Chapter 3: The Cabin in the Woods
The pastels sat on her desk for a week. Delaney didn’t touch them. Every time she entered her studio, their presence was a quiet, humming pressure. A question she couldn’t answer. She’d used her old, chalky set instead, grinding the stumps into the paper, unsatisfied.
The rumors started on Thursday.
“You know that guy? The one from the thing at the station?” Mia asked, leaning against the locker bank, her voice low.
“Which guy?” Delaney asked, though her stomach knotted.
“The one who wasn’t arrested. Colson, I think his name is. Philosophy grad student.” Mia glanced over her shoulder. “Eva from my poli-sci seminar knows someone who was in his cohort last year. She said he got into some really deep, weird stuff. Like, not just reading Nietzsche, but… intense. Got into a physical altercation with a professor during a debate. Almost got expelled, but it got hushed up. Something about the professor retracting his statement.”
The words landed like stones in cold water. Altercation. Hushed up. Delaney shoved her books into her bag. “People say stuff.”
“Yeah, but where there’s smoke,” Mia said, shrugging. “Just… be careful, okay? He sought you out after. That’s a little much.”
Be careful. The phrase stuck in her head, a irritating rhythm matching her footsteps as she left campus that evening. She needed to move, to outrun the feeling. She drove to the state park just outside town, where a network of trails wound through old-growth forest. It was where she went when the walls of her studio felt too close.
The air was cool and thick with the smell of damp earth and decaying leaves. The dying light filtered through the canopy in slanted, dusty beams, making the world seem fractured. She started jogging, the impact on the packed dirt path a steady, calming beat. Be careful. A physical altercation. Hushed up.
Her thoughts were a tangled loop, and she wasn’t watching the trail. A gnarled root, slick with moss, snaked across the path.
Her foot caught.
There was a sickening twist, a sharp, white-hot crack of pain that shot from her ankle up her leg. She cried out, a short, shocked sound swallowed by the trees. She went down hard, skidding on the gravelly dirt, the palms of her hands scraping raw. For a moment, she just lay there, breathless, pain throbbing in time with her heartbeat. The forest seemed to lean in, the shadows between the trunks deepening from gray to purple.
“Shit,” she whispered, pushing herself up to sit. Her right ankle was already ballooning, an angry, hot pulse under her skin. She tried to put weight on it and gasped, vision spotting. It was bad. Twilight was bleeding the last color from the sky. The parking lot was a mile and a half back.
Panic, cold and slick, started to climb her throat. She fumbled for her phone. No signal. Of course.
The rustle came from behind her.
Not an animal. Too steady, too heavy. A deliberate crunch of leaves underfoot.
She twisted around, her ankle screaming in protest.
Colson stood ten feet away, at the edge of the path where the shadows began. He wore a dark windbreaker, his hands in his pockets. He didn’t look surprised. He looked like he’d been waiting.
“Delaney,” he said. His voice was calm, almost conversational, as if they’d run into each other at the coffee shop.
“How…” she started, but the words choked off. The isolation of the place, the gathering dark, the sheer impossibility of him being here, crashed over her. The rumors echoed. Altercation. Hushed up.
“I come out here to think,” he said, answering her unfinished question. He took a few steps closer, his eyes on her ankle. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine,” she said, the lie automatic and thin. She tried to stand again, to show him she was fine, but her leg buckled instantly. She would have fallen if she hadn’t grabbed a sapling.
“You’re not.” He was beside her then, moving with a quiet, unsettling speed. He crouched down, his gaze clinical. “That’s a significant sprain. Possibly a fracture. You can’t walk on it.”
“I can manage. I just need to—” She tried to hobble, a pathetic one-legged hop. Agony lit up her leg.
“You’ll destroy the ligaments.” He stood. “My car is on a service road about half a mile that way. My place is closer than the hospital. I have a first-aid kit. Ice.”
“No. No, I’ll just… I’ll call someone.” She held up her useless phone.
He looked at it, then back at her face. The last of the light caught his glasses, turning them opaque for a second. “There’s no signal until you clear the ridge. That’s two miles.” He stated it as simple fact. “It’s going to rain soon. You’re in shock. You’re not thinking clearly.”
He was right, and that was the most terrifying part. The wind had picked up, carrying a bitter, metallic chill. The first cold drop hit her forehead.
Before she could protest further, he moved. He didn’t ask. He simply bent, one arm sliding behind her back, the other under her knees, and lifted her. He did it effortlessly, as if she weighed nothing. The sudden elevation, the loss of control, made her dizzy.
