Page 79 of Her Sloth

“Fucking hypocrite,” she says.

I chuckle darkly.

“Yeah,” I say with a pretended self-sufficient smirk while all I want to do is die from the pain it causes me. “Living up to your expectations of me, ain’t I?”

Slap. Her flat hand meets my cheek with rain splashing from the pure force of her slap.

Yes, please hate me.

“I told you to leave,” I say. “I warned you. You didn’t. Now you gotta live with whatever wreck I leave behind.”

With that, I get into the car. Doing so causes a pain to stab me in my chest.

“I won’t let you,” she says, holding onto the door. “You can’t walk away from what is real.”

One sentence.

My sentence.

But she walked away, too.

“You walked away first,” I tell her and rip the door closed.

I start the motor, but she steps in front of the car, blocking the way.

The headlights dip the yard into a dark scenery, the heavy rain, her standing in front of the car with a long shadow and her gun pointing directly at me.

I let the motor roar.

She doesn’t move, so I let the car jump forward, just enough that it almost touches her knees.

She still doesn’t move.

I shake my head.

She has no clue who she is confronting.

One of the many things she doesn’t know.

I pull the hand brake up as hard as I can.

Turn the steering wheel completely to the left.

Instead of letting the gas come in slowly, I press it all the way down.

The Mustang roars and drifts to the side without touching her.

I can’t see her face, but when I pull the Mustang straight and let go of the hand brake, causing it to dart forward, A shot is fired. It hits the Mustang in the back.

I don’t care; I just drive off. After all, I have a plan to finish.

The moment I leave the driveway and the garage behind, I know there will be no way back after this. It’s for the better, before she loses herself in me as she did in my sister.

I will go back to L.A., and everything will return to normal.

At least, I tell myself as much. I tell myself because anything else would be too painful. Telling her about Hailey? About my sister? No. I won’t be the reason she drives her car into the Hudson again.

So, I swallow everything down, step into a role, take my phone, and get on with the plan.