Cut (The Devil's Due) Read online

  Josh’s brow creases, his handsome face drawing in on itself. Introverting and pulling me in with it.

  I want to touch him. I want to hug him and ask him to hold me. I want to close this distance that’s building between us with each passing minute. With every inch the sun creeps closer to dawn and this next part of my life threatens to begin. The part without Josh woven into every moment. I’m not sure how to live that life yet, and that’s part of why he scares me. He’s too important. Too integral to my survival. I can’t risk him on a whim. On a feeling that’s been building in my belly for the last four years; that burns and hums every time he comes close. I can feel it now, even as I pretend I can’t. Denial is my only weapon against Josh. Against him and the way my heart clamors to be close to him.

  I look around the room for somewhere to ditch this candy bar that’s practically dripping down my fingers. Josh sees me searching. He takes it from me, leaning back to toss it into the trash can under my desk. When he sits up straight, he’s licking his fingers clean of the molten chocolate coating them.

  I cringe, unwilling to clean my own hand the same way. Like a fucking animal.

  “Give ‘em,” he grunts, already pulling my hand into his space.

  He singles out my index finger, lifting it to his lips. He licks it slowly, dragging his tongue along the millions of nerves beneath my skin. They come alive under his touch. They send a signal singing through my veins, up into my brain where it bursts like fireworks against the backs of my eyes. I feel lightheaded. Ethereal.

  Hot.

  He licks another finger clean. Hot air from his mouth kisses my cold, wet skin as it leaves his lips, sending a chill down my spine. I shiver visibly, unable to hide it.

  He sees it. He sees everything. Every tortured, torn, desirous thing scrawled across my face and beating in my breast.

  “I wish it was you,” I whisper, my voice trembling with the truth. “You have no idea how bad I wish it was you.”

  His eyes soften. “Then why? Why can’t it be?”

  “Because I’d ruin you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re going to college. You’re going to get out of this town and get married and buy a house and an SUV, and I’m not the girl you do that with.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t want to do those things if I can’t do them with you.”

  “But you deserve them.” I clench my fingers tightly around his. “You deserve better than me.”

  Josh tugs on my hand. He pulls me in close until his face is only inches away. He’s looking down into my eyes and I’m gazing up into his like I’m staring at the stars, and I think how beautiful he is. How beautiful I feel when he looks at me like that; like I’m so much more than I am.

  “Nothing on this earth is better than you,” he vows.

  Before I can breathe, he kisses me. It’s deep and slow. It’s tender and tight, like there’s an avalanche behind it, carefully kept in check. But for now – snowflakes. Downy soft and different every time. Every movement of his lips against mine sends a new current through my body. I’m shorting out, falling apart, and his arms are wrapping around me. Pulling me against him. Dragging me out of myself and into his lap where I fall willingly. Eagerly.

  My legs wrap around his waist. His hand takes hold of my ass, lifting me up. Pulling me in tighter against him until we both groan into the warm, wet of each other’s mouths.

  “Harlow,” he whispers desperately.

  I recover his mouth with mine, silencing him. Encapsulating us in this moment, this snow globe that’s cocooning us from the rest of the world. Nothing and no one else matters but the staccato of our breaths. The erratic beat of our hearts. The flurry falling around us.

  Josh’s control is slipping. When I pull his shirt up over his head and smooth my palms over the rough hair peppered across his chest, he loses a foothold. His mouth becomes more demanding, laying claim after claim as his hands tug at my clothes. They disappear as if by magic and before I can blink, I’m under him. I’m looking up at his face pinched with concentration, determination, and something softer. Something needy that I feel in the center of my stomach, like a string tied between us, tugging at the same place in both our bodies. Our spirits.

  He rises slowly. He falls even slower. Steady and unrelenting, inch by precious inch expanding inside me. Filling me to the brink and then some. My breath rushes out past my lips to make room for him. Tears well in my eyes, spilling down the sides of my face. I let go of everything I don’t need. Every fear, every anxiety, every doubt about my body and my being and my life. I cast them out one by one as he lays down over me, covering me and bleeding into me, refilling those empty spaces with so much more. So many emotions I can’t put name to but I can’t deny.

  He curses as he moves inside me. My body tightens. His fists push hard into the mattress on either side of my head, his long arms like columns holding up the sky. He stares down at me with this sort of half-smile/half-grimace that melts my insides until I can’t remember what it felt like to be me without him. I reach for him, for the stars, and I hold his face in my palms as he brings us both closer, closer, closer. Slowly, almost painfully. Perfectly.

  “This is us,” he promises me. “This is the way it should be. Always.”

  “I wish…” I hesitate, my body starting to burn. My breath leaving me. “I-I wish…”

  “Fuck, Harlow. You’re tight. You’re coming, aren’t you?”

  “Ah!” I cry, my back arcing off the mattress. “Josh. Josh.”

  “I’m here. I’m right here with you,” he chants.

  I cling to his face, staring up helplessly into his eyes as my body blows apart beneath him. He pushes one hand into my hair, dropping his forehead to mine as he drives into me quickly.

  “Always,” he grunts. “Always. Always.”

  I wish I had breath to answer him.

