Chapter 22: What does that even mean?
Skylar swallowed hard, her throat clicking audibly in the quiet cabin. She felt the tremor of something shifting in Nate, something she couldn't interpret. It wasn't anger, exactly. It wasn't lust either.
It was colder, deeper, calculating. Like he was taking measurements of her soul the way someone might measure lengths of wire, or gauge the strength of a beam.
She lowered herself back onto the stool beside the plate, her palms damp with sweat. The water in the shallow ceramic dish quivered faintly from the movement, almost as if it sensed her nerves.
She hesitated. This ridiculous task… this strange command… she didn't understand it at all. But she understood one thing with perfect clarity:
If Nate wanted her to slap water, she would slap water until her hands went numb.
She raised her hand and brought it down in a flat, quick motion, slap and a thin arc of water splashed out over the rim onto the stone counter. It dribbled onto the sides of the bowl, sliding down in glistening beads.
She reached for the bucket immediately, refilling the plate.
Again.
Slap.
More escaped, splashing up onto her forearm. She refilled it again, switching to her left hand just to keep pace with his instructions. She was confused, embarrassed, even a little angry but her fear outweighed everything else.
Behind her, the stew simmered, filling the cabin with a warm, meaty aroma. Nate didn't speak again. Not a word. He simply stirred and let the silence swallow the earlier argument whole.
She kept going.
Slap.
Refill.
Slap.
Refill.
Slap.
Switch hands.
Slap.
Her hands were getting red. The water splashed up onto her cheeks, her shirt, her thighs. But she said nothing.
Only when Nate finally turned off the hotplate and ladled the stew into wooden bowls did she allow herself to stop. She sat there breathing hard, the bowl still trembling from her last hit, droplets scattered around her like tiny glass beads.
Nate placed one of the bowls in front of her. He didn't say a word about her performance. He didn't praise her. He didn't criticize her. He simply sat across from her and began to eat.
She watched him cautiously, unsure whether she was allowed to touch her food yet. He saw her hesitation and gestured with his spoon.
"Eat."
Relief flooded her chest. She ate the stew slowly, savoring the warmth, the fat, the savory richness. It was the best thing she'd eaten in months. Neither of them spoke at all during the meal. The earlier storm between them still hung pregnant in the air, but now there was a kind of truce, a natural pause where neither of them wanted to break the fragile peace.
When they finished, Nate stood, took his bowl to the sink, washed it, and then, without ceremony, picked up one of the thick textbooks from the table. A chemistry manual, heavy enough to serve as a weapon in a pinch.
He sat on the bed, leaned back against the wall, and opened it.
Skylar blinked in confusion.
"…so what do I do?" she asked tentatively.
Nate turned a page.
"Return to the bowl."
She stared at him for several seconds, waiting for more explanation. None came.
Her stomach twisted, but she obeyed. She moved back to the plate and took a slow breath before lifting her hand again. The water surface had stilled to a perfect silver mirror, faint ripples from her breath just barely warping her reflection.
Slap.
Water splashed up her arm again. She refilled.
For the next few minutes, the only sounds were pages turning and water slapping against ceramic.
Skylar's confusion grew into frustration. Finally, Nate looked up from his book, eyes tracking her movements carefully, analytically.
"Use your mind," he said.
She blinked. "What does that even mean? I'm slapping water, what is there to think about?"
"Thinking is the difference between training and wasting time." He closed his book with a soft thump, marking the page with a scrap of cloth. "Just doing what I told you is not efficient. You're going through the motions. Anyone can do that. Even a dog can follow a repeated action."
She frowned, not sure whether she should feel insulted.
"You have to think," he continued calmly, almost teacher-like. "Think through things. Ask yourself what I'm testing. Ask yourself what the goal is. What the failure looks like. What the improvement looks like."
She stared at him, breathing unevenly. Her heart felt too big for her chest.
"Talking through things is why you don't think," he added, flipping the chemistry book open again. "Use your mind. Not your mouth."
That was the breaking point.
Everything she'd been feeling, fear, shame, confusion, the lingering sexual tension, the discomfort of being studied like some kind of tool, all of it collided at once. The desperate thought clawed its way up her throat before she could swallow it.
"Can't you just forget about this and fuck me?" she burst out, voice cracking.
Nate froze.
He didn't snap. He didn't flinch. He didn't even blink.
He just… stared.
Stared at her like she had become a new species for him to catalogue.
She stared back, breath trembling, the weight of what she'd said crashing into her all at once.
Finally, Nate closed the chemistry book, rose from the bed, and walked calmly across the room. He sat down in front of her, folding his legs under him. The space between them was barely the width of the bowl she'd been slapping.
His expression was unreadable.
"Do you really think your body is the only valuable thing about you?" he asked bluntly.
She opened her mouth, then froze. She had no answer. She had nothing.
He nodded slightly when she failed to speak, as if confirming his hypothesis.
"Yes, I brought you here to fuck you," he admitted without shame. "But teaching you today made me realize how inefficient I was doing things alone."
Her breath caught.
"There are places I have seen," he continued, voice low, steady, "places I ran from because I didn't have a partner watching my back. If I had someone I could rely on, someone I could train… we could have gotten better materials. Better wiring. Better parts to expand this place. We could have made this whole valley secure."
He leaned in, his eyes so close she could see the flecks of amber in the dark green.
"Alone, I focused on speed. On low risk. On staying alive and nothing else."
Her chest tightened.
"But with you here, I realize something. If I can make you even a little more competent, more useful… we can survive better. We can find somewhere better. Or build something better."
Skylar sat in stunned silence.
"You know I'm a college dropout, right?" she blurted, too overwhelmed to filter her thoughts.
Nate paused, considering her words. "I didn't know that."
"Well… I didn't even go to high school," he added dryly. "So that's nothing."
She blinked hard. "What? But… how do you have all this? The power? The books? The reading? You're more educated than I am!"
"That should be evidence enough that school doesn't mean intelligence," he said simply. "College can teach you facts. But facts aren't thinking."
Her lips parted.
"I could even argue that school limits thinking," he continued. "Trains you to wait for instructions. To follow frameworks. To never question the box."
He tapped the plate of water lightly.
"This is not about obedience. It's about observation. Interpretation. Logic. Adaptation."
He stood, returning to his books.
"I want you to think for yourself. And not just the basic 'I cook, you give me sex' kind of thinking."
Heat rose in her cheeks.
"I will even teach you chess," he added casually, flipping another page. "That's the first step. Understanding alternatives. Seeing more than one path. Knowing how to plan more than one move ahead."
He sat, settled in, and reopened his chemistry book.
"Now continue your slapping."
Skylar stood there, torn, lost, and weirdly… humbled? No man had ever spoken to her like that. No man had ever told her she could be useful beyond her body. That she could think. That she could learn. That she could be more.
She swallowed hard and looked down at the plate.
This time, she didn't slap mindlessly.
She studied the bowl. The water. The shape. The depth. The rim height. Her hand. Angle. Force. Spread.
She lifted her fingers slowly, measured her distance, and struck the water at a controlled angle.
Slap.
A tiny splash. Controlled. Predictable.
She felt something click.
Behind her, Nate glanced up once, just enough to see the change in her posture, her focus and then returned to his book.
Skylar didn't know it, but he finally allowed himself the faintest hint of a smile.
Not of amusement.
But of approval.
And for the first time since stepping foot inside his cabin, she wasn't just surviving.
She was learning.