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“Ready?” Ridge asks, and I nod. “Place the axe on the log as a starting point. It’ll help with muscle memory.”
I do what he says, resting the blade in the center of the log. He disappears from my back, and when I’m sure he’s at a safe distance, I heave the axe up and let it fly.
I miss the log completely, metal sinking into the tree stump.
“Good form.” Archer steps in and yanks the axe from the wood, whirling it around to hand it to me, handle first. “The first try is always a swing and a miss. Let’s do it again.”
They take turns showing me their methods, giving me advice while giving each other shit. After a few more misses, I finally hit the log, and a few more swings after that, I’ve really got the hang of it.
But cutting the firewood isn’t the true stress reliever, I realize. Yeah, sure, it’s really nice to imagine the log is my uncle’s face. And I do that a few times.
As tension evaporates from my body and the knot in my stomach starts to unwind, I finally realize what it really is.
It’s these men.
Their attention. Their friendly, easy-going banter. The way they look out for me and take care of me.
I’ve never had anything like that in my life, and try as I might to resist, I feel myself being drawn toward them like a flower toward sunlight.
* * *
That night, I slip into an easy sleep, though my arm muscles do their best to protest.
At first my dreams are benign and nonsensical.
I’m racing through the forest with the cold mountain wind ruffling my hair. I see wolves around me and the moon high overhead, and my body feels lighter than air, as if I’m flying rather than running. I reach the edge of a ravine, and rocks shift and fall beneath my feet.
Then Ridge is beside me in human form—naked and magnificent, even in my dreams. He takes my hand and we jump right over the edge of the canyon. Instead of falling, we soar.
But then it isn’t Ridge beside me anymore.
His hand becomes a vise grip, and I’m lying on my uncle’s work bench with my hand in an actual vise grip. Both hands are pinned between unforgiving metal planks on either side of my body. I can’t struggle. It only makes the pain worse to try.
Uncle Clint towers over me, smoke curling up over his balding head from the cigarette perched between his lips. He lifts a hand, and I see he’s holding a cutting knife—a small one from our kitchen set, meant for chopping vegetables, not for slicing up your niece.
But that’s what he uses it for.
This is one of his calculated torture sessions, I realize in horror. Not his drunken rages or his power-hungry man tantrums that cause him to push me down stairs or punch me in soft places on my body.
This is war.
This is tactical.
His knife slices up the front of my shirt, and he uses the sharp tip to throw the edges of my shirt out of his way. He eyes my stomach like a painter planning his next move, before he sets the blade to my skin and starts to carve.
Even in my dream, the ghost of the pain feels almost as horrible as it did in real life. He carves so lightly, not deep enough that it won’t properly heal. In his calculated attacks, my uncle scratches some kind of itch I’ve never understood. He wants me to feel maximum pain. He wants to cause me excruciating agony. And he knows how to cover his tracks well enough to get away with it.
Blood runs down my sides in warm little rivulets, soaking through the crumpled fabric of my destroyed t-shirt. The cuts keep going until I’m screaming, screaming for anybody to help me. Screaming for something to take me away from this pain.
I wake up in a cold sweat, my heart pounding like a jackhammer against my ribcage. The blankets are heavy on my body, more confining than they should be, and I frantically shove them off me with all four limbs until they slip off the bed to pool on the floor.
My breaths come faster as I glance around the dark room. I can hear that the generator is off beyond the cabin wall, so I can’t even turn on a light to dispel the gloom.
The small bedroom feels like a tomb, and all logic flees in the face of my panic.
I’m trapped.
I can’t be here anymore.
