Chapter 2: Into the Goon Cave
The shower had been running for exactly four minutes when Evie made her move.
She'd counted. She'd been counting a lot lately—days, hours, floorboards, the seconds between the groan of the pipes and the steady hiss of water against tile. It was a game she'd invented to give structure to her shapeless days, a way to feel like she had some control over the chaos of lockdown life.
Four minutes was enough. He always spent at least ten in there, sometimes fifteen, and she knew from the past week of obsessive observation that he wouldn't emerge until his hair was dripping and his skin was pink from the heat.
Her heart hammered against her ribs as she crept down the hallway. The carpet muffled her footsteps, soft and forgiving beneath her bare feet. She'd worn her oldest, most comfortable hoodie—the one with the faded Stanford logo and the holes in the cuffs—and a pair of sleep shorts that barely reached mid-thigh. She looked like she'd just rolled out of bed, which was exactly the point. If he caught her, she'd pretend she'd been wandering, half-asleep, looking for him to ask a question.
But she didn't plan on getting caught.
She paused outside his door, her hand hovering over the knob. The wood was warm beneath her palm, warmed by the heat that always seemed to radiate from his room. She'd noticed that, how his space was always a few degrees warmer than the rest of the house, like he was running some kind of internal furnace.
The shower was still running.
She turned the knob. It gave easily, unlocked, and the door swung open on silent hinges.
The first thing that hit her was the smell.
It wasn't the kind of smell she could name, not exactly. It was him—his cologne, the one she'd bought him for Father's Day two years ago, expensive and woodsy and masculine. But underneath that was something else. Something muskier, earthier, more human. The smell of sweat and skin and...
She didn't want to finish that thought.
The room was dark. Not pitch black, but close—the curtains were drawn tight, heavy fabric blocking out the afternoon sun. The only light came from the three monitors arranged on the large desk against the far wall.
They were on. Of course they were on.
Evie moved closer, her bare feet silent on the carpet. The room was smaller than she remembered, more cluttered. Clothes were piled on the chair in the corner. Dirty dishes sat on the nightstand. The bed was unmade, sheets tangled and twisted like someone had been wrestling with them.
Her father was a neat person. He'd always been the one to fold the towels just so, to organize the pantry by expiration date. This room was not neat.
This room was a cave. A den. A space that existed outside the rules of the rest of the house.
She reached the desk and stopped.
The three monitors were arranged in a slight arc, like they were surrounding whoever sat in the worn desk chair. The chair itself was pushed back, crooked, as if the occupant had risen in a hurry.
On the left two screens, a video was playing. It was on a loop, the same few minutes repeating over and over.
Evie's breath caught in her throat.
Asian women. They were all Asian women, with dark hair and almond eyes and skin that ranged from pale to deep bronze. They were beautiful, every single one of them, but they were also... positioned. Arranged. Spread out on beds and couches and against walls while white men used them from behind.
The camera angles were deliberate. The women's faces were always visible, always contorted into expressions of exaggerated pleasure. But their eyes told a different story. Empty. Hollow. Like they were somewhere else entirely.
Evie watched for a moment too long, frozen, transfixed by the rhythmic motion on the screens. A woman with hair like her own—long and dark and straight—was bent over a desk, her face pressed against the wood, while a blonde man pounded into her from behind.
She should look away. She should run. She should pretend she'd never seen any of this.
But she couldn't.
Her eyes moved to the third monitor.
The screen was paused on a frozen frame. A picture—no, a video still. The quality was too good for a television broadcast, too well-lit for a lo-fi phone camera.
A girl in a coral bikini, her body glistening with water, her hair slicked back from her face. The camera angle was from above, slightly to the side, capturing the curve of her hips and the swell of her chest. She was mid-laugh, mid-movement, her body caught in a moment of pure unselfconscious joy.
The girl was Evie.
Her stomach dropped. Her heart stuttered, then surged, pounding so hard she could feel it in her ears.
There she was. On the screen. In a bikini she hadn't worn since she'd been home. In a pose she didn't remember striking. But there she was, in every detail—the exact curve of her waist, the shape of her smile, the way her hair fell across her shoulders.
She'd posted that video to TikTok back in January. A silly little dance she'd done for her friends, nothing serious, just a few minutes of shaking her ass and laughing at her own ridiculousness. She hadn't thought twice about it.
But her father had. Her father had seen it. Had saved it. Had it on his screen, paused, so he could look at her whenever he wanted.
Her stomach flipped. Not with disgust—though she should have felt disgust, should have felt violated and sick and horrified.
