Sloth (Sinful Secrets 1)

He frowns. “You don’t think I would have helped?”

“You already know how I feel about you. You’re a predator, remember? An opportunist. Clearly.” I turn around and lift my book bag off the bench. “I don’t know what to do now,” I say, aiming to fill silence. “I won’t be able to work with you if people know I deal. I’ll have to find a—”

“Milasy’s going to rat?”

“Well, no.” I adjust the book bag’s straps and shake my head. “She said she’d tell people something came up with me. Some other obligation that’s keeping me away from the sorority. I can go to chapter meetings and stuff, but nothing fun. And I had to give her some of my stuff. Like, purses and things. One of my favorite pairs of boots.”

His mouth opens. “She took your things?”

I nod.

Kellan’s jaw clenches. As quickly as I see his anger, he extinguishes it. “That’s bullshit.” Well, most of it. “I can help you get your things back. And I think Milasy will keep it to herself.”

“Why?”

He shrugs.

“She said if I get caught by anyone else—she mentioned you specifically,” I say with a roll of my eyes, “then I’d be kicked out of Tri Gam. She even checked the records that I kept as treasurer. It’s so insulting. I did it on my own. I started my business from nothing. I didn’t steal a bunch of rich girls’ money.”

I raise my hand to cover my mouth, because seriously, I never planned to say all that to him. I cover my whole face with my hand, only lowering it when I hear him laughing softly. “Righteous indignation.” He reaches out and cups my cheek. “You know your face gets red.”

I pull away from his warm touch and lean my butt against the little table. “This whole thing is such a mess. I feel like I can’t deal at all si

nce she knows... and is mad and stuff. But I don’t know what I’ll do without the income. I make a lot of cracks about ‘I need a Coach bag’ and stuff like that, but the truth is I’m not even sure that I could stay here at CC without that money. I get literally nothing from home. My mom and grandmother both think I live off grants. My plan for years has been to have a little nest egg for Mary Claire—for my little sis—before she goes to college, so she doesn’t have to—”

Kellan shakes his head dismissively. “Don’t worry, Cleo. I’ll take care of Milasy.”

“How?”

He grabs my overnight bag off the bench, pulls my book bag off my back, and shoulders them both. He pushes the door open. “Let’s get out of here, okay?”

I’m not sure if that means he doesn’t want to talk here or he doesn’t plan to tell me about Milasy, but I have the strange thought, as we walk through a common area, that Milasy finding the brick has altered the course of my life. I’m not sure how much yet, but without a doubt, it has.

If I’d been sleeping in my room at the house this morning, I wouldn’t have let Kellan in. Not because I don’t want him, but because deep down, I know he’s only using me. For my body, for my business—for both? It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care about me. I’m just a means to an end.

And I don’t know if I can handle knowing that when his soft eyes are on me.

I’VE THOUGHT ABOUT IT—Kellan’s offer. Which may not even be on the table anymore. But if it is... it’s probably too much money to pass up.

Money isn’t everything, of course, but it’s a lot. If money’s never been scarce—if you’ve never helped your mom search every crevice of everything in the house for change to put gas in her ’91 Accord—maybe you wouldn’t understand, but when you have no means, you have no choices. Even something as simple as choosing the high-quality deodorant at the grocery store was revolutionary for me after I first started dealing. Being able to grab a snack I want at a gas station, or buy one notebook for each of my school subjects, rather than a five-subject spiral notebook that would have to work for all my classes.

You know how they say ‘it’s the little things?’ It so is. Like eating cheese. Not the boring, WIC-approved kind, but the good stuff: asiago, halloumi, Havarti. When you have one pair of shoes and it rains, guess what? They start to stink, because you have to wear them the next day, and the next day, and the next. Life goes on, but I don’t like stinky shoes. I like crackers. Do you know how expensive a box of Cheese-Its is? Plus or minus four dollars. What about jeans? I like jeans that fit my curves in all the right ways; not the cheap ones. I like painting on canvases that don’t come from the discard pile behind Michael’s. Almost all my art from high school is on ripped canvas.

But it’s the little things that other people notice, too. They didn’t see my mom working sixty hours a week to make rent on our little house, they only saw the second-hand clothes she bought me. They saw the perma-sweat-stained strap of my one and only bra when it peeked out of my shirt. They could see past my pathetic attempts to dress myself up with my one nice jacket I got for Christmas the year before, or the earrings that belonged to my great aunt.

I don’t want to look second-rate.

I don’t want to always be reaching.

I don’t want to be a cashier, or a gas station clerk, or a mill worker. I’m so close to all my goals, I can’t give up now. Even if I have to spend a couple weeks at Kellan’s illicit river mansion, sticking my ass into the air for him.

It’s not as if I’ll mind that. Sharing my body with him can be done without too much heartache, I think, if I can manage to remember the limitations of our arrangement.

A strand of hair falls into my eyes, and I swipe it off my face. In doing so, I get a glimpse of Kellan, striding a half foot in front of me. He’s got my backpack slung over one muscled shoulder and my overnight bag hanging from the other. I notice, as I pull ahead to walk beside him, that he’s still holding the sack.

My stomach rumbles at the sight of those grease stains. “What’s in there?” I ask.

He looks down, as if he’s only just remembered he’s carrying it. He gives me a small, lopsided smile—a smile that feels distracted, as if he’s only peeking out at me from wherever he is inside his head. “You’ll see.”