Snow Queen: A Prom King Prequel Short Story

Alison Weston loathes Christmas almost as much as she despises her “stepbrother,” Alaric Weston. She hates his stupid handsome face; she hates his big, smart brain; she hates his perfect athletic body; and she especially hates sharing the same last name because it shouldn’t be his in the first place. Unfortunately, Alison needs something from Alaric before winter break, and she’ll do just about anything to get it.

Part 1: Deck the Halls

Hovering next to the bough of holly, halfway hidden behind the corner where the science and math hallways intersected, I glared icicles at Alaric’s profile. He stood at his locker, bent slightly to reach inside. Like all the rich kids in this school whose parents sponsored the PTA, he’d been given a much-desired top locker, but his massive height meant he still had to duck somewhat to see the contents within.

As usual when encountering Alaric or his brother—but most especially Alaric—I was all ice on the outside while my insides were a lava flow of bitterness and animosity. I noted he looked well-fed. And his sweater appeared new and warm. How nice for him.

Despite what my sister said, I didn’t actually like feeling jealous. I didn’t mind the anger, though. Anger was an excellent motivator. Anger might be more than fifty percent responsible for my twelve consecutive years of straight A’s and all the extracurriculars and volunteer hours I managed on top of my year-round part-time job and two seasonal jobs.

Who needed sleep when one had such an inexhaustible supply of rage? Not this girl. Especially not during Christmas.

Ah, Christmas. The angriest time of the year.

“What are you doing?”

This question came from Renee Owens. I hadn’t noticed her approach.

Lifting a hand, I made a vague shooing motion with my fingers. “Leave me alone. I’m thinking.”

Fact, Alaric possessed excellent note-taking skills. He utilized some sort of intricate bullet point system and color coded with highlighters. I’d never asked him about it, obviously. Also fact, Mr. Restivo informed me that only Alaric had been in class consistently for the last month while I’d been stuck in the hospital. Half the other students—like me—had tested positive for meningitis. One quarter of the remaining half had been kept home by their parents out of fear, and the rest had continued attending class, but not consistently.

Only Alaric . . .

“You’ve been standing here for five minutes, staring in the same direction.” Renee walked around me, beyond the corner I’d been using as my cover, and into the open hall. But once she stood at my shoulder she came to an abrupt stop.

“What—Alison?” Her tone now hushed, she took a careful step backward. “Why are you staring at Alaric Weston? You’re not planning to start a rumble with your stepbrother or anything, are you?”

“He’s not my stepbrother,” I hissed.

“Your dad divorced your mom and married his mom years ago,” she whispered low, so only I would hear. “It doesn’t matter that y’all weren’t raised together, it doesn’t matter that your daddy didn’t raise you at all or that you haven’t seen or spoken to Mr. Weston in over ten years. Alaric is your stepbrother, you are his stepsister. Those are facts.”

Renee was . . . odd, but also well-intentioned. I didn’t mind her monologuing about my past. Everyone knew the story about how my wealthy biological father ditched my mom, me, and my sister on Christmas Eve for Alaric’s mother, using loopholes to get out of paying child support and leaving us barely scraping by.

This was a small town, and that kind of gossip never quieted to anything less than a loud whisper.

But Renee didn’t have a mean bone in her body. She may have been book smart, but she wasn’t terribly socially aware. I didn’t mind. Plus, she was a reliable friend.

I tried waving her away again while I debated my options. During the first twelve minutes of my lunch period, I’d loitered near the trophy case, waiting for Alaric to emerge from the gym while counting the fat red bows zip-tied to every handrail and light pole. Whoever decorated the school for Christmas this year either had too much time on their hands or an attitude problem. Even the rusted-out blue metal benches in the quad got their own limp garlands.

“So . . . a rumble?” Renee asked again, drawing herself up. “I’ll be on your side. Go for the eyes first.”

“Not a rumble.” I shook my head at Renee. “A simple request.”

Adjusting my backpack, I noticed the right shoulder strap had started to fray, little white plastic threads sawing into my shirt. My mother would say it gave me character. My mother said that about everything we couldn’t afford to replace.

“You’re actually going to talk to Alaric? On purpose?” The tension in Renee’s rising shout-whisper matched the ball of stress in my stomach at the thought of really doing this. But what choice did I have? The teacher’s notes were bare-bones, and I knew Alaric’s would have all the extra credit questions spelled out. I needed an A+ on the next test. I needed it.

