Sloth (Sinful Secrets #1) (30 page)

I DRIVE IN CIRCLES
, blind to everything. My hands on the handles, the tilt of my body as the road curves—I move on memory. My mind is reeling, even as my body feels so good and satiated.

I didn’t know.

I should have known.

I didn’t know, and when I did, I let her stay.

It’s wrong. So fucking wrong, to let her near me.

She won’t find out, I want to scream—but if she did.

I don’t care... can’t care. And that’s how I know I’m truly sick.

I shouldn’t need anyone the way I need to string her up. It just confirms what a monster I’ve become.

“I’m Nessa.”

“Kellan,” I say teasingly.

“You deal weed, don’t you?”

“Who’s asking?”

She smiles. Her lips are blood red. Her skin is white.

I touch her auburn hair. “Is this stuff real?”

“My hair?” She laughs.

“It looks like a wig.”

“No, it’s mine.” She smiles again.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“Why are you here? I’ve seen you before, at—”

“I want to help you with the... special cases. Someone told me what you do.”

I look into her brown eyes. “Why?”

“Because I like to break the rules. And because I like to make a difference, you know?”

“Make a difference?”

“Don’t judge.” She smirks. “You don’t know me. There’s no type for Nessa.”

“You’re brave, to come to me like this.”

She shrugs. “I trust you. We’re not so different.”

“If you want to deal for me, you’ll have to live with me first.”

I’m only teasing, so I’m surprised when she nods.

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“Not much bothers me, Kellan. What is it they say? It’s all small stuff.”

I blink. “Except the big stuff.”

I mean it as a perverse allusion. She takes it differently. Her deep brown irises seem to pool. She bites her lip, and I can almost taste her sorrow.

“I just want to feel like I can do something.”

I nod, because I understand. I push open my front door—the one she just came through. “Come back tomorrow, Nessa. Bring your bags.”

I fly down a busted county road that starts just south of the Chattahoochee city limits and juts northwest, curving through a ten-mile tuft of thick pine forest. The faded asphalt is spotted by moisture from a recent rain. I steer my new Ducati 899 Panigale into the pale trace worn on the dark road by cars’ tires.

The speed limit is 55. I push the bike to 80, 85, 90 before I start to ease up on the juice.

It’s dangerous, but then that’s how I’m feeling.

If I lost control and wrecked, wouldn’t that be preferable to what will happen if I don’t?

My heart is pounding hard. Making me feel sick. But that’s fitting, isn’t it? What kind of monster would I be if I didn’t feel ill?

I pick a firm-looking shoulder to veer off and angle the bike for a quick, ten-foot descent over battered grass, into a bed of pine needles. I park at the edge of an eternity of pines and swing off the bike’s seat.

For a second, I just stand here, testing out my legs. Nothing about this night seems real, so it’s almost surprising that I have a body—much less one that does the things I tell it to. My mind is back at home, curled up somewhere near Cleo.

Sloth... she says it is. Dear fuck.

I grab a freezer-sized Ziploc baggie from my pack, tuck it in the pocket of my black jacket, and step deeper into the trees. The entrance to Nessa’s neighborhood is well lit, so I’m cutting through a fourth a mile of forest, using the light from the subdivision’s welcome sign to signal my exit.

Every heavy footstep drives her through my head.

Sloth... Sloth... Sloth.

What are the odds?

What are the odds?

My mind should be on Nessa but it circles
her
. I wonder what the chances are, in numbers. Out of all the colleges in Georgia... How many students? How many of them female? Only one of them is her. What are the chances we would meet?

Well, you came here for her...

It’s not entirely true. She was just a thought, a distant want. Yeah, I wrote to her—notebooks full—but that’s not all. I’ve always liked the luscious South, starting with a family trip to St. Simon’s Island the year before my mother died. Lyon and I were eight, and Barrett thirteen. We stayed for three weeks by the sea. My dad came just four days.

She’s a dealer—Sloth is?

I can’t reconcile it. It doesn’t fit with my picture of her. And yet, it kind of does. I imagine her swinging her arms around, all jacked up on Vyvanse; I can see that black shawl flapping around her. Cleo, kneeling, making faces at Truman. I can see a younger Cleo, getting high and eating pizza.

Why is it so shocking? That a good person—a person whom I know to be inherently good and generous—would sell marijuana?

