If you ask me, every woman’s most secret fantasy is not about being swept off her feet or taken by a dark, handsome stranger. To be honest, I think what most women would rather go for is vindication. To have the men who’ve hurt her in the past come groveling back to her on their knees, full of apologies and admissions of guilt, full of regret for mistreating her… and the sweetest thing for her would be to say, “oh who are you again? Oh, right. I’d forgotten about that. You see, I am so busy having my amazing life that your apologies don’t even mean anything to me now. Sorry for you!”

It’s petty, I know. It’s childish. But I’ll also admit that it was all that kept me going after Hugo rode off into the sunset, a ‘free’ man. It wasn’t exactly revenge I wanted. It was more subtle than that – I just needed him to see how much he hadn’t hurt me. I needed to prove to him that it wasn’t my loss, but his. I wanted him to regret messing me around so much that he begged my forgiveness …and my punishment for him would be to withhold it. What else could I have held on to, in those bitter months after he left? I certainly felt at the time that I was the one who’d gotten the raw end of the deal. Clearly I had loved him more, had invested more, and now he was running off, scot-free. I had to tell myself that the day would come when he would miss me but I would no longer be there. Then he would understand. Only then I would get what I really fantasized about for years. Vindication.

When I woke up the next morning he was already up and out of the tent. I rubbed my bleary eyes and it felt like Christmas for a few seconds: today was the day we would make it to the cabin. It was bizarre, how long we’d been out here. But in a way, the longer we were, the less bizarre it felt. I saw him sitting off on a log, twiddling some grass between his fingers. He looked deep in thought, and said nothing even as I began to pack the tent up and redo the braid in my hair.

The night before I had held him, twitching, in my mouth, coaxing that delicious cock of his into an orgasm that rocked him so hard I swear I could almost feel it on his behalf. I had swallowed down his cum and breathed him in and kissed him and stroked him as he shuddered and came back to earth… just like old times. But now we were back to being awkward strangers again. Just like new times.

I couldn’t tell if he was mad or sad or completely unbothered with me. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure how I felt either. We were both probably over-tired, and needed to get back home already.

“Morning,” I said at last, unable to stand the silence. He looked my way and gave a small smile and a nod, then returned to his work of plaiting grass into little loops. Fine. I didn’t blame him. I was kind of a bitch yesterday. Or was I?

I tamped down everything in his backpack and tightened the straps on mine, then we headed off together, in silence. I was glad that we were finally leaving, but a part of me also felt like I was just getting to know this place. I had hated everything about this forest the first day I had gotten hopelessly lost. But perhaps I could start to understand what people loved about the outdoors. It was the simplicity. There was something so earnest and straightforward about everything that happened here. It made it easy to pretend, even just for the shortest moment, that I could fall in love with Hugo again and everything would be perfect.

Hugo walked fast. He knew exactly where he was going and hacked through the undergrowth easily. When I casually said that I was feeling hot and sweaty, we were by the side of a babbling stream within minutes. I really never stopped being impressed with how knowledgeable he was about some things. As we both squatted next to the silvery water and washed our faces and arms with it, I couldn’t help daydreaming. The last time I had been by a stream like this and thought of things, those things had come true. I had imagined Hugo, and then, like magic, he was there the next day.

I rinsed my hands and patted the cool water over my neck. I imagined us at a little old chapel, the stone walls covered in moss. We were getting married, and I was wearing a giant fuchsia dress and we were standing under a trellis of roses. We kissed and laughed, and doves flew into the sky. I stood and let the water drip off me. That was the kind of schoolgirl idiocy I used to indulge in. Marrying Hugo? I had a better chance of getting that wolf that attacked him to settle down with me and commit to a lifetime of Saturday mornings at IKEA.

Our eyes briefly met and I wondered if he was wondering what I was wondering. But no. He kept on walking and I followed. After about an hour the terrain changed and we seemed to break free of the densest part of the forest. He was still distracted. We’d barely said two words to each other.

“You okay?” I asked. He didn’t turn around.

“I’m great. Doesn’t hurt a bit,” he said, feet in a steady rhythm through the foliage.

“I didn’t mean your arm.”

