Page 34 of Heart of Thorns

Lydia clicks her phone off and stares at me from across the room. Her lips turn up at the corners, and she shakes her head. “I want you back on the team, Hart. I’m not talking you out of anything.”

CHAPTER 12

THORNE

Bill Keenland apparently works fast.

Bright and early Saturday morning, the ringtone I gave my father—the Darth Vader theme song—wakes me from a dead sleep.

“Aserious relationship?” he growls in my ear after I answer his call. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

“Good morning to you, too,” I mumble.

“Cassius Remington Thorne,” my father booms.

I wince. All he left off are the Roman numerals that followThorne. The ones that declare me thethirdof my name. Not my father, though. Just his grandfather, and my grandfather’s grandfather. It’s tradition to skip a generation, I suppose.

Everyone calls me Thorne.

The only people to ever call me by my first name—or the full name, like now—are my parents. Usually when I’ve done something wrong. All through school, teachers were quietly and firmly corrected before they even had a chance to do roll call.

So I can get away with no one knowing, or giving a shit about, my first name.

Cassius feels ancient.

Remington feels presumptuous.

Thorne, though? That part felt right. Even as a kid.

“A serious relationship,” I confirm. “I was waiting to tell you?—”

“Can you imagine howhumiliatedI was when Bill Keenland called to inform me of this? Because you chose to tell him in front of his daughter? The disrespect you show our family.” He makes a disgusted noise. “You embarrassed me.”

Guilt presses in on me. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you going to marry this girl?”

I freeze, gripping my phone tight to my ear.

She hasn’t even agreed todateme yet.

“Dad—”

“Well. We’ll just have to meet her. And if she lasts as long as you think she will, we’ll be seeing her for Christmas, won’t we?” Except, he doesn’t quite frame it as a question.

He hangs up without so much as a goodbye.

I groan.

My door swings inward without warning, and Rhys pops his head in. We’ve shared a space—first a dorm room,fuck that, then an apartment, and now a house—since freshman year. We roped in a few other guys from the football team to join us, splurging on a space where we can have a living area for hosting.

Not parties or anything crazy. I, for one, like to protect my peace. But we’re not above beers and tuning in to Monday Night Football. Or vegging on the couch on Sundays, watching the games throughout the day. Or studying our competition on Saturdays…

“I heard the dulcet tones of one Thorne Senior.” Rhys ventures farther in, leaving my door open and plopping into my desk chair. “Bit early on a Saturday to have his knickers in a twist.”

I sit up and shake my head. “Well, word just got back to him about something I did wrong.”

“Naturally.” Rhys eyes me. He’s in shorts and a t-shirt, his dark hair still wet from a shower he probably just exited. “What did you do this time?”

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