This was the moment. If I didn’t go over there now, he’d skip off to wherever quarterback, honor roll, golden boys went during lunch. Probably off campus since he could afford it.

Gathering a deep breath, I stepped around the holly bough and slunk across to Alaric’s side of the hall, careful to land on the rubber strip that muffled my footsteps. The crowd had thinned since I’d initiated my lurking, but a few stragglers remained here and there. Similar to Renee watching from the corner, I felt their eyes on me and didn’t think it was my imagination when a hush settled around us.

Meanwhile, Alaric continued setting his folders in his locker, ignorant to my intentions and approach, humming something cheerful. And why wouldn’t he? He was a cheerful guy.

I took a breath and counted. Three, two, one.

“Alaric,” I said, flat as a sugar cookie.

His head jerked up. He turned. He blinked, eyes huge, the color of those blue-flavored freeze-pop tubes my sister still begged for at Doc’s Drug Store.

Alaric straightened and his gaze darted over me a few times, like my appearance had stunned him so much, he questioned whether I was real or a hallucination.

“Alison.” Alaric’s voice had a shade of Texas in it, unlike me. I’d meticulously scrubbed all the Southern from my words in eighth grade.

“Hello.” I let my gaze go as flat as my tone. I refused to say his name. I would never say it. Ever. His calculus notes may have existed, but he did not.

Alaric stood so tall, I was forced to crane my neck up a little to meet his eyes. His hair was wet from the shower or the rain, curling at the tips in deliberate little spirals. His skin had a glow to it, even under the garbage LED lights.

“Uh—Alison—” he started, lifting his hand to scratch the back of his neck. “What can I—”

I cut him off. “Mr. Restivo told me to get your calc notes from this last month. Do you have them?”

He grinned, which made me want to leave immediately. “Are you feeling better?” He sounded like he cared. I despised that this wasn’t an act. He probably did care.

“I didn’t get sick. Do you have the notes?” I heard the sharpness in my voice, and so did he.

He cocked his head, shuffling closer. “Weren’t you in the hospital?”

Holding my ground, I looked past him and at the interior of his locker. “Do you have the notes?”

I sensed the wide-eyed, surprised look seep from his expression. “First tell me how you are.”

“Do you have the notes?”

“Are you okay?”

“Do you have the notes?”

In the corner of my vision, I watched his affable, interested smile completely fall away. “It’s an easy question, Alison. Answer the question.”

“Do you have th—”

“Fine. Whatever,” Alaric ground out, shaking his head as he turned back to his locker. “Yes, I have the notes.”

He sifted through the top shelf, pulling out a battered spiral notebook. Turning to face me, he tapped it against his palm like a cigarette pack.

I held my hand out and waited. And waited. And . . . waited.

When it became clear he was going to make me ask, I pasted on the closest approximation to a smile I could manage while also gritting my teeth and asked, “May I borrow them?”

“Sure,” he said. But he didn’t hand the notebook over. He held it out of my reach, smiling like a game show host. “What do I get in return?”

It was the kind of thing a normal person would laugh at. Meanwhile, given our history, I merely stared at him, hoping my eyes would roast him like a chestnut.

He took that as his cue. “I’m kidding,” he said, but he wasn’t. Not really. “Just—don’t photocopy them, okay? They’re only for you.”

“Do you think I have a Xerox in my backpack?”

He tilted his head and leaned forward, as though to inspect my backpack. “You never know.”

Refusing to prolong this interaction, I plucked the notebook from his grip, feeling the warmth from his hands on the cover.

“How long do you need them?” He still looked at me, I could feel his gaze. I often did. Therefore, I was a superhero at ignoring it.

“Three days should do it,” I said, flipping through to the first dated page. His handwriting was neat, angular, every number and variable sharp as a razor.

Alaric leaned in closer, causing me to look up and flinch back. “What are you doing?”

Lowering his voice as though to keep others from hearing, he pushed his pretty-boy face toward mine and whispered, “Meet me after school at the track and I’ll tell you my conditions.”

I stared at him. “What?”

“The track,” he said, adding a small, shy-looking smile. “After school. You know, the big oval thing with numbers painted on it?”

I closed the notebook with a snap. “No.”

Now he flinched back. “No? Why not?”

I licked my lips, refusing to look at or notice the crowd forming. Spectating. “I have to work. Unlike some people.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. His face went tight at the edges, like he was fighting the urge to apologize, or maybe swallow his tongue.

