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CHAPTER 23 - NOT A COINCIDENCE
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2026-03-05 15:19:10
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PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 25 - OUR FAVORITE LANGUAGE
"–and you weren't there, Rhys. That's the point.""I was at practice.""You're always at practice. And Caleb is always exactly where I am, saying exactly the right thing at exactly the right time, and I'm standing there being defended by the person who destroyed me because the person I'm actually with couldn't be bothered to show up."His jaw tightened. He was leaning against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, doing that thing where his whole body went still and controlled while his eyes gave away everything. We'd been going back and forth for ten minutes and the apartment felt smaller with every sentence."I don't need to perform for people.""It's not performing. It's showing up. There's a difference.""Caleb showing up isn't kindness, Naomi. It's strategy. He defended you because it makes him look good and me look absent. That's the whole play.""I know that. You think I don't know that? But knowing it doesn't change the fact that Jade stood in front of a dozen people and called me
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 24 - HIS NEW PLACEHOLDER
Jade struck at the interdepartmental mixer, because Jade always struck in public where the audience could double as witnesses who'd later say she was just joking, you're being sensitive.A group of us standing near the drinks table – Sienna, two girls from my English seminar, a guy from Zara's study group. Casual. Low-stakes. Then Jade appeared with a cup of something pink and a smile sharp enough to cut glass."Naomi! Haven't seen you in forever." She looked me up and down – the kind of scan that catalogued every flaw and filed it for later. "Love the outfit. Very... comfortable.""Thanks, Jade.""So how's things with the transfer?" She said transfer the way you'd say rash. "Must be exciting, going from the team captain to the team... what is Maddox exactly? The loose cannon?" She flipped her hair. Turned to the group like she was sharing a fun fact. "I just think it's brave. Downgrading from Caleb Park to the guy who got expelled for almost killing someone. That takes commitment."T
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 23 - NOT A COINCIDENCE
Caleb Park was a ghost I couldn't exorcise.Monday: library study group for Dr. Kim's midterm. I'd chosen this group specifically because Caleb wasn't in it – different section, different schedule, no reason to be there. He showed up anyway. Laptop and notes and that golden smile, sliding into the chair across from me like he'd been expected. "Room for one more? Kim's exam is brutal this year." Then, twenty minutes in, unprompted: "Remember when we pulled an all-nighter for Kim's class sophomore year? You threw a textbook at my head because I wouldn't stop quoting the wrong theorist."The table laughed. I watched Rhys's name flash on my phone – how's studying? – and felt the precise, surgical way Caleb had just made four years of history sound like warmth instead of a cage.Wednesday: campus coffee shop. My corner, my time slot. Except Caleb had Miles with him – my brother perched on a stool with hot chocolate and the big marshmallows, grinning so wide it cracked something in my chest
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 22 - HOLDING ON
I'd never been on a motorcycle before.He didn't ask if I was scared. Just handed me the helmet, waited for me to put it on, and swung his leg over the bike like he'd been born on one. The engine rumbled to life between his thighs – low, deep, a vibration I felt in my teeth before I even climbed on."Hold on to me," he said. Not a suggestion.My arms went around his waist. My chest pressed flat against his back and my thighs locked against his hips and I could feel everything – the leather of his jacket under my fingers, the warmth of his body underneath, the hard lines of his stomach through his shirt. The tattoos I'd memorized with my mouth were inches from my hands.He pulled out of the lot and I held on so tight my knuckles went white.Thirty seconds of pure terror. The wind hitting my face, the ground blurring, the world tilting on turns that felt like falling. Then something shifted – not in him, in me. The fear thinned out and underneath it was something I didn't expect. Freedo
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 21 - WHAT ARE WE?
"You're staring at your phone again."Sienna didn't look up from her flashcards. She didn't need to – she had a sixth sense for when I was spiraling and an even sharper one for when the spiral involved a boy."I'm not staring. I'm reading.""You're rereading a text from Rhys for the fourth time. That's not reading. That's forensic analysis."She wasn't wrong. The text was two words – see you tomorrow – and I'd been trying to decode the emotional temperature of a period versus no period for eleven minutes. This was who I was now. A girl who analyzed punctuation from a boy who was technically almost her stepbrother.Growth.The thing about Rhys and me was that everyone on campus knew what we were except us. He walked me to class. Found me after every game, still damp from the ice, and slung his arm around my shoulder like a claim. When I shivered outside the arena one night he pulled his jacket off and put it on me without asking and without making it a moment – just did it, like keepin
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 20 - THIS ISN'T OVER
Things were good. That was the problem.Good was dangerous. Good meant I was forgetting to be careful – letting my guard slip, letting the walls stay down, letting myself exist in the space between fake and real without forcing a definition. We studied in room 3B three times a week and his foot always found mine under the table and I always let it stay and neither of us talked about what he'd said against the wall outside the rink.I don't want this to be fake anymore.I hadn't answered. He hadn't asked again. But the words sat between us like a lit match on a paper tablecloth – ignored, undiscussed, quietly burning through everything underneath.The blog was the only place I could be honest.I wrote at night, after Sienna fell asleep, the screen glow turning my dorm room blue. Anonymous posts about wanting things that could burn your life down. About kissing someone whose last name you might share someday. About tracing tattoos in the dark and learning someone's history through their
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