Cabin Fever | ✓

Extra 3: Return To Kingston High

🎵: Ours by Taylor Swift (it's a country song)

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THIS HAS BEEN SO HIGHLY REQUESTED SO HERE IT IS!! An extra of their first day at Kingston after Camp as a celebration for CWTHAW hitting 200,000 reads!!! Holy sh*t.

Also...I posted a new book where I'll be publishing poetry on my profile, titled 'The End Of The World From The Moon.' If you like poetry (I understand that it isn't everyone's thing) then it's there! I'll be updating on that frequently.

Reminder: book three will be out on September 1st (I have a title but it's a surprise 😆).

Vote if you guys missed Aidley as much as I did ❤️

Okay I'm so excited for u to read this so I'm going to stop writing this authors note and publish right no-

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Marley Hoover's normal is a quiet morning.

She spent most of her younger years sharing a house with a man whose days began after the sun set. Poker games. His job at the factory. The bars he frequented. Alcoholism. Bob Hoover had never been much of a sleeper, especially after his wife and son left, so it was strictly involuntary — usually a drunken slumber, hung over the couch in the early hours of the morning.

Marley was his daughter, his maid, his cook, his keeper, and also a professional at avoiding the wrath of a man who — when woken without the sound of a cold beer cracked open — could yell his throat dry and sore in the midst of a hangover.

By habit, she doesn't converse much in the morning. Her movements are slow, deliberate, and all with purpose to maintain the serenity. Marley doesn't like to wake early, something she assumes she inherited from her father, but mornings had always been the most peaceful time of day. She could get ready in silence, tidy in silence, do laundry in silence, cook breakfast in silence, leave in silence. No jolting to shouts at the loud television. No requests or complaints. No jabs. No banging around or watching her father dry heave into the sink while she leaves her share of breakfast to rot that morning — attending school with a lost appetite.

Spending years with her father's routine, that mentality, she became comfortable. It wasn't ideal, it wasn't the burden she would wish on herself, but the thing that can be said about humans is our quality to find solace in the predictable. Her father's twisted daily schedule was something Marley understood, something she expected. A familiar violence. A disappointing constant.

That is, until the better. Until the variable change. Until the new constant Marley could definitely get used to: the smell of breakfast that isn't her own doing and butterfly kisses that wake her up in a deliriously-goofy-smile way. She mumbled something incoherent after he kissed her nose, arms flailing into the cold air to gain purchase so she could yank the world's leading cuddler into her bed.

"Spitfire-"

"Shhh."

"We have to-"

"Shhhhhhhhhhh."

"-get ready and pick up everyone-"

"Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

Marley squinted an eye open to narrow it at his blurry form leaning over her. Her fingers were tight around his t-shirt, yanking fruitlessly while he smiled at her in amusement. "Just come here...for...a minute. One minute. Promise." Her voice was squished against her pillow, coffee brown strands haphazard around her face, still halfway into dreamland.

Marley likes to think she and Aiden have a lot in common when it comes to work ethic and drive but they couldn't be more different when it comes to how they like their mornings. Aiden is up at the crack of dawn for a workout routine that's basically his religion, and loves being productive at the start of the day while Marley prefers to enjoy what she spent her life conditioned into believing was the only quiet, anxiety-free sleep she'd get.