A Very Witchy Yuletide

by D. Lieber

  “Feel good?” she asked.

  He nodded, his eyes losing focus as she stroked. “I’m not selfish,” he muttered, his weak voice pleasing her just as much as his shivers.

  Evergreen bit her lip against her moan, her body shaking as he ran the pad of his thumb over her clit. Her hand on his cock loosened.

  Sawyer kissed her, slowly lowering her back to the floor. Her thighs twitched in anticipation as his cock neared her core. And as he slid smoothly into her, the howling wind outside did not cover the sounds of their mutual pleasure.

  Sawyer pumped slow and hard, his hips digging into Evergreen’s thighs. She vaguely wondered if she’d have bruises the next day. But she didn’t care. It was finally happening. With Sawyer. His abs stiffened with each thrust, and Evergreen clung to his neck and shoulders, her fingernails sinking into his skin. And as he drove her to her peak, she knew that he’d had the right to brag after all.

  He collapsed beside her, having fully lived up to expectations and then some. His eyelids drooped.

  Evergreen stroked his sweaty hair. “Tired?” she murmured.

  He nodded.

  She glanced over at the window. “It’s dark out. Go to sleep,” she encouraged, leaning over to kiss his cheek.

  He nodded again but held his arms out to her.

  She smiled and snuggled in close to him, his heartbeat a comforting lullaby.

  Sometime in the night, Evergreen awoke. She wiggled free from Sawyer’s embrace and started toward the bathroom.

  The fire had dimmed, so she stopped and put a few more logs in. Standing up again, she looked back to make sure she hadn’t woken him. Her phone’s notification light blinked from the table, and she picked it up to make sure her mother wasn’t freaking out.

  By the time she’d realized it was Sawyer’s phone, it was too late. She’d already seen part of the message from a woman named Maria, whose profile picture was a black cat. “Hey, honey, call or text me when you get this…” The rest of the message was cut off, and she didn’t know the password to see what else was said even if she’d wanted to.

  Evergreen’s stomach dropped, and she was pretty certain she was going to be sick. She put the phone back on the table and rushed to the bathroom. After turning on the cold water, she splashed her face. She took deep breaths, trying to keep her lunch down.

  Who the fuck is Maria? she thought. Does Sawyer have a girlfriend? Is that what he was trying to tell me when I cut him off by kissing him? Would he cheat on his girlfriend with me? I never thought he was that kind of guy. Maybe he isn’t. Maybe he’s poly. Maybe that’s what he was trying to tell me. I mean, that’s great for him or whatever. But poly doesn’t work for me. I don’t share.

  Once the initial nausea had quieted, Evergreen’s chest tightened as if some witch hunter was trying to force her to confess. I knew it, she thought. I should have listened to my instincts from the beginning.

  Hot tears rolled down her cheeks, and her nose burned as she tried to silence the sob that rose in her throat.

  Chapter 36

  Before Sawyer even opened his eyes the next morning, he smiled to himself. He was groggy, sore, in that very satisfying way. Eeva no longer lay on his chest, but the scratchy roughness of the blanket she’d draped over his naked body bespoke her care. He’d gotten through to her. She might have cut off his confession by kissing him, but he’d made sure that his actions spoke louder than words ever could. He breathed deep from his nose and cracked his eyelids against the morning light.

  Eeva lay, fully dressed, on a separate blanket. She stared up at the ceiling, her eyes dark and puffy.

  Sawyer rolled to his side, facing her. “Good morning,” he greeted warmly. “Did you sleep okay?”

  She didn’t turn to him. She just stared ahead, her eyes unfocused and resolute. “That was a mistake,” she declared, her tone deadpan.

  It took Sawyer’s mind a few seconds to process her words. As his heart squeezed, his stomach churned. “You regret it?” he asked, not even certain he’d said it loud enough for her to hear.

  “Yes,” she confirmed. “I regret it.”

