Page 21 of The Prom King & The Ice Queen

And for a second there, I’d forgotten she’s a heartless harpy with no soul.

I mean, seriously. Not even a thank you?

I clear my throat. “I can explain…”

“Uh huh.” My mom crosses her arms. “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to explain while you’re grounded.”

“What? Mom, I’m too old to be grounded.”

She doesn't seem to hear me as she ticks off a list on her fingers. “You can go to school, to family functions, and to football practice, but that’s it.”

My brows fly up in shock. “You can’t be serious.”

Her lips press together in a thin line and her nostrils flare. Maybe ‘you can’t be serious’ was the wrong choice of words. “Do I look like I’m joking to you?”

I scratch the back of my neck. There’s really nothing else to say but, “No, ma’am.”

Her lips twitch before she catches herself, and when she does, I see it again. That flicker of disappointment. She glances meaningfully back toward the door through which we came. “Please tell me I didn’t hear you being rude to Savannah Winters.”

I blink. I open my mouth…and nothing comes out.

I can’t exactly deny it. She’d heard me being rude. What she clearly hadn’t heard was Savannah deserving it.

My mom shakes her head with a tsk. “I raised you better than that.”

The subtle stress on the ‘I’ in that sentence is clearly the only acknowledgment of what we prefer to leave unsaid.

That she raised me to be good and noble and grateful for all I’ve been given. My delightful adopted father? He’s basically the living embodiment of everything my mom didn’t want me to be.

In a word? An entitled ass.

Okay that was two words, but still. The point remains. My whole life she’d been hammering it into me that just because I was born to wealth didn’t make me better than anyone else.

Meanwhile, my dad married into wealth and he took that to mean he was in a class above everyone else.

My mom was too nice and too respectful of Rich’s role of ‘Dad’ to ever state it so clearly, but I’d always understood. And if I hadn’t, my grandparents were always there to drill it into me.

Acting like a brat was a big no-no. Being an entitled little prick was classless and a poor reflection on the family, according to my grandmother.

“Mom, what you heard…it wasn’t what you think.”

She plants her hands on her hips. “So you weren’t mocking that poor girl just because she has to work and you don’t?”

“No, of course not,” I say quickly. “And she’s not ‘some poor girl,’ Mom, she’s—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she snaps. “Savannah and her friends have been working our parties for years now, and she’s never been anything but cordial, reliable, and courteous.”

And a thief!I just barely contain the words. I still can’t quite believe what I’d seen, to be honest.

My mom was right. For all her faults, I’ve never seen Savannah so much as talk out of turn in class or drink at a party. The girl might act like she’s tough, but deep down she’s kinda a goody two shoes.

“Don’t give me that look, young man,” my mom says.

That’s when I realize I’m scowling. But not at my mom, I’m scowling at the thought of Savannah. Why wouldn’t she just tell me what was up?

Is she in trouble? That’s the best guess I can come up with and it brings out protective instincts I never even knew I had.

I barely hear what my mom’s saying as that thought creeps in and takes hold. What if Savannah is in some sort of trouble? I’m itching to get back out there. She owes me some sort of answer, dammit. If I’m going to be punished for her bad deeds, she can at least tell me why she—

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