Their Steamy Cabin

3. Savannah

THREE

This is quickly becomingone steamy cabin.

I moan lightly as I shift through the piles of blankets on top of me. So warm, so comfy, I’m almost not missing that Hunter had left me sometime during the night, leaving me in his bed alone.

Almost. I’ll manage to forgive him at some point.

I twist around a bit, and look toward a wall clock. Unless that’s horribly off, it’s two in the afternoon. More forgivable. With some effort I pull myself out of the bed and sit on the edge, eyeballing Hunter’s bathrobe from the night before.

I can’t believe I went and fucked him. Sure, he’s hot and sweet, the nicest man I’ve ever met, and I could feel myself falling in love with him at first sight, but I’m not a “fuck on the first date” kind of girl. I usually like to feel people out, and convince myself that there could really be something there beyond fleeting attraction.

Maybe it’s just something I needed. With how everything fell apart with my father and the immense amount of stress I’d been dealing with, I needed something to remind me that life was worth living. And Hunter? He definitely makes life worth living.

Aching the good ache, I pull myself together and slip on his robe. I find my clothes, freshly cleaned and dried not far from me, and I head into the main room of the cabin to look for him. He’s not there, but I’m struck with how cozy everything is. When we drove up, I remember how “just right” his place looked as we approached, as if it were as natural as any of the trees that surrounded it. Inside? Every bit of furniture seems crafted with love, and out of actual wood. I’m so used to plastic and metal, and materials I didn’t even have the words to describe. Here, the rocking chairs look firm and sturdy, with designs carved into them. I wonder if they had any particular importance, or if they were just here to look nice.

The way the sunlight filters through the windows gives it all a golden hue, and the scent of pine and cedar remains strong, even though I’m sure a lot of this stuff had to have been made years ago. It all has a vibe of peace and tranquility, both things that have long eluded my life.

I head to the bathroom, which is a bit more modern, the usual ceramic tiles and stainless steel for the various fixtures in there. After everything I had done, a good shower is something that called to me. I turn the knob, and find that the water gets hot pretty quickly and am thankful that this place is not totally rustic.

As I step my naked body under the hot stream of water, I’m left thinking, what’s next? Where was I going when I stormed out? Nowhere in particular. And I should have been at work four hours ago. Charlene was going to be pissed that I didn”t show up, and I dread getting back to my phone and seeing the eighty-seven angry voicemails and texts that she has probably sent me since then.

I borrow some of his shampoo. Not my usual strawberries and cream scent, but sometimes you just want to be clean and don’t care how you get there. Lathering my hair, I look out one of the small nearby windows in the bathroom and see Hunter outdoors. He’s got a wood ax in hand and is hewing some firewood, all while shirtless. He’s sweating, and I can’t help but watch his back glisten as his muscles flex as he does his work. I start to wonder how any girl could have resisted taking all their clothes off and throwing herself at him with how he looked.

Freshly clean, I get dressed and head outside as he’s stacking up his fresh wood supply.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” he says, a sly smile on his face.

“Good afternoon,” I admit, not willing to lie to myself. “Thank you for washing my clothes. And for feeding me. And for... um... everything else.”

I’m beet red, and he just chuckles. “All my pleasure, Savvy.”

I stroll about and look around us. At his little patch of land, his cabin, and how rustic it all is. “So, you cut your own wood. What else do you do yourself up here?”

“Pretty much everything,” he says, setting the wood down in a plastic bin right outside the front door. He shuts it to protect it from the rain. “I do my own hunting; I have my own little garden; I live a pretty quiet life.”

“Completely off the grid, I guess?”

“Hardly,” he replies. “Unless you think I went and hunted my own cow for the beef stew.”

I shrug. “I’m a city girl, so I’m not going to pretend to be an expert, but I”ve never heard of a wild-cow problem plaguing Evergreen Valley.”

“Because there isn’t. I still got bills. I gotta pay for power and water, and even the internet.”

I look at the horizon, seeing nothing but tall trees and mountains. “You must get some terrible speed out here.”

“Hell yeah, it’s terrible, but it’s good enough for what I need it to be. I’m just modern enough to not be a caveman.”

“How do you make money, then?” I stroke my chin in thought. “Wait, are you some rich trust fund kid living out his hardened woodsman dreams?”

