Page 37 of Cruel Devotion

“Doing what?” He resumed eating, acting like this was normal. Like he was comfortable being near me and refraining from bullying me.

“I don’t know.” I furrowed my brow, refusing to believe he honestly wanted to be friends now.

“Just like you didn’t know where your glasses went?” He smirked. “You haven’t worn them for four days now.”

I arched my brow. “You’re counting?”

He shrugged, sitting so close to me at this high counter in the food court that his shoulder brushed against me. “I don’t see how you can’t know what happened to your glasses. They’re a part of you.”

I sighed, breaking eye contact.

“Haley?”

I stuffed food in my mouth, not trusting his “friendship”, as tenuous as it was. I didn’t trust what his reaction would be if I told him the truth, either.

The jerk that he was, he asked me again once I’d swallowed my food. He wasn’t letting me off the hook. “Haley, what happened to your glasses?”

“It’s none of your business.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I’ll make it my business.”

“Ha.”

“Why won’t you tell me?” He nudged me with his elbow.

I nudged him back. “Because I don’t want to.”

“Why not?” Pushing his empty plate away, he rested his elbow on the table, tucked his chin in his hand, and stared at me.

“Because it won’t matter if you know what happened to my glasses.”

“Maybe it could.”

I pinned him with a stare. “Because I somehow matter to you now?”

“Yeah.”

“Just because I helped you clean up a few cuts last week?” I shook my head. “Don’t insult me by insinuating I could be gullible enough to think you care about me.”

“I could say the same to you.”

“How so?”

“You would never admit you care about me,” he said, pivoting to face me fully, knocking his knees against my thigh, “but you proved that you kinda do when you tolerated my presence at the library.”

So what?I didn’t want him to think I was weak and would cave to whatever game he was playing just because I was nice. “The key word there istolerated. I might be capable of tolerating you, but I don’t trust you.”

“You mean you don’t trust what I’d do if I knew what happened to your glasses?”

When he lifted his hand to brush my hair out of my face, I held my breath and went still. It wasn’t necessarily an intimate gesture.

“You used to hate wearing contacts when we were younger.”

“Because they irritate my eyes.”

“Which is why I’m curious that you’re wearing them now.”

I shrugged.

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