All Chapters of PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Sienna didn't mean to do it.That's the thing I kept reminding myself after. She wasn't stirring anything. She was lying on her bed painting her toenails with the phone on speaker, talking about Cole the way she'd been talking about Cole for weeks – half-annoyed, half-obsessed."He's been weird all day. Quiet. I think Rhys's meeting stressed him out and it's leaking onto everyone."I was at my desk. Highlighter in hand. Midterm notes spread across every surface."What meeting?"The silence on the phone lasted four seconds. I counted."The... scholarship meeting?" Sienna's voice climbed. "The one with the alternative funding people? Cole said–" She stopped. I could hear her toenail polish brush freeze mid-stroke. "He didn't tell you."Not a question."No.""Naomi–""I have to go."I hung up. Sat with my hands flat on the desk for a long time. Longer than I should've needed. Because the anger wasn't the kind that hits fast and burns out – it was the kind that arrives quiet, settles into

We were arguing about dishes.That's what I need you to understand. Dishes. A pan in the sink I'd asked him to wash three times that he kept saying he'd get to and hadn't. Stupid. The kind of fight that means nothing on its face and everything underneath because nobody screams about a pan unless they're screaming about something else."I said I'd do it–""You said that yesterday. And the day before. And last week about the scholarship meeting you didn't tell me about, so forgive me if I said I would doesn't carry the weight it used to."That landed. I watched it hit. His jaw tightened. His eyes went flat. And I knew I'd crossed the line from the pan into everything else – Richard, the lies, the pattern, the version of him I'd compared to Caleb in his own kitchen – but I couldn't stop because I was tired and scared and anger was easier than admitting I didn't know how to fix us."Don't.""Don't what? Be honest?""Don't use that against me every time you're mad about something else.""T

NAOMI’S POVThey pulled him out of practice on a Wednesday.I was in the fourth row. Same spot. Laptop open, coffee going cold, eyes on number seventeen the way they always were – tracking him across the ice like a compass needle that only knew one direction. He was skating well. Controlled. The three days on the hallway floor had done something to him – softened the edges, quieted the noise. He was passing again. Communicating. Cole had clapped him on the shoulder during warmups and the tension in my chest had loosened for the first time in a week.Then the doors opened.Two men in athletic department polos walked onto the ice surface. Not coaches. Administrative. Clipboards. Lanyards. The specific, officious energy of people who were about to ruin someone's afternoon and had already rehearsed how they'd phrase it.Coach Harlan skated to meet them. A conversation I couldn't hear – thirty seconds, maybe less. Harlan's face changed. Not surprise. Resignation. The expression of a man be

The sunflowers were wrong.Too tall. Too bright. The ones Dad grew in the backyard were shorter – stubby, with petals that curled at the edges like they were shy about being looked at. These bodega sunflowers were aggressive. Cheerful in a way that felt like an insult when you were buying them for a dead man.I bought them anyway. Carried them back to the dorm wrapped in brown paper. Set them on my desk and stared at them while the room got dark around me.Six years. Six years since the phone call that split my life into before and after. Six years since Mom's voice on the other end – wrecked, unrecognizable, the voice of a woman who'd just had the floor pulled out from under her entire existence. Six years since I sat in the principal's office at fourteen and thought he made me eggs this morning, this doesn't make sense, he made me eggs.I picked up the scissors. Started cutting the stems at an angle – forty-five degrees, sharp blade. The way he taught me when I was seven and we were

NAOMI’S POVHe banged on my door at 3 PM. Not knocked – banged. Fist against wood, desperate, the sound of someone who'd been holding it together for hours and had finally run out of material.I opened it and he looked wrecked. Not the controlled version I was used to. Actually wrecked. Hair wild. Jacket stained. His hands – God, his hands. Knuckles split across both fists, skin peeled back and crusted dark, fingers so swollen I didn't think they could close. Breathing hard. Eyes red-rimmed and searching my face for something I wasn't sure I could give him."Equipment room." Low. Tight. Not looking at me – looking at his own hands. "Basement. Door locked from outside. No signal. Cole found me two hours later."He held up his hands. Torn skin and dried blood and knuckles that would scar over the ones already scarred."Sunflowers are in the car."Three words. That was the sentence that cracked him. Not the equipment room, not the two hours, not the blood. Sunflowers. His jaw worked. His