Sloth (Sinful Secrets #1) (18 page)

I pull a door open.

“You fucking with me, Drake?”

“No sir.”

“Well... fuck. I can’t believe that. I just can’t believe that you... You’re sure? You sure you’re sure? You got more than one person telling you this, and it’s not a mistake? It’s not your—being paranoid because of... ?”

I shake my head. “I’m sure, coach.”

“I’m gonna keep this to myself. I want to see you both next fall.”

I can hear the words, echoing off lockers. I don’t know why my mind chose to regurgitate them now.

I shake my head.

My gaze rises to my right hand, and I use it to pull the first canister out. I set it on the countertop and get a second, third, and fourth.

I sweep my eyes over the array. The things inside this cabinet are as essential as they are horrible.

I take one of them in my hand and feel the smooth, slick plastic under my fingers. I take the top off and empty its contents onto the granite.

I sift through them. They whisper as I push them around. There are guidelines for this, but I always tweak them. Fuck the rules. Where I am, they don’t apply.

I gather the ones I need into a pile, then put the cap back on. I store the container back inside the cabinet and repeat the process eleven more times.

Then I close the cabinet doors, leaving most of their contents untouched. Those things I will need later, if it gets that far.

Three more minutes in the small room, one long gulp of soothing water and a splash on my hot face, and I’m back in my bedroom.

I rub a hand through my hair, run my fingers over my brows, where want of sleep already tugs at me. Then I hurry down the stairs.

I’ve got an eighth of an ounce in a vacuum-sealed bag under the sink. I toss that into my messenger bag, grab the books and notebooks I need, and let a deep breath out as I shut the door behind me.

Next time I’m here, I won’t be alone. If I play my cards right, I might never be alone again.

Three sharp raps jerk me out of sleep. I shoot up, slamming my forehead against the underside of the study table that dominates my little library room.

It’s the same room I was in with Kellan Walsh, so the first thing I think about after my eyes focus on the green cinderblock wall and my palms flatten out on the rough, industrial carpet, is the feeling of him driving into me. For a heart-racing second, I’m immobilized. Lust is the brightest color mixing on my mind’s easel.

Fear becomes brighter. On the other side of the door, I envision furious police, a snarling drug dog, my mother’s devastated face, a gossipy library monitor who somehow saw Kellan and me fucking like animals on a hidden camera...

I scramble out from under the table and straighten with a wince. I’m dizzier than a kid at a carnival, and my mouth is painfully dry. My hands shake as I try to right my twisted leggings, tug down my rumpled Smuffins shirt, and straighten the big, black shawl that’s doubled as my blanket. I’m not wearing a bra.

I grit my teeth as The Man knocks again. “Just a second, please!”

My Vera Bradley overnight bag sits, unzipped and barfing up my favorite outfits, on the padded bench where Kellan had me in his lap last night. Beside it is my book bag, crammed with my laptop, day planner, and text books. I wrangle with the overnight bag until it’s zipped, tug the shawl away from my body with a prayer that my nipples aren’t hard, and drag my tangled hair into the rubber band around my wrist. I take a shallow breath and pull the door open.

When I see Kellan, my stomach somersaults. He’s wearing a blue and white gingham button-up with a pair of straight-front khakis that look like they were made for his trim hips and long, strong legs. His blond hair looks a little messy and a lot soft. His stubble-shadowed jaw and the gorgeous planes of his face remind me why he has his way with so many girls.

But it’s his eyes that drop an anchor to my soul. Something about the way they fix on my face. There’s concern there, born not of alarm but interest. It makes his gaze soft.

For an intoxicating moment, I wonder what it would be like to be cared for by him. But that fades as I remind myself I’m being unrealistic. Fantasizing. I have the desire to be cared for in this silly, over-the-top, romance novel sort of way... But the guy standing in front of me wants a sex deal. If there’s a real person somewhere underneath his sharp clothes and Spartan body, I’ll never know it.

He makes my panties wet and—yes—he piques my curiosity, but so what?

I break my gaze away from his and cast it down to the grease-stained paper bag he’s holding. Is that for me?

He doesn’t notice me eyeing the bag. He’s too busy noticing my situation. His eyes trail up and down my sore body, checking me out. When they meet mine, they are wide with incredulity.

“You slept here.”

I clamp my teeth down on my lip and let my eyes wander to his shoes. What do I say to him?

“What happened?”

I look from his shoes to my socked feet. There’s a hole above my right foot’s pinkie toe. “Milasy... found the brick.”

In the thick silence that follows, I focus on the motion of my ribcage, moving much more gently than my frenzied mind.

When I get the nerve to look back up, I find his fingers curled around the door frame. “Did you tell her where you got it?”

“No. Of course not.” I wrap my arms around myself. “I’d never do that.”

His shoulders slacken. His face relaxes as he steps toward me. I take a step back into the room, allowing him to fill it up. His husky voice says, “That’s good, Cleo.”

He’s so wide, so tall—and I can smell him. Shaving cream and something earthy; spicy; rich; the way I imagine “warm” should smell. The back of his hand comes up to brush my cheek. “You slept on the floor.” I feel myself flush as his fingers trace the little pock marks the carpet made on my cheek.

“Cleo,” he says, low and taut. His eyes press mine. “You should have called.”

I draw my face away from his hand. Not just because his fingers are making me dizzy, but because there’s something in the tenor of his voice that strikes a painful chord inside my chest. “You’re not my superhero, Kellan.”

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 since 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.