MasukShare
Chapter Sixteen: The Stairwell
Tanggal publikasi:
2026-06-21 22:05:41
Bab terbaru
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter 170: The Ice Holds Them Both
POV: RileyThe code still worked, and my fingers still knew it without me.It was the last day of the year. Five in the morning, and the sky over the campus was the color of old pewter. I stood at the side entrance of the rink with my skate bag on my shoulder and my breath rising in small clouds. The air tasted of cold stone and wet earth. A year ago I had come to this exact door at two in the morning with nowhere else to go, my hands numb, my chest full of a name I could not say aloud.I punched in the numbers. The lock clicked. The door swung open on the dim blue light.The emergency lamps glowed low along the boards, blue and gray, the same as before. The ice lay quiet and resting, a wide pale field with no one on it. The cooling system hummed under my feet, one long, steady note.I laced up on the bench. The leather creaked. My fingers moved without hurry.Then I stepped out.I skated without music. I skated without a plan. No program to run, no coach at the boards, no one to impr
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter 169: A Seat At The Table
POV: RileyI typed the word yes at midnight, and then I sat very still, waiting for my body to argue.It did not. My desk lamp made a small gold circle on the wood. Rain ticked against the window, soft and patient. Down the hall, a faucet dripped. The email to Dana Okafor sat on the screen with one short line in it, and my finger rested on the key.I thought of Preethi.We had been sitting on a bench outside the science building, months ago, with cold coffee going bitter in our hands. Her funding had just been restored. She had looked at the sky for a long time, and then she had said it, quietly, without any bitterness at all."Do you think it will actually matter?"I had not known what to answer. I had said I hoped so. It was the truth, and it was thin.Now I knew only one way to find out. Not from the outside, reading articles. Not from a hallway, waiting for someone else to open a door. From the inside, in the room, with my own voice.I pressed the key. The message flew away with a
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter 168: Good,I Would Have Been Annoyed
POV: RileyThe form had one box left blank, and my pen hovered over it for a full minute.Major. A single word, and a whole life folded inside it.It was a bright Tuesday in April. The registrar's office smelled of toner and warm carpet, and a ceiling fan turned slowly overhead, stirring the corners of the papers on the counter. Through the window the quad had gone green. Students lay on the grass with their shoes off. Somewhere a guitar was being played badly and with great joy. A year ago I would have chosen the safe word, the one my father had circled in red on every plan he ever drew for me.I wrote it in small, clear letters.Communications. Concentration, documentary photography.My hand did not shake. I read it twice, the way I read things that mattered, and slid the form across the counter. The clerk stamped it. The sound was a soft, final thud, like a door closing on one room and opening on another.I stood there a moment longer than I needed to.I planned the rest of it in t
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter 167: Acknowledgements
POV: RayProfessor Wen did not tap her pen, and that was how I knew.It was a gray Friday morning in mid December. Frost furred the edges of her office window. The radiator hissed. A mug of tea steamed beside a leaning tower of blue folders, and the whole room smelled of paper, chalk, and bergamot. She had sent me a two line email at eight. Come by when you can. I had read it six times on the walk over, searching for a threat in it, the way I used to search every message from a man in a leather chair.She sat very still when I came in. Her pen lay flat on the desk."Sit," she said.I sat. My knee began to bounce. I pressed my palm over it."Your paper was accepted," she said. "The Journal of Organizational Studies. The graduate edition. They want it in the January issue."The words arrived and did not make sense. Accepted. Journal. I heard them the way you hear a door close in another room."Third draft," I said stupidly."Third draft." Her mouth moved, nearly a smile. "The editor wro
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter 166: Good
POV: MarvelOn my first morning, forty men heard the coach say my name, and not one of them cared."Martinez," he said, loud enough to bounce off the cinder block walls. "Third line. Left wing. Do not make me regret reading your file." A few players laughed. It was not cruel. It was only the sound of a room that had never heard of me and did not plan to ask. I stood there with my gear bag cutting into my shoulder, and I felt the old version of me, the captain's rival, the boy people watched, slide off like a coat I had borrowed.The city sat four hours from campus by bus. My apartment was above a tire shop, one room with a mattress on the floor and a window facing a parking lot. At night the smell of rubber crept through the vents. The rink was old. Half the seats were orange, one bulb was dead in the scoreboard, and the ice had a soft gray look under the lights, like it was tired of everyone.I worked harder than I had ever worked in my life. Up at five. Skating drills until my legs
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter 165: Ordinary Architecture
POV: RileyThe first snow of December fell on a Sunday, and for once I did not check the windows.I woke to a soft white hush. The glass was frosted at the corners. Outside, the quad lay under a clean blanket, and the lamps along the paths wore small round caps of snow. A bell rang the hour somewhere far off, low and slow, and the sound seemed to settle into the drifts instead of echoing.I lay still and listened to nothing.No buzz from my phone. No quiet fear humming under the floorboards. I had trained my body for a year to listen for a watcher, and now my body was slowly learning it could stop.I pulled on my boots and went out.The rink at six in the morning was a different country. The doors sighed open on a breath of cold that smelled of wet steel and fresh water. The lights came up slowly, blue and then white, and the ice lay waiting under them, newly flooded and shining like poured glass.I laced up on the bench by the boards. The leather creaked. My fingers knew every loop.
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter Three: I Need To Find Her
Riley's Pov Marvel,” I said, the word coming out as a relieved sigh.He didn’t smile. His eyes, usually so warm when they landed on me, were hard. “What’s going on?”“I was looking for you. I came down to… I saw the end of the game.” I took a step toward him, wanting to bridge the gap, to get us a
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter Two: You Were Saying?
RileyI had done exactly one thing in my entire life without my father’s approval, and I was determined not to mess it up.Figure skating.It was my secret rebellion, planned and saved for in silence. While my father graded papers and muttered about “frivolous pursuits,” I watched old Olympic routi
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter 1: To Baby Sit Her?
Ray's PovI should have said no.The second Professor Hartwell asked me to babysit his daughter, I should have walked out. But I didn’t. I just sat there, in the worn leather chair across from his desk, trying to figure out what game we were playing.I’d been in his office plenty of times. Usually,
The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits Chapter Five: The Assignment Begins
POV: RayMonday came like a punishment. I stood outside the athletics media room with my hands in my jacket pockets, telling myself I was calm. I was not calm. I'd barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the photograph on Hartwell's desk, the girl with the laughing eyes and the swinging hai
Anda juga akan menyukai
Bound to the CEO
wandering jedi702.1K DibacaWet Desires: {A Steamy Collection}
The Book Magician589.1K DibacaThe Day I Kissed An Older Man
Cher the Cherished1.1M DibacaThe CEO's Ten Million Dollar Wife
R.C.BRIE15711.9K DibacaFaking Forever With My Ex’s Rival
The Artist 9 DibacaWILD WEDDING HOOK UP
Sassenach W122 DibacaToo Fat? Hell No. The Hockey Stars Love My Curves.
Ade’s Pen86 DibacaCEO, Take Your Filthy Money and Get Out
June55 Dibaca
