Page 10 of Cruel Devotion

Her shirt was more like a scrap of fabric than a garment. The thin strip barely contained her boobs and her stomach was fully exposed. Despite it being twenty-five degrees outside, she wore a tiny skirt and leather boots meant more for design than lined with layers for warmth. Sure, women could dress for themselves, too, but when a girl clung to someone like this, they were after one thing.

Something about her tossing me in with all the other athletes here bothered me. Cutting through the haze of my buzz, I fought the urge to roll my eyes and step away from her.

All the jocks?

Couldn’t she at least acknowledge that I was a football player, not a member of tonight’s winning basketball team?

It shouldn’t have mattered. But it did.

I never cared this much about how people perceived me before, but I couldn’t let go of how her incorrect assumption about me irked me.

Because soon, I wouldn’t be that guy. My sports season was already over. Football had ended months ago. Now, I was just a college student, ready to graduate and move on to “real” life. For the first time, making that distinction of my changing identity caught my attention.

This girl saw me not as a person, but as a free dick to ride—a jock to claim as a conquest.

Not that I was a smart man toughing out college and graduating.

Not that I was a respectable guy getting ready to contribute as a working professional later this year.

I’d been “Mr. Popular” for years, but when it came time to graduate, what the fuck would that do for me? What would it matter if I went out of my way to be well-liked, easily recognized, and desired for a quick fuck by brainless ditzes who didn’t actually know me?

“So… what do you say?” She tipped her face up a little more and licked her lips. “Want to get out of here?”

With you?Ordinarily, I’d say yes. A quick fuck. Another one-night stand. Another sweet pussy to enjoy. Maybe she’d be up for a little bit of kinky stuff, too. I hadn’t been a celibate saint my whole life.

But as I looked at her eyes, I wasn’t intrigued by the dull brown of her eyes, hazy with too much booze. I wasn’t interested in her small breasts and over-visited pussy. She was too easy. There was no challenge here.

Nothing like the familiar thrill I felt when I faced off with Haley.

I furrowed my brow as I stared down at this girl’s face, hating that it washerin my mind again.

What the hell is going on?

Earlier after class, I had been thinking about her. During dinner, my mind wandered to her. When I got here and saw Davina, I was again reminded of her.

Now with an easy lay within reach, Haley freaking Feldstone was on my mind again!

I stepped back, annoyed with how easily I kept thinking back to the brunette I’d grown up with. We were both born and raised here. Way back before it mattered to be so cool and popular, we’d even been friends. In the years since then, we’d grown apart. A line was drawn in the sand between us, marking us as enemies, not buddies. I wouldn’t stoop so low as to call her an acquaintance, either. That was how much of a pariah she was.

Other than happening to go to school with her my whole life, she was nothing, a nobody to me.

So why the fuck can’t I get her out of my mind?

“Hey, no.” The redhead tripped, reaching for me as I backed up another step. “Don’t go.”

“Nah. I’m good.” I held my hands up to ward her off.

I couldn’t explain it, but this inability to dismiss Haley was bothering me.

It threw me off my game, and as I looked for Finn to see where he was, I grabbed another beer from the kitchen and hoped it would help me forget about Haley. About why I was acting so off as to give up a chance for a nameless fuck.

Mid-life crises would be waiting for me later. Like, thirty years later. But as I drank and walked through the mansion to find my buddy, I wondered if I was experiencing some kind of a lame quarter-life crisis. Or a third-life crisis. Something was off with me, but I ignored it.

I was here to have a good time, not to get deep and reflective.

Or think about Haley.

I huffed, laughing at myself as I stepped outside. Maybe Finn had come out with Britney for some fresh air.

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