“Look, you can’t have the notes until we meet and talk,” he said, softer, imploring. “Text me when you’re done with work.”

“I don’t have your number,” I lied. I knew his number. But I didn’t own a cell phone, so I couldn’t text him.

He blinked. “You’re kidding.”

I shrugged.

There was a moment of actual silence. I could hear the clock ticking, the shouts from the gym, the band practicing “Deck the Halls” from the music room (badly). Alaric gathered a deep breath and I got the sense he was having an internal debate. The internal debate quickly turned into a wrestling match, and his electric blue gaze locked with mine began to narrow.

He wasn’t going to let this go. I didn’t have time for this or his BS conditions.

“Forget it,” I said, adding inside my head, And I hope your nog is full of rotten eggs. “I’ll find someone else.”

Thrusting the notebook at him, hard enough he had to catch it or let it fall, I hiked my backpack higher on my shoulder.

He looked confused, a quick flash of frustration, then annoyance. “Ali—” he called after me, his tone stern. “Alison Weston. Stop right there.”

But I was already jogging, around the corner and past Renee, back toward the trophy case, past the tinsel and garland and the zip-tied bows. I kept my head down until I pushed out of the building. My shoulder strap dug a line into my collarbone, rough and persistent.

I told myself I didn’t care. I told myself it didn’t matter, I could find another way. I never had to speak to him again. But my hands were shaking.

I hated that I’d broken my vow and talked to him. I hated that I could still see his face when I closed my eyes, the surprise, the hopefulness, and then the hurt. And underneath it all, the quiet question I hoped he would never ask.

Part 2: Decorate the Walls

My shift at Igor’s Pizza Parlor started at 2:45 PM and typically ended at 6:45 PM, after the sun sank over the parking lot. I tied my apron in the staff closet between a busted mop bucket and a rack of identical black polos that never quite fit anyone. My brain was occupied reviewing the topics we’d covered in AP physics today, about thermodynamics and entropy and the slow expansion of the universe, and how all of that made more sense to me than the social order of this town.

Igor’s Pizza Parlor was located in a miniature strip mall across the street from the car wash. The owner, whose name wasn’t Igor, had a deep spiritual attachment to both neon signs and Christmas, and every year he made his staff hang up the neon Christmas-themed signs he’d special ordered, like the one where Mary’s pregnant belly grew bigger every three seconds, just to flatten again once the end of the loop was reached.

The front counter already seemed mobbed with arguing middle and high schoolers, vying for the tables closest to the arcade games. My manager ignored the kerfuffle while whisper-screaming into the phone. As I neared, I surmised he was attempting to contest a credit card charge his wife had made earlier in the day.

Fishing the notepad from my apron pocket, I walked straight to the front and started seating those in line first.

“In the back, near the Star Wars pinball machine, the table at the end of the Welcher’s Wall. Please.” Three boys about four years younger than me rattled off which was their preferred table. Since they happened to be the first in line, I sat them in the exact spot they’d requested.

Igor’s had decent pizza, but it was the Welcher’s Wall that made the place a destination location for kids—and many adults—of all ages. This was a sacred architectural feature to the town that occupied the entire south side of the dining room.

Legend had it, the wall started as a kind of inside joke between the original Igor and customers who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) pay for their meal. A giant neon WELCH’S GRAPE JUICE sign salvaged from a closed-down diner, hung over a corkboard the length of a Lincoln Town Car. Igor would put nonpaying customers’ names on the corkboard to shame them, saying they’d “Welched” on their bill.

When Igor refused to take down the names unless folks paid, other people started pinning up sticky notes about who owed them money for gas or movie tickets, or IOUs for lost bets and dodged dares. Then it metastasized. Now there were hundreds of notes, some older than me, chronicling every welched bet, every $2 loan left unpaid, every ex-friend’s broken promise. Kids from other towns made pilgrimages to see if their names had landed on the wall. Nobody wanted to end up there. For anyone under eighteen, it was a social death sentence served with extra cheese.

Once every person in line had been placed at a table, I spent the next two hours running between customers, delivering their drinks and meals, juggling demands and ignoring the sexual innuendos tossed at me by boys from my school. Eventually, things settled down, most tables emptied, and while I spent a blessedly quiet moment restocking the napkin dispensers, a bell jingled over the door.

