My Hockey Bully Stepbrother 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 71 - 챕터 80

Summer's PovI stood in the hallway for a moment after Crew walked past me and tried to figure out what had just happened.He'd looked at me like I was a problem he'd decided to stop solving. Not mean, not cold exactly, just closed off in a way that felt deliberate, and that almost made it worse because at least anger would have made sense. This was something else. This was him making a decision about me without asking me anything.I went to the kitchen and dished out some food because regardless of everything else my body had hit a wall and I needed to eat something real. Gray was in there and he looked up when I came in and said hey, and something about his face was easier than it had been earlier, softer around the edges."How are you doing?" I said."Better than this morning," he said. "Sit. Talk to me."So I did. We took our food to the living room and sat and talked about nothing important, about the movie Gray had been thinking of watching, about a book he'd been trying to get

Summer's Pov I made it out of the corridor and around the corner before the first tear fell. I didn't even feel it coming. One second I was walking and the next my eyes were just wet and I pressed the back of my hand against my face and kept moving because stopping felt worse than anything else right now. None of it meant anything. I kept hearing it in his voice, flat and certain, like he'd rehearsed it. Like he'd stood in front of a mirror and practiced saying it until it came out clean. The river didn't happen. The car didn't happen. It was just proximity and stress and things getting out of hand and I had imagined the rest. I hadn't imagined anything. I knew what I felt and I knew what I'd seen on his face and I knew the difference between a moment that meant nothing and a moment that meant everything, and Crew Ashford standing at a river in the dark pressing his mouth to mine was not nothing. It was never nothing. And the fact that he could look me in the eye and say otherwis

Summer's PovI was almost at the gate when Tyler caught up with me."Hey." He fell into step beside me and matched my pace without being asked. "Where are you going?""Home.""You shouldn't go home right now."I glanced at him. "Why not?""Because you've had one of the worst days I've seen you have in a long time and going back to that house right now is not going to help anything." He said it plainly, not like a suggestion but like something he'd already decided. "Come to mine.""Tyler—""Summer." He stopped walking and I stopped too and he looked at me with those steady eyes that had been looking at me the same way for years. "Ruby just ended a thirteen year friendship in a school hallway. Something is off with you and Crew, I'm not blind. You've been carrying things for weeks that you won't talk to me about and I'm not going to force any of it out of you." He paused. "But I'm not going to let you go sit alone in a room either. Come to mine. My mom made food. We'll figure the rest o

Summer's PovThe equipment room thing should not have affected me as much as it did.I told myself that on the ride back to school, standing in the hallway after Tyler walked me to first period, sitting through a lecture I retained absolutely nothing from. I told myself it was fine, that I had handled it, that mouthing those two words at Crew and walking away was the most dignified exit I could have managed under the circumstances and I should be proud of myself.I was not proud of myself.I was jealous. Stupidly, embarrassingly jealous. Brianna's hand sliding into his, her voice all smooth and possessive, the way she looked at me like I was something that needed to be removed from the room. And the worst part was not even Brianna. The worst part was Crew letting her lead him out and going, just going, and looking back at me like he was sorry and doing it anyway.I kept my face neutral through all of it. I was very good at that by now.After last period Kayla caught up with me near th

Summer's PovI didn't go back upstairs right away.I walked into the kitchen because I needed somewhere to put myself and the kitchen was the first room I reached and I stood in the middle of it with my hands pressed flat on the counter and just breathed for a moment. In and out. Like a person who was fine. Like a person whose life was not actively falling apart in real time.I was not fine.I couldn't even pinpoint which part was hurting the most. The Crew thing, which had been hurting for weeks now and I had gotten almost used to carrying it. Or the Gray thing, which was new and confusing and I didn't even have the right words for it yet. Or the fact that I was standing in a kitchen at night feeling like a stranger in a house I was supposed to live in.I opened the alcohol cabinet.I didn't even like alcohol. The taste of it had always been wrong to me, too sharp, too much. But I pulled out a bottle and found a glass and poured some and drank it and it burned going down and I poured