All Chapters of Stuck between Hockey Player and his Quarterback Brother: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

I pulled out my phone and dialed Evans's number. He picked up on the second ring."Hey," his voice sounded rough, strained."Where are you?" I asked, standing up and grabbing my backpack."At the community rink," Evans sighed. "Coach banned me from the school ice for the duration of the suspension. I'm just sitting in the bleachers, freezing to death and staring at a Zamboni.""Stay there," I said, a small smile breaking across my face for the first time all day. "I'm coming to tutor you.""Tamine, you don't have to""I'm your tutor, Thorpe," I interrupted, walking briskly toward the library exit. "And you have a lot of making up to do if you want to pass AP English. I'll be there in twenty minutes. I'm bringing hot chocolate.""Make it black coffee," Evans said, and I could hear the faint, lopsided smile in his voice. "And Tamine?""Yeah?""Drive safe. The Civic's battery is on borrowed time.""Shut up, Evans," I laughed, pushing through the heavy library doors.The hallways were sti

"Tamine and I broke up months ago," Atlas announced clearly. "We broke up because I cheated on her. With Emilia Grant."The silence shattered. A hundred heads whipped toward the cheerleading table, where Emilia was sitting. Her face was drained of all colors. She shrank into her seat, looking like she wanted the linoleum floor to open up and swallow her whole."Tamine didn't play anyone," Atlas said, raising his voice to cut through the sudden explosion of whispers. "I messed up. I ruined it. And she moved on. Anyone who says differently, anyone who calls her a name in these halls or online, deals with me. And you all know what that means."He didn't wait for a response. He didn't ask for forgiveness. He just delivered the facts, dropped the mic on his own reputation, and walked out the side exit.The cafeteria erupted into absolute chaos.I sat frozen at my table, my hands shaking. He had done it. He had burned his own flawless image to the ground just to clear my name. The stares th

I sat in the driver’s seat of my Civic, the engine turned off, staring at the front doors of Blackridge Academy through the frosty windshield.It was Monday morning. Forty-eight hours ago, I was just a girl trying to survive her senior year. Now, I was the epicenter of a civil war.My phone had been a vibrating brick of chaos all weekend. I had eventually muted all notifications, but not before seeing the hashtags trending on local feeds. #TeamAtlas and #TeamEvans were no longer just whispered gossip; they were a literal draft.I took a deep breath, grabbed my backpack, and pushed the car door open. The biting wind whipped across the parking lot, but the chill was nothing compared to the electric, frantic energy radiating from the school grounds.As I walked up the main steps, I noticed it immediately.The student body had segregated.To my left, clustered near the trophy cases, was a sea of solid gold football jackets, gold scarves, and cheerleaders who had defected from Charlotte’s

/Tamine/The library at Blackridge Academy had always been my fortress of solitude. It was a cavernous, wood-paneled sanctuary filled with the smell of aging paper, floor wax, and the quiet hum of the ancient HVAC system. For three years, it had been the one place on campus where I could disappear. Before Evans Thorpe transferred into my AP English class, before Atlas Thorpe decided I was a prize to be won back, and before Charlotte Hart turned my life into a viral spectacle, I was just a ghost haunting the biography section.But as I sat at my usual corner table on Tuesday afternoon, waiting for my scheduled tutoring session to begin, the silence of the library felt remarkably loud.I was trying to regain a sense of control over a life that had violently spun off its axis over the past seventy-two hours. The weekend of the Winter Showcase was still dominating every conversation in the school. The explosive, aggressive kiss Atlas had planted on me in the endzone, followed mere hours l

Wednesday brought a snowstorm that blanketed Blackridge Academy in six inches of pristine, blinding white. The cold was bitter, an aggressive, biting chill that seeped through the thin fabric of my coat and settled deep into my bones.The weather had completely frozen the windshield of my ancient Honda Civic solid overnight. Because I couldn't afford a real ice scraper, I had spent fifteen minutes that morning furiously hacking at the glass with a plastic spatula I had stolen from my own kitchen. By the time I finally made it to the school parking lot, I was violently shivering, my fingers were completely numb, and my mood was thoroughly foul.The social civil war raging within the walls of the academy, however, was entirely unaffected by the plummeting temperatures.I pushed through the heavy double doors into the main lobby, stomping the clumps of snow off my boots. The school’s heating system was blasting, but it did little to thaw the icy tension in the corridors.To my left, near