FIFTY-TWO – SIGN IT

“We need to talk,” I say.“Come in.”“We’ll do this in the hallway.”He steps out and closes the door behind him.“You have two options,” I say. “You tell your parents we broke up. You can make up whatever you want, but tell them after they leave Korea. Then you go home and never contact me again.”“And if I don’t?”“Then we go with option two,” Rhys says from behind me in a low voice. “The source file on your laptop, including the emails with Priya and the metadata showing you leaked the Victoria contract. All of it goes to Richard’s legal team, and his legal team can take it from a file to a courtroom in under a month.”Caleb’s jaw tightens.“You manipulated the leak to suppress endorsement deals that funded a nonprofit serving minors,” Rhys says. “A prosecutor would call that conspiracy to defraud. My father’s lawyers would call it Tuesday. And I wonder what your parents would say about everything you’ve done”“You punched me on a public sidewalk. There are witnesses.”“There are.”

Last Updated : 2026-09-14

FIFTY-THREE – THE DISHES

Rhys stirs, and without opening his eyes, his hand finds mine on my stomach and rests on top of it, and the weight of his palm over mine is enough. It’s everything right now.We land, get our bags, and get in a car. The highway passes in silence until the bridge appears, then we turn onto our street, the parking structure, the elevator, the hallway, and the door.He unlocks it. Pushes it open.The apartment is exactly as we left it – his laptop on the table with the spreadsheet, mine beside it with the dead manuscript, the fan’s card face-down on the counter, the blue box of pasta in the cabinet.I stand in the doorway and look at the apartment, and the apartment holds still while I look, the same counter and the same floor and the same quiet that has always lived here when we’re both inside it.Rhys puts the bags down. Opens the fridge. Stares at it. Closes it. The old habit surviving everything, the checking that was never about the food. This time I almost smile.“We should eat,” h

Last Updated : 2026-09-16

FIFTY-FOUR – RESEARCH

Weeks pass. My belly grows. My jeans stop buttoning around week six, and I switch to his sweatpants, which is its own kind of intimacy – wearing his clothes while not touching his body, the cedar-smelling fabric holding me loosely and warmly the way his arms used to.A letter arrives on a Wednesday. No return address, same handwriting as the card from before – the one we believe came from the woman who stood on the sidewalk facing our windows. This one is shorter. I’m sorry if I caused any trouble. I didn’t mean to make things hard for you. I just wanted you to know someone cares.Rhys reads it at the counter with his coffee going cold. His jaw does the thing. He puts it down and calls Patricia. The call lasts four minutes, and those four minutes produce a restraining order filing that she processes that afternoon.The letter goes in a folder. The folder goes in a drawer. The woman has a legal document delivered to the address Patricia traced, and the stay-away becomes enforceable rat

Last Updated : 2026-09-16

FIFTY-FIVE – THAT’S YOU

We talk more for a bit, then we hang up, and the laptop closes. Rhys sits, looking at the dark screen, his jaw relaxed for the first time in weeks."He knew all along," he says."He's Richard.""He knew about it, but he sat on it.""Because he's Richard."We sit in the quiet that follows a detonation that turned out to be smaller than expected – the crisis reduced to three words and a man whose greatest act of love was choosing not to use the information he had.The day moves on, and it soon turns into weeks, and as the weeks keep passing, the belly keeps growing. The tightness across my hips when I sit too long sets in. The tenderness that makes stomach-sleeping impossible becomes more frequent. The afternoon exhaustion that doesn't respond to the decaf I've switched to – the decaf being a betrayal I'm not ready to discuss – becomes an instinct. And then the careful distance continues.I start handing him my phone automatically, because sometimes explaining things feels like work, bu

Last Updated : 2026-09-16

FIFTY-SIX – SETTLED

RHYS’ POVShe's asleep on the couch the same way she has been lately, with one hand hanging and the other on the bump.She calls it your daughter's apartment when she's talking to me and calls it the situation when she's on the phone with Sienna. An hour ago, she called it the reason I can't see my feet while reaching for something on the second shelf, something she could reach four months ago.It's 9 PM. Her laptop is open beside her, the manuscript glowing on the screen. New pages. Good ones. Pages that sound like her again. Her mouth is slightly open, her hair across her face, and the hand on the belly is resting over the spot where the baby kicks hardest – positioned there even in sleep.I'm in the kitchen holding a cup coffee I'm not drinking. It has probably gone cold based on the amount of time I’ve been focused elsewhere, but I still can’t stop myself from watching her sleep as I think about the things I don't say out loud.Cole called this morning. Twenty minutes between prac

Last Updated : 2026-09-16

EPILOGUE

NAOMI’S POVMonths later, we’re at the apartment. I'm at the kitchen table with my laptop open and a coffee going cold, because every coffee goes cold in this apartment – a law of physics specific to this kitchen that no hot drink has ever survived. Our daughter, Orion has been asleep in the next room, which means I have approximately ten minutes before the grey eyes open and the Maddox jaw opens wider, because Orion Maddox communicates hunger with the volume of a fire alarm and the subtlety of her father.The morning is ordinary. That's what I can't get over. After everything, what's left is a truly random Tuesday. A woman at a table with cold coffee and a sleeping baby and a finished manuscript and a man in the next room murmuring to his daughter in the low, warm voice because he’s talking to someone who can't answer yet but is listening with full-body attention since every sound is new.I open my phone and go to the camera roll, and I look at the birth photo that the nurse took at

Last Updated : 2026-09-17

All Chapters of P^CKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A HOCKEY ROMANCE: Chapter 221 - Chapter 226

FIFTY-TWO – SIGN IT

FIFTY-THREE – THE DISHES

FIFTY-FOUR – RESEARCH

FIFTY-FIVE – THAT’S YOU

FIFTY-SIX – SETTLED

EPILOGUE