All Chapters of PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

I left at 5 AM like a coward.No note. No kiss on his forehead. No romantic morning-after moment where I make coffee in his shirt and we smile at each other across the kitchen like people who haven't just detonated their entire lives.I simply peeled myself out from under his arm one inch at a time – holding my breath when he stirred, freezing when he mumbled something into the pillow that sounded dangerously close to my name – and grabbed my shoes from the hallway floor and my bag from the kitchen table and slipped out the door like I was fleeing a crime scene.Which, technically, I was. The crime was sleeping with my future stepbrother in his bed, sober, on purpose, and liking it so much that I'd stayed the night instead of doing the smart thing and leaving while I still had plausible deniability.The walk home was freezing. February had no sympathy for girls doing the walk of shame at dawn, and every step was a replay I didn't ask for. His mouth on my stomach. His fingers threaded

Caleb avoided us for the rest of the mixer. Physically, at least – his eyes didn't leave us once, tracking every movement like a predator calculating distance. But he didn't approach again. Didn't need to. The handshake had said everything both of them wanted to say, and the rest was just a matter of time.Campus didn't stop buzzing. Not that night. Not the next morning. Not during lectures where I could feel people's eyes on the back of my head like sunburn. The confessions page had a new thread – Maddox and Ellis confirmed?? – with four hundred comments and a blurry photo someone had snapped of the temple kiss. Half the comments were fire emojis. The other half were calling me Caleb's leftovers.I was still thinking about the comments when Rhys's hand landed on my thigh.We'd been in study room 3B for over an hour. Laptops open. Gatsby notes spread between us. Professional. Boundaries intact. I'd been explaining the symbolism of the green light for the third time because he kept ask

Caleb didn't even wait for me to ask.He found me before I could find Rhys – outside the English building, coffee in hand, that concerned expression he'd been perfecting since childhood. The one that made teachers trust him and parents love him and girls like me mistake control for care."Hey. Got a second?""Not really.""It's important." He fell into step beside me. Casual. Unhurried. Like we were still the kind of friends who walked together. "I didn't want to say this over the phone. It felt like something you should hear in person.""You already said it over the phone, Caleb.""I said you should ask him. I didn't tell you what happened." He stopped walking. I stopped too – hating myself for it, for the way his gravity still worked on me even when I knew it was artificial. "Your boyfriend got expelled from his last school for nearly killing someone. A teammate. Put him in the hospital with a fractured jaw and three broken ribs."He said it like he was handing me medicine. Like the

We lay there for a long time after.Not talking. Not moving. Just breathing in the dark with his head on my chest and my fingers in his hair and the tattoo – the day my mother left – still warm under my fingertips. The silence wasn't uncomfortable. It was the kind that happens when two people have run out of walls to hide behind and are sitting in the rubble deciding what to build next.He started talking without preamble. No lead-in, no transition. Just his voice against my skin, quiet and stripped bare."Elena. My mother. Married my dad at twenty-two. Had me at twenty-four. Left at thirty-four." A pause. "Packed a bag while I was at school. Drove away. Didn't come back."I kept my fingers moving through his hair. Didn't stop. Didn't tense. Just listened."No note. No custody fight. Nothing. Came home and her closet was empty and my dad was at the kitchen table with a scotch. Looked at me and said she's gone. Same tone he'd use to tell me it was raining."His voice didn't crack. That

I wore his name on my back.Not planned. Not discussed. I showed up at the arena and Sienna handed me a jersey – black, oversized, MADDOX printed across the shoulders in white block letters, number seventeen beneath it. "Before you argue," she said, "it's too late. I already bought it."I put it on. It smelled like new fabric and bad decisions and it fell to the middle of my thighs and the second I caught my reflection in the arena glass, I knew there was no coming back from this.Everyone noticed.Zara grinned. Sienna took a photo. Three girls in the row behind me whispered loud enough for me to hear – she's wearing his jersey, it's official, Caleb must be losing his mind. I didn't look for Caleb. Didn't need to. I could feel his attention from across the arena like heat from an open flame.The game was a rivalry match – Thornfield versus Redmond, Rhys's old school, which meant the energy in the building was unhinged before the puck even dropped. Redmond's fans had signs. Some were a