Every time a bell rings . . .

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask the new customers to give me a moment when I looked up.

Alaric Weston.

I watched him shake out his hair and survey the room. A couple of freshman kids near the jukebox started gasping and pointing. He caught my eye, grinned, and pointed at me, mouthing, “Can I talk to you?”

I felt the frown start at my forehead and work its way down like an avalanche, coating my features in frost. Debating whether to hide in the kitchen or the walk-in freezer, I let the napkin dispenser drop to the countertop with a clatter. While I debated, he walked right up to me.

“Ali,” he said, all casual, like we were old friends and not enemies. Like we spoke to each other daily instead of once every three years, and only when I was desperate. “Hey. Do you think you could take a break?”

“No.”

Undeterred, Alaric leaned on the counter, propped his chin on his hand, and smiled at me. “That’s a shame. Because I brought the calculus notes.”

Sighing, I pulled a menu from the rack and slapped it in front of him. “Sit wherever you want. I’ll be with you when I feel like it.”

He laughed and took a seat at booth 8, the table closest to the host stand, presumably so he could watch me avoid him up close. Alaric set his backpack on the seat next to him and put his phone on the table, but didn’t look at either. It wasn’t busy anymore, so he obviously knew I made him wait on purpose. I did a lap through the two remaining tables, checking if anyone needed more dipping sauce or extra forks. Alaric simply waited quietly, twirling a straw between his fingers and watching me like a wildlife photographer with infinite patience.

The thing was, Alaric wasn’t the worst person I knew. He wasn’t even a bad person. He was nice. He was always nice. He was the kind of nice that made me want to scream, because it was ignorant and oppressive and impossible to believe in and even harder to hate.

But my disdain for Alaric Weston was akin to my aversion to Christmas, or how some people hated the taste of cilantro, with ingrained loathing and therefore perpetual avoidance. It wasn’t his fault and there was nothing he could do about it. His life and mine ran parallel in the dumbest, cruelest way.

Therefore, I took my time. I wiped down every table twice, refilled every Parmesan shaker. I drew a snowman on the to-go order chalkboard. Erased it. Drew it again, but this time an evil version that might eat Santa’s elves, with fangs and red eyes and blood dripping from its gaping mouth. Finally, when I couldn’t stall any longer, I grabbed a pen and a fresh order pad and stalked over to Alaric’s table.

He smiled again, soft and warm and welcoming. “You’re not busy right now, are you?”

“What do you want?”

“A medium pepperoni,” he said, then added, “and also about ten minutes of your time.”

“And to drink?” I didn’t lift my eyes from the pad.

“Whatever you want, bring two. My treat.”

I considered for a second, then said, “Fine,” and began to turn away, planning to bring him a triple shot espresso.

But then my boss called over from the front counter, “Go ahead and take a break, I’ll make the pizza and bring it out.”

I frowned. “I’m fine, Mr. G.”

He pointed a pen at me. “Sit down, Alison. You work too much. A break is good for you. Sit with your, uh, friend.”

Mr. G knew better than to call Alaric my brother, and he almost never let me take a break. I sent Alaric a side-eye, pondering whether some of the wonderkid’s luck had flaked off in my direction. Either way, my arches were killing me, and Mr. G didn’t mind, so I wasn’t going to say no.

I slid into the booth across from Alaric. “You have until the pizza arrives. What do you want?”

He leaned back, his gaze moving over me. “I will let you borrow the notes for three days. But you have to give me three of your days in return.”

I stared at him. “What does that mean? What three days?”

“You give me an IOU for three days, to be determined in the future.”

I snorted. “I’m not doing that. What if you make me clean your giant stupid house? Or use the days to humiliate me?”

He looked down. “I would never do that.” The words absolutely reeked with sincerity. Then he lifted his eyes. They hooked into me immediately, drawing me in, beseeching and soft, setting my stupid heart racing.

I believed him. It wasn’t only that I’d never seen Alaric go out of his way to hurt someone. He didn’t have to. He always won without trying.

But I believed him because he’d always, always, always been super careful and gentle and kind to me. I knew he’d confronted guys on his football team when he heard them discussing me in the locker room. I knew he’d tried to cover the cost of my lunch a few times when my account ran low. I knew it was him who’d left a bouquet of my favorite flowers—red tulips—in front of my locker last Valentine’s Day without a card or a note to indicate who it was from. I even knew he’d been my Secret Santa our sophomore year and had bought me a ridiculously expensive graphing calculator. I’d needed it and I couldn’t afford it and he’d gifted to me and never once said anything.