Hunter laughs louder. “Kind of wish I was, but no. I do enough to get by. There’s demand for venison—that’s deer meat, by the way.”

“I’m not that out of the loop, Hunter.”

“Well, sorry, I didn’t want to assume. But deer, moose, even the occasional boar. In other words, not domesticated livestock. What I don’t need, I take to the market. But my main income is from carpentry.”

“Carpentry? Woodworking?”

“Whatever you want to call it. I cut down the evergreens around here and do all the processing myself. All the furniture and wood pieces inside the cabin are things I’ve built with my own two hands. Then I keep making things, and sell them at the local market and on the internet. People will pay a pretty penny for stuff that’s handcrafted. I just use the word ‘artisanal’ a lot, and it all ends up selling really well.”

I’m fascinated by what he’s describing. It all seems so much slower paced. “So, what, you just stay away from society beyond that? Are you some sort of prepper? Thinking the world’s going to end soon or whatever?”

He stares off in the distance, scratching his head. “God, I hope not. Where am I going to get my whiskey if the world ends? I haven’t looked up how to distill that stuff myself yet.”

It all brings a smile to my face. “I’m sure it’s not that hard. First thing mankind ever did was figure out how to get drunk.”

We stride over to a porch swing outside of his cabin’s front door. He slaps the wood, inviting me to join him on it. I do so without hesitation. “Savvy, my girl, I’m a simple man. I do what I need to do to get by, then I head back down into the outskirts of Evergreen and enjoy some adult beverages responsibly on the weekends. I just don’t think I need to be rushing to make more and more money. All I care about is taking care of myself.”

Hunter looks my way, a smug grin on his face. “And taking care of those who I love too.”

“A simpler life, but still a modern life, huh?” On the swing, I sit back and enjoy the view that’s in front of me. The evergreens that give the town its name tower into the sky, a gentle breeze making their limbs sway with the flow of the air. Sunlight gently casts over everything without the interruption of some massive concrete building, vibrant green grass and moss-covered rocks below all of them, and flowers of red, orange, purple, a literal rainbow of botany, as my eyes scan the scenery.

What surprises me the most is how silent it all is. Outside the occasional sweet sound of birdsong, there’s no ambient noise. In the city, you can’t get away from the rumbling of a car’s engine in the distance, the roaring of some generator, people shouting and laughing. Silence in the city is a goddamn myth. Here? It’s simply the natural state of things. I can even hear the two of us breathing.

“So that’s what I’m all about,” Hunter says, leaning back in the swing, his hands behind his head. “If it ain’t too much to ask, what about you? What do you do, Savvy?”

My shoulders sink. “Nothing as romantic as what you do. I’m just a waitress at a chain restaurant. I run around all day making sure people have coffee and hoping that they actually leave a tip.”

“Rough. Can see how that all builds up to you being in a busted-ass car on the highway out of town at one in the morning.”

Oh yeah, my car. Well, my dad’s car. It should have been something I was concerned about, but I was in no rush to go fix that problem. It would lead to me spending less time with Hunter, and I haven’t felt this kind of serenity in ages.

If I’d ever felt it before at all.

“That can’t be what you’re after in life though,” Hunter says. “I don’t mean any offense, but I never heard of anyone saying being a waitress at Denny’s is their dream in life.”

“Well, yeah, no. That’s not what I wanted to be as a little girl.”

“Then what did little Savvy want to be?”

I laugh. “I don’t think I recall anything serious. Unless you want me to tell you I wanted to be an astronaut.”

“Nothing wrong with wanting to be an astronaut. That seems cool as hell.”

“Yeah, but there’s two realistic paths to actually being one. The military, which I’m definitely not cut out for. Or astronomy, which made my brain melt out of my ears when I tried to take it in high school.”

“Oof. There had to have been something else.”

“Actress. But I don’t think I’m pretty enough for Hollywood.”

He interrupts me from saying anything else. “The hell you aren’t. You’re more than pretty enough for Hollywood.”

I giggle. “How did I know you’d say that?”

“You knew I’d say it because you saw that I have eyes.”

