All Chapters of Pucking the Captain: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The glowing screen of my phone felt like a live grenade in my palm, and the crisp autumn wind cutting through my jacket suddenly felt like ice water in my veins. I stared at the high-definition photo of Jaxson dragging me out of the frat house bathroom, my heart hammering a frantic, sickening rhythm against my ribs. I wanted to look away, I wanted to smash the device against the pavement and pretend this was just a nightmare, but my eyes were glued to the second photo. It was blurry, taken from the street looking up at our hotel window in Michigan, but there was absolutely no mistaking the silhouette of Jaxson’s massive frame pressing me against the glass, his hands tangled in my hair while I melted into his kiss. "Jules," Jaxson’s voice was a low, dangerous rasp that barely carried over the hum of the distant traffic. He stepped into my line of sight, his massive hand reaching out. "Give me the phone."I didn't argue. My fingers were shaking so badly I practically dropped it int

The leather chair in the Athletic Director’s office was supposed to be comfortable, but it felt like I was sitting on a bed of nails. The room was aggressively sterile, smelling of lemon polish and expensive cologne, and the only sound was the rhythmic, maddening tick of the grandfather clock in the corner. I sat with my arms crossed over my chest, my bandaged knuckles throbbing in time with my heartbeat, while Athletic Director Sterling and the university’s head of PR, a slick woman named Elena, sat across from me behind a massive mahogany desk. They weren't yelling. They weren't calling me slurs or telling me I was a disgrace to the sport. In a way, that would have been easier to handle, because I knew how to fight anger with anger. But this? This cold, calculated, corporate dissection of my personal life was making my skin crawl."Let me be perfectly clear, Jaxson," Sterling started, steepling his fingers and leaning forward. He was a guy in his late fifties who looked at play

The glowing screen of my phone felt like a live grenade in my palm, and the crisp autumn wind cutting through my jacket suddenly felt like ice water in my veins. I stared at the high-definition photo of Jaxson dragging me out of the frat house bathroom, my heart hammering a frantic, sickening rhythm against my ribs. I wanted to look away, I wanted to smash the device against the pavement and pretend this was just a nightmare, but my eyes were glued to the second photo. It was blurry, taken from the street looking up at our hotel window in Michigan, but there was absolutely no mistaking the silhouette of Jaxson’s massive frame pressing me against the glass, his hands tangled in my hair while I melted into his kiss. "Jules," Jaxson’s voice was a low, dangerous rasp that barely carried over the hum of the distant traffic. He stepped into my line of sight, his massive hand reaching out. "Give me the phone."I didn't argue. My fingers were shaking so badly I practically dropped it int

The leather chair in the Athletic Director’s office was supposed to be comfortable, but it felt like I was sitting on a bed of nails. The room was aggressively sterile, smelling of lemon polish and expensive cologne, and the only sound was the rhythmic, maddening tick of the grandfather clock in the corner. I sat with my arms crossed over my chest, my bandaged knuckles throbbing in time with my heartbeat, while Athletic Director Sterling and the university’s head of PR, a slick woman named Elena, sat across from me behind a massive mahogany desk. They weren't yelling. They weren't calling me slurs or telling me I was a disgrace to the sport. In a way, that would have been easier to handle, because I knew how to fight anger with anger. But this? This cold, calculated, corporate dissection of my personal life was making my skin crawl."Let me be perfectly clear, Jaxson," Sterling started, steepling his fingers and leaning forward. He was a guy in his late fifties who looked at play

I hadn’t slept more than two hours a night since the blog post dropped, and the sheer, crushing exhaustion was starting to fray the edges of my sanity. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the hateful comments, the flashing cameras, and the terrified look on Jules’s face when his mother called, so I just stopped sleeping altogether. Instead, I went into full, feral-protection mode, convincing myself that if I just controlled every single variable in his environment, I could keep the cruel world from touching him. I walked him to his nine o’clock lecture, my body angled deliberately to shield him from the street, my eyes scanning every single student who looked in our direction. The crisp autumn wind was biting, but I was sweating through my jacket, my muscles coiled so tight they ached. When a guy with a camera phone lingered a second too long near the campus fountain, I stepped directly into his path, towering over him and glaring with such murderous intensity that the kid practic