I don’t want her getting caught.

If she was doing it anyway...

I don’t want her anywhere near me. And yet—

And yet.

I see the white glow of the subdivision’s sign, and step out of the woods in the shadow of two houses that I know don’t have security lights. The lots in this neighborhood are about two acres each, and there are plenty of trees and hedges to hide behind as I make my way Nessa’s quiet circle.

Her house is a two-story dollhouse, painted deep lavender with mint green accents. It’s a new home, but it’s meant to look Victorian. Her parents bought it for her after the break she took last year.

I’ve been here dozens of times, but lately I just haunt the yard. Nessa always leaves the curtain open, just for me.

Tonight, I take my time among the hedges and the azaleas that encircle her house, moving from window to window on the balls of my feet. My heart pounds. I start to sweat. Tonight will shape up different from those prior nights. I haven’t done the deed yet, but I can tell I will. It’s... both strange and not. It’s natural and deplorable.

It’s me, making good on a promise.

I find Nessa in a little library, framed by floor-length burlap curtains. She’s wearing blue sweatpants, a giant white Auburn University sweatshirt—probably one of her father’s—and fuzzy yellow socks. She’s sitting on a sea blue couch, blaring Broken Bells from the speakers of her iPhone and moving her shoulders to the beat.

I watch her as she checks her phone—looking for a message from Ryan, her on-again-off-again?—As she runs her fingers through her tight curls. As she paints her toe-nails some greenish color that’s not clear to me through glass, and from this distance. I fall into a calm as I watch her balance her checkbook, a habit I know her mom demands. I watch her drink peppermint water. Take her Kindle from a desk and read a book.

After seven weeks of this, I know her habits. Nessa has ADD, and now that she’s withdrawn from school again, she seems to drift through evenings, moving from one thing to the other, trying to entertain herself without really seeming settled.

After more than an hour peeking through her window, I walk around the house again and mess with a flimsy window in her first-floor half bath. I know from past visits that I could open it without much trouble, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the way I’ll go. Why would I, when I have a key?

I walk through the dewy grass behind the house, where she keeps her garbage cans as well as a small, baby blue bicycle. My pulse is racing as I re-approach the little study room she’s in.

Nessa is still there. Now she’s drinking coffee from an owl mug.

I think of Cleo. Sloth. I’m hoping that the guilt I feel over not sending her away tonight will distract me from the lead ball in my gut right now, but no such luck.

There’s no hiding from tonight—not even behind the shock of Sloth. Tonight has been a long time coming. I just couldn’t get the balls to do it for these last few weeks.

I tilt my head back, look up at the moon. The stars. I can see so many of them out here, miles away from city lights. Even Chattahoochee, an old mill town-turned-college-town of thirty thousand, doesn’t put off enough light to really blot the stars. Not like where I’m from.

Somewhere nearby, a dog barks.

I hold my breath and listen. It’s quiet after the dog settles, nothing but the sound of trees moving and the low hum of traffic, somewhere miles away. I picture Nessa standing out here with me, smiling that faint smile of hers. That smile that said
I have a secret
.

Like my secret.

I can’t think long of that, can’t think at all of that, so I start walking, around the edge of Nessa’s porch, toward the giant magnolia tree in the middle of her soft, green lawn.

The thing is massive, only a little shorter than the roofline of her house. I turn my body sideways and I work my way between its branches. Its limbs press against my back and shoulders, come around my hips, until I’m hidden by its waxy, oval leaves.

Once I’m settled in, I hold my body still, trying to be sure I know my own mind.

Can I do this?

I can do this.

I pull my phone out of my pants pocket. I can do this, but first...

I rub my thumb over the screen, calling up the picture I took of Cleo a few months ago on the concourse. I clench my aching jaw and peer down at her. After this is over, I can go back to her.

Wrong wrong wrong.

After this is over, I can fuck her.

It’s wrong—because of who I am, my situation; it’s even more wrong because of who she is, and what she is to me—but I know already I will keep her for at least a few more nights. Because I have to. Because I’ll need her after this.

Despite my own assurances, air whistles through my teeth. Blood booms like a drum between my ears.

I rub my brows—a little too hard. My fingers curl into fists. I think numbly of Lyon.

Lyon, Ly... please help.