So, yeah. I believed him. And if I hadn’t believed him before, the way he looked at me now couldn’t have been more convincing. Alaric leaned forward slightly, his gaze lowering to my mouth for a split second as he licked his lips.

“Ali, I’ve always —”

Just then, the bell on the front door dinged, announcing another customer. A woman in scrubs with two little boys. I shot out of my seat, relieved and grateful for the interruption.

I got the new family settled, grabbed a booster seat from the stack in the corner, and brought menus. While I waited for their drink order, I watched Alaric out of the corner of my eye. He hadn’t moved. He sat there, drumming his fingers. But his eyes were no longer following my every moment. His gaze had grown introspective and he wore a slight frown.

I brought waters for the boys and a Sprite for the mom, then ducked into the kitchen to think. Three days. He wanted three days of my life, to be spent however he wanted. It felt like one of those devil’s bargain stories you read in English class, except the devil had blue eyes and was our school’s quarterback and my father loved him a lot more than he loved me.

I poured Alaric a water instead of an espresso. Bringing Alaric an extra caffeinated beverage to mess with his sleep schedule wasn’t right. He had practice in the mornings, and he actually needed the rest.

When I finally went back to his table, the pizza was already there, steaming and glossy with oil. Mr. G had cut it into perfect even slices, like he was showing off for Mr. Weston’s beloved stepson. Alaric reached for a slice, but waited until I sat down again before taking a bite.

Crossing my arms, I glared at him, careful to keep my defenses up this time. “Fine. I agree. Give me the notes.”

He shook his head. “You have to write me an IOU first.”

I sighed and pulled a pen out of my apron. I found a napkin and wrote, in my neatest print:

Alison Weston IOU for three days, to Alaric Weston, time TBD. No gross or humiliating stuff.

I slid the napkin across the table.

He didn’t take it. Instead, he said, “If you don’t honor the IOU for these three days, I’ll put you on the Welcher’s Wall.”

The words hit me harder than I expected. Being on the wall wasn’t only social death, it was shame. If my name went up there, I’d be a target for teasing and ridicule. People would come in just to see it, take pictures, post them, leave copies of the photos on my locker.

I already had to work twice as hard as everyone else and valued my invisibility.

Standing, I picked up the napkin, ripped it in half, and then crumpled it. Dropping it onto the table, I moved to walk past him. “Never mind. Forget it.”

He caught my arm, not hard, but enough to stop me, and the feel of his hand around my wrist sent an unwelcomed jolt up my arm.

I yanked my arm away.

“Wait. Ali, wait.” Alaric held up both hands, palms out. “Why don’t you think about it? My offer doesn’t have an expiration date. If you want the notes, you know where to find me. All it will cost you is three days.”

I wanted to tell him to go to hell. I wanted to throw the pizza in his face. But I simply stood there, burning up, scowling as he took another bite. And Alaric watched me openly, like his request had been perfectly reasonable.

When I finally went back to the counter, the grape juice sign buzzed, tinting the whole dining room purple. I looked up at it, and then at the wall below, thick with the names of people who had forfeited or lost. People who were losers.

And I made myself a promise. My name would never end up on that wall. I would never be a loser.

Part 3: Under the Mistletoe

Finals week. The phrase had always filled me with a sense of predatory purpose, the way I imagined it must feel to a shark when it caught the scent of blood in open water. In theory, it was about closing the semester and demonstrating knowledge. For me, it was a chance to prove my academic dominance.

This particular Friday before finals found me standing at the end of a quarter-mile driveway, cold air stinging my cheeks. The sky had the milky-pink color it only got after a light snow, the ground glistening and muddy where the December sun had already melted last night’s efforts. I was wearing my only halfway-decent pair of jeans, a hand-me-down sweater, and the blue windbreaker that made me look like an assistant manager at an outdoor equipment store. Behind me, the world looked like the rest of our small Texas town. Rolling hills, brown, sprawling.

But ahead, it was straight-up Christmas Narnia.

