Alle Kapitel von The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits : Kapitel 151 – Kapitel 160

POV: RileyThe campus smelled like cut grass, and nobody was watching me walk across it.That was the first thing I noticed about summer. The quad that had once felt like a stage was only a wide green lawn now, warm under a pale morning sun. Sprinklers ticked in slow arcs. A single bicycle leaned against the oak by the path junction, its chain gleaming. The buildings stood quiet with their windows open, and the air tasted of dust and water and something sweet from the flower beds.I stayed. I had a small room in a summer housing block on the edge of campus, a narrow bed, a window that faced the trees, and a desk where the sunflowers no longer sat. I had finally let them go in May, pressing one dry petal into my notebook first.My days had a shape now.At six every morning I was on the ice. The rink felt cooler in July than it ever had in winter, a sharp clean chill that woke my lungs. My blades hissed over fresh white, and my body moved the way it had learned to, edges steady, jumps l

POV: RileyMy phone buzzed against the rink bench, and the name on the screen stopped my breath.Clara.It was a Saturday morning in late August. I had just come off the ice, skates half unlaced, my fingers stiff and red from the cold. The rink was nearly empty. The lights hummed overhead. A thin smell of wet rubber and floor cleaner hung in the air, and somewhere behind the boards a machine rumbled softly, smoothing the ice for the next hour.I had not heard from her since the day the story went live.I knew she had read it. Amara had told me she sent it to her first. For three days I had checked my phone in the mornings and at night and in the quiet gaps between, and each time the screen stayed empty. I told myself that was fine. I told myself some people need silence to hold a thing like that.Now the message sat there, unopened, glowing.I set my skate down on the bench. I wiped my palms on my knees.Then I opened it.It was long. Longer than I expected. But it was not stiff or ca

POV: RileyThe first thing I saw when I walked back onto campus was the door to the athletics building, and my stomach did not drop.I stopped on the path to check. I stood with my bag heavy on one shoulder and the late August heat pressing on my neck, and I waited for the old cold feeling to arrive. It did not. The door was only a door. Glass and steel, a smudge near the handle, a sticker for a fall fundraiser curling at one corner.That surprised me more than I expected.Second year began on a Monday. The quad was loud again. Bicycles clattered over the stones. A group of first years stood in a tight circle holding maps, squinting at buildings that all looked alike. Someone had propped a speaker on the grass, and music drifted over the lawn, thin and bright. The air smelled of cut grass and hot pavement and fresh paint from the dorm doors.Everything was the same. The oak by the path junction. The long brick wall of the library. The bench outside the exam hall where I had once waite

POV: RileyThe door to the advocacy office had a brass nameplate, and I stood in front of it for a full minute before I knocked.It was a gray Thursday morning in late September. Rain misted the hallway windows. The building smelled of fresh paint and new carpet, a clean, unlived smell, like a room still deciding what it would become. Last year this corridor had held a storage closet and a broken copier. Now there was a glass door, a small potted plant on the sill, and a sign in plain black letters that read Office of Student Advocacy and Review.Sasha stood beside me with her skate bag clutched against her chest. She had not said a word since we left the rink. Her chin was lifted. Her knuckles were pale."You do not have to come in," I said. "I can tell them.""I want to," she said. Her voice was thin but steady. "It is my file."I nodded. I knocked.The door opened on a bright room with two desks and a long window. A woman stood up from behind the larger one. She was tall, with silv

POV: Riley"What are you thinking?" I asked, and my voice came out smaller than I meant.The library had gone quiet around us. Two hours of silence, and now one question sat in the amber light between our laptops like something I had set down too carefully. The radiator ticked under the window. Outside, the wind pushed a last handful of brown leaves across the glass. Far away, a cart rolled and squeaked and went still.Ray did not look away. He closed his laptop slowly, until the soft click settled in the room. His hands stayed flat on the cover. They were steady, and I noticed that, because I knew what it cost him."About us," he said. "About what I want to say."My heart gave one slow knock. I held very still, the way my grandmother used to, and waited."We have been not saying it for a long time," he said. "Since the stairwell. Maybe since the rink." He turned one hand over and looked at his palm. "I think the not saying has become its own kind of statement. Every week we do not sa