Sloth (Sinful Secrets 1)

I look between the treetops and the moon.

Something... please.

I get out of the car. It’s like my body... thinking on its own. I stumble in the grass and tip my head back.

There. The sky.

I don’t want it. I would tell her I don’t want to. I want her. I can’t. I know. I have to hurry. Now I’m... just too tired.

I get into the car. I dream while I drive. Warm hands and her hugging arms. My mom’s got cookies. Lyon with the football. Cleo on the bed.

She says, “You can talk to me, you know.”

I start to whisper. I press a hand to my forehead... so I can think.

The bridge is near here... right? The rail is bent. The drop is steep.

I tell her all the things. The whole story. Flat green pastures gleam under the moon. I pass a cow beside his fence.

My speeding heart begins to slow, as if it knows the score. My mind clears like the sky as clouds shift, revealing a bright moon. Pale light winks over my hood.

Some ways ahead, the road bends left. I press the pedal: fifty-five... then sixty. I take the curve at seventy.

Cleo... Cleo.

The road runs straight. I can see the bright lines of the bridge’s metal rails.

It’s definitely him. And I’m a stalker freak, because I’m tailing him. I wasn’t going to. It started with an innocent U-turn. Why go to his house if he’s not there? But then I saw his car pull over on the roadside. So I dimmed my lights and stopped a hundred yards or so behind him. When he got back in and turned onto another road, a more rural road, I just... kept following.

What do I want?

No idea.

Through the woods, I follow him. Along a winding road pinned in by fields. Beside the fence line, cows cluster. Bright moonlight stripes the long fields, casts crooked shadows through an orchard of pecan trees.

Pine-needles shimmer with moon dust. Kellan’s inky car glints as he swerves a little to the right.

I picture her head between his thighs and press the brakes a little, halfway hoping that he’ll see me in his rear-view mirror.

My eyes trace his silhouette. I can’t see hers...

I picture her pink lips around his dick. The way his legs flex, right foot heavy on the pedal. The Escalade surges forward as if my narrative is true. I see a creek off to my left, glinting in between the trees. The road squiggles, and Kellan’s Escalade dips into the left lane for half a heartbeat. I touch the brakes again, a mime of what I wish he’d do, but Kellan flies around the bend.

I punch the pedal. “Slow down, Kell...”

Next time I sight him, he is riding with the car’s right side on the shoulder.

My head feels hot. My pulse picks up. I reach into my lap, to call who? The road curves sharply right and Kellan runs again into the left lane.

Fuck.

I top out at 75 mph and press the brakes out of sheer fear. But Kellan doesn’t.

Kellan disappears around another wooded bend.

I come around it... see a bridge. The sheen of moonlight on its metal rails. The glow is blotted—for one second. The rails are blotted by his car. I hear the Escalade punch through the guardrail with an awful screech. I watch in horror as it tumbles toward the water.

I RUN DOWN THE SHOULDER, I slip, I tumble down the hill that skirts the murky swampland. I scramble up just feet from the dark water, which splays about as wide as a skating rink.