Page 91 of Puppy Love

Hayden shoots me an unconvinced glance, a hint of amusement tugging at his lips.

“What?” I frown. He shakes his head.

“Well, you know Cam,” he says, crossing his arms. “She doesn’t ‘forget’ anything.”

I look down, gently kicking at the snow underneath me. “Yeah, but I don’t know her, know her. Not like you. It’s all contract for us. With you, it was natural.”

A short, loud laugh bursts out of Hayden, and he immediately slaps a hand over his mouth.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, shaking with mirth. I roll my eyes.

“Now what, cowboy?” I ask, trying my hardest to shoot him a Cam-like scowl. He shakes his head.

“Nothing.”

I glower, my newfound power thanks to the Ice Princess herself. Hayden breaks.

“Well firstly,” he says, adjusting the cowboy hat on his head, which is pointless given the twenty-three-degree overcast weather. “Nobody knows Cam like I do. Secondly, that contract bullshit might work on Cam, but it doesn’t on me.”

My stomach twists, the pure coldness of the air around me suddenly flooding my body.

22“What do you mean?”

Hayden cocks a brow, until he realizes I’m genuinely serious. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“Violet,” he says, patting my shoulder almost condescendingly, “You do realize that you and Cam are essentially dating, right?”

My stomach flips, an unbridled laugh slipping through my lips.

“What? No we aren’t. That’s like—”

Hayden promptly puts his hand up.

“Sorry,” he says, lifting up the brim of his hat so he can look me in the eye. “But whatever you’re about to say is bullshit. You spend seventy percent of your time together, and when you’re apart, you talk about each other non-stop. You can say it’s ‘just sex’ all you want, but people who are just hooking up for fun don’t memorize each other’s favorite colors or show up on each other’s doorsteps in the middle of crises.”

I open my mouth to speak, but he just continues.

“You’re like, totally in love with Cam.”

Heat rushes to my cheeks, stinging against the cold sensation of the crisp winter air. I scoff, shaking my head.

“I’m not in love with Cam,” I say defensively, crossing my arms over my chest like that will make it true. It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. I like being around Cam, even though she makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes. I like the way she laughs and how candid she always is. How that dimple stays hidden until I’ve truly earned it, and how, sometimes, it’s as if she can read my mind. Whether or not that has anything to do with “love” doesn’t matter, because all of it violates one of the only rules left in that stupid contract.

Hayden doesn’t pay my declaration any attention.

“And I think,” he continues, staring out into the vast fields in front of us. “I think she likes you too.”

“What?!” I don’t mean to shout, it just kind of forces its way out of me. Hayden is completely delusional if he thinks Cam has any sort of feelings for me past lustful annoyance, which is a lot better than where we were in the beginning. It would be out of character for him to be playing some strange joke on me to get me to admit to my feelings for her, but that’s the only reason I can think of that he’d say something so preposterous. “Do you even hear yourself?”

His shimmering blue eyes meet mine, not even the slightest hint of deception mixed in his expression.

”Do you?” he shoots back with a soft smile. I scoff loudly.

“Did she say that? That she has feelings for me?”

I analyze Hayden’s expression, waiting for defeat to take over, but it never does. In fact, he only grows more assertive.

“She doesn’t have to,” he says confidently. “I just know.”

---