The Westons’ house took up nearly the same square footage as the school’s gymnasium. Today, the place had gone full North Pole. At least a dozen Christmas trees glowed through the front-facing windows, each visible from the drive, each themed—red-and-white, gold-and-green, the blue tree in the leftmost turret, and, above all, the immense “real” tree that dominated the foyer and was visible through the triple-height glass above the entry. They’d wound the entire roofline with LED icicles, and the driveway lamps were wrapped in what had to be literal miles of faux evergreen garland. Two nutcracker soldiers flanked the front door, each six feet tall and militarily menacing. If the Christmas budget for this house didn’t crack the GDP of a small island nation, I’d eat my own scarf. Except, I didn’t have on a scarf.

I leaned my bike against the stone wall and considered, for the hundredth time, whether this would be worth it. Did I really need these notes? Was there any other way?

No. I’d tried every other calculus student. None had the most important missing days, when the extra credit questions had been detailed. Or if they did, they weren’t willing to share them with me. I had one chance left.

Since I didn’t want Alaric Weston to spot me hesitating on his property, I crunched up the walkway, rang the bell, and waited. A few minutes passed, during which I gave myself a motivational speech about how this moment would last for an instant, but an A+ would last for an eternity.

I heard a sound, then felt a chill shiver down my spine as the massive front door creaked open. The person answering was not Alaric or his younger brother, nor a parent. Instead, it was a maid. She wore the uniform, which seemed aggressively on the nose given the current millennia.

“Can I help you?” she said, voice friendly.

“Hi. I’m here to see Alaric,” I managed. My breath made a pale cloud between us.

She sized me up. “And you are?”

“Please say it’s Ali. From school.”

She nodded. “Sounds good. Do you want to come in?”

The wind knifed through my jeans and the icicles on the eaves began a slow, threatening drip.

“No, thank you,” I said, and meant it. If my biological father was inside the house, I didn’t want to run into him.

Not that he would recognize you. . . But he might recognize the name ‘Alison.’ Which was why I’d given the name Ali instead.

Shooting me an exasperated look, she clicked her tongue, obviously not having it. “It’s really cold outside. Why don’t you at least come in and wait in the foyer. I’ll go get him and he’ll be down in a minute.”

She stepped aside and her look brooked no argument. Therefore, hesitantly, I crossed the threshold into warmth and, instantly, the smell of cinnamon and pine and whatever magical, all-consuming air freshener rich people imported for the holidays smacked me in the nose. The entryway was as over-the-top as expected: black-and-white marble floors, that monstrous Christmas tree rising up from the center, decorated with silver bells and white ribbon and at least a thousand tiny snowflakes. If you looked up, the ceiling was painted with an actual fresco of a sky, complete with a rendering of cherubs. Probably hand-painted by some European artist who’d been flown in to paint this ceiling.

The maid vanished into the back. I heard her calling for Alaric and I kept my hands in my jacket pockets, my eyes glued to the floor. If my biological father did happen upon me, I’d simply . . . ignore him. What could he do? Stop making child support payments? Who cared? Through some magic of bookkeeping, placing his businesses in his new wife’s name, tax shelters, and legal witchcraft, he’d never paid more than $500 monthly my entire life. And now that I was eighteen, he only paid $250 for my younger sister.

With these bitter thoughts in my brain, I hovered in the grandiose space. It was like waiting for a doctor to call you back, except instead of worrying about a diagnosis, I worried about how much of my pride I’d have left after this.

Moments passed. My eyes kept ticking back to the tree, the tiny mechanical train that circled the base, the monogrammed stockings hanging from the stair railing, the garland that trailed up all three stories of the circular staircase. For a second, I let myself imagine what it would be like to have a home that looked like this, where winter break didn’t mean twelve extra shifts or running errands for my mom’s friends, but instead meant an actual break.

Then, without warning, Alaric appeared. He descended the stairs in long, sure strides, wearing jeans and a white thermal. The only thing about him that looked less than catalog-perfect was his hair, which looked like he’d run both hands through it, either because he’d recently gotten up or because he’d failed to brush it since coming home from school.

He carried his calculus notes in one hand, and he slowed when he saw me. “Alison.”

I waited until he descended the last stair and crossed to me before holding up a folded piece of paper I’d placed in my jacket earlier. “Here’s the IOU. Give me the notes. I’ll have them back to you on Monday.”

I shoved the folded paper at him. My heart raced, but I managed to keep my voice flat and professional.

He didn’t take the note right away. Instead, he took one more step closer and stopped inside arm’s reach, the two of us standing in the full, embarrassing light of the chandelier. He looked at the IOU, then at me.

