An Understated Dominance novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Cabin

The road to the cabin climbed through pine forest for forty minutes, and the snow got deeper with every mile.

Colter drove the truck the way he did everything, steady and without comment.

I watched the wipers beat and the headlights carve a tunnel through white.

"Your grandmother's place," I said.

"My mother's mother. She left it to me when I was twenty-two."

"My father doesn't know it's mine. He thinks it was sold."

"Why not?"

"Because it's the only thing in my life he's never been able to put a price on."

The cabin appeared out of the dark, a low log building with a tin roof and a porch half buried in drift.

He parked beside a woodpile that had a tarp over it.

We carried in the groceries from the back seat, and he held the door against the wind.

Inside, it was freezing and smelled like cedar and old books.

"I'll start the stove," Colter said.

"Do you know how?"

"Mostly."

I watched him crouch at the iron stove with a handful of kindling and a box of matches.

He lit three matches and blew out two of them.

Smoke curled out of the door and into the room.

"Colter."

"It's drafting weird."

"Move."

"I'm almost there."

"You're not. Move."

He sat back on his heels, and I knelt beside him and opened the damper.

I rebuilt the kindling into a little tent, with the small sticks on the bottom, and struck one match.

The stove took the flame and roared.

I sat back, pleased with myself.

He was staring at me.

"What?"

"You're very good at that."

"I design gear for people who sleep in the snow. Lighting things is the job."

"You lit it in one match. I used three and a prayer."

I laughed so hard I had to sit on the floor.

The cabin warmed slowly.

I took off my wet coat, and he hung it by the door.

He lit the lamps, and the room came up gold around us.

That was when I saw the workshop.

It was a lean-to behind the kitchen, with a table saw and a bench and a wall of hand tools hung in order of size.

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