  The room spun as Sawyer seemed to drown in a sudden sense of hopelessness. Did something happen? He wondered, his mind grasping for some explanation. She certainly seemed to enjoy it last night. Did I misunderstand? But she initiated it to begin with.

  He tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. But that doesn’t really matter. Does it? She has the right to feel differently in the light of day. But…did I do something wrong?

  Sawyer analyzed her stony expression. She wasn’t giving anything away. “Okay,” he muttered. What else can I even say? he thought. If that’s how she feels, then that’s how she feels.

  He averted his eyes, praying that he could hold it together. Sitting up, he held the blanket to his naked form. He grabbed his clothes, his numb fingers hardly registering the feel of the fabric in his hand. Then he went to the bathroom to dress. His movements were slow and automatic, relying on muscle memory to execute the procedure.

  He glanced at himself in the mirror as he moved to put his shirt on. There were tiny indentations on his shoulders and back where Eeva had dug her nails into him. He pulled on his shirt, covering the evidence. But as the cloth passed over his face, he was smacked with Eeva’s scent. That’s right, he thought. She lay on my clothes as we made love…had sex, he corrected.

  He turned on the faucet and closed his eyes against the telltale burning. He breathed in deep through his tingling nose, but he didn’t manage to keep all the tears down. He bent over the sink and splashed water on his face, washing away the few that had escaped.

  By the time he exited the bathroom, he had successfully masked his emotions. He walked over to the window and looked out. “The snow has stopped. We should head back,” he said, woodenly.

  When Eeva didn’t respond, he glanced over at her. Bad idea, he thought, redirecting his eyes as his stomach flopped.

  “I’ll carry the log if you can get the saw and lunch bag,” Sawyer said, not daring to look at her again. His voice sounded hollow even to him, and he knew he’d never talked to Eeva that way before.

  She didn’t respond, but she didn’t argue either. Sawyer pulled on his winter things and picked up the log. Her footsteps were soft as she drifted after him.

  With how bad the storm had looked the night before, Sawyer had expected the snow would be a lot deeper. Still, it was about mid-shin for him, and it took a bit of effort to stomp through it. He was extra careful when he climbed the hill he’d fallen down the day before. And he did warn Eeva to watch out, as if he were a guide she’d paid to get her home safely.

  As they arrived back at the retreat center, they were greeted with exclamations of joy and relief. The enthusiasm from his friends and family was too loud, too happy, too juxtaposed to the weight that silently crushed him.

  “I’m just tired,” he found himself saying as someone asked him what was wrong. He wasn’t even sure who it had been. Probably his mom. There didn’t seem to be a lot of attention on him, so he didn’t bother to figure it out.

  He registered a gentle pat on the back. “Maybe a nice hot shower will sort you out.” Yes, it was his mom speaking. He nodded, passed the Yule log into Wes’s arms, and headed in the direction of the bathroom. He turned on the shower, the mundane task doing little to distract his thoughts.

  He needed a shower to be sure. He could feel the dried sweat, no longer sticky, still clinging to him like Eeva had just hours before. The ghostly remnants of her kisses on his mouth, his face, his neck and chest, still echoed in his mind. He needed a shower, but he didn’t want one. He didn’t want to wash her off of him, as if doing so would wipe their too short time together away like it never happened.

  No, he thought. It had happened. The ache in his chest was too real, and it wasn’t going away just by washing the only evidence of their love…sex down the drain. He’d wished it was only that easy, that fifteen minutes of soap and hot water could
rewind time, back to when he still had hope in his heart.

  He stepped under the waterfall showerhead, the sound of the water splashing on the stone walls and floor too pleasantly dissonant, and went about erasing all physical traces of their night together, the night she regretted so much. How much of what streaked down Sawyer’s face was tears? How much was water? He didn’t give it much thought.

  Chapter 37

  A shower had not washed away all traces of Sawyer from Evergreen’s thoughts. She’d said she regretted their night together, and she did. She regretted how she now had to deal with the emotional fallout. She had gone against her better judgment. Her heart had opened up to him again, called out to him again, seemingly forgetting the hurt it had gone through before. She’d been weak. Sawyer was her weakness. And now she would pay for it.