After almost an hour of this madness, I dial Nessa. She answers wordlessly. I breathe into the phone. Swallow. “You know why I’m calling,” I rasp.

“Yes.”

“What are you doing, Nessa?”

“Dancing.” She sounds nervous. “Just drinking a little wine.”

“Oh yeah. What kind?”

“Hmmmm... honestly, I don’t know,” she giggles. “It’s red, and it was the most expensive bottle they had at the store.”

“Be sure to save a glass for me.”

“I will.”

I exhale slowly. I’m surprised by the strength of my desire to tell her about Cleo. Sloth.

But this isn’t about that. Or about me.

“Do anything special tonight?” I ask.

“I saw a shooting star.”

My stomach clenches. “Yeah?”

“Yep.”

“Did you make a wish?”

“I did.”

I swallow hard, willing my throat not to close up on me. “Was it that I’d call,” I tease. My voice is strange—but Nessa understands.

I can hear her gentle smile. “It was about you. You know what.”

“That I would call you?” I ask, even though I know that’s not what she wished for. “Then, wish granted.”

She laughs a little, but says nothing, and soon there’s a silence.

“I should let you go,” I say.

“See you soon.”

“... Goodnight.”

“Goodnight Kellan.”

I wait almost two more hours, to be sure she is asleep. Usually, she has trouble. But the wine and the Ambien will help.

The lights have been off for almost two hours now.

I move from the tree to her porch in half a heartbeat, my shoulders curled in as my key slides silently into her lock. I turn the knob and slip inside.

I’m in the two-story foyer, with an oak staircase I take two steps at a time. I pause on the top stair. Listen.

Nessa is asleep, not in the master bedroom, which she feels is too big and uses for storage, but in the larger of the two bedrooms down the hall to my right.

I pass a family portrait: Nessa with her mom and dad, dressed in their church clothes. To my left is a framed photo of Nessa with her best friend, Hope. On the right, a pressed, framed rose from Ryan.

I pass a closet door. I look down and—

“Fuck!”

I throw my arms out, trying to keep my balance, while Nessa’s cat, Cheshire, dashes off, then doubles back, his tail waving, to look at me. I lower my hand, but I can’t make myself crouch down and pet him.

“Sorry,” I murmur silently.

I move slowly, walking softly. I don’t want to wake her up. I don’t think she’ll wake up.

Stay asleep, Nessa. Stay asleep.

Her bedroom door is slightly ajar. Thoughtful.

The room is dark, but the blinds are open, letting in starlight.

I pause at the threshold. The Ziploc bag feels heavy when I pull it from my pocket. It’s melded around the small cylinder inside.

Taking care to be quiet, I peel the ‘zipper’ open. I stick my fingertips inside, grasping the end of the syringe. I dig a little deeper, until I can feel the cool glass of a vial I mixed up just for Nessa.

I’m surprised my fingers work. Amazing, what can be endured when choices are so limited. I stick the needle in, draw the plunger. My jaw aches, a precursor to tears. A scream builds in my chest. I lock it there, where it belongs.

I step over her pink polka-dotted rug. My limbs feel heavy, as if I’ve sampled Nessa’s cocktail.

I take half-steps, past her feet, her knees, until I’m level with her hips. Under the lilac covers, she is just a lump. It strikes me that is all she’ll ever be again. My eye twitches.

Nessa’s bed has a large, carved headboard her mother had imported from Italy, if I remember. I can’t see much of the carving, even here, beside her, but I stare up at it for a minute, because I want to see what’s on it. My eyes never fully adjust to the darkness, as deep down I know they won’t. I’ve got acquired night blindness. All I’m doing standing here is waiting.

Long enough, apparently, for Cheshire to come join us.

Shit.

I take long, steady strides toward the door and scoop the cat up. “C’mon... Stay quiet,” I murmur to his soft head as I spirit him down the hall, toward the stairs. I set him down and stroke his neck and back. He arches to my hand. “That’s it. Good boy.” My voice quavers. Cheshire perches like a gymnast on the bannister.

When I return to Nessa, she’s rolled over on her right side, with her back to me. I take a deep breath. I position the syringe between my fingers and lean over her. My hand hovers by her neck. Her hair is in my way. I move it slowly, relishing the softness of her curls. My fingers tremble. I will them still.