PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE의 모든 챕터: 챕터 21 - 챕터 25

"You're staring at your phone again."Sienna didn't look up from her flashcards. She didn't need to – she had a sixth sense for when I was spiraling and an even sharper one for when the spiral involved a boy."I'm not staring. I'm reading.""You're rereading a text from Rhys for the fourth time. That's not reading. That's forensic analysis."She wasn't wrong. The text was two words – see you tomorrow – and I'd been trying to decode the emotional temperature of a period versus no period for eleven minutes. This was who I was now. A girl who analyzed punctuation from a boy who was technically almost her stepbrother.Growth.The thing about Rhys and me was that everyone on campus knew what we were except us. He walked me to class. Found me after every game, still damp from the ice, and slung his arm around my shoulder like a claim. When I shivered outside the arena one night he pulled his jacket off and put it on me without asking and without making it a moment – just did it, like keepin

Caleb Park was a ghost I couldn't exorcise.Monday: library study group for Dr. Kim's midterm. I'd chosen this group specifically because Caleb wasn't in it – different section, different schedule, no reason to be there. He showed up anyway. Laptop and notes and that golden smile, sliding into the chair across from me like he'd been expected. "Room for one more? Kim's exam is brutal this year." Then, twenty minutes in, unprompted: "Remember when we pulled an all-nighter for Kim's class sophomore year? You threw a textbook at my head because I wouldn't stop quoting the wrong theorist."The table laughed. I watched Rhys's name flash on my phone – how's studying? – and felt the precise, surgical way Caleb had just made four years of history sound like warmth instead of a cage.Wednesday: campus coffee shop. My corner, my time slot. Except Caleb had Miles with him – my brother perched on a stool with hot chocolate and the big marshmallows, grinning so wide it cracked something in my chest

"–and you weren't there, Rhys. That's the point.""I was at practice.""You're always at practice. And Caleb is always exactly where I am, saying exactly the right thing at exactly the right time, and I'm standing there being defended by the person who destroyed me because the person I'm actually with couldn't be bothered to show up."His jaw tightened. He was leaning against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, doing that thing where his whole body went still and controlled while his eyes gave away everything. We'd been going back and forth for ten minutes and the apartment felt smaller with every sentence."I don't need to perform for people.""It's not performing. It's showing up. There's a difference.""Caleb showing up isn't kindness, Naomi. It's strategy. He defended you because it makes him look good and me look absent. That's the whole play.""I know that. You think I don't know that? But knowing it doesn't change the fact that Jade stood in front of a dozen people and called me