Silence.

“Hugo, I’m sorry if I was a little rude last night,” I said, wishing he’d just turn around and look at me already.

“Last night? The way I remember it, you were very, very accommodating,” he teased.

“You know what I mean.”

He turned and sighed.

“Let’s be honest here, Becky. You were right. What happened five years ago was a …big mistake. I missed my chance and you know, I don’t feel so great about that. Last night you reminded me of everything I left behind. I took you for granted, and now it’s too late. When you said you never wanted to see me again after this, that really… it really… I don’t know what to tell you. I hate myself that it’s taken me this long to figure it out. You were the best thing to ever happen to me. I fucked it up. I’m sorry.”

And there it was. My vindication. Handed to me on a silver platter, and it was more sincere than even I had imagined it. He missed me. He wanted me. He was sorry. The man who hated discussing our relationship and told me that commitment just wasn’t ‘in his DNA’ was standing before me looking defeated, just like I had wanted.

And now I didn’t want it anymore. What I really wanted was to stay out here with him in the sun and kiss him and have him fuck me so hard I couldn’t stand. I wanted to rewind it all, to go way back to a simpler time, to just close my eyes and let go, knowing he was there holding me…

“I’m sorry too,” I said quietly. “I needed your commitment. I needed you to take us more seriously. And I still feel that way.”

“I know. I didn’t get it then, but I get it now.”

The grass was beginning to itch my legs. He lowered his head, turned on his heel and kept on walking. I followed. By the time we saw the wooden peak of the cabin roof poking over the horizon, it felt like a grim reaper, there to mark the end of something I suddenly wasn’t sure I wanted to end. The next few minutes of walking brought us into a little farmland, with pylons and cables high overhead and the grass clipped short. I missed the forest already. Beyond the house was the distant crisscross of roads on the hills. The cabin flanked the very edge of the park, straddling the border between the two worlds. It had been three days, and we had somehow made it through the miles and miles of the notorious Fox Trail. One way or another, we had made it through.

“Woah, you didn’t say it would be this nice,” he said and bounded ahead.

He was right. ‘Cabin’ wasn’t quite the right word. It was a spacious, fancy looking place gleaming with giant windows and a deck wrapped all around it. I trotted after him and wondered if by some chance any of the women from the bachelorette party were still lingering around. They didn’t seem like the kind to have days long hangovers, I had to say.

“It belongs to one of the managers,” I said as I caught up to him and we both peered through the front door window. It was like a picture perfect dolls house, out here in the forest with nothing like it for miles. “I think it’s a holiday home or something.”

Hugo wasted no time in trying the door, and gave me a triumphant look as it opened easily and let us inside. With a little thrill I followed him into the entrance hall and we paused for a moment to look around. A dead fireplace. Light, gauzy white curtains edging a large open-plan room. A worn but expensive looking Persian rug.

“Wow. Fancy,” he said and poked around a little.

It certainly was. It felt strange to be in a place like this after living in the grass and wind for three days. I briefly had the notion of Hugo and I as some kind of alien species, or wild animals ourselves peeking out from the forest into a world we didn’t belong to anymore. I stopped and looked at a colorful paper banner hung over the entrance to the kitchen. “Bride to be” it said in goofy pink letters. For some reason, I felt a little embarrassed.

“They’ve all gone,” he said and emerged from a side room. A cherry colored splodge had appeared on his makeshift bandages. He caught me looking and walked off to explore the rooms up some rough wooden stairs. I joined him and we both laughed at the mess they’d left up there. Glitter, puckered balloons and countless empty wine glasses stained purple on the inside.

“I guess if you’re wealthy enough to have a place like this you’re wealthy enough to just get someone to come out here and clean up after you, huh?” he said, and carefully held up a feather boa between his thumb and forefinger. I laughed. None of this was how I had pictured my weekend. I found a plastic tiara and propped it on my head, then posed for him. He gave me a thumbs up.

“I think we had the better party though, right? He said. I followed him downstairs again.

“We always did find a way to have our own fun, didn’t we?” I said.

I looked around for the bathroom but Hugo stopped me in my tracks.

