Page 75 of Cruel Devotion

“No.” I shook my head. “It’s not like that. We text nonstop. She’s never out of reach. This isn’t some stupid control thing or whatever you’re getting at.”

“But maybe that’s it. You guys are always with each other. It could be suffocating, right?”

I shook my head harder. “No. Not like this. I…” I sighed, hating that I couldn’t know whether she was all right. “I don’t like this. After that day that Preston?—”

“I know.” He patted my back. “Worrying after that is totally understandable. But we know he’s not going near her. We’ve all been helping you keep an eye on her. And Preston isn’t even here. He’s been posting about his trip in the Bahamas all week.”

I knew that, and it helped. But I still worried about her. I couldn’t stop thinking about the worst-case scenarios because that was how much she mattered to me. How much I had to know she would be there for me and be waiting for me to take care of her.

“It just doesn’t sit right with me,” I admitted. “If something is wrong. If something happened…”

He exhaled a long breath. It wasn’t a sigh of exasperation but something more like pity. Or sympathy. “You’re going to make yourself crazy if you keep at it like this.” After he dug into his pocket, he extended his arm toward me, offering me his keys. “Just go. Take my car and go over there. Having peace of mind is better than freaking out and obsessing about why she might have wanted a day off from school.”

I smiled for the first time today. Taking the keys, I patted his back once. “Thanks, man. I owe you.”

“Go on while you have a break before another class.”

I nodded, taking off at a jog toward the parking lot.

I didn’t drive often since I didn’t have a car, but some things never changed. Like riding a bike. Yet, as I drove toward Haley’s house, I tried to resist the urge to speed too fast. Impatience was a curse at a time like this, but I knew better than to act like a reckless driver. I was still lucky that Mr. West wasn’t trying to get the cops involved with how I’d damaged his car in his driveway. But I didn’t need to test my luck in any other way.

As soon as I got onto the road that led to Haley’s house, I saw the problem.

“Fuck.” I gripped the steering wheel tighter, furious that they would dare to come here and bother her. That my parents would dare to return to Cindy and Haley’s house and bother her again. I was still livid that they’d come at all, but this was going too far.

Raging with the need to protect my girl, I parked to the side of my mom’s car, turned off the car, and ran up to the front door.

I didn’t want to know why they had the guts to interfere with Haley’s life.

I didn’t want to imagine the stupid shit they were saying.

It was one thing for them to track me and come to my dorm to warn me away from her. I could handle it. I could take it. But not for one second was it all right with me that they’d approach her directly.

Running up the front steps, I tried to keep my temper in check. My usual method of dealing with my parents was to stay silent, nod blankly, and wait for them to run out of steam. They’d give up to try again later. Haley might not have that same in-one-ear-and-out-the-other mentality, though.

“How dare you be so selfish?” my mother screeched as I burst through the front door, still open from when my mother must have arrived. “How dare you be such a selfish little whore and trap him with a baby?”

I ran into the living room, finding them standing there and facing each other down. Haley stared at my mother, eyes wide open with alarm but that familiar need to fight burning in her defiant eyes. Her lips stayed in a firm, thin line. My mother raised her arms, her fists clenched tight as she shook them, her classic furious stance when she thought screaming and shouting would get her what she wanted. It never did.

Ignoring the scene and dismissing the setup of their stand-off, I tried to get past what she’d said.

My mother was the only one here. My dad wasn’t chiming in to be her backup.

It was just her.

And the thing she’d said…

Baby?

I blinked, seeming to react in slow motion despite the frantic, fast pace of my heart thumping in my chest.

Baby?

Turning slowly to face Haley, I waited for the comprehension to kick in and slot into my brain as a fact.

Baby.

Haley was holding a pregnancy test in her hand.

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