Page 6 of Cruel Devotion

“I just happened to see her after class, and she said she has no interest in the winter dance. It’s only a month away…”

Davina smirked. “It wouldn’t matter if it was one day away or one month away. She wouldn’t have a date.”

I huffed. “You got that right.” The bespectacled brunette had made it crystal clear that she had no interest in that dance. But that was the norm with her. In grade school, then high school and into college, Haley made sure the whole world knew that she didn’t want to join in. I could never tell whether she thought she was better than everyone else or just too damn meek and shy to put herself out there.

It was a moot point, anyway.

“No, I’m not saying she wouldn’t have a date because she couldn’t find one,” Davina said, always coming to Haley’s defense. “Just that she wouldn’t want to get one and go at all.”

“Sure, sure.” I patted her shoulder. “Whatever you want to tell yourself.”

Looking past her, I scanned the crowd of this party, letting the heavy bass of the music vibrate up through my legs from the contact of my feet on the floor. Drinks and food. Music and celebrations.

This was what I’d miss. This liveliness. This nonstop festive feeling.

All too soon, I knew it would be gone. I’d have to move on to something else—a career, for one thing. Giving up the fun in college was simply a truth of life that I’d have to accept.

I walked through the throngs of my peers, also knowing that Haley wouldn’t have a date to that dance because it was another simple truth of life.

But for the first time in a long while, I felt the fleeting curiosity whether that aloofness was something she wanted and tried hard to maintain or that solitude was a curse she’d had to accept as unchangeable.

What do I care?I scoffed at the direction of my thoughts.

Haley Feldstone didn’t belong in my head.

Only this moment mattered, living it up and enjoying life to the fullest before real life after college would be waiting for me.

I sipped my beer and set out to enjoy this party.

All night long.

3

HALEY

Aunt Cindy stopped nagging me after we got home.

The drive between the campus and the house she got from my grandparents was a long one, but I preferred the distance, despite the headache it was to go back and forth. Being stuck in a dorm room didn’t appeal, and I certainly didn’t have the money to afford an apartment near the campus.

While she ranted and nagged on the drive home, put out for having to wait for me for so long, I let it all in one ear and out the other. This was far from the first time I was the sole audience for her grievances. Since she was all I had of my family in town, I felt obligated to let her say her piece—her lengthy piece—and wait for her to lose the energy to carry on. I was twenty-one, not eleven. I was an adult, not a child. It peeved me that she’d act like I was still a kid or adolescent who could benefit from a lecture, but I understood why she was so upset.

The West family had caused hell for us, mostly in the sense that it was always a case ofhe said, she said, and their voice mattered more.

Aunt Cindy’s life was hard enough, primarily because she had fibromyalgia and couldn’t hold down a steady job well.

It was nice to get home and escape to my room after making us a quick dinner. The second I closed my door and leaned my back against it, I shut my eyes and drew in a deep breath.

And the peace was shattered. With one buzz of my phone in my back pocket, I was jarred and thrust back into reality, not the comforting blackness of my closed eyes as I just breathed, as I decompressed, safe in my own space.

“Now what?” I mumbled as I walked over to my bed and dropped onto the mattress. Rolling until I lay on my stomach, I unlocked the old-model phone and read the messages that had come in.

Davina:Mr. Popular is here at the party.

Davina:He mentioned you.

“See if I care,” I replied aloud.

Eli Young “mentioning” me was a kind and false way of saying he’d made fun of me. Ever since fourth grade, he'd made it his life’s mission to ridicule me at every chance he could get.

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