  She would pay for it every time her eyes drifted toward him, every time her skin remembered the brush of his touch, and every time he didn’t give her a second thought. Her legs were still sore from where his hip bones had pounded into her. And, despite her emotions, her body was still languid from the satisfaction he’d provided.

  “Okay,” she muttered to herself, repeating Sawyer’s words to her declaration that morning.

  She stood at the kitchen island, cutting cotton string into two-foot lengths. Cassandra stood at the stove melting beeswax in the double boiler.

  Okay? Evergreen thought. Is that all he could say? Didn’t he want to know why I suddenly changed my mind? I thought there was going to be more of a fight. I thought I was going to get to tell him exactly why I was upset. But he just accepted it. Just like that. It must not have been that important to him to begin with. I mean, he shrugged it off so easily. Shrugged it off while I lay there despondent and hurting.

  Evergreen had tried to feel out his reaction at the time. But when her own emotions were that high, she couldn’t effectively read others.

  I’m so stupid, she thought miserably. I wish I never would have come home for Yule. If I would have stayed at school, Sawyer could have stayed a relatively happy memory. Sure, I would have been hurt that he’d left and never looked back. But at least I remembered him as sweet, and kind, and solid. Now…it just stings to think about him at all.

  “Okay,” she said again, clicking her tongue in disgust.

  “What are you muttering about over there?” Cassandra asked from the stove.

  Evergreen flinched. “Nothing,” she murmured. She started tying washers to the ends of the strings she’d cut.

  “Mmmm, yeah, I’m not buying it. You’ve been weird since you got back this morning. Did something happen between you and Sawyer?”

  Evergreen turned her back to her cousin, knowing she wouldn’t be able to control her expression. “No,” she said, trying for unconcerned. “Why would you think that?”

  “Um, I don’t know,” Cassandra said sarcastically. “Maybe because you two have been flirting with each other since you arrived, and now you can’t even look at each other.”

  Evergreen didn’t respond.

  “Did you two have a fight?” Cassandra pushed.

  Evergreen sighed. Hanging one of the strings over a wire coat hanger, she carried it to the stove.

  Cassandra took it from her and started ladling melted wax over the string.

  “I guess you could say he isn’t who I thought he was,” Evergreen murmured.

  Cassandra responded without looking away from her work. “Did you think he wouldn’t have changed at all over the last four and a half years?”

  “No, I mean, I knew he would. Of course he would. But…it just seemed like he’d changed for the better up until yesterday.”

  “You want to be more specific about what exactly happened?”

  “No.”

  “Okay…Well, from where I stand—knowing what little I know—Sawyer is a pretty good guy. I mean, I think we can both agree I have an eye for irresponsible assholes. Not to mention I’m a magnet for them.”

  Evergreen didn’t say anything.

  “We’ve all known each other for a long time. And let’s not mince words here. You’ve been totally in love with him for most of that time.”

  Evergreen made a sound to protest, but a glance from her cousin just made her nod her head silently.

  “That’s a long time fantasizing and hoping and wishing.” Cassandra shrugged. “Maybe you’ve put him on a bit of a pedestal. Don’t you think that’s possible?”

  Evergreen frowned. “Even if that’s true—and I’m not saying it is—there are certain things that…just don’t mesh between us.”

  “Such as…?”

  “Well…I mean, yeah, we have known each other for a long time. But a lot of that time, he utterly pretended like he didn’t know me at all. Like, he left for college and didn’t talk to me at all until just a few days ago.”

  Cassandra snorted. “He ignored you, did he? So you sent him message after message, and he just pretended like he didn’t know you? Be honest, cuz. Communication is a two-way street. Sure, maybe he didn’t reach out to you, but I don’t recall you reaching out to him either.”

