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FIFTY - IF
publish date:
2026-09-14 11:39:37
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PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE FIFTY-TWO – SIGN IT
“We need to talk,” I say.“Come in.”“We’ll do this in the hallway.”He steps out and closes the door behind him.“You have two options,” I say. “You tell your parents we broke up. You can make up whatever you want, but tell them after they leave Korea. Then you go home and never contact me again.”“And if I don’t?”“Then we go with option two,” Rhys says from behind me in a low voice. “The source file on your laptop, including the emails with Priya and the metadata showing you leaked the Victoria contract. All of it goes to Richard’s legal team, and his legal team can take it from a file to a courtroom in under a month.”Caleb’s jaw tightens.“You manipulated the leak to suppress endorsement deals that funded a nonprofit serving minors,” Rhys says. “A prosecutor would call that conspiracy to defraud. My father’s lawyers would call it Tuesday. And I wonder what your parents would say about everything you’ve done”“You punched me on a public sidewalk. There are witnesses.”“There are.”
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE FIFTY-ONE-WHATEVER COMES AFTER
I finally look, and I see there are no messages.My heart is about to cut, then 9:14 comes, and I hear a knock.My entire body jolts – heart slamming, hands shaking – and I’m off the floor with my legs stiff and my hands on the door handle before I’ve stood up fully, pulling it open hard enough to make the hinges protest.Rhys is in the hallway wearing the same clothes. His hair is damp and pushed back, which means he showered somewhere, which means he found a hotel and checked in and showered and came here, and the coming here is the part that makes my knees go soft. He’s holding two coffees. Two coffees, meaning he stopped for drinks on the way to this – and the ordinariness of the gesture cracks me open from a direction I wasn’t guarding.“Can I come in?”I step back, and he walks in and sets the coffees on the desk beside the laptop, and he looks at the set – the positioned cup, the angled notebook – and his jaw does the thing, but he doesn’t comment.He sits on the edge of the be
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE FIFTY - IF
“I understand.”“I don’t think you do.” He holds my eyes. “You’ve watched me come back from everything. And maybe you learned that coming back is what I do, and some part of you calculated that I’d do it again.”The sentence goes into my chest because some part of me did calculate that.“This is me telling you I don’t know where my limit is because I’ve never found it. So, please, don’t make me find it.” He pauses. “I’m not threatening you. I’m begging you. Because I love you enough that finding that limit would break something in me that probably would never go back together.”“I won’t,” I nod. “I won’t make you find it.”“You almost did.”“I know.”He reaches across the space between us and takes my hand. I grip it with both of mine.“You could have called my dad.”The sentence opens something I didn’t know was exposed because he sounds confused and hurt.“He would have paid. He would have found the hospital and even flown out the next day to sort it out.” His hand tightens around m
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE FORTY-NINE - MY FAULT
My voice breaks on the last word.“It was my fault. Every day after I realised this was on me fully.” I wipe my face with both hands. The wiping doesn’t help. “I can dress it up in trauma responses and my father’s death, but the underneath is that I was scared you’d leave and I was scared Mom would die, and the fear made me do the exact thing I said I wouldn’t.”He’s quiet.“Also.” My voice is steadier now, worn flat by the crying. “It was Caleb who leaked the Victoria contract. I found out this morning.”Rhys’s eyes close for a few seconds that scare me.“And there’s–” My throat closes. I force through it. “The treatment might not work. And I’ve been scared, and I felt even worse when I found out I’m pregnant. And I didn’t know how to tell you because–”“What?”His entire demeanour changes as he leans towards me, and it hits me that this is the first time he’s hearing about it.“I’m pregnant.”His hands come up and press against his mouth, and his eyes are on me over his fingertips.
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE FORTY-EIGHT - WHY?
“Why?”One word. He’s in the doorway with his bag on the floor and his knuckles split and the word between us taking up all the air in the room.I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again.“Caleb showed up at the apartment.” My voice is thin and far away. “Three weeks ago, while you were at practice. He had nearly a million dollars that he got from a PR contract through his parents’ hospital network, and the money could fix the foundation deficit and fund the program for years.”Rhys doesn’t move. His face doesn’t change.“The condition was that I show up as his girlfriend while his parents are in Korea. They don’t know about anything that happened at Thornfield, and they think he has a career and a girlfriend named Naomi because he told them about me years ago when we were still friends.”His jaw tightens.“I told him to get out.” My hands are shaking in my lap, the fingers lacing and unlacing because my body needs something to do while my mouth does this. “And then he told me about Mo
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE FORTY-SEVEN - STUPID DECISIONS
RHYS’ POVI text Coach from the gate. Family emergency. Out for a few days. Send. Don’t wait.Cole gets less. Going to Korea. Back soon.Twelve seconds. Go.One word. Cole understands things that don’t need sentences.The flight is fourteen hours. I buy the ticket at the counter because buying it online would’ve taken four minutes, and four minutes is four minutes. The woman at the desk looks at my face and skips the upsell.Smart.I don’t sleep. Economy wasn’t designed for 6′3" and I didn’t check what I was booking because checking would have taken time and time is the thing I’m trying to beat. My phone is off. The window is black. Fourteen hours of sitting with six words.I need you to come to Korea.She gave me no context. No explanation. She called me every night for many days before the text, then she sent that text, and that was all I needed, because they were the first real thing she’s said to me since she left.I knew something was wrong already, but I didn’t push because push
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