All Chapters of Stuck Between Two Hotties: My Stepbrother Stole My Christmas: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

LENA Pov;For hours, the house felt like it was holding its breath.Cassian sat beside me on the couch, elbows on his knees, shoulders hunched like the weight of the night was carved into his bones. The snow outside thickened until it blurred the world into white noise. The lights from the Christmas tree flickered across his face, carving shadows under his eyes.No one spoke.No one moved.My mother paced the kitchen.Senator Ward made phone call after phone call.My aunt cried silently in the guest room.And Cassian…He didn’t look at anyone.Not even me.The storm outside wasn’t half as violent as the one inside him.I watched his fingers long, tense, knuckles pale as though he was holding on to something invisible and breakable.His breath finally cracked the silence.“This is my fault,” he whispered.I jerked toward him. “Cassian no.”His eyes didn’t lift from the floor. “I pushed him. I said things I shouldn’t have. I let him walk out.”“You didn’t force him to leave.”“I may as

LENA Pov;They found him at dawn, half-buried under a crust of new snow, curled like he’d been trying to make himself small enough to disappear.The rescue team shouted into the wind, flashlights stabbing the gray. Someone threw a thermal blanket across his shoulders. Someone else cupped his cheek and called his name like a prayer. I didn’t move at first. I couldn’t. I only watched Cassian how he moved as if the world had been reduced to one point and that point was Bryce.He was… pale. Bruised. One arm bent wrong, soaked through. He was breathing but shallow, teeth chattering. They lifted him on a stretcher and hustled him toward the ambulance, voices clinical and sharp, but inside my chest everything was raw and leaking with relief so big it almost made me sick.“Let’s go,” Cassian said, so quiet I thought he was asleep. He was on his knees before the stretcher like the ground had betrayed him and he needed to hold it in place. He didn’t look at me when he said it only to Bryce. For

LENA Pov;Bryce’s recovery was slow.Not dramatic.Not miraculous.Just slow.A day passed. Then another.He could talk in full sentences again by the second morning. He could sit up with help. He could even make small, tired jokes with the nurses and they loved him for it. Bryce had always been good at charming people.But whenever Cassian walked into the room, or even passed by the open doorway…Bryce went quiet.Not angry.Not rude.Just… quiet in a way that felt like he was shrinking away from something sharp.Cassian noticed.Of course he did.And every time Bryce pulled back even a littleCassian’s guilt carved deeper lines into his face.By the third night in the hospital, the air between the three of us felt crowded, suffocating, like we were breathing each other’s fear.On the evening check-in, Bryce asked to see me alone.Not Cassian.My heart dropped.Cassian’s jaw flexed, but he stepped out of the room without a word. His shoulders were tight, like the act of leaving cost

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN:CASSIAN Pov;Control is a funny thing.People think it’s loud. That it looks like clenched fists and sharp words and doors slammed hard enough to shake the frame.For me, control has always been quieter than that.It lived in the space between impulse and action. In the way I learned to swallow instincts whole and pretend they didn’t exist. In the discipline of choosing not to reach, not to speak, not to want.And for most of my life, it worked.Until Lena.The morning after I stood in her doorway and told her “not yet,” I woke up already losing the battle.I lay there staring at the ceiling, heart thudding like it had something to confess. The memory of her face, eyes steady, mouth soft, unafraid looped in my head like a wound I couldn’t stop touching.I don’t want to be temporary.Neither did I.That was the problem.Downstairs, the house was already awake. The smell of coffee drifted through the hall. I could hear my father’s voice on the phone, clipped and pr

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: THE QUESTIONS WE DON’T ASKLENA Pov;The morning after the house learned to listen, it started asking questions.Not out loud.Not yet.They lived in glances held a second too long, in silences that pressed down harder than words, in the way everyone seemed to move more carefully like one wrong step would shatter something already cracked.I woke before my alarm, heart already racing, my body tense like it expected impact. The light outside my window was pale and cold, snow clinging to the edges of the world like it refused to let go.Down the hall, I heard movement.Bryce.His footsteps were slow now, cautious, like his body didn’t trust itself anymore. Every sound he made pulled guilt through me in thin, cutting lines.I lay there staring at the ceiling, replaying the night before.Cassian’s voice.His promise.I won’t make you a mistake.The words sat in my chest like a vow and a warning all at once.By the time I went downstairs, everyone was already awake.M