He Waited in the Pines

The storm rolled in faster than any forecast predicted. Thick clouds swallowed the sky, turning the afternoon into a premature twilight. The trees along the highway bent under the wind like they were bowing to something bigger and older than the weather.

I should have turned back when the first road sign rattled so hard it nearly snapped. But once I had my mind set on something, I tended to push through even if the universe screamed no. That could be stubbornness, maybe it was survival, or possibly that was the kind of reckless hope you learn after enough people walk out of your life.

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and focused on the snow-covered road ahead.

Winter break, a week alone in my late grandmother’s cabin. Silence and distance offered a chance to breathe without expectations. That was the plan.

I hadn’t planned on this storm.

My phone sat on the passenger seat, stubbornly without service. Every now and then, it buzzed with half-loaded notifications before giving up again. I had promised my mother I would text when I got to the cabin. At this rate, I would be lucky not to wind up in a ditch.

“Just a few more miles,” I muttered to myself.

The GPS couldn’t help me. I was running on memory, and the way the road curved between dark pines that seemed to lean in closer the deeper I drove, the closer I got.

My headlights cut through swirling snow, illuminating patches of ice and branches clawing across the ground. The storm howled around the car. The noise was so constant it felt alive.

Then I saw him, a man standing on the side of the road. My foot slammed the brake without thinking. The car fishtailed on ice before finally stopping sideways across the road. He didn’t move. He stood half-shadowed and half swallowed by falling snow. A hood pulled low. Shoulders broad. Stance steady. Too steady for someone caught in a storm like this.

Something about the shape of him tugged at a memory I didn’t want to remember. My heart hammered. “No. No, no, no.” I wasn’t afraid of the woods. I wasn’t scared of storms. I was terrified of men who waited too quietly.

I fumbled for my phone. Not that it mattered since it still had no service.

Looking through the windshield, I saw the man had gotten closer. I gasped and quickly leaned back. Was he moving so fast? Or was he nearer than I thought? The snow blurred the view, and shadows played tricks on my eyes. My breath fogged up the glass. I blinked twice, and suddenly he was gone.

Not walking away, not fading out of sight. Just gone. Like he’d been pulled back into the trees, my pulse raced so fast it hurt. “Nope,” I whispered. “We are not doing this today.” I put the car in drive and floored it. The tires spun before catching, the snow roared against the windows, and it hasn’t let up once this whole time. I drove faster than I should have, heart, clawing at my ribs.

The cabin finally appeared through the slanted white curtain of snow, dark and quiet beneath towering pines. The porch light was dead. The windows were black. The place looked abandoned except for the faint outline of footprints leading toward the trees.

Fresh ones. My stomach dropped.

I grabbed my bag, bolted from the car, and ran to the front door. It stuck the way old wooden doors do in winter, but I shoved it hard, went inside, slammed it shut behind me, and locked it.

A long, deep breath rushed out of my lungs. The cabin smelled like cold wood and dust. Familiar, lonely, and safe compared to the growing madness outside. Or so I told myself. I set my bag down and checked every corner like a paranoid raccoon. When I reached the back window, I paused. Something moving at the tree line caught my eye.

A shape, tall, still, and it was watching. I stepped back from the glass. My phone buzzed weakly. One bar, then it vanished again. I turned toward the door to check the lock one more time.

Knock.

I froze, then another knock came, three slow, heavy taps. Every part of me told me not to answer, then a voice spoke through the wood, low and familiar enough to make my knees weaken. “Tessa. Open the door.”

My heart stopped. I knew that voice. Draven Holt.

The man I left behind last year. The man whose attention had always felt too sharp, too focused, and too close to obsession. “How did you find me?” I whispered under my breath. He knocked again, softer this time.

“Tessa. Please.” The storm howled outside. My pulse raced. Draven Holt had followed me into the pines. And something else had followed him.