bow to the howling wind. The radio mentioned a storm brewing in the Atlantic, and by the curtain of clouds that’s quickly shutting the stars out of sight, I know I’m running out of time before the sky unleashes on me.
Relying on my car’s headlights to guide me through the desolate woods, I slow before seeing a sign for Shoal Creek Falls. I drive another half mile down dirt and gravel, and a mailbox with the number 7933 confirms I’m in the right place.
A smattering of raindrops pings the roof, quickly morphing into buckets as I turn onto the private drive that leads to my old home. With a quick flash of my high beams, I spot my father’s cottage up ahead, all twelve hundred square feet of dark brown house and fifteen acres of land that I now own.
With a tight grip on the wheel, I park the car in the middle of the drive and begin to gather my things. I left Scott’s with only two suitcases containing clothes, shoes, and one family photo album that didn’t get packed away in storage with the rest of my mom’s things. Just the essentials. Nothing else in the house was mine. Not the pristine furniture, not the pretentious wall décor, not even the fancy tablet he gifted me on my twenty-fourth birthday. It was all getting to be too much.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to disperse my rising anxiety. It takes everything in me to not succumb to the emotions that flood my thoughts and cripple me to extinction. Grief, guilt, and confusion terrorize my mind, but I pull strength from the fact that I have no regrets. Only hope.
Hope.
As thick raindrops continue to pummel the roof, I search the passenger seat until I feel the very thing that set everything into motion.
My decision to leave my life in Durham behind didn’t develop over a few days or even a few months. It’s been in the back of my mind for years. But it wasn’t until I received the envelope containing a gifted deed and a key to my father’s cottage in the mountains that I knew I had to make it happen.
A single slip of my father’s old stationary accompanies the deed. Written at the top of the lined sheet, in a scrawl made with shaky hands and utmost care, are words I can hear my father saying as if he’s in the car with me now.
Through smoke and fire, reality awaits—ever-changing, yet always present.
I run the pad of my thumb over the familiar bold, dark blue print before taking the key from the envelope and shoving it into my pocket. I take another deep breath and switch off the ignition.
Ignoring the missed calls and messages from Scott, I swallow against the thickness in my tired throat and reach into the backseat of my Honda Accord. In my hasty effort to pack, I somehow managed to bury my jacket in the tumbled mess of clothes and shoes without thinking that I might need it when I arrived. One, two, three tugs later, I free the fabric from my suitcase and zip it around me before snatching my handbag and stepping out of the car. My phone’s flashlight shines against the cobblestone path as I dodge the slanted downpour, careful not to snag my loafers on the uneven terrain.
My father hasn’t tended to the cottage in almost seven years. I assumed the worst when it came to the state of his home. Rotted wood. Broken doors. Chipped and faded paint. Weeds to my chin. Maybe even vandalism.
But I was wrong. The cottage looks like it’s been cared for. Sure, it could use some TLC, but it certainly doesn’t appear to have been abandoned. Unlit garden lights line the mud and dirt-caked stone pathway to the front door. The porchlight isn’t on either, which doesn’t surprise me considering it’s been years since anyone has replaced the bulbs. I can fix that tomorrow. The utility companies assured me the power and water would be on by the time I arrived, but something stirs in my gut, telling me I won’t be so lucky.
Wood panels creak beneath my feet as I step onto the covered porch. A set of rocking chairs and a wooden porch swing decorate the front, relenting to the wind as they moan and rattle. As a strong gust engulfs me in the deep, earthy scents of pine and soil, I brace myself fo
r the first memory to come, expecting it to hit hard now that I’m faced directly with my past. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? I see, feel, hear, and smell scenes from my past, and the memories come rushing back like a tsunami?
A crack of lightning jolts through the sky, causing me to jump. I yelp, the wind and rain swallowing my voice as my stomach churns with nervous energy. My pulse quickens, a sign of life I welcome like it’s my first breath.
Even though it’s June, it’s a cool night in the mountains. The wind and the fact that I’m soaked in Earth’s cry makes me shiver. Wrapping an arm around my middle, I unlock the cottage door and practically leap inside. My jacket comes off first, my boots second, and then I’m locking the door behind me and patting down the wall to find a light switch.
Aha. Got you.
My fingers find the switch plate settled between a kitchen inlet and the front door, and I flick it on—but darkness remains. Of course. I wiggle and toggle the switch a few more times, just in case. Nothing.
Defeated, I lean back against the door and sigh.
On the other side of the room, rain splatters against the sliding glass that overlooks the back porch. The storm clouds have pulled the curtain on nature’s glow, stealing most of my light.
After kicking off the door with a bout of desperation, I move through every door and shine my phone’s flashlight over every tabletop, taking in my surroundings. I see the bathroom. The office. And a wooden ladder propped at an angle above the kitchen inlet, leading to the loft above.
I circle the room like a shark, inspecting the furniture, touching the walls, and inhaling a burgundy blanket that’s hanging over a couch. But familiarity fails to stir within me. I feel nothing.
I’m still numb.
I’m still broken.
I’m still empty.
And it’s all so goddamn suffocating.
Disappointment settles in my gut like an immovable anchor. This moment is yet another reminder of why expectations are something I try to steer clear of. I didn’t realize how badly I wanted to feel something until now. But nothing sparks that wick in the dark corner of my mind. I’m afraid it may be lost forever.
