Page 41 of Cruel Devotion

“Do you?” he asked carefully.

I sat up and furrowed my brow. “What? No. I mean she’s not taking the hint that I’m acting like I want more. For the dare.”

“Oh. Of course.” His skeptical expression suggested he didn’t think that.

“What are you getting at?”

He pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Nothing, really. It just seems like you’re… Never mind.”

“Like I’m what?”

“Like you’rereallyinvested in this with her.”

I huffed a bitter laugh, tossing the ball and catching it again. “Yeah, I’m really invested in her. If I don’t pull off this stupid-ass dare, Preston’s going to tell his dad the truth about that car and I’ll be fucked. I’ll have to pay all of the scholarship money back and probably not graduate.”

“No. I meant invested inher. Not the dare.”

I frowned, feeling put on the spot. “That’s the same thing. The dare is to get her to the dance and fuck her.” I winced immediately.

“That.” He pointed at me. “That’s what I’m getting at. You seem like you actually care about her, man.”

That was nonsense. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I?” he asked as I stood.

“Yeah. I’m not…” I sighed, hating how this felt like a lie. “All right. I do care. I care about her to the extent that I’ll make that fucker apologize and pay for her glasses.”

“But?” he guessed.

“But nothing. That’s it. Haley and I grew up together, then I spent a while distancing myself from her, and now, she’s the means to an end. I only need to do this to appease Preston and stay out of trouble so I can graduate.”

“The means to an end.”

“Yeah.” I left with that final note, hating how cruel that sounded.

The more time I spent in her company, the clearer I could see I’d been missing out all these years. Trying to be a dick and bully her hadn’t gotten me far. Maybe I’d secured some adoration for being the popular jock, which was only possible when I didn’t associate with someone like her. But in the end, now that we were nearing the end of our time in college and I’d leave here to be someone other than the popular jock who only managed average grades?

It seemed like such a damn waste.

If I could be honest with myself, Haley was so much more than a means to an end. She sawme. She saw the real me beneath the cool-guy act that no longer mattered around her.

Finn was right.

I did care about her.

So when I entered the library and sought her out down an aisle between bookcases, I wondered how much longer I could try to dupe myself that I didn’t.

With her hair down, she peered at a book on a lower shelf. All those thick, long locks of wavy brown cascaded like a curtain, blocking her face from my view.

Only when I stepped up close did she flinch and stand, almost startled to see me there even though I told her I’d come.

“Oh. Hey.”

“Hi,” I replied, fighting a groan at the fact that she’d taken off her hoodie already.

Haley wasn’t a girly girl. It was almost as if she went out of her way not to look sexy. No makeup. No sense of fashion. Always in baggy jeans and sweatshirts, she consistently hid herself from the world.

Seeing how her breasts stretched the fabric of her tank top, I hated that she’d ever thought she needed to make herself smaller and less noticeable. The girl wasfine.

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