No. It was something else. Something darker.
She pressed her thighs together, a hot rush of warmth pooling in her core. Her nipples tightened beneath the soft fabric of her hoodie—she wasn't wearing a bra, hadn't been wearing one since she'd started spending her days around the house.
She thought about the video. She remembered the dance, the way she'd moved her hips in perfect sync with the beat. She remembered feeling good, feeling sexy, feeling powerful.
He'd seen that. He'd watched it. He'd—
She reached out and touched the screen, her fingers brushing against the image of her own face. The glass was warm from the monitor, warm like his skin would be.
A shiver ran down her spine.
She looked back at the left two screens, where the loop continued. The women there looked like her. Same hair, same features. The same exotic, other-worldly beauty that had always set her apart in her mostly-white hometown.
She'd always known she was different. Half-Korean, half-white, she'd grown up caught between two worlds, never quite fitting into either. Her mother had understood that—had shared it with her, had guided her through the complicated maze of growing up with a foot in two cultures.
But her mother was gone. Six years gone, taken by a drunk driver on a rainy night when Evie was just thirteen.
She looked back at the screen. At the women. At herself.
Her father didn't have a type. He had a category.
He liked Asian women.
And Evie was half-Asian.
Was that why he looked at her? Was that why he had her video saved on his screen, where he could see it while he...
She didn't want to finish that thought either.
But she couldn't stop it. Her body was ahead of her mind, pulsing with a forbidden excitement. The dark thrill was spreading through her veins. Her fingers tingled. Her breath came faster.
She hadn't been this turned on in weeks.
She pressed her hand between her legs, pressing through the soft cotton of her shorts. The pressure was good, but not enough. She needed more. She wanted—
The shower stopped.
Evie froze. Her hand was still between her thighs, her eyes still fixed on the screens. The silence was deafening, a sudden void where the white noise had been.
He was done.
She had to leave. She had to get out of this room before he came back, before he caught her here, before he discovered that she knew.
But her feet wouldn't move.
Her eyes darted around the room, taking in details she'd missed. The fleshlight on the desk, sitting next to the keyboard. The bottle of lube nearby, half-empty. The crumpled tissues in the trash can. The faint stain on the carpet that she didn't want to identify.
This was where he came. Every day. Every evening. Hidden away in this womb of darkness, surrounding himself with images of women who looked like her.
Images of her.
She should have been sick. She should have been running. She should have been screaming for him to explain himself.
Instead, she felt something unfurl in her chest like a dangerous flower. A hunger. A curiosity.
What would it be like to be the one in that room with him? To be the object of his attention instead of just the image on his screen?
She'd been bored for so long. Sick of the silence, the solitude, the endless empty days. She'd been desperate for something to fill the void.
And now she'd found it.
She heard him moving in the bathroom, opening the medicine cabinet, the click of his razor against the sink. He'd be out in a minute. Maybe less.
Evie made her decision.
She stepped closer to the third monitor and studied the image of herself. She'd look at it later, think about it, figure out what it meant. But right now, she needed him to see her. See her for real, not just as a frozen video still.
She pulled the hood off her head, letting her hair fall loose around her shoulders. She'd been sleeping too much lately, her skin pale and dull. She should go outside more. Get some color.
She should have worn her bikini to bed tonight. Maybe that would have been better.
But she was in her hoodie and shorts, and she had maybe thirty seconds before her father would walk through the door and find her standing in the middle of his secret room, surrounded by his secrets.
She didn't run.
She took a step back from the desk, then another. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She watched the door.
She heard his footsteps in the hallway, heavy and slow. He was dragging his feet, like he always did when he was tired. She heard him stop, heard the slight creak of the floorboard outside his door.
He was right there.
And she was in his room.
Evie held her breath. The seconds stretched, elastic and endless.
She heard him sigh. Heard his footsteps continue, moving down the hall, toward the kitchen.
He hadn't even looked in his room.
She let out a shaky breath, half relieved and half disappointed. Disappointed because she'd wanted him to see her, maybe? Wanted to catch a glimpse of his face when he realized she'd been there, that she'd seen what he'd been hiding?
No. That wasn't right either.
She didn't know what she wanted.
She slipped out of his room, closing the door silently behind her. The hallway was empty. She could hear him in the kitchen, opening the fridge, the clink of a glass against the counter.
She walked back to her room and shut the door behind her.
Her body was still buzzing, her skin tingling with a strange electricity. She collapsed onto her bed, pressing her face into her pillow, and screamed.
But it wasn't a scream of horror.
