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CHAPTER 53 - MOM

Author: Dirty Diana
last update publish date: 2026-03-16 03:03:16

She was sitting at the kitchen table when I came downstairs.

Coffee in front of her. Both hands wrapped around the mug. Not drinking – holding. The way people hold things when they need an anchor and the nearest one is ceramic. She was wearing the flannel pajamas again. Second day in a row. Whatever was happening inside my mother was big enough to make armour feel too heavy.

I poured myself coffee. Sat across from her. The kitchen was quiet – Miles at school, the house empty in the way houses a
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  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 70 - LIKE HIM

    NAOMI’S POVI was wearing his shirt.That's what I keep coming back to when I replay it. Not the words, not the silence after, not the way his hands shook for twenty minutes straight. The shirt. Grey, threadbare, smelled like his soap and his skin and the night before. I was standing in his kitchen with coffee in one hand and my phone in the other, scrolling through nothing, feeling the kind of quiet that only exists the morning after someone holds you like you're the last good thing.The door opened without a knock.Richard Maddox walked into his son's apartment the way he walked into everything – like he owned it. Like the space rearranged itself around him out of obligation. Expensive coat. Car keys still in hand. Eyes that swept the room and catalogued every detail in under three seconds.Me. The shirt. The coffee. My bare legs. The two mugs on the counter.His expression didn't change. That was the thing about Richard – he never gave you the satisfaction of a reaction. Everything

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 69 - MIDNIGHT THOUGHTS

    RHYS’ POVThe water was too hot. I kept it that way.The burn was the only thing that worked. Not ice, not running, not the bag in the corner I'd punched until my knuckles split last week and taped up before she could see. Hot water on my shoulders, my back, my neck. Skin turning red. And for three, maybe four minutes the noise went quiet enough to breathe.The noise sounded like my father.You're a disappointment. You're dangerous. You're exactly like me and that's the part you can't stand.I braced my hands on the tile. Water down my face. Tried not to think about the freshman. Thought about him anyway.The check was too hard. I knew it the second my shoulder connected. He went into the boards and the sound echoed and I felt nothing. That's the part. Not guilt. Not remorse. Nothing. The cold satisfaction of a body doing what it was built to do.The guilt came later. Always later. I was sitting in the locker room after everyone left, staring at my hands. Seeing them the way the kid s

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 68 - HEAVY WEAPONS

    It came back to her through Cole. Because everything came back through Cole eventually – the quiet goalie who noticed everything and said nothing until saying something became necessary.Rhys was already in the apartment when I arrived Tuesday evening. Standing in the kitchen. Not sitting – standing. The posture of a man who'd been pacing and had stopped when he heard my key in the lock. His face was the dangerous kind of calm. The kind that looked like stillness from across the room and felt like a loaded weapon up close."You had an honest talk with Caleb."Not a question. A statement. Delivered flat, each word placed carefully, the way you place stones on a scale when you're measuring something you're afraid to know the weight of."What?""Cole heard it from two different guys at practice today. That you and Caleb had a heart-to-heart. That you called him when things got hard. That you feel safe enough to go to him when you need to talk." His jaw tightened. "His words. Making the r

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 67 - LIES TO PROTECT

    It started with a sentence Sienna didn't know was a grenade.We were in the dorm. Saturday evening. She was getting ready for Cole's game – the not as a friend game, the one she'd changed outfits for three times while pretending she hadn't – and I was on my bed editing my column when she said it. Casually. Offhandedly. The way people deliver information that will rearrange your entire week without knowing they've lit the fuse."Cole was bummed about practice being cancelled yesterday. He'd been working on some new save technique and wanted to test it."My fingers stopped on the keyboard. "Practice was cancelled?""Yeah. Something with the rink – ice maintenance or a scheduling conflict or something. Cole said the whole team had the afternoon off."The whole team. The afternoon off. Yesterday. The same yesterday when Rhys had texted me at 2 PM – can't make the reading, practice runs late, sorry – and I'd said no worries and gone alone and read my piece to a room that didn't include him

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 66 - THE MASK

    I let him in.Not because the apology was good – it wasn't. It came out sideways and defensive, more explanation than remorse, delivered while he stood in my doorway with his hands in his pockets and his jaw doing the thing it did when sincerity was costing him physical pain."I shouldn't have disappeared. But you compared me to Caleb and I–""Needed space. I know. Three days of it.""I'm not good at–""I know what you're not good at, Rhys."Silence. Him in the doorway. Me in the room. The distance between us measured in days and fights and the accumulating weight of patterns that kept repeating no matter how many times we named them.I was tired. Not the kind that sleep fixes – the bone-deep kind that comes from loving someone who requires constant translation. From decoding silences and interpreting shutdowns and doing the emotional labour of two people because one of them had never been taught how to carry his half."Come in," I said. Not warmth. Not forgiveness. Just exhaustion ch

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 65 - PERSONAS

    "What did you say to him Rhys?"He was still damp from the ice, bag over his shoulder, hair pushed back. The hallway outside the locker room was empty – just us and the fluorescent lights and the question I'd been holding since I watched a nineteen-year-old freshman skate away from Rhys Maddox with his head down and his shoulders caved in like someone had scooped out his confidence with a spoon."He needed to toughen up.""He's nineteen.""This isn't a nursery."Flat. Dismissive. The voice of the version of Rhys the campus was afraid of – cold, cutting, a man who left marks with his mouth and called it mentoring. I'd watched from the fourth row. Watched him check a kid half his size into the boards so hard the sound bounced off the rafters. Watched him lean in close and say something I couldn't hear but didn't need to – the kid's body told the whole story as he skated away with the look of someone who'd just learned that the person he admired thought he was nothing.Even Cole looked u

  • 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

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 32 - PAYING ATTENTION

    The campus literary magazine came out on a Thursday.I found it in the English building – stacked by the door in a neat pile, the cover a muted blue with black text. My piece was on page fourteen. Anonymous, like always. No name, no photo, just the words I'd bled onto a screen at midnight sitting i

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-26

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 31 - HOW WE WORK

    I came to return a textbook. That was it. That was the entire plan – drop off the Gatsby anthology he'd left at my dorm, leave it on his counter, walk away before the conversation turned into something neither of us could control.The plan lasted until the parking garage.He followed me down the st

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-25

  • PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE   CHAPTER 27 - HIS SURRENDER

    NAOMI’S POVHe stood in the doorway and took it.Every word. The Caleb comparison. The accusation. The truth he didn't want to hear from the one person whose opinion could actually cut him. He took it the way he took hits on the ice – absorbed it, let it land, didn't flinch.Then he stepped back. L

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-24
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