Cabin Fever | ✓

(62) A Rich Housewife Needing A Maintenance Boy

Bob Hoover, has been many things to Marley.

Her assailant, her prison warden, her boss, and her worst nightmare. Never a father. Growing up, she has always seen him as everything but. At some point — after one too many nights of cleaning, cooking, working long hours, taking cold showers and doing his shopping for him — she stopped being anything but afraid of him. She gave up on him.

Or so she thought.

There's a saying: you don't know what you have until it's gone. Marley is realizing in the current moment that statement is all too accurate of one. As soon as the words left Detective Bryan's mouth — as soon as he told her that her father was in critical care and may not survive the night — everything else went out the window. The years of pain and cruelty and darkness.

Because Bob Hoover is still her father. He is the only family she has left, and Marley would pathetically grieve his absence regardless.

She wasn't sure of what happened next, because her panic attack was so bad that it was nothing but flashes. She was hysterical — crying, shaking, gripping onto Gabby's shirt and mumbling nonsense as their Uber rushed to get them back to camp. Marley watched through blurry eyes as Gabby took her phone and spoke to Detective Bryan herself with one hand, an arm wrapped around Marley with her free arm.

None of those horrible years mattered right now, not when a person she always assumed would be around could very well be gone within the next twenty-four hours. Her fathers' hold on her that she was naive enough to believe had been lessened, was as strong and violent as ever.

The car stopped, but Marley's body was too shaky to move a limb right now. Her fingers were clasped tightly around Gabby's now damp shirt, her breathing hardly existent as she panicked. Every second a painful reminder that it could be her fathers' last.

She was never worried about him. She would be okay without him. What a sick, cruel joke that is.

"Calm down, Marley. Just breathe, okay? Breathe." Gabby soothed calmly, her voice shaky, rubbing her hands up and down her back.

Marley spoke through hiccups, "He's...he's all I have," she cried, "I can't...I can't lose him, Gabby! He doesn't get to die on me! He doesn't get to leave me too! It's not fair!"

In the distance, she heard the rapid crunching of gravel. The door to the car opened again, sending a draft of cool night air across Marley's back.

"Marley?"

She choked out a sob, her hands loosening around Gabby's shirt at the familiar voice. The anchor in her storm. "Aid-Aiden?"

Gabby's hold loosened as she lifted her head — brown hair mussed, under-eyes swollen and red, lower lip trembling and tears rapidly racing down her cheeks — to face her boyfriend halfway leaned into the car, blue eyes frantically looking her over.

She practically leapt across the seats into his arms, clenching his shirt tightly in her fists and dampening it with her tears rapidly. He held her back immediately, helping her wrap her legs around his waist as she cried into his shoulder. His right hand caressed the back of her head, but she could feel both of his shaking, "Tell me what's wrong, baby. I've got you now. I've got you."

From behind her, Gabby left the car and replied to Aiden with a choppy, weak voice, "Her father's in the hospital. He may not survive the night."

"Fuck," Aiden cursed under his breath, holding her tighter against him. Marley was crying and shaking in another onslaught of tears and agony at Gabby's words, "I'm sorry, Marley. I'm so sorry. But I'm going to take care of you now, okay? I'm going to help you." he soothed gently, and she felt the shifting of his body beneath her as he walked.