Semua Bab P^CKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A HOCKEY ROMANCE: Bab 211 - Bab 220

I dream that Rhys is gone.In my dream, the apartment is the same apartment, the counter is the same counter, the spreadsheet is still glowing red on his laptop, but the coffee mug is washed and put away, and the closet on his side is empty the way closets get empty when a person has taken everything rather than packed for a trip. The hangers are bare. The drawer where he keeps his socks – the one I’ve opened a thousand times looking for the thick grey pair he stole from Cole – is pulled out and vacant, and the vacancy has a sound, a low hum like a freezer running in an empty house.I’m standing in the bedroom doorway with my hand on the frame while the hum gets louder until it fills the apartment and the apartment is just a series of rooms where a man used to live.I wake up at 4 AM with my heart slamming against my ribs hard enough to feel it in my throat.I’m still in the hotel room in Seoul with the jacket on the back of the chair and the ring in the pocket.I lie there with my pu

He doesn’t stop me. Maybe he saw the laptop and did his own math. Or maybe he knows that stopping me now would take something physical, and putting his hands on me in anger is the one line he hasn’t crossed because crossing it would make him something worse than what he already is.I pick up my bag and walk past him without looking at the laptop, because looking would confirm what he’s suspecting and the confirmation would start a conversation I can’t have in this room while his parents are in the garden.The car is waiting downstairs because there’s always a car waiting downstairs in this life that isn’t mine. I get in and give the driver the hospital address, then I put my face in my hands and cry.My tears come out loud and ugly – the managed version I’ve been doing for seventeen days into pillows and bathroom tile is gone, replaced by the full-body kind Rhys has held me through a hundred times, except Rhys is somewhere over the Pacific and what’s holding me is the leather backseat

RHYS’ POVI text Coach from the gate. Family emergency. Out for a few days. Send. Don’t wait.Cole gets less. Going to Korea. Back soon.Twelve seconds. Go.One word. Cole understands things that don’t need sentences.The flight is fourteen hours. I buy the ticket at the counter because buying it online would’ve taken four minutes, and four minutes is four minutes. The woman at the desk looks at my face and skips the upsell.Smart.I don’t sleep. Economy wasn’t designed for 6′3" and I didn’t check what I was booking because checking would have taken time and time is the thing I’m trying to beat. My phone is off. The window is black. Fourteen hours of sitting with six words.I need you to come to Korea.She gave me no context. No explanation. She called me every night for many days before the text, then she sent that text, and that was all I needed, because they were the first real thing she’s said to me since she left.I knew something was wrong already, but I didn’t push because push

My voice breaks on the last word.“It was my fault. Every day after I realised this was on me fully.” I wipe my face with both hands. The wiping doesn’t help. “I can dress it up in trauma responses and my father’s death, but the underneath is that I was scared you’d leave and I was scared Mom would die, and the fear made me do the exact thing I said I wouldn’t.”He’s quiet.“Also.” My voice is steadier now, worn flat by the crying. “It was Caleb who leaked the Victoria contract. I found out this morning.”Rhys’s eyes close for a few seconds that scare me.“And there’s–” My throat closes. I force through it. “The treatment might not work. And I’ve been scared, and I felt even worse when I found out I’m pregnant. And I didn’t know how to tell you because–”“What?”His entire demeanour changes as he leans towards me, and it hits me that this is the first time he’s hearing about it.“I’m pregnant.”His hands come up and press against his mouth, and his eyes are on me over his fingertips.

I finally look, and I see there are no messages.My heart is about to cut, then 9:14 comes, and I hear a knock.My entire body jolts – heart slamming, hands shaking – and I’m off the floor with my legs stiff and my hands on the door handle before I’ve stood up fully, pulling it open hard enough to make the hinges protest.Rhys is in the hallway wearing the same clothes. His hair is damp and pushed back, which means he showered somewhere, which means he found a hotel and checked in and showered and came here, and the coming here is the part that makes my knees go soft. He’s holding two coffees. Two coffees, meaning he stopped for drinks on the way to this – and the ordinariness of the gesture cracks me open from a direction I wasn’t guarding.“Can I come in?”I step back, and he walks in and sets the coffees on the desk beside the laptop, and he looks at the set – the positioned cup, the angled notebook – and his jaw does the thing, but he doesn’t comment.He sits on the edge of the be