Love & Hate (Book Two: Love) by JJ Dorn Page B

to talk.
    Like Hell we do!
    Aren’t you busy screwing your girlfriend?
    Take that you asshat!
    I told you I don’t have a girlfriend. Open your front door.
    Oh hell no!
    NO. GO AWAY!
    I know he is on the porch because I can hear him knocking. I try to ignore it. My phone dings.
    Please Paige, I need to see you.
    I think about opening the door for a half a second and then remember seeing him tangled in the bed with Laney. I know he won’t stop though, not unless I tell him the truth.
    This needs to stop Cutter. I don’t want to see you, not ever again. It hurts too much. Please just stop pretending you care about me and let me move on.
    The knocking stops and I hear him step off the porch. When a safe amount of time passes I peek out the front window and confirm that he is indeed gone. I don’t know why but at that moment I feel a profound sense of loss, like there was finality to our conversation.
    I don’t cry when I snuggle up in my bed in the dark. I think I am all cried out over Cutter Daniels. He has gotten the majority of my tears in the last two years and now my body refuses to spill one more tear over him. I am glad for that, I am sick of crying and refuse to do it anymore. It’s time to toughen up girl and get the hell over him.

CHAPTER 12
     
    It’s been over two weeks since I walked in on Cutter and Laney. I understand that I don’t really have a right to judge him, since I am kind of seeing Holden, but I still hate him for acting like he gives a damn about me when he clearly doesn’t. Ever since that night I have been in a horrible mood, even Millie doesn’t try to calm me down anymore. I think she has accepted this new angry Paige. I have even stopped listening to the heartbreakingly passionate lyrics of Adele; she has now been replaced them with the angry ramblings of Godsmack and Artic Monkeys. I get that I need to snap out of it and forget I ever had feelings for Cutter but it is just so hard, and to make matters worse it is now homecoming week on campus. While everyone around me is giddy and excited for the biggest event of the semester, I am dreading every minute of it. Mainly because my sorority has been paired with Cutter’s frat, and in a double turn of craptackular luck, my house has also been paired with Holden’s house. Of all the fraternities on campus my sorority has to be paired with the only two in which I have dated guys from. Could this possibly get any worse?
    “ Okay ladies the chapter meeting is over, but be sure to check the schedule in the foyer to see what times you have been assigned to watch the homecoming fire at Chi Sigma Rho.” I try to make sense of what our sorority president is saying but I have no idea what she is referring to.
    “ What is she talking about Mills?” I ask Mills as we stand to leave the chapter room.
    “ Chi Sigma Rho always has a bonfire for the entire homecoming week burning in their front yard and people are assigned times to sit there and watch it. Since we are paired with them this year we will have to help watch the fire.”
    “ Uh… like how many hours am I going to have to sit there and watch this random bonfire?”
    “ I don’t know probably a few times. It’s really fun though. Last year I went and sat with Tanner on his night watch and we had a blast.”
    “ Can I request not to be paired with a certain individual?” I ask pointedly.
    “ Look Paige, there are what like sixty to seventy dudes in the frat, the possibility you get paired with him are low.”
    “ Yes but you forget I have like the worst luck ever.” I give Mills my signature quizzical eyebrow raise and she just shrugs her shoulders before she turns to head off towards study tables in the kitchen.
    I figure there is no time like the present to see exactly how bad my luck really is. I head over to go read the dreaded list in the foyer. There are several girls congregating around it, so I wait my turn. When I finally make my way to the front I see my name is written