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CHAPTER 41 - FAMILY MATTERS

Author: Dirty Diana
last update publish date: 2026-03-09 05:28:28

I sat on the edge of Rhys's bed and watched my world tilt sideways and did nothing to stop it.

Because what could I do? What was the plan – the plan I'd never made, the conversation I'd never prepared for, the exit strategy I'd never built because I was too busy tracing tattoos in the dark and pretending that love was a fortress when it was really just a house with no locks? I'd known this was coming. From the very first night – the bar, the bathroom, the stranger who turned out to be the one p
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  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 77 - DAD

    The sunflowers were wrong.Too tall. Too bright. The ones Dad grew in the backyard were shorter – stubby, with petals that curled at the edges like they were shy about being looked at. These bodega sunflowers were aggressive. Cheerful in a way that felt like an insult when you were buying them for a dead man.I bought them anyway. Carried them back to the dorm wrapped in brown paper. Set them on my desk and stared at them while the room got dark around me.Six years. Six years since the phone call that split my life into before and after. Six years since Mom's voice on the other end – wrecked, unrecognizable, the voice of a woman who'd just had the floor pulled out from under her entire existence. Six years since I sat in the principal's office at fourteen and thought he made me eggs this morning, this doesn't make sense, he made me eggs.I picked up the scissors. Started cutting the stems at an angle – forty-five degrees, sharp blade. The way he taught me when I was seven and we were

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 76 - POWER SHIFT

    He showed up at my door vibrating.Not angry – worse. Restless. The coiled, buzzing energy of a man who'd spent a week being investigated for something he didn't do and had just been cleared by a system that shouldn't have doubted him in the first place. His jaw was tight. His hands were opening and closing at his sides. His eyes had that flat, dangerous look – the one that usually preceded a fight or broken furniture or sex rough enough to leave marks on both of us.I knew what he wanted. Could read it in every line of his body – the need to hit something, fuck something, burn the energy out before it burned him from the inside. The old pattern. The one we'd been running since the beginning. Anger to contact. Contact to collision. Collision to the temporary silence that felt like peace but wasn't.Not tonight."Inside," I said. Stepped back. Let him in. Locked the door.He paced. Two steps toward the window, two steps back. Hands through his hair. The apartment too small for what was

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 75 - THE TEST

    NAOMI’S POVThey pulled him out of practice on a Wednesday.I was in the fourth row. Same spot. Laptop open, coffee going cold, eyes on number seventeen the way they always were – tracking him across the ice like a compass needle that only knew one direction. He was skating well. Controlled. The three days on the hallway floor had done something to him – softened the edges, quieted the noise. He was passing again. Communicating. Cole had clapped him on the shoulder during warmups and the tension in my chest had loosened for the first time in a week.Then the doors opened.Two men in athletic department polos walked onto the ice surface. Not coaches. Administrative. Clipboards. Lanyards. The specific, officious energy of people who were about to ruin someone's afternoon and had already rehearsed how they'd phrase it.Coach Harlan skated to meet them. A conversation I couldn't hear – thirty seconds, maybe less. Harlan's face changed. Not surprise. Resignation. The expression of a man be

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 74 - MY IDENTITY

    RHYS’ POVThe door closed. I looked at my hands.Same hands. Same knuckles. A few hours ago they'd held her face in the shower like something I'd ruin if I squeezed too hard. Now they'd proved me right.Stop.Her voice. Flat. Careful. The voice of a woman who'd practiced being calm around dangerous men.Ten steps. That's how far I got before my legs went. Back against the wall. Floor. Elbows on knees. Hands in front of me, palms up, because I couldn't let them close. If they closed they'd become what they were in that room. What they'd been on the ice. What they'd been my whole life when I stopped paying attention.I stayed.Not a decision. Couldn't move. Couldn't text her. Couldn't go home to an apartment that would be dark and quiet and full of the shower where I'd held her like she mattered and the kitchen where she'd laughed and the bed where her hand rested on Orion like it meant something.Her face. I kept seeing her face. Not the fear. The recognition. She'd looked at me and se

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 73 - STOP

    We were arguing about dishes.That's what I need you to understand. Dishes. A pan in the sink I'd asked him to wash three times that he kept saying he'd get to and hadn't. Stupid. The kind of fight that means nothing on its face and everything underneath because nobody screams about a pan unless they're screaming about something else."I said I'd do it–""You said that yesterday. And the day before. And last week about the scholarship meeting you didn't tell me about, so forgive me if I said I would doesn't carry the weight it used to."That landed. I watched it hit. His jaw tightened. His eyes went flat. And I knew I'd crossed the line from the pan into everything else – Richard, the lies, the pattern, the version of him I'd compared to Caleb in his own kitchen – but I couldn't stop because I was tired and scared and anger was easier than admitting I didn't know how to fix us."Don't.""Don't what? Be honest?""Don't use that against me every time you're mad about something else.""T

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 72 - STRESS RELIEF

    I found him outside the science building.He was leaning against the wall with his bag over one shoulder and his phone in his hand and that look on his face – the one he'd been wearing since Richard's visit, since I'd stood in his kitchen and compared him to Caleb. Tight jaw. Distant eyes. The look of a man carrying things he wouldn't put down.I grabbed his arm."Come with me."He looked at my hand on his sleeve. Then at my face. "Where?""Just come.""For what?"Honest answer? I didn't know. My body knew. My brain was still catching up. Everything had been so heavy for so long – Richard, the lies, the pattern, the conversation I'd replayed forty times in the car with my forehead on the steering wheel. I was tired of heavy. Tired of meaningful. Tired of every single moment between us carrying the weight of something we'd have to talk about later.I pulled him across the quad. Through the side entrance of my building. Up the stairs because the elevator took forever and I didn't want

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 42 - HALF THE STORY

    I sat in the driveway for eleven minutes before I could make my hands stop shaking long enough to turn off the engine.My mom's voice was still in my ears – how COULD you and I'm finally happy and fix it – playing on a loop that got louder every time I tried to think past it. I'd driven here becaus

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-31

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 39 - SLOWLY CHANGING

    Rhys got a B+ on the American Literature midterm.Three nights of flashcards and highlighters and him sprawled across his apartment floor complaining that Fitzgerald was "a rich drunk who wrote about other rich drunks" while I threatened to leave if he didn't focus. He'd focus for twenty minutes. T

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-29

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 38 - EXPOSED

    It started that way. It didn't stay that way.Seven words. By Thursday morning they were everywhere. Screenshotted on Instagram stories with heart emojis and fire emojis and the crying-face emoji that could mean twelve different things depending on who was posting it. Quoted in the campus confessio

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-29

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 34 - NO WORDS

    He followed me home.I didn't invite him. Didn't ask. Just walked across campus with my arms wrapped around myself and the words captain's leftovers still ringing in my skull and Rhys Maddox three steps behind me like a shadow that refused to detach."I'm going back.""You're not.""One conversatio

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-27
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