SOPHIE
Soren leaving didn’t concern me until I woke back up in the early morning, hearing the soft crunch of gravel on the driveway. I shoot up and look beside me. No one slept there last night.
“Shit.” He was gone all night. What set him off? Was it me in the dumbass heat of the moment asking him to shove his cock in? Look at me, continuing to motivate a serial killer instead of demotivating one. I wrap a robe around myself and slip out of the room. No one is up yet, but I hear soft creaks upstairs, alerting me that people are starting to move around.
Quickly, I open the door to the underground level and pad down the stairs with my fuzzy, grippy socks. I walk through the unfinished game room and then rip open the garage door.
Soren’s standing there with a look of shock, frozen in place, as I catch him pulling a body towards a stack of presents. I close the door behind me softly, then stomp towards him.
“I had a moment of weakness,” he says, dragging the body. I accidentally step on its hand as I get closer to Soren.
“Ugh,” I groan, looking at my sock, but thankfully, there’s no blood.
“We both knew this was going to happen again at some point,” he says.
“While my entire family is here?”
“Oh! The pastries are on the passenger side. Let me get this guy chopped up and wrapped, and I’ll bring those up.”
“No, Soren, no! You can’t do that.”
“Why? Please tell me we aren't out of wrapping paper,” he groans. “We already ran out of boxes yesterday.” I look over at the pile of “presents” he wrapped, and some seem oddly shaped like calves and feet. I let out an exasperated sound.
“You are not allowed to kill while my family is here. This isn’t good, Soren.”
“Well, maybe I wouldn’t need to let off some energy if someone wasn’t begging for me to stick it in,” he shoots back. My mouth drops open, and my face flames with heat.
“You started that,” I hiss, jabbing his chest. I accidentally step on the corpse again.
“Stop stepping on him, I’m going to drop it,” Soren complains. I hear creaking upstairs.
“Ugh, okay, I’ll take the pastries upstairs while you chop up the body. Do not put any pieces in the freezer.”
“Wait, are we really out of wrapping paper?” He asks.
“I don’t know.” I wave him off as I lean in his truck. I pull out a couple boxes of pastries and a bag filled with bags of roasted coffee beans from the bakery.
“Hey,” he calls out, dropping the body. He comes over and gets the door for me.
“Thank you,” I murmur as I pass by him. He gently grabs my arm.
“I don’t want to do what we did last night anymore,” he says.
“Okay.”
“We’ll convince your family we’re in love without any more of that.”
“We will?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. He smiles down at me.
“Yes,elskling. I’ll prove to them I adore you.” He brushes my hair behind my ear and then slips back into the garage with the corpse.
It’s for the best that we don’t get physical like that again. There are rules, and that felt like it was breaking them entirely. I sigh on the way up from the basement with breakfast. The antsy disappointment gets shoved down where I can ignore it. A moment later, I deposit the pastries on the kitchen counter and start the coffee machine.
My family begins slowly wandering in, the earliest wakers to the slower risers. The smell of rich, quality coffee and sugary dough draws them into the kitchen, some brighter-eyed than others.
It snowed again last night. It's a soft, fluffy snow that makes everything outside look idyllic.
“Did Soren get this?” My little nephew asks, shoving a sprinkled donut in his mouth.
