Alle Kapitel von Pucking the Captain: Kapitel 31 – Kapitel 40

The polaroid felt like a block of dry ice in my palm, burning my skin with a cold, sickening terror that completely paralyzed my lungs. I stared at the glossy square, my brain struggling to process the image. It was me.I was asleep, my face pressed into Jaxson’s pillow, my bad arm resting awkwardly on the mattress. But it was the angle that made my stomach violently heave. The photo hadn’t been taken from the doorway. It had been taken from *inside* the walk-in closet, peering through the slatted wooden louvers of the closet door. Someone had been standing in the dark, less than ten feet away from my bed, watching me sleep while Jaxson was in the living room crying on the phone. *I’M INSIDE NOW.* The thick, jagged black marker bled into the white border of the photo, and the sheer, violating intimacy of the threat snapped the last fraying thread of my restraint. My duffel bag hit the floor with a heavy thud as my knees finally gave out, but before I could collapse, Jaxson was

The flashing red and blue lights of the fire trucks painted Jaxson’s face in violent, alternating colors as I held the Polaroid out to him. My hand was shaking so badly the glossy square rattled against my palm, the silver RA fob clinking softly against the white border. "Jax," I whispered, my voice barely carrying over the deafening roar of the diesel engines and the shouting firefighters. "Look at this. It was in my pocket. He didn't take the closet photos. Someone planted this on me while we were standing right here."Jaxson snatched the photo from my hand, his bloody, split knuckles stark against the glossy paper. He stared at the image of Brody, his jaw ticking so hard I thought the bone might actually shatter, before his dark eyes flicked to the master fob clipped to the bottom. For a second, I thought he was going to rip the photo in half out of sheer rage, but instead, a dark, cynical scoff tore from his throat, completely devoid of humor."He's playing with you, Jules,"

Jules POVThe crushing pressure on my broken wrist was agonizing, a blinding flash of white-hot pain that radiated all the way up to my shoulder, but it was nothing compared to the sheer, suffocating terror freezing my lungs. Coach Miller’s fingers were dug into my cast like a vice, his nails biting into the sensitive skin just above the fiberglass, and the heavy, cloying stench of wintergreen tobacco and peppermint was so thick in the narrow hallway I could practically taste it. He wasn’t looking at my face; his dark, dead eyes were locked onto the pocket of my sweatpants where my phone was hidden, his expression completely stripped of the warm, paternal mentorship he had worn like a mask all night. "Are you trying to text the captain?" he whispered again, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that sent a violent shiver of pure dread straight down my spine. My heart was hammering a frantic, bird-like rhythm against my ribs, my brain screaming at me to pull away, to run, to scream fo

The matte-black barrel of the handgun looked impossibly huge in the dim light of the living room, and the smell of gun oil mixing with the cloying, suffocating stench of Coach’s wintergreen tobacco made my stomach violently heave. I stared down the sight of the weapon, my heart hammering a frantic, deafening rhythm against my ribs, but the sheer, blinding shock of the moment was already burning away, replaced by a cold, tactical clarity that I only ever felt right before a massive hit on the ice. My brain was racing, connecting the dots in a fraction of a second. The master override fob. The smell of peppermint and tobacco in the closet. The way he had confiscated Jules’s phone. The way he had looked at Jules when he thought I wasn't paying attention. It wasn't Brody. Brody was just a pathetic, obsessive kid who had stumbled into the crosshairs and gotten framed. The monster standing in front of us, the man who was supposed to be our mentor, our protector, the man who had sat in t

The ringing in my ears was a physical weight, a high-pitched, deafening whine that completely drowned out the sound of Coach’s wet, gurgling screams, and I just stood there for a fraction of a second, staring down at the matte-black handgun in my left hand. The barrel was still smoking, and the sharp, metallic smell of burnt cordite mixed with the heavy, coppery stench of fresh blood, coating the back of my throat and making my stomach violently heave. I had pulled the trigger. I had actually pulled the fucking trigger, but at the very last microsecond, my instinct had jerked my wrist downward, turning a lethal execution into a brutal, bone-shattering graze across Coach’s jaw and collarbone. He was writhing on the splintered hardwood, clutching his face as dark, arterial blood pumped through his fingers, but he was still breathing, and as much as a dark, feral part of my brain wanted to put the gun back against his skull and finish it, the sound of Jules’s ragged, panicked sobbing