Sloth (Sinful Secrets #1) (17 page)

“Always.”

“They’re good bears.” He pauses, as if thinking. As if we haven’t had this conversation thirty times before. He adds, “Made in America.”

I roll my eyes. Pace and his love of talking in code. I can only assume that ‘Made in America’ means the weed he’s bringing me from California is higher quality than what he usually sends.

“Sounds good. I’ll be ready.”

This is where I’d choose to end the conversation, but my cousin never can just let things be. Pace is an awkward motherfucker. Coming up on fifty, he’s a beach bum with nothing to his name except a lot of good intentions. I like Pace well enough—as kids, we called him Uncle Pace—but these phone chats can get tedious.

“You doing okay?” he asks after a silence.

I shut my eyes. “Fine.” The word is sharp.

“Really?” he asks.

Fucking Pace.

“Just checking, dude,” he says defensively. “Robert has been sniffing my ass crack, wanting to know if you’ve decided anything.”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Pace.”

“I know, but—”

“Fuck him,” I growl.

“You just... you can’t say that, man. Robert is—”

“Who do you work with, him or me?”

It’s a simple question with a complex answer. I’m not being fair to Pace. Not that I really give a fuck. He’s not being fair to me, either.

I hear him breathing. Biding time as he tries to figure out how to broach forbidden subjects. I hear the phone brush the scruff of his beard, followed by his low voice saying, “Whitney called him. She said she hasn’t been able to get up with you.”

Whitney. Of course.

My fingers rearrange themselves around my phone. “I haven’t noticed any missed calls from her,” I lie. Whitney has been calling weekly for three months.

“You’ve got everyone all stirred up,” Pace says in his low-but-nasally voice. “Man, I’m worried too. Don’t get all butt hurt, but we all have the same horse in the race. We’re a motherfucking family.” In a low voice, he says: “No one wants to see you wind up like Lyon.”

The mention of my brother makes my eyeballs ache. Pressure builds inside my head. I suck a deep breath back and clutch the phone. “Don’t go there, Pace.
Ever
. You have a problem with Robert, deal with it. He’s your burden—not mine.”

I hear a shuffling sound: Pace’s flip-flops on that little deck that hangs over the beach. He puffs some smoke out; I can hear his breath. “I just want to help you, man.”

“You can’t, so stop trying.”

I want to punch him in the teeth. I want to roar at him. I can’t believe he mentioned Ly. Instead, I say, “Till one-one, then.”

The shipment will arrive at the old toy warehouse on Fifty-First Street on the eleventh of September. That’s what he meant by “teddy bears” and his made-up drug trafficking code, “double nickel and a penny,” as code for the eleventh.

“Next week,” he says finally. He sounds defeated.

I still feel enraged.

I slide the phone into my pocket and stalk down to the basement. I tear into the punching bag that dangles from the ceiling, and imagine that it’s Pace’s pug-dog face. It turns into my father’s face, and then Ly’s. Which is almost indistinguishable from mine.

I’m tired of fighting. I’m so tired of fighting me.

I wait until the darkest part of night to go to Nessa’s house.

I’M UP BEFORE THE SUN,
pacing the balcony outside the glass-walled room. Gulping chilly air into my lungs.

My knuckles are bruised from my assault on the punching bag. My body screams for sleep, because I stood outside Nessa’s window for three hours last night: a silent ghost, eviscerated. Now I’m drinking coffee—black and hot.

After a while outside, listening to the river slosh below, watching the pines tip in the breeze, I pull on some basketball shorts and go down to the basement. Fifty minutes on the treadmill, and it doesn’t tame my hunger. I do my weight routine for longer than my usual, making sure that by the time I’m done, all my muscles are shredded. Then I make myself two waffles and choke down every bite.

I wander back up to the room: her room. I take a small, black remote out of the night stand drawer and press the button that makes the middle part of the indented ceiling retract. I take the canopy off the bed and lower the harness down to the mattress. I caress the ropes and smooth the sheets and rub my cock as I imagine Cleo lying right here, her wrists and ankles bound to the four ends of my X-bar, her wet, pink pussy ripe and ready for me.

When I realize I’m going to stay hard until I see her, I sink down on the edge of the mattress and stroke myself off, remembering the way her pussy clenched around my cock on the floor at the library.

When I’m done, I put the harness and spreader away and leave the room with my pulse hammering in my ears.

I need to shower and get dressed. Focus. I’ve got things to do this morning.

I shower quickly, and dress in khakis and a plaid button-up: the preppy shit that helps me blend in on campus. Then I walk into the bedroom I’ve been using, pluck a brass key off the duvet, lift up the Native American blanket that hangs on one wall of my room, and step to the mahogany door hidden behind it. I slide the key into its custom keyhole. My feet feel heavy as I turn the doorknob and step inside my sanctuary.

The room is small: no bigger than a half-bath. The wall I face as I step in is smooth and beige. Cashmere, the paint was called. Built-in bookshelves indent the tiny wall on my right. I had them built because I wanted to like something about this space, but I could never place a book on them.

The wall on my left is not a wall but stacked cabinets and a small counter. The four-foot slab of granite is black, with tiny veins of gold. The cabinets above the counter are dark and glossy, stretching to the ceiling. They contain my arsenal of secrets.

I run my hands over the cold granite. As always, I try not to look into the mirror, but my eyes betray me. As I meet my own gaze, the far-off echo of a hopeful spark strikes in my chest. I look into the eyes and wait to see the face transform. The mouth should smile—a dimpled smile. The eyes should crinkle. The face should relax, the way mine only ever does if I’ve had a good, long hit and held it in my lungs for several seconds.

If you never met him, you would never understand the way this face could look. My mouth tugs down into a deep and dimpled frown, and I wrench my gaze up to the cabinets.