บททั้งหมดของ My Hockey Bully Stepbrother : บทที่ 131 - บทที่ 140

Summer's POVWe watched Tyler disappear through the shop door and then it was just me and Ruby standing in the middle of a dress shop with a specific kind of quiet between us.Ruby spoke first."Do you think Susan is too controlling?"I turned back to the rack in front of me. "I don't know.""Because it really feels like she's trying to pull him away from us.""Maybe she is." I flipped through two dresses without seeing them. "But we are not going to do anything about it.""We're not going to eliminate her?""Ruby, nobody is eliminating anyone.""I'm just asking.""No." I pulled out a dress, looked at it, put it back. "Whatever is supposed to happen will happen. You don't force friendships. If Tyler is meant to be our friend through everything then he will be. And if he needs time to figure out what he's doing then we give him that."I said all of it very calmly and meant approximately half of it.The other half was sitting in my chest doing something uncomfortable that I was choosing

Summer’s POV“You look so good I am literally dying right now.”Ruby’s face took up my entire phone screen, her hair half done, one earring in, pointing at me with the kind of intensity usually reserved for emergencies.“Ruby, stop.” I laughed and turned away from the camera.“No, I will not stop. Turn around. Let me see the full thing.”I spun slowly.Ruby made a sound that was not a word.“I am not standing beside you tonight,” she said. “I refuse. You are going to make me look bad and I love you too much to let you do that to me.”“You look beautiful and you know it.”“I know, but you look better and that is the problem.” She finally turned back to her own mirror and went back to her earring. “Okay. I’m going to be the first person to see your final look tonight. If you change anything before you leave, you tell me immediately.”“You’re not even going to be here.”“Distance means nothing. I am spiritually present.” She pointed at the camera. “I mean it. Anything changes, you call m

Tyler’s POVI did not expect to spend prom night fighting with my girlfriend.Nobody plans for that. You picture the night a certain way and then life decides to do something else entirely and you just have to stand in it.It had started in the car on the way there.Ruby had posted a photo. Her and Summer, mid-laugh, dressed up, the kind of photo that showed up on my feed and made me stop scrolling for a second. They looked beautiful. Both of them. I liked the photo without thinking about it, the same way I had liked a hundred of Ruby’s photos before, and then I put my phone away.Susan saw it.One hour. We argued for one full hour before we even got out of the car, and by the time we walked through those doors we had agreed without saying it to act like everything was fine.We were not fine.Now we were dancing and I was trying to be present and Susan was trying to smile and neither of us was doing a particularly convincing job.“It was a harmless notification,” I said quietly. “They

Crew’s PovThe ice was exactly where I needed to be.Everything else – Summer, exams, the arrangement, Tyler, all of it – went quiet the moment my skates hit the rink. That was the thing about hockey that nobody who did not play it would understand. It did not leave room for anything else. The puck moved too fast and the game was too physical and your brain had one job and one job only.Coach blew the whistle and we moved.Tyler was in goal and he was sharp today, sharper than he had been all week, reading the play before it developed and positioning himself with the kind of instinct that could not be coached. You either had it or you did not and Tyler had always had it. I drove hard toward the net twice in the first half and he stopped both attempts cleanly and I genuinely respected it even while it frustrated me.The session ran long. My legs were burning by the end and my shoulders were carrying the kind of ache that meant tomorrow morning was going to be unpleasant. I did not let

Summer’s POVI had been standing in front of the mirror for five minutes tying and retying the same knot.My hands were not cooperating. My brain was running at about three different speeds at once and none of them were the right speed for doing anything practical.My phone was propped against the mirror, my mom’s face on the screen, watching me with the patient expression she used when she was actively stopping herself from saying calm down.“You are going to be fine,” she said.“I feel like my stomach is somewhere outside my body right now.”“That is just nerves. Nerves mean you care. Caring means you prepared.”“Or it means I am about to fail spectacularly in front of everyone.”“Summer.” Richard leaned into the frame beside her. He looked calm in the way Richard always looked calm, like he had already decided how things were going to go and was simply waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. “I know you. I know what you are capable of. You are going to walk in there, you are