“Hunter, you’re the sweetest man I’ve ever met. But even if I accept your declaration of my hotness, I kind of wrote it off when I realized that it’s a bit of a crapshoot of luck and people you know. And probably sexual favors with a lot of creepy old men. Took a lot of glamour out of the whole dream.”

“Okay, if we can’t rely on little-girl Savvy’s dreams, what about adult Savvy’s dreams?”

I cross my arms, my eyes drifting away from him. “I haven’t really had time to think about what I realistically want out of life, to be completely honest.”

“Not even something like, I don’t know, a business degree? Go be a girl boss or whatever it is people say women should be nowadays?”

“Nah, not that,” I reply. “I’ve been working at least part time since I was fifteen years old. My father always needed the extra money, and I wanted to make him happy, so I gave it my all. The number of hours I put in to some of those jobs was likely illegal, given my age. And really? Probably still illegal even after I turned eighteen.”

“Jeeze,” he says, throwing a comforting arm over my shoulder. “A father shouldn’t expect that of his daughter.”

“Times are tough sometimes. And they’re changing too. He says I couldn’t expect him to pay all the bills alone.”

“Yeah, times are changing. I get that. But I always took sharing the bills as something more for a partnership with your spouse. Last thing I’d ever want to do would be to ask my own child to support me. It’s supposed to be the other way around.”

“Well, that’s how it was with my father. A selfish sad sack of a man who happily let me work my high school years away, and left me exasperated and exhausted as an adult.”

He massages my shoulder. “You have a moment to collect your thoughts now though. Can you put any thought into what you want now, Savvy?”

I take another deep breath. “I don’t know. It’s not that easy. I guess someday I want to be a mother. And to have a family. But there needs to be more than that. I’ve always loved to knit, but not sure that could make me a liveable income. I usually just make mittens for my coworkers at Christmas, a sweater for myself, if I can spare the money for yarn.”

“I loved being in a woodshop, making stuff when I was a kid. That’s how I got started with woodworking.”

“You turned it into a business. I don’t know if I can get good enough to do that.”

“No one knows if they have a knack for something until they try. I didn’t find out I had some talent until I gave it a go, and even then I still got scars on my fingers from my knife going astray.”

I nod along. For a time, we enjoy the silence, the cool breeze blowing through the forests. “I like it here,” I say, words slipping out without me even thinking about saying them.

“I like it here too. It’s why I live here.”

Laughter escapes me. “I’ve lived in the city my whole life. Everything’s always been so fast. So chaotic. Never a moment to rest.”

“It can get hectic when I go into town for the farmers’ market. Sometimes.”

“Yeah, but that”s ‘sometimes.’ Not an ‘always.’ City life”s always crazy, and I think I’m just tired of it.”

Hunter gazes off into the distance. “Yeah. Well, there’s always plenty of room out here in the woods. Getting a cabin built is a bit rough. And kind of expensive if you aren’t doing it yourself. But maybe you don’t have to build something new. Maybe you can find one that’s already built.”

“What, like yours?” I smirk.

“Yeah. I could do with you being in mine, going forward, Savvy. I think I’d like that a whole lot.”

We were moving entirely too fast. It all felt so ironic, considering how fast my life usually went, and how much I had just complained about it. But in this case, it felt right. It’s all a race to calmness, a race to peace of mind.

A race to having a man who actually cared for me in my life.

“Um... maybe I should go and make you some lunch,” I suggest, shifting off the swing. “Pay you back for your wonderful beef stew. On top of all the other wonderful things you’ve done for me.”

“Don’t think of it as something transactional, Savvy. I do it because I like you. Because I like you a whole lot.” There’s a cheery playfulness to his words, but I can sense that he’s not sure if he wants to use a word stronger than “like” just yet.

“Then let me make you some lunch because I like you a whole lot, too, Hunter.”

“My kitchen is yours,” he says, with a sitting bow. “Don’t think there’s any pasta for you to make chicken Alfredo though.”

“That’s a shame. I’m going to share that with you sooner or later.”

“Tell me what you need for it. Or, hell, I’d love to show you around town so you can see what the grocers have, yourself.”

I nod, my smile still warm. “I’d like that.”

What did I want out of my life? What was my dream? My realistic dream, one that could actually happen?

Being the loving wife of a man like Hunter. Never would have considered it before, but now, I can’t think of anything I’d want more.

It kind of scares me.