All Chapters of PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

141 Chapters

CHAPTER 21 - WHAT ARE WE?

"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

CHAPTER 22 - HOLDING ON

I'd never been on a motorcycle before.He didn't ask if I was scared. Just handed me the helmet, waited for me to put it on, and swung his leg over the bike like he'd been born on one. The engine rumbled to life between his thighs – low, deep, a vibration I felt in my teeth before I even climbed on."Hold on to me," he said. Not a suggestion.My arms went around his waist. My chest pressed flat against his back and my thighs locked against his hips and I could feel everything – the leather of his jacket under my fingers, the warmth of his body underneath, the hard lines of his stomach through his shirt. The tattoos I'd memorized with my mouth were inches from my hands.He pulled out of the lot and I held on so tight my knuckles went white.Thirty seconds of pure terror. The wind hitting my face, the ground blurring, the world tilting on turns that felt like falling. Then something shifted – not in him, in me. The fear thinned out and underneath it was something I didn't expect. Freedo

CHAPTER 23 - NOT A COINCIDENCE

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

CHAPTER 24 - HIS NEW PLACEHOLDER

Jade struck at the interdepartmental mixer, because Jade always struck in public where the audience could double as witnesses who'd later say she was just joking, you're being sensitive.A group of us standing near the drinks table – Sienna, two girls from my English seminar, a guy from Zara's study group. Casual. Low-stakes. Then Jade appeared with a cup of something pink and a smile sharp enough to cut glass."Naomi! Haven't seen you in forever." She looked me up and down – the kind of scan that catalogued every flaw and filed it for later. "Love the outfit. Very... comfortable.""Thanks, Jade.""So how's things with the transfer?" She said transfer the way you'd say rash. "Must be exciting, going from the team captain to the team... what is Maddox exactly? The loose cannon?" She flipped her hair. Turned to the group like she was sharing a fun fact. "I just think it's brave. Downgrading from Caleb Park to the guy who got expelled for almost killing someone. That takes commitment."T

CHAPTER 25 - OUR FAVORITE LANGUAGE

"–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

CHAPTER 26 - KEEPING HER CLOSE

RHYS’ POVFourth line.Caleb put me on the fourth line. Leaned into Coach Harlan during the line change with his clipboard and his captain's face – the one that said team player, leader, just looking out for the program – and my name came out of Harlan's mouth attached to a rotation that had no business being anywhere near mine. Two freshmen who skated like they'd learned last week. A defenseman who'd been riding pine since October. The line you use when you're running down clock in a game nobody cares about.I cared about this game.Didn't say anything. Skated out. Helmet on, jaw locked, the freshmen looking at me sideways like they knew this was wrong but didn't have the rank to question it. I didn't explain. Explanation was for guys who needed people to understand them and I'd stopped needing that a long time ago. Just pushed the pace. Harder shifts. Harder hits. Turned the fourth line into something nobody expected – not a team effort, not a rotation. A demonstration. One man drag

CHAPTER 27 - HIS SURRENDER

NAOMI’S POVHe stood in the doorway and took it.Every word. The Caleb comparison. The accusation. The truth he didn't want to hear from the one person whose opinion could actually cut him. He took it the way he took hits on the ice – absorbed it, let it land, didn't flinch.Then he stepped back. Left the door open.Not an invitation. Not an apology. Just – space. Room for me to enter if I wanted to. The Rhys equivalent of a white flag.I walked in.The apartment was dark. Takeout containers on the counter from what looked like two days ago. Books still on the floor from the table incident – neither of us had picked them up and the symbolism of that was almost funny if it wasn't so pathetic. He moved to the kitchen. Leaned against the counter. Arms crossed. Looking at me with an expression that was working hard to be steel and failing at the edges."I'm not going to apologize well," he said. Flat. Direct. "That's not something I do.""I noticed.""The shutting down thing. It's not abo

CHAPTER 28 - I'M STAYING

He came off the ice looking like a car wreck that had somehow won.I'd watched the whole game from the fourth row – my spot now, the one I didn't share with anyone, the one where I sat with my hands clenched in my lap every time someone checked him into the boards. Tonight was worse than usual. The opposing team had targeted him from the first period – two hooks, a slash across the wrists, and a cross-check to the ribs that sent him into the glass so hard I heard the impact from where I sat.He fought their enforcer in the second period. Dropped gloves, took a hit to the jaw, gave back three. Five minutes in the penalty box. Blood on his knuckles when he came out. He scored twice in the third to seal the win, because that was who Rhys was – the kind of player who bled on the ice and made you pay for it on the scoreboard.I waited outside the locker room. Leaning against the wall with my jacket pulled tight and my heart somewhere in my throat, hating how natural this had become. Standi

CHAPTER 29 - THE MAJOR SCARE

Everything was not fine.Everything was, in fact, so spectacularly not fine that I'd spent the last three days conducting a private negotiation with God, my uterus, and the universe – offering up increasingly unhinged bargains in exchange for one simple biological event that had never in my life been late before and had chosen this specific moment to go rogue.My period was three days late. And the condom had broken two weeks ago.I remember the exact moment. His apartment. Middle of the night. The pause – both of us going still, looking down, the quiet fuck he'd muttered that had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with a piece of latex that had chosen violence. He'd asked if I was on birth control. I'd said yes. He'd said okay. We'd moved on.Except my body hadn't moved on. My body was now staging a silent protest against every reassurance I'd given myself, refusing to bleed on schedule like a biological clock that had decided to teach me a lesson about consequences.Da

CHAPTER 30 - DEAL OR NO DEAL

I told him on a Tuesday. After the test came back negative. After the three days of quiet terror had passed and my body was mine again and the danger was over and there was no reason to tell him at all except that the guilt was eating me alive.We were at his apartment. Kitchen table – the one with the scratches. I set the test on the counter between us like evidence and watched his face cycle through confusion, recognition, and something I'd never seen on him before.Hurt.Not anger. Not the cold shutdown I'd braced for. Genuine, uncalculated hurt – the kind that made his voice go quiet instead of hard."When.""Last week. I was late. I took the test Friday.""Friday." He repeated it like he was doing math. "That was five days ago.""I know.""Five days. And you just – carried that. Alone. Didn't call me. Didn't text. Sat in this apartment with me Saturday night and watched a movie and didn't say a single–""It was negative. It's fine. There was nothing to–""Don't." The word landed

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