  I wish I was enough for him.

  I wish I didn’t love him like I do.

  I wish, I wish upon a star…

  I wish I wasn’t leaving in the morning.

  Chapter One

  Josh

  Three Years Later

  It’s 2 a.m.

  Knock, knock.

  Never answer anything after 2 a.m.

  “Josh!”

  Not the door. Not the phone.

  Knock! Knock! Knock!

  Nothing good will ever come of it.

  “Dude, are you in there?”

  Midnight is the witching hour.

  “Open the door, man.”

  But 2 a.m.?

  “We’re dying here.”

  That’s the Devil’s daylight.

  “We need your help,” he calls through the thin crack between the door and the frame. “We need to make a purchase.”

  I groan tiredly, rolling off the couch to throw my feet on the floor. My toes recoil from the cold hardwood, making me hobble toward the door like a drunken cripple; blanket thrown over my hunched back, eyes squinting into the darkness. I grab blindly for the coffee table as I pass it, my fingers easily feeling out the cool metal laying there. The pebbled handle of my gun.

  “Yo, Josh!”

  I pound once hard against the center of the door, banging on the wood by his face. The guy jumps back with a muttered curse.

  “Fuck off,” I tell him quietly. “I work by appointment only.”

  “Dude, come on. It’s Bryan. You know me.”

  “I know a lot of people. People I meet by appointment only. You know the drill. Make the call. Get an appointment.” I shuffle back toward the couch. Back toward sleep. “Get the hell away from my door.”

  Hands slam angrily against the metal storm door, shaking it loudly.

  “We have cash,” Bryan insists. “A lot of it.”

  I pause, closing my eyes. Telling myself to ignore him.

  First rule of being a dealer – never be needy. Desperate is not a good shade on me. It makes people think they’re holding all the cards.
They think they can start setting their own price and negotiating deals.

  I don’t negotiate. Everyone gets the same price on the same product. No purchase incentives. No discount for buying bulk. No markdowns because my pockets are empty and I don’t know where my next meal is coming from.

  “Make an appointment,” I repeat blandly.

  “We’re already here, we—“

  “Do you have the number?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Call it. Get a location. Give your order. Follow the instructions.”

  “You’ll deliver tonight?”

  “Might as well seeing as I’m already awake,” I reply bitterly.

  “Yes! Thanks, man. We owe you one.”

  “Do you know how you can repay me?’

  “How?”

  I cock the gun audibly, making sure the moron hears it echo inside the empty house. “Don’t ever come knocking on my fucking door again.”

  “Jesus,” he whispers, shocked. His feet scuffle down the porch steps. “We won’t. Take it easy.”

  “Call the number.”

  “Yeah,” he calls back, sounding farther away with every word. “Yeah, we’ll call.”

  I listen to his car start up. I wait for it to peel out down the street. Then I wait a few minutes more to make sure he really is gone. That he isn’t doubling back.

  All clear.

  I check my locks before I go back to the living room. It’s an old habit, the paranoid mind of a dealer hard at work. The locks are secure. All four of them.

  The gun I set down with a loud clatter. My ass I set down with a low groan.

  I close my eyes as I wait because part of me is hoping I’ll get to go back to sleep. That good old Bryan will have lost the number or he’ll lose his nerve or he’ll crash his car and spend the night in the hospital trying to score drugs off a lonely nurse instead of me.

  No such luck.

  Five minutes after he leaves, my phone is ringing, the glow from the screen blowing up the room in stark white light, making me squint. Shadows take shape against the glow, the untouched corners of the room looking darker than before. Fuller and more dangerous in their condensed state than the all-encompassing black hole I’ve gotten accustomed to.

  “Yeah,” I answer roughly, closing my eyes as the light dims down, the room sliding slowly back to darkness.

  “Got a request,” Harrison says, yawning loudly. “It’s for tonight. I told him you wouldn’t do it but dude swore he talked to you. Said you said it was okay. I told him he didn’t need a hook up tonight. He was already high if he thought you were going to get out—“

  “I’ll do it.”

  My statement is met with silence.

  “Harrison,” I prod.

  “Are you for real? You’re going to go out tonight for this douche?”

  “Which one is he? He said his name was Bryan.”

  “Football player. He called you? How’d he get your number?”

  “He didn’t. He came to my place.”

  Harrison is suddenly very awake. “How’d he find out where you live?!”

  “Yellow Pages?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I,” I deadpan. “I’m listed under P for Pills. Took out an ad.”

  “You told him you’d agree to an appointment tonight?”

  “That depends. How big is his order?”

  Harrison sighs, settling down. Business soothes him. “It’s big. Expensive shit.”

  “What’s he want?”

  “Party drugs. Uppers mostly.”

  “He ask for Flunitrazepam?”

  “Jesus, man, use street names. You know I can’t say that shit.”

  “Rohypnol. Did he ask for it?” I push impatiently.

  “No. No roofies. No Ketamine.”

  I sit forward, reaching for my shoes under the coffee table. “Good. He asks for date rape drugs and he gets blacklisted.”

  “I know the drill, dude.”

  “Text me the order. Tell him I’ll meet him in forty minutes at the park downtown, next to the fountain. Tell him to come alone and with cash.”

