Page 69 of Sawyer

“Shit!” he pants. His body goes rigid, his eyes suddenly flaring with worry. “I didn’t even ask if you—”

“I am,” I say, rotating my hips, wanting more. “I’m on the pill. It’s okay.”

Reassured, he relaxes against me, driving into my body with abandon, and I meet each thrust with a whimper of joy and pleasure. Every hour we’ve spent with each other has been a path we’ve walked to find ourselves here, free to love each other for as long and as hard and as much as we want. Maybe even, I think, my heart blooming with hope, forever.

“I love you,” he says, cradling my face, a slick of sweat on his brow. “I love you so much, Ivy.”

As I meet another thrust, I rake my nails up his back. He growls my name, coming in fast, hot spurts inside of me, his panting breath against my neck and his vows of love a litany by my ear. I answer each one in my heart.

I love you, too.

I love you, too.

I love you, too.

I will say the words soon. Not today, but soon.

I hold him tight as he shudders and shakes, until his heartbeat—thump thump, thump thump—returns to normal.

***

When we return to the lodge an hour later, after a shower that required a second shower, the dessert table has been ravaged, the Stewart men are arguing about the best way to rope the lights around the tree, and we are eyeballed thoroughly and completely. But to my relief, no one says anything…except Aunt P. We’re sitting side by side on the couch when she turns to me and whispers:

“Is anyone’s heart getting broken this time?”

“No,” I say, unable to keep the smile from my face. I catch Sawyer’s eyes. He’s been roped into holding the star steady while Tanner plugs it into a string of lights, and Hunter complains that he’s doing it wrong. “Hearts have been mended. Love has been made. Promises, too. I think I might stay in Skagway for a while. What do you think?”

“For real?”

I can’t help the happy giggle that escapes my lips. “For real.”

“I think I love Sawyer Stewart,” says my aunt, putting her arm around me.

“Then you better get in line,” I tell her, all sassy. “I got here first.”

When we leave the Stewarts around midnight, it’s after watchingElf, hanging ornaments, singing Christmas carolsaround the old piano, and drinking way too much spiked hot cocoa. The girls fall asleep in the back of the car on either side of me, and the phone I must have dropped on the floor of the backseat hours ago has one text message waiting:

FATHER:

Text me. We need to talk.

A chill runs down my spine, and for the first time today, I feel cold.

He’s taken away my allowance, my credit cards and my insurance. I’m not returning to Juneau, so he’ll be taking away my apartment, my car, and my belongings on January 1. He’s already threatened to disown me. What is there to talk about? What else is there to say? What in the world can he bargain with now?

Jenny leans her head against my shoulder, and Vicky is snoring softly in my lap. Aunt P. turns to my uncle and laughs when he makes a joke about the amount of bourbon in her pie.

What in the world can he bargain with now?I look around the car again at the family I love most in the whole world. Another chill runs down my spine, this one colder and meaner.

“Uncle Alan,” I say, my stomach roiling with dread. “How often do you talk to my father?”

“Not much. Now and then,” he answers from the driver’s seat. “A few times a year.”

“Is he demanding of you?”

“Demanding? No. Not really,” says my uncle. “He doesn’t ask a lot of me. He asked us to look after you every summer, of course, but that was more of a pleasure than a favor.”

Not to my father, I think. It’s all about money for him, about credit and debt. My aunt and uncle will have some measly bit of credit on account for looking after me, but not enough to balance out what he’d make with the “special legislation” my marriage would have afforded him.

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