“Look, I have signal,” he said. I pulled out my own phone and remembered that it had died out there, and still showed nothing but a blank screen. So there it was, it was a solution to our predicament but I was kind of disappointed to have found it.

“So uh…” he said and rubbed the back of his neck.

I grabbed his phone and dialed for a taxi, and Hugo watched me intently. This was it. Our little adventure was coming to an end in this weird ‘cabin’ filled with the last shreds of a bachelorette party.

I hung up and we made eye contact.

“Well, that was easy,” I said. “Turns out you can be out in the wild one day and plugged back into civilization the next.”

He nodded. I couldn’t push from my mind all the juicy thoughts that had been following me all morning. I couldn’t stop thinking of the night before, of the soft, urgent sounds he’d made as I pushed him right to the brink. Though it had only been a few hours ago, I missed it already. I wanted more.

“Now what?” he said.

“Now we wait,” I said and settled onto the immense overstuffed sofa. “The taxi guy said he’ll be a couple of minutes. I bet they’ll charge a fortune too, with it being a callout…”

“Don’t worry about that, it’s on me,” he said and settled down on the sofa next to me. Close. But not that close. But close enough.

“What? You’re kidding, right? Hugo, I dragged you into this mess, the least I can do is pay to get you out of it. It’s on me. And so is your hospital stay.”

“Hospital? It’s just a little nip, I’ll be fine.”

“You need stitches, Hugo.”

“It doesn’t even hurt.”

“It was a wolf for crying out loud.”

“So what? It was me, for crying out loud.”

I laughed.

“Let me look around and see if they have a first aid kit or something,” I said and hauled my tired bones off the sofa. But he reached for me and pulled me back down, questions written all over his face.

“You really meant it? This is it for us?” he said quietly.

Silence.

He released his grip on my hand but I didn’t have the energy to get up again.

“Hey, I found our box of memories the other day, do you remember?”

My face burned. I hadn’t remembered. Not for years now.

“God, Hugo, that takes me back. I was such a kid then. So embarrassing.”

“Embarrassing? No way. I thought it was cute. You wanted me to remember you while I was deployed.”

“Well. So much for that, huh?”

He looked hurt.

“Yeah, well. I don’t know. They make for good reading.”

“Yeah?”

“We really used to love one another, Becky.”

I stared at the red stain on the fabric of my shirt, now wrapped over his torso. A broken heart.

“Hugo, I can’t do this anymore, okay? Let’s just drop it. Please. I already moved on from this. What’s the point of even pretending we could get back together? So I can try and fool myself you won’t be thinking of leaving at any second? So you can pretend that tying yourself to a single woman is what you really want?”

“What if it is what I really want?”

A knot of bitterness grew at the back of my throat. I stood up quickly to leave but he grabbed me again.

“Becky, please. I’m serious.”

Before I realized what was happening, he stepped forward off the sofa and went down onto one knee, still clasping my hand tightly. He pulled something from his pocket and offered it to me. A tiny loop braided from soft green grass stems. So that was what he had been making. I tried to pull away, tried to quickly wipe at the tears that began to tingle in my eyes, but her held me fast and looked deeply into my eyes.

“Becky…”

“No, Hugo. This is all wrong. I…”

I yanked my hand from his.

“Becky, please.”

The sound of a car horn broke the stillness in the cabin.

“We have to go,” I said, head spinning. I had to get away. I didn’t know where, just not here anymore. I grabbed my backpack and hurried to the front door. Hugo followed slowly but stopped in the doorframe. I was halfway down the stairs and turned to look up him standing there, an expression on his face I had never seen before. The taxi driver got out the car and opened the trunk. It took all my willpower to keep from bursting into tears then and there. But I didn’t.

“Are you coming?” I said, voice croaking.

He shook his head.

“Nah. I think I’ll stay out here for a while. I’ll call for a cab later, you go ahead” he said, his eyes glazing over like they were staring at something far away.

The taxi driver cleared his throat and in a heartbeat I found myself rushing down the stairs, dumping my bag in the trunk and driving off. The car tires crunched the driveway gravel and we disappeared from the cabin. I looked over my shoulder but Hugo was no longer standing in the front doorway.