  Evergreen shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I mean…that’s true…but—”

  “Look, I’m not trying to assign blame to either one of you. I’m just pointing out that you two have a pretty long history of not being honest with each other. You never told him how you felt back then. You didn’t reach out when you missed him. And he’s obviously got some things to answer for, too. So don’t you think it’s possible that whatever you’re upset about is just a misunderstanding?”

  Evergreen’s stomach rolled as she remembered reading the text on Sawyer’s phone. She shook her head. “I hear what you’re saying. And, yeah, I haven’t been very good at communicating with him. But this time…I don’t see how I could be misunderstanding.”

  Cassandra shrugged. “Well, it’s not like I even know the particulars, so maybe you’re right. But it’s still four days until Yule. I suggest you figure something out.”

  “It’s a big house. There are a lot of people. We can pretty well avoid each other for four days.”

  “If you say so.”

  Chapter 38

  Sawyer had done a pretty good job of avoiding Eeva since they’d returned, though effectively doing so meant he was overly aware of her movements. Sometimes, he felt as if he could feel her eyes on him. But he told himself that was his imagination. That’s what he wanted to believe. He wanted her to change her mind back, to return to the Eeva who would haunt him, the one who’d climbed into his lap with that come-hither smile.

  He was exhausted, physically and emotionally. But he didn’t want to go to sleep. He didn’t want to crawl into his sleeping bag on the floor beside her. And he was worried what he would dream about. So he stayed up, sitting in the common room until everyone had gone to bed but him and his mom. Muir and Larkspur both lay in his lap as he stroked them in unison.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened, son?” Tara asked finally.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he murmured.

  “Are you sure? Because you kind of have that expression like you need to.”

  Sawyer frowned, a tug of war playing out in his mind. “I think I fucked up.”

  “How’s that?” his mom asked.

  “Eeva…” He choked a little on her name. “We uh… Stuff happened last night while we were in the isolation cabin.”

  “Is that your way of telling me you and Eeva had sex?”

  Sawyer nodded slightly.

  “Okay. So how did you fuck up? You used protection, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, we did…I…I wish I knew what I did wrong. I thought everything was great. Totally fine. Then I woke up this morning, and she’s all serious… She said it was a mistake.”

  Tara nodded slowly, her eyes losing focus as she considered his problem. “Did she give you a reason?” she asked.

  “No. And…it didn’t feel right to ask. It’s her body. I
f she regrets sharing it with me…then how can I argue?”

  Tara reached out and rubbed her son’s arm.

  “Mom, what did I do? Why would she change her mind?”

  Tara shook her head. “I don’t know, honey. It could be any number of things. Maybe she got caught up in the moment and didn’t really think about what it meant until after. Maybe, after all was done, she realized she felt more platonically toward you. Or maybe she’s scared.”

  Though she had given her examples gently, each one was like a knife in Sawyer’s chest. “Scared? Of me?” he asked.

  Tara stroked her son’s hair in the soothing gesture she’d always used when he was a boy. “Not necessarily,” she answered. “She could be scared of what she felt, of what it could mean for her, for you, for your relationship.”

  “Like…like she’s worried about getting hurt, so she pushed me away?”

  “Well, that’s one way of looking at it.”

  Sawyer frowned, gazing at the glowing embers in the hearth, all that was left of the fire that blazed only hours before. “But these explanations are really different. If she’s scared, then I should reassure her. But if it’s another reason, I should just leave her alone.”

  His mother nodded. “It is a predicament.”

  Could she just be scared? he wondered. He pictured the mask-like expression Eeva had worn as she’d said those three words: I regret it. No, he thought. She wasn’t scared. She never shied away from a confrontation. If she had something she wanted to say, she would have just said it.

  “I don’t think she’s scared, Mom,” he admitted.

  Tara sighed sadly. “I know it hurts right now. But it will get better. Believe me.”

  Sawyer dipped his head in a slow nod. He’d seen people go through much worse than what he was feeling, his mom included. But she was right. It didn’t feel possible at the moment.

  “You going to bed soon?” she asked.