Page 14 of Their Steamy Cabin

“Oh, how sweet, you made me a drink.” He downs it in one gulp. By the smell of him, it’s likely not the first beverage he’s had tonight.

“That’s not for you!” I wriggle out of his grasp and slap him, punch at him. He’s so much bigger than me, and I curse my frailty.

“Come on, Savannah. Uncle Earl is waiting in his truck to help us go get my car.”

“Fuck Uncle Earl. I’m not going anywhere!” I yell, planting my feet and pulling back as he pulls me forward.

“You’re mine, you ungrateful slut,” he says, the venom seeping in his tone. He’d never called me something so strong before. I guess I’m not his little girl anymore, but that’s not exactly improving our relationship.

“I’m not going anywhere, Dad. I’m staying here.”

“In some shitty shack in the middle of nowhere?” He sneers. “Have you been kidnapped? And are you so stupid to be Stockholm syndrome’d in a day?”

“If being with a man who actually treats me like a human being is giving in to Stockholm syndrome, then, yeah, I’ll gladly say that’s it.” I know that’s not it, but at this point, I’m just shouting at my father, hoping that my hatred will bore into his dense skull and that there’all be some semblance of decency in him that’ll stop him from dragging me across the floor and toward the door.

“You’re a dumb bitch, Savvy. Just like your mother was!” He yanks me forward, and I nearly fall onto my face.

“Don’t you talk about Mom like that!” I screech back.

We keep yelling back and forth. No points are made. It’s a tug of war. I’m struggling to stay in the cabin, holding myself against frames, railings, whatever I can get my hands on.

“Stop being such an ungrateful little piece of shit!” he bellows, and then I see a violence that I hadn’t seen him devolve into just yet.

A fist.

He’d never hit me. He pushed and pulled me out of the way like he was doing now, but in all of his emotional and verbal abuse he’s thrown at me over the years, actually striking me was never a line he crossed.

And now he’s willing to cross it.

The fist comes right for me, and I dive away to avoid it. My heart pounds. He’s gone, I realize. My father is well and truly gone, and all that is left behind is a narcissistic monster, who can’t see what he’s doing to his own daughter.

I scramble away. “Get back here!” he yells, stomping through the cabin behind me.

More footsteps. Part of me is hoping my dad’s friend has more soul than he does at this point, and is stepping in to stop this.

No.

It is Hunter.

Hunter, who proceeds to throw a haymaker right across my dad’s jaw and sends him crumpling to the ground.

“So I’m guessing by all the yelling that this is your father?” Hunter asks, looking over him.

I nod.

“Wh-who the hell are you?” my father snarls, scrambling to his feet and staring down Hunter.

“Her friend. Lover. Boyfriend. Maybe something even more than that. But whatever I am, I’m not letting you take her if she doesn’t want to go with you. Get out of my house, or... well...”

“What, you’ll call the police? It’ll take them hours to get up here.”

“Yeah, exactly.” Hunter cracks his knuckles. “So I don’t rely on them. Out here in the woods, we have to use some old-fashioned justice if we want something done. So this is your warning before I show you exactly what that is.”

Hunter is honestly kind of scary as he says that. But I know anger is fueling his current intimidating nature. I’d only ever seen a sweet and kind man. But sometimes, part of being sweet and kind is being terrifying to those who deserve it.

My father stands up and starts backing out of my cabin. “Fine. I’ll leave. But I want my car. It’s my car.”

Hunter looks at me, lets out a long sigh, and then grabs the metal jerrican he had been carrying with him, toward the door. He throws it at my father. “Take that. It’s somewhere on the road back to Evergreen Valley. It ran out of gas. Refuel it, and then get out of here. If I ever see you again, I’m going to carry out my threats of old-fashioned justice, and no one will ever hear from you again. Not until some poor hiker accidentally finds your corpse in the woods a decade from now.”

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