He didn’t smirk, didn’t gloat. Instead, he smiled small, a gentle upturn of his mouth, almost sad. Maybe he knew exactly how hard this was for me, and that thought made everything worse. I didn’t want his pity. The only thing I wanted from Alaric Weston was his calculus notes.

Then, with the stage presence of a guy who’d grown up in mansions, he looked up at the ceiling and then back at me. For one insane moment, I thought he was going to say something idiotic about “atmosphere” or the weather or the dumb cherub mural, but instead, he pointed up.

I followed his line of sight. Mistletoe. Hung directly above us, suspended from a little ribbon, twirling slowly with the faintest motion of the warm air from the vents.

Frowning at the green leaves and the white berries, I returned my attention to Alaric and expected a cheesy line, a dare, some attempt at negotiation. He stood there, eyes clear, mouth curved, waiting.

Then, gently, not touching me anywhere else, he leaned in and kissed me.

It was the briefest, softest thing, a collision of cold noses and warmer lips, the barest pressure. If a kiss could be gentlemanly, this kiss was extremely gentlemanly. It was well-bred, well-mannered, tasted like sincerity and gentleness, and also seemed to ask a question punctuated by please. When he pulled away, his eyes wide and searching, the please shone at me from behind his blue irises, too.

“I, uh—” he croaked, and swallowed with what looked like difficulty. “Alison, please don’t be mad.”

My chest filled with fire. “Why?”

He grimaced. “Why what?”

“Why did you do that? And don’t give me some bullshit answer about the mistletoe.”

His grimace fell away and was replaced with something infinitely harder and intense. “You know why,” he ground out, the three words sounding like an accusation.

“I really fucking don’t, Alaric.”

“Yes,” he said on a breath, his expression striking me as both frustrated and pained, “you do.” He nodded and stood straighter, and the determined tilt to his chin set off alarm bells in my chest; I barely heard him as he added, “But I’ll tell you if you finally want to hear it. I’ve always—”

Grabbing his face, I kissed him. I kissed him to stop him. An instinct. An act of selfish self-preservation in a moment of near panic.

I didn’t want to hear his “it.” I didn’t want him to say it, I didn’t want to know it, I didn’t want anything from him at all except his complete and utter failure at absolutely everything. I wanted him to fail, to make nothing but stupid mistakes, and be a horrible disappointment, a cruel embarrassment, to my biological father so that maybe, just maybe, that evil bastard would regret leaving my mom, and my sister, and me. That’s all I wanted from Alaric. That was my “it.”

So, I stopped Alaric from talking . . . with my mouth. And, apparently, my tongue because it found and stroked against his. And my nails were also used in the pursuit to stop him when they skimmed along his jaw, eventually digging into the back of his neck and scratching lightly down his nape as I wrapped myself more completely around him, deepening the kiss that would stave off his “it” and save me from having to think about Alaric Weston as anything but an enemy.

Except—now that he and I were kissing and my arms were twisting around his neck and our bodies were plastered together and his large hands were holding me to him like a life preserver, and a deep, lovely rumble vibrated out of him as our tongues tangled and teased, and I whimpered a little because he tasted like chocolate-and-mint candy, only hotter and sweeter—as much as I wanted Alaric to be a failure, I also maybe didn’t mind anything about this either. My body felt so good, so light, my head blissfully empty of everything except: more, more, more and yes, yes, yes.

A thought: Perhaps it would be okay if Alaric were a complete and utter failure at absolutely everything except kissing.

And when I finally let him go, I bit down on my own lip to keep it from trembling.

Snatching the notes from his hand, I tossed the IOU into his chest and said, “Here’s your IOU.”

He caught it reflexively, visibly shell-shocked.

I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a backward glance, leaving his mansion at a slow walk, flinging the door open so forcefully that I heard it ricochet off a hard surface. I mounted my bike, the cold metal burning through my jeans, and pedaled so hard down the drive that I nearly lost traction in the muddy melt.

Tears burned my eyes, partly from the wind, partly from rage, and partly from the sick, collapsing feeling in my chest I’d had every time I remembered Christmas Eve, so many years ago, when Duke Weston destroyed my family and abandoned us.

I would make him pay for that one day. I would come back to this town, to this very house, and ruin Christmas for him the way he’d ruined it for us. It didn’t matter if it took ten years or twenty.

Prom King is coming March 5th, 2026

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