Their Steamy Cabin

6. Savannah

SIX

Usually I’ma one-shower-a-day kind of gal, but with everything I’d done in the past twelve hours? A second one would be nice. All the exertion from our walks, the cooking, and the... let’s just call it strenuous, cooperative exercise with Hunter... they all made me work up quite the sweat.

Besides, I think I want to be clean when Hunter comes back. Fresh and ready for more strenuous, cooperative exercise.

Never mind that it’s my third shower in twenty-four hours. I’m not a neat freak; I just want to look my best for him always.

I find myself enjoying the scent of his shampoo too. It isn’t anything special; Hunter isn’t the type to make his hair smell like peaches—just some generic “fresh scent.” But it smells like him, and I can feel myself becoming more and more attached to everything about him as time goes on.

Freshly clean, I slide into his robe, and take a whiff of that too. I can’t really even pretend that I’m not head over heels in love with him, anymore. I told myself if he went and popped the question at that old tree, I’d be rational and say I wasn’t ready, and it’s a tad too forward. But now, simply hours later?

Damn. I never expected it to happen so fast. I always thought it was simply a dramatic effect when I saw it in movies and TV.

I wander around the cabin. If he is getting pizza, I can’t make dinner for him, so I just get the dishes done and poke around his cabinets to see if there is anything fancy I could make.

He has a liquor cabinet. Some gin, some tonic, and I remembered how I already knew how to make one of those. It was more than just combining them, it was about getting the right balance. Sure, legally I’m not allowed to go buy alcohol on my own, but my dad never cared about that. I turned fourteen, and he taught me how to make his favorite drink, which wasn’t all that hard, considering it was scotch, neat.

I had no idea what was Hunter’s favorite, but given he had the ingredients here, I decide to prepare a gin and tonic, to have it ready for when he gets back. He also had some bottled orange screwdrivers, which made me smile. One: It was my preferred choice when I committed the horrible sin of underage drinking. Two: It reminds me of the kind of man Hunter is. He isn’t so ruled by his vision of masculinity that he’d refuse what was seen as a girly drink. He likes what he likes, and he doesn’t give a heck who judges him.

That’s a man worth keeping.

And as I return to the couch, the doorknob turns. I smile, realizing I’d, just by chance, timed everything perfectly. I hold my two drinks with anticipation as the door swings open.

It’s not Hunter.

No.

“Savannah Lynn Summers, you’re coming with me right this fucking minute.”

“Dad? Dad, what the hell are you doing here?”

Without hesitation, he moves to me and grabs me by the arm, my screwdriver falling out of my hand.

“I’m taking you home. You can’t run off from me like that. Not with my car. Not with what you owe me.”

“What the hell do I owe you?”

“Eighteen years of support. All the times I paid for your food and shelter, and this is how you repay me?”

I’m trembling. Fear and anger fester in me in equal amounts. “How did you even find me?”

“There’s a tracking app on your phone.”

“What? How? Dad, I’m nineteen; you can’t be stalking me like that.”

“I’m your father. I own you,” he says, twisting my arm. “And it took way too long to find you up here. What kind of backward place has service this weak?”

Out of desperation, I go to throw the gin and tonic in his face, but he catches my arm, and wrestles it out of my hand.

“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.”

My father’s face is ghastly white as he stands up. I’ve never seen him so scared before in my life. He takes the can and then runs toward Earl’s truck, scrambling into the passenger side. Earl himself looks confused by the whole thing before throwing the truck into reverse and finally driving my father away from here. I hope that if I ever see him again, that maybe he will have realized just how far he’d fallen since my mother passed.

I don’t think it is likely. But I’m allowed to have hope.

Hunter turns toward me as I push myself up off the floor. Our eyes meet.

And I rush toward him.

I throw myself into his arms.

All the terror I felt, I realize it’s because Dad was threatening to tear me away from the first bit of happiness I’ve felt in years. From a man who really wants to treat me right, who wants to take care of me, and to actually help me become who I want to be. The despair I would have felt, being torn away from him, not knowing if I’d ever get to enjoy his embrace ever again is embedded in my soul.

More than ever, I can’t deny my feelings.

“I love you,” I say, tears streaming down my face.

“I know,” he replies, a powerful kiss following. “And I love you so fucking much, Savvy. No one’s ever going to take you from me.”

He holds me close. For the first time in my life, I feel absolute calm. I’m taken care of. I’m protected.

I am loved.