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CHAPTER 96 - THE FIRST ROUND
publish date:
2026-04-23 04:17:15
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PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 162 - THE WAY WE ARE
The light through the curtains was amber for once. Not the usual Portland grey – actual sun, like the city had decided to give us one good morning as a reward for surviving many months of rain.I was propped against the pillows with my laptop on my knees, formatting the final front matter. Title page. Table of contents. The editor needed files by noon and I was running the finishing line with intense focus.The bedroom door opened. Espresso and cedarwood hitting the air before his shadow cut through the light.Rhys. Grey sweats. Chest bare. Hair destroyed by nine hours of the deepest sleep he’d had since the draft.He set a mug on my nightstand. Climbed onto the bed. His arms coming around my waist, his mouth finding the spot where my neck met my shoulder.“I’m working,” I said.“I know.” He bit the skin softly. A slow, lingering pressure that sent a shiver straight down my spine and into territory that had nothing to do with formatting.“The file is active, Rhys.”“Save it.”His hand
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 161 - FROM DAYS TO MONTHS
The book proposal got accepted on a Saturday at 10:14 AM, which meant Rhys was sitting across from me in our corner booth at the coffee shop with a paperback he was actually reading when I screamed loud enough to make a poetry major spill her latte.I built that. The reading. Gave him book after book during the long-distance months until he stopped pretending literature was homework and admitted he’d been devouring everything I recommended. He was on his third Toni Morrison. The margins of his copy of Song of Solomon looked like his Gatsby – crammed with observations that were too good and too personal to be called notes.Saturday mornings were ours. The brick-basement coffee shop two blocks from his apartment. I wrote. He read. The barista knew our order without asking. We had a ROUTINE – the word alone made something in my chest do a complicated thing, because I’d never had routines that lasted longer than a crisis. Routines required peace. Peace required trust. Trust required two p
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 160 - UNDER THE SAME SKY
The Portland lookout didn’t have a dirt road. It had a paved scenic pull-off with a metal guardrail and a sign that said NO PARKING AFTER 11 PM, which Rhys ignored the way he ignored all administrative suggestions that conflicted with his priorities.We sat on the motorcycle. Engine off, ticking as it cooled. The city below was a grid of amber and silver – bridges tracing the dark river, lights sprawling wider than Thornfield ever sprawled. Bigger city. Louder city. A city that didn’t know us and didn’t need to.Same sky though. Orion above the treeline – the three-star belt cutting clear and bright through the dark.I leaned back against his chest. His arms around my middle. Hands locked over my stomach. No mask tonight. No captain posture or pro-athlete jaw. Just Rhys – the version that only existed when we were alone and high up and the city was far enough below to feel theoretical.I reached up and slid my finger under his sleeve. Found the ink. Orion on his shoulder – the constel
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 159 - PUBLISHABLE
My MFA advisor had silver-framed glasses and the demeanor of a woman who’d spent thirty years cutting fat from prose the way surgeons cut fat from bodies – without sentiment, and with the understanding that what remained would be stronger for the loss.She tapped my manuscript with her pen. A slow, rhythmic click that made my lungs forget their job.“This is publishable,” she said. “Not in a magazine. As a book.”I sat in her office chair and let the word settle. Book. The blog posts that started at 2 AM on a dorm room floor. The anonymous confessions about forbidden desire that ten thousand strangers read and shared and said this is the most honest thing I’ve ever felt. The investigation chapters. The separation chapters. The kitchen floor chapters. All of it – the whole sprawling, devastating, filthy, honest mess of it – and a woman with thirty years of editorial precision was telling me it had a spine.I brought the first chapter to Rhys that night. His apartment. The mattress he’d
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 158 - PORTLAND
Same area code. Different lease.My apartment was a brick studio three miles south near the river, the window glass rattling every time the streetcar ground past. I took the 14 bus to his neighbourhood most mornings, laptop bag heavy against my ribs, watching the Portland mist roll off the bridges. We’d agreed on the space before the boxes left the dorm. It was the first line we drew on purpose – proving we could share a zip code without collapsing into a single outline. I wasn’t Elena. I had my own keys and my own rent and my own name on a mailbox that didn’t say Maddox.But the logistics of peace were heavier than I expected.After my Tuesday workshops, his motorcycle would cut through the rain outside the humanities building. I’d swing my leg over the seat and lock my arms around his waist and press my face into his leather jacket while the city smeared into amber streetlamps. The ride to his apartment took eleven minutes and neither of us talked because the engine was too loud and
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 157 - HOME
The hallway smelled like industrial carpet cleaner and rain.Three flights of stairs because I couldn’t stand in an elevator for thirty seconds without losing my nerve. My backpack was cutting into my shoulders and the suitcase wheel had been sticking since baggage claim. I was two weeks early and I hadn’t told him, and the fellowship stipend had processed ahead of schedule.My lease was signed and I was HERE – standing in a Portland apartment corridor at 4 PM on a Wednesday with my hair still damp from the airport rain and my heart slamming against my ribs like it was trying to evacuate my body before I did something irreversible.Door 314. The numbers slightly crooked on the panel. An unpolished detail that didn’t belong to any room Richard Maddox had ever paid for. This apartment was Rhys’s. Bought with his own money, furnished with his own bad taste.I knocked. Three times. Hard. The way you knock when you’ve spent two months talking to a screen and the screen isn’t enough and the
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