——
That night, Evie couldn't sleep.
She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, her body too hot even under the single thin sheet. She'd stripped down to just her panties and an old t-shirt, but her skin was still burning.
Her mind replayed the images from his room.
The women. The video. Her face frozen on the screen.
She tried to be disgusted. She tried to feel violated, to feel like a victim. But there was nothing in her but that dark, thrilling hunger.
He'd been looking at her. Her father had seen her—really seen her, beyond just as his daughter.
She'd felt invisible for her entire first week of quarantine. Trapped in this house, stuck in her childhood bedroom, feeling like a ghost in her own life.
But now she knew. She wasn't invisible to him.
He'd watched her dance. He'd looked at her body. He'd wanted—
She squeezed her eyes shut and slid her hand down her stomach, beneath the waistband of her panties.
She'd been so pent up for so long, so desperate for any kind of release. And now she had something to think about, trapped in her mind like a dirty, forbidden secret.
She circled her clit slowly, almost experimentally, as if testing whether her own body would betray her. The first shock of pleasure shot through her, electric and immediate, her gasping at the intensity.
She thought about the woman in the video, her face pressed against a desk. She thought about the way her father's monitors were arranged, surrounding him, enveloping him in a cocoon of sound and vision.
She imagined it. Imagined him in that chair, watching her. His hand wrapped around his cock, stroking himself. His eyes fixed on her face, his breath ragged and hot.
Was that something she could be?
Was that something she wanted?
She wasn't sure. But her body was already answering, already flooding with heat, clenching around nothing, desperate to be filled. Her fingers moved faster, her hips bucking involuntarily as she chased the feeling.
The orgasm crashed over her like a wave, sudden and overwhelming. She bit down on her pillow to muffle her scream, her body convulsing as the pleasure tore through her.
For a moment, everything was quiet. The heat in her skin faded. The tightness in her chest loosened.
She collapsed into the mattress, breathless and boneless, every muscle in her body relaxed and trembling.
But the hunger didn't go away.
It just got stronger.
She rolled onto her side, looking out the window at the night sky. The moon was bright, hanging over the silhouette of the neighbor's roof.
What would it be like to replace the image on his screen? To walk into his room and be there in the flesh, not just in pixels?
The thought should have horrified her.
It didn't.
She fell asleep with a smile on her face, her dreams already planning her next move.
——
The next morning, Evie woke up early.
Not late like she had been, not dragging herself out of bed at noon. She was up before nine, showered and dressed before her father had even emerged from his room.
She put on her tightest pair of cut-off shorts and a tank top that showed off her cleavage. No bra. She'd stopped wearing one around the house days ago, too uncomfortable and too pointless.
She stood in front of the mirror, studying her reflection. The image of the girl on the monitor flashed through her mind, beautiful and sexual and desirable.
She'd been hiding herself. Buried in hoodies and baggy t-shirts, letting herself go because she'd been trapped and miserable.
Not anymore. Now she had a mission.
She walked to the kitchen and started making breakfast. Eggs, bacon, toast—the full spread she hadn't made in months. She'd been an athlete in high school, used to fueling her body for morning practice, and the familiar rhythm of it was almost therapeutic.
She felt the heat from the stove warm her bare arms as she stirred the bacon. The seams of her shorts. The sway of her hair against her lower back.
Evie checked over her shoulder, while reaching up to get the plates, letting her shirt ride up.
She’d just flipped the toast when she heard it—footsteps in the hallway.
She slowed her movements instantly, deliberate. Leaning into the counter, her back arching slightly as she tilted her head to look out the window, humming a low, tuneless song. She sensed him before she saw him, his warmth a sudden presence in the kitchen doorway.
"Morning, princess."
She turned around, making sure he saw the full picture. Her long hair loose and silky around her face. Her simple tank top hugging two tanned, heavy breasts. The cut-offs barely clinging to her hips. A basket of fresh eggs she was cradling like an offering.
"Morning, dad. You want some breakfast?”
He blinked, his gaze snagging on her bare shoulder, and the flash of that heat in his eyes as he looked her up and down once—just once—before looking away.
"Since when do you cook?" he joked, shuffling to the coffee maker.
Evie smiled sweetly at his turned back. "Since you started working so hard. Thought you might need a break."
She felt his attention return to her before she could even establish what she needed to do next. He was a man unaccustomed to creatures like her.
"Bacon's your favorite, right? I saved the crispiest pieces for you." She plated his portion and set it down, standing close enough for the edges of her shoulders to almost graze him. "Let me know what else I can do for you today."