  “You got it. You want me to come with you?”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  “Text me when it’s done.”

  “Yeah.”

  I let the phone fall from between my cheek and shoulder, letting Harrison hang up for both of us. I slip my feet into my shoes, not bothering to undo the laces first. Pops would be pissed if he saw it. He’d smack me upside the head, treat me like a six-year-old kid and not the twenty-one-year-old man I’ve become. Not the dealer with a gun and a bag of scripts to deliver to some shithead in the middle of the night.

  Sometimes I miss having him around. Other times, like right now, I’m glad he’s living in ignorance in a home, unable to see this.

  When my cell pings with a new text message I turn on the small camping lantern next to my gun. The room flares again, brighter this time. The LED light gives off a blue hue that makes the room look more sterile than it is. It makes it feel emptier somehow, amplifying the dark color of the bare walls until they seem endless, merging with the dark wood on the floor. Engulfing the big black filing cabinets standing sentinel against the far wall.

  I pull on the chain around my neck to bring up my key. It’s the only one I have, so I’m pretty paranoid about losing it. I wear it when I sleep. When I shower. When I fuck. It’s my lifeblood, the only thing keeping me even remotely afloat, so I treat it like the treasure that it is.

  The order Harrison has texted me is coded using the Dewey Decimal System, like we’re a couple of drug pushing librarians. Looking inside the first drawer in my cabinet, I groan miserably. Filling this order will take everything I have on a few crowd favorites like Adderall and Benzedrine, meaning I’ll have to hit up the pharmacy in the morning before it opens.

  Looks like I’m not going back to sleep tonight.

  I grab a hollowed-out text book from my stack on the floor, a bunch of retired ones no class at the college is using anymore. I salvaged them from a dumpster behind the campus book store where I used to work part time. I brought them home, hollowed them out, and now I fill the carved out square in the middle with baggies full of pills, meticulously filling the order.

  When I’m done I tally up the total. It’s small. Smaller than seems possible. It’s enough to cover next month’s bill from the retirement home, replenish what I’m selling, pay Harrison his cut for being my go-between, but that’s about it. Nothing for the school demanding tuition and nothing for the utility companies breathing down my neck.

  I slam the drawer shut, locking it before shaking the key down inside my white thermal shirt. I’ll worry about money later. Right now I have work to do.

  After texting the total to Harrison to pass on to the buyer, I cram the book into my backpack. Outside is colder than I imagined it would be; the desert at night is a real bitch when she feels like it. It’s probably only about sixty degrees, but it feels freezing compared to the eighty-five or so it was this afternoon. For a second I think about going back in for a jacket. Or going back in, throwing the bag down, and letting Bryan freeze his ass off waiting all night while I go back to sleep. It seems like the most satisfying plan, but it doesn’t put coin in my pocket, and no matter how small this payout feels, I need every dime of it.

  “Fuck it,” I mutter to myself, forgetting about the jacket. “I’ve come too far.”

  To warm up, I take off at a jog down the street. If I keep a steady pace I can cover the two miles between the house and the fountain in thirty minutes. Opal, Nevada is a small town, it’s only attraction the Winslow College campus at the edge of it. There’s not much ground to cover in any direction, and besides, I could use the exercise. Cardio is surprisingly important for any dealer.

  The town is fast asleep as I pass through it. Every storefront dark. Every window in the houses vacant. Everything about the town is old and tired, just like the people in it. Faded signs, saggy awnings, broken
sidewalks. Even the fountain in the center is nothing but a sleeping slab of cement; a water feature in name only. I’ve lived here my whole life and not once have I ever seen water in the damn thing.

  Lucky for him, Bryan is waiting next to it when I get there. Pain in the ass, yes, but also punctual. Gotta give him that.

  I nod to him as I slow to a walk, my eyes scanning the surrounding park. It’s empty.

  “Your boy said you had everything we asked for,” he says quietly, extending his palm to me for a shake. A wad of bills is expertly hidden between his fingers.

  I nod in confirmation as I shake his hand, taking the money. I step back, surreptitiously spreading the bills quickly with my fingers, keeping it hidden close to my body. A quick glance and a little mental math says he’s all square, so I slip the money in my pocket and my backpack off my shoulder.

  “I found the book you asked for,” I tell him, handing off the hollow text book. “All the pages are clearly marked. Don’t get them confused.”

  He takes the book excitedly, popping the cover for a split second to guarantee his order is filled. He smiles when he sees the assortment of pills.

  Snapping the book shut, he offers me his hand again. “Thanks, man. You really came through.”

  I glance at his hand, making no move to take it this time. It doesn’t have anything I want. “I always come through, but never again at two in the morning.”

  “Hey, bro, I’m sorry about that but I got people looking for a good time tonight and I couldn’t leave ‘em hanging. You know how it is.”

  “Sure. Yeah. I get it.”

  “Cool.”

  “Which one is for you? Bro.”

  His fingers curl into his palm, his hand slowly lowering. “Why do you wanna know?”

  I shrug loosely. “Professional curiosity.”

  “None of ‘em.”

  “None of them? Really?”