Sloth (Sinful Secrets 1)

“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 od

ds?

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...