Page 29 of Her Sloth

She looks at me.

She is close to my face right now.

“Did it ever occur to you,” she says, using my own words against me, “That you are not the only person with issues?” she says, leans back, and throws the door shut without another word. She walks to the Mercedes, turns on the hazard light, and returns to the Hellcat to drive off.

I stare outside the entire ride; wherever we are driving, I don’t give a fuck. I just sit there with my legs pulled up, like a grounded teenager who is throwing a silent tantrum.

We don’t exchange a word, and then we’re back at the impound lot.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I ask as she rolls through the gate and drives all the way back to the Mustang.

“We don’t give up,” she says and throws the Mustang’s key in my lap. “We race. That’s how we deal. How we survive. How we die.”

I scoff.

“You tell me you aren’t a driver?” she asks. “Because I think you are, you’re just too fucking afraid to acknowledge it because we roaches don’t fit into your perfect image of a life.”

I scoff as derogatorily as it can get.

“You know nothing about me,” I say as coldly as I can.

“I know enough,” she says. “I know you’re reckless enough to kill yourself. I know you have nothing to lose because you take the shot for someone you don’t even know. I know you are lost enough to drive away everything good in your life,” she says in a tone so raw it touches me, causing my stomach to clench heavily.

“I know you drive like hell, because you were made for it. You have it in your blood, just like she had. You can hear a fucking camshaft; do you even know how rare that is? You know honor. You know the scene. You have gasoline pumping in your veins. You just live in a world that’s so fucked you can’t see the sky in all the shit you’re stuck in.”

I stare at her because somehow, between all the disgust she holds for me, there was some deranged compliment in what she just told me.

She is impressed by my skill.

She also knows more about me than she should, and there is only one reason why. One reason that has nothing to do with me, but everything with her

“Sounds like you know,” I say silently.

Her eyes flash at me, and then go back to cold aversion.

“Get in the car,” she says dismissively and nods to the Mustang.

I snort in derision before I get out and slam the door shut behind me. She lets down the window and leans in on the middle console.

“Addy,” she says. I turn and bend down, leaning with my arm onto the roof and look inside. “I know, because it’s ride or die. Quarter Mile, follow my lead.”

9

CASS

PLAYLIST: RENEGADES – X AMBASSADORS

Idon’t know why I do it, but I ride all the way from Red Hook through the city with her to the spot on Columbus Avenue I used to race Elise.

Maybe it's the Eleanor, maybe the daring to know who Addy really is. Because Addy is, while looking like an older copy of Elise, the opposite of her. She cares. She cares so annoyingly fucking much that it destroys her.

Elise didn’t care about anything, and it made her reckless.

Addy cares, but can’t handle it, and it makes her a whole other level of reckless.

Like me.

It is like she is holding up a mirror for me. Because I tell myself I don’t care, while I do care. I care so much I couldn’t let the woman I despise for her mere existence kill herself. Which is why I sat with her, why I reminded her of who we are.