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TWENTY-EIGHT - SICK
publish date:
2026-08-02 13:22:15
最新章節
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE TWENTY-EIGHT - SICK
My body goes still before my brain processes the sentence.“What did you say?”“She was diagnosed four days ago. Acute myeloid leukaemia.” He says the words carefully. “I ran into her at the medical centre while I was in her town covering a story for the sports desk. She was in the waiting room, and she saw me before I could dip.” His voice drops. “She hasn’t told you yet because she’s still processing. I came here because the treatment window is narrow and you need to know.”The words acute myeloid leukaemia are sitting in my chest cavity doing something that has no name. It doesn’t feel like pain or panic, but it’s something underneath both of those, something that lives in the place where my father’s death is stored like a recording I can’t delete. And the recording is already playing. Tuesday dinner plans. Thursday diagnosis. A countdown shorter than anyone expected because the body had already decided before the doctors were consulted.“You’re lying.” My voice sounds like it’s co
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE TWENTY-SEVEN - OLD WOUNDS
The doorbell rings on a Thursday morning while Rhys is at practice.I’m at the kitchen table with my laptop open to the book two manuscript that hasn’t moved in six days, the cursor blinking at the end of a sentence I wrote last week and haven’t been able to follow because the sentence is honest and the honesty muscle has atrophied so severely that following it would require a version of me I’m not sure still has access to the controls. The coffee beside me is cold. The spreadsheet is still glowing red on Rhys’s laptop across the table, the twelve-thousand-dollar deficit pulsing like a wound that won’t close.The doorbell is wrong. Deliveries don’t ring – they knock twice and leave the package against the door. Rhys has a key. Cole texts before he comes over because Cole was raised by a woman who believed unannounced visitors were a sign of societal collapse.I check the peephole.The face on the other side stops my hand on the deadbolt before my brain can process what my eyes are rep
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE TWENTY-SIX - OPPOSITE
Rhys sends me a spreadsheet at 7 AM with the subject line “foundation budget Q2.” The spreadsheet is the kind of document that Richard would be proud of – colour-coded, every cell containing a number that represents a kid who gets to skate or a kid who doesn’t.The column labelled deficit is highlighted in red because the deficit is twelve thousand dollars and the colour red is the universal language for things that are about to stop working.Twelve thousand dollars stands between Deshawn and an empty rink, and the number is simultaneously enormous and ridiculous.Neither of us has twelve thousand dollars sitting in an account, but twelve thousand dollars is exactly what Rhys’s old Nike campaign spent on a single photo shoot.The endorsement deals that Victoria’s PR strategy was supposed to protect evaporated when Victoria’s PR strategy evaporated, because the sponsors who were nervous about the stepsibling angle became sponsors who were nervous about the PR scandal angle, and the ner
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE TWENTY-FIVE - MULTITASK
Naomi's POVThe fan’s messages have graduated from appreciation to need in approximately six weeks.The first message said “your blog saved my marriage” and the fifth said “I feel like you understand me in a way nobody else does” and the eleventh said “I came to your reading in Hillsboro and you looked right at me and I know you felt it too” and the seventeenth, which arrived this morning while I was standing in the kitchen deciding whether cold cereal or cold coffee was the more depressing breakfast option, said “why aren’t you responding? I’ve shared parts of myself with you that I’ve never shared with anyone and the silence feels weird.”I screenshot the message and send it to the lawyer Richard referred me to – a woman named PATRICIA who speaks exclusively in legal outcomes and whose initial consultation felt like being debriefed by a very expensive robot.Patricia responds within the hour with a cease-and-desist template and the instruction to document everything and engage with
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE TWENTY-FOUR - MELTED
Rhys' POVThe contract is on the counter where we left it yesterday.I’ve walked past it nine times in two hours. Coffee. Water. Checking if the coffee is still hot even though I poured it four minutes ago and coffee doesn’t go cold in four minutes. With each pass, the number on page three pulls at something behind my ribs – the same pull the ice used to have when I was twelve and the rink was the only place with enough room for me.The number would fix everything.I pour the coffee. It’s hot. It was always hot.Naomi is at the table with her laptop closed. The laptop has been closed more than open for weeks now.I stand at the counter with the contract three inches from my elbow and the silence is doing what silence does in our kitchen when something large is sitting between us unnamed.Then I feel it.The freeze. My sternum first then outward. Shoulders tightening. Arms going heavy. Fingers locking around the mug handle with a tight grip. My body using the only defence it knows, whi
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE TWENTY-THREE - FREEDOM
The offer arrives by courier on a Monday afternoon in a manila envelope with the kind of return address that makes your stomach rearrange itself before your brain can read the words.By the time I’ve opened the envelope and seen the number at the bottom of page three – a number with enough zeros that it looks like a typo until you read it twice and realise it isn’t – Rhys is standing beside me at the counter reading over my shoulder with the stillness of a man whose entire future just changed shape inside a piece of paper.The team is in a city I’ve never been to, and the place exists on the opposite edge of the country from Portland and from Thornfield and from every geography we’ve built since a bar on Valentine’s Day.The contract is offering more money than either of us has ever conceptualised as a real number. It's the kind of money that solves the foundation’s funding gap and the financial anxiety that’s been sitting in our bank account since the PR scandal stripped the sponsors
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