“Put me down!” Her voice was shrill, swallowed by the vast, uncaring trees.
“If I put you down, you will collapse and injure yourself worse,” he said, his voice a low vibration against her ear. He was already walking, leaving the main trail, cutting between two massive oaks onto a narrower, darker path she hadn’t even noticed. “This is the most efficient solution.”
She pushed against his chest, but it was like pushing a wall. The windbreaker was cool and slick under her hands. “I don’t want to go to your place. Take me to my car.”
“Your car is in the main lot. That’s in the opposite direction. By the time we got there, you’d be in severe pain and soaked.” His grip adjusted, tightening just slightly. Not enough to hurt. Enough to feel utterly inescapable. “I’m helping you. Try to relax. You’re making it harder on yourself.”
Helping. The word felt wrong. This didn’t feel like help. It felt like a transaction she hadn’t agreed to. The forest blurred past as he walked with steady, sure strides. The light was almost gone now, the world reduced to silhouettes and the sound of his footsteps and her own ragged breathing.
He leaned his head down slightly, his voice a murmur meant only for her. “I told Mia you should be careful out here. These trails are treacherous if you’re distracted.”
Ice flooded her veins. He’d spoken to Mia. He’d known she’d be here. Or he’d guessed. The logic didn’t matter. The result was the same: he was here, and she was in his arms, utterly at his mercy.
She stopped struggling. A primal understanding took hold: in this moment, resistance was useless. She went rigid, every muscle taut, her face turned away from the warmth of his neck.
After what felt like an hour but was probably only fifteen minutes, a small, rustic cabin materialized from the gloom. It was barely visible, tucked into a hillside, with a steep, shingled roof and a stone chimney. No lights were on. It looked less like a home and more like a place to hide.
He shouldered the front door open and carried her inside, kicking the door shut behind them. The interior was one open room, dim and neat to the point of sterility. A wood stove, a worn leather couch, a desk buried under precise stacks of books and papers. No photographs. No personal touches. It smelled of pine sap and old paper.
He laid her on the couch with surprising gentleness. “Don’t move.”
He moved through the shadows with familiarity, flipping on a single brass lamp that cast a small pool of yellow light. He retrieved a professional-grade first-aid kit and a bag of frozen peas from a small, humming fridge. He knelt before her again, his movements methodical.
“This will be cold,” he said, and wrapped the bag in a clean towel before gently easing her sneaker off. She winced, biting her lip. His hands were deft, careful, as he positioned the ice. His fingers were long, and for a absurd moment she thought of those pastels, of how they must have felt in his hands when he bought them.
“Thank you,” she forced out, the social habit overriding the screaming fear.
“You don’t have to thank me,” he said, not looking up. He was examining the swelling with detached focus. “It’s the correct thing to do. You needed aid. I was capable of providing it.” He finally glanced up at her. Her fear must have been plain on her face. His expression softened, just a fraction. “You’re safe here, Delaney. The only thing I want is for your ankle to heal.”
He said it with such conviction she almost believed him. But then she looked past him, at the desk. Among the dense volumes of philosophy and history, one book lay open, face down. She couldn’t see the title, but a paragraph was underlined in violent, slashing red ink. She caught only a few phrases in the lamplight: …the fragility of moral constructs… and …the right of the stronger will…
He followed her gaze and, without a word, reached over and closed the book, sliding it into a pile.
“Let me get you some water,” he said, rising and turning his back to her.
She sat on the edge of the couch, the ice numbing her ankle, the chill seeping into her bones. The cabin was silent except for the wind beginning to keen against the roof. He was being kind. He was helping. He’d carried her when she couldn't walk.
And he’d known where to find her. He’d known what Mia had said.
He handed her a glass of water. She took it, her fingers brushing his. This time, she didn’t flinch. She was too tired, too confused, too trapped.
“I’ll drive you home when the swelling goes down a bit,” he said, sitting in a chair across from her, watching her. Just watching. “You should keep it elevated.”
She nodded, sipping the water. It was perfectly cold. She realized, with a hollow sense of defeat, that she wouldn’t tell anyone about this. Not Mia, not anyone. How could she explain it? He rescued me sounded insane after the rumors. He kidnapped me sounded even more insane, and wasn't quite true. The truth was somewhere in the terrible, silent space between, and that was a space she would have to navigate alone.
For now, she was just a girl with a busted ankle, sitting in the quiet, watchful dark of a stranger’s cabin, waiting for the moment he decided to take her back.