Page 7 of Cruel Devotion

Davina:This place is packed.

I sighed, wondering if I should bother replying.

Davina:You sure you don’t want to come for a little bit?

“One hundred percent,” I muttered. Davina was the closest thing I had to a true friend. She’d moved to Marsten our freshman year of college. Because she wasn’t born and raised in town and privy to the fact that the Feldstones were supposed to be the bottom of the barrel, socially speaking, she had the open mind to befriend me when we were partnered in a biology lab. I struggled to truly let her in because of how much I’d been an outcast all my life—though through no actions of my own—but I accepted her as a friend and valued having someone to talk to.

Haley:I’m sure.

Would I want to voluntarily attend a party at the West mansion?

Over my dead body.

I didn’t care who was there celebrating whatever those happy, peppy people wanted to cheer about. So many of my classmates seemed stuck in the teenage years—carefree and oblivious to how life could suck for others.

Davina:Are you saying you don’t want to come because I said Eli is here?

I appreciated her reporting in to me that Eli was there. She was well aware of the antagonism between us, a force that set in when he decided he was too cool to be friendly to me since fourth grade. But it wasn’t just avoiding him that kept me home.

It was avoiding them all.

Haley:I don’t care who is at this dumb party.

I didn’t. I’d stubbornly stand by that fact. After the way everyone talked crap about me all my life? No thanks. I wasn’t a glutton for punishment to the point I’d want to go somewhere and be subjected to more bullying and teasing just for being alive and breathing. It didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do. Those jerks would never stop targeting me.

Haley:And I especially don’t care about an asshole like him being there.

She didn’t reply, but she had something on her mind. Three dots appeared, vanished, and popped back up, over and over as she debated a response. Whatever she said wouldn’t make me change my mind, though. I learned from my mistakes, and the hard lesson I’d gotten years ago was that bullies never changed. They’d never stop acting like I was a leper or a freak, so I stopped trying to fit in.

That elusive goal hadn’t died, though. While I refused to be social and put myself in the position for the popular, wealthy students to try to make my life hell, I wished so badly that Icouldfit in. That it was at least possible to be included and valued as a member of society.

And it could happen—just not in Marsten. Not at this college. Not while I lived in this house with Aunt Cindy. This little place I had grown up in was too prejudiced against me all because of my last name. My family reputation was a dark stain I could never wash off, and it was all the more reason I couldn’t wait to get out of here after graduation.

It wasn’t wanderlust or pure escapism that fueled my fantasy of getting out of here. It was realistic acceptance that I’d always be judged by association.

When I moved to the city to live near my older sister, Natasha, no one there would sneer at me because my mom had participated in multiple affairs and acted like a homewrecker for multiple couples and families in Marsten.

When I relocated to the city to work in a school that needed new teachers, no one there would frown upon me because my sister got pregnant when she was a teenager.

And when I walked away from all the bullies, I could blissfully blend in as a nobody, one among many, never worrying about what people could say to me to bring me down.

Renewed with the promise of a new start, I turned my phone over and scrolled through my contacts. Just zoning out at the wall and thinking about all I could look forward to prompted me to call the one person who never dismissed me.

As my Irish twin, Natasha was almost one year older than me, and she got me. She understood what it was like to be victimized and targeted for things we hadn’t done ourselves. Where Aunt Cindy would nag and assume I was doing something wrong, my sister would know that I was just surviving the best I could.

We didn’t talk often, what with her raising her five-year-old son, Grayson, in the city on her own. Between her job, being a single mother, and trying to get her GED, she didn’t have much time to hear me out on the bad nights. But she was always there for me when I needed her. And soon, once I had my diploma, I’d be in the city with her to help her out.

“Hay-ie!” Grayson answered on the video call.

“Hey, buddy!” I grinned at my adorable nephew who was growing so damn fast. I swore he looked so much older and different every time I saw him.

“Is that Haley?” Natasha asked, gently emphasizing thelthat he struggled to form with his lisp.

“Yeah, it’s Ha… Ha…” He pouted, frustrated to try to say it.

“It’s me, Nat.” Looking at Grayson and enunciating so he could follow along, I slowly said, “Ha-ley.”

“Ha…ley.” He grinned, his dimples showing in his cheeks. “I did it. I did it, Mama. Ha-ley!”

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