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Chapter 46: Gym Doors
publish date:
2026-03-23 07:39:15
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CRAVING MY FORBIDDEN STEPBROTHER Chapter 47: Playing arm
One of Cain’s teammates grabs my arm in the corridor outside the gym. A year above me, his face carrying the look of someone who has seen something he can’t make sense of yet. “They’re saying it wasn’t clean,” he says. “Someone in that ring was carrying something. It went for his arm on purpose.” The words don’t land all at once. They come in pieces, each one worse than the last. Not an accident. His arm. On purpose. I pull free and push through the gym doors and don’t look back. The noise inside is wrong, not a crowd watching a fight but the stunned quiet of people who have just witnessed something and haven’t found the language for it yet. I push through anyway, shoulder first, through the gaps, through the people who don’t move fast enough, not saying anything, just moving until I’m through the last of them and I can see the ring and the floor beside it. He’s down. Half sitting, head dropped forward, his coach crouched over him. Blood above his eye. His kit dark with sweat. Hi
CRAVING MY FORBIDDEN STEPBROTHER Chapter 46: Gym Doors
Layla The gym doors are right there and I am not moving. Three minutes and forty seconds. I know because I keep checking the clock above the water fountain, watching the second hand like it’s going to change my mind from entering in there, for taking this reckless step i planned to take. Inside, the crowd is loud, the noise of a fight hitting its peak, and I am standing in a corridor with my hand not quite on the door. I know why. Walking through those doors makes me a girl watching her stepbrother fight, and I have spent months being careful about what things look like. Months keeping distance and choosing Tyler and showing up to every family dinner and performing the version of myself that is fine, that has always been fine. The scholarship. My mother’s face when she talks about Marcus. Everything we built, everything that stays intact as long as I keep my feet in this corridor. Being with Cain means none of that survives, and I have always known that, and still I am standin
CRAVING MY FORBIDDEN STEPBROTHER Chapter 45: Tournament
Layla The pasta has gone cold. I’ve known for about three minutes but I keep moving my fork through it anyway, because it gives my hands something to do and my hands need something to do or they’re going to give me away. His father is talking about the beach house. Spring break. Four days, the four of us, open water and a shared roof and no school corridors to disappear into. My mother is already nodding, her hand moving toward her phone before Marcus has even finished the sentence, checking availability probably, or looking up what to pack. “Layla.” She turns to me. “What do you think? Are you in?” Four days of Cain Russo across every table, in every room. Coffee in a kitchen with no exits. Dinner on a porch with nowhere to look that isn’t him, knowing what I know now about what his hands feel like and what his voice sounds like when there’s nobody left to perform for. I have spent the last four days timing my exits. “I’m not sure yet,” I say. My mother’s face does something
CRAVING MY FORBIDDEN STEPBROTHER Chapter 44: Avoidance
Layla The bell hasn’t rung yet. I know because I’ve been counting. Timing my exits between periods with the precision of someone who has something to avoid. Third period ends, I wait four minutes, the hallway clears, I move fast and I don’t look up and I get to fourth period before anyone else and I sit at the back and I breathe. Four days of this. Four days of waking up before the house stirs and going to bed after his light goes off and finding seventeen different reasons to be somewhere he isn’t. Four days of dinner plates and careful small talk and passing the salt without making eye contact and telling myself it’s fine, I just need time, I just need to think. I just need to figure out how to look at Cain Russo across a breakfast table without remembering exactly what his hands feel like in the dark. I haven’t figured it out yet. I know we just got to a place that made more sense than it ever has with Cain and that was what scared me. “Wednesday,” Zara says beside me. She
CRAVING MY FORBIDDEN STEPBROTHER Chapter 43: Sack
“Get your hands off her.” They both turn. Jace’s face shifts from rage to something worse. Amusement. “Well, well.” He doesn’t let go of Zara. “Come to save your pathetic friend?” “I’m not going to say it again.” I’m close enough to touch them now. “Let her go.” “Or what?” He’s smiling. Actually smiling. “You’ll run to a teacher? We both know how well that worked out for you last time.” There’s a version of me from freshman year that would have flinched at that. That would have felt it land and taken a step back. That version is gone. “No.” I cross my arms. “I’ll tell Coach Anderson exactly what I just watched you do. What you’ve been doing.” The smile falters. “You didn’t see anything—” “I saw you hit her. I heard you threaten her. I watched you put your hands on her.” I hold his eyes. “That’s enough.” “It’s none of your business—” “It became my business when you touched someone I care about.” One step closer. “So here’s what happens. You let her go. You walk away. You leave her alo
CRAVING MY FORBIDDEN STEPBROTHER Chapter 42: Zara
The door swings shut. Her footsteps go fast down the hall and then they’re gone, and the silence that settles is so complete I can hear us both breathing. I move first. Push off the wall. Yank the door open. Step into the hallway. Empty. Both directions. Just the noise bleeding up from somewhere above and the ugly corridor light and no Zara. She’s fast when she wants to be. I stand there with one hand on the doorframe and my heart doing something loud and uneven in my chest. Not just because of Zara. Because of all of it. What just happened in that room. What it means. The fact that I have absolutely no idea what to do with any of it. She heard everything. She saw everything. She knows. “Hey.” Cain’s hand closes around my wrist. Not hard. Just there. Pulling me back inside. “Leave it.” “She knows—” “I know.” “She’s going to tell someone. She’s going to tell Tyler or post it or—” “Layla.” Quiet. Even. “Look at me.” I look at him. He’s watching my face the way he always wat
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