All Chapters of FALLING FOR MY BROTHER'S RIVAL: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Noah’s PovThere were only two kinds of games against Mason Blake.The ones that ended with someone bleeding.And the ones that ended with the media pretending they were disappointed nobody had thrown a punch.Tonight had fallen somewhere in the middle.The final buzzer had sounded nearly twenty minutes ago, but the noise inside the arena hadn’t faded. Fans were still chanting, reporters were crowding the tunnels, and every sports channel in the country was already replaying the moment Mason and I slammed each other into the boards during the third period.Neither of us had started the collision. Neither of us had backed down either.I pulled my helmet off as I walked into the locker room, tossing it onto the wooden bench before running a hand through my sweat-soaked hair. The room smelled of ice, tape, and victory.We had won. Barely.Yet nobody would remember the score by tomorrow morning. They would only remember another chapter in the never-ending rivalry between Noah Steele and M

Noah’s PovThe first thing I noticed when I stepped inside the mountain lodge wasn’t the warmth from the massive stone fireplace or the relief of finally escaping the brutal snowstorm.It was Sophia Blake.She stood near the reception desk with a suitcase beside her, looking just as surprised to see me as I was to see her.For a brief second, neither of us moved.Of all the places in the state, of all the weekends in the year, fate had somehow decided to strand the two of us in the same place.She folded her arms across her chest. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”I pulled my gloves off and slipped them into my coat pocket. “I was about to say the same thing.”The receptionist looked from one of us to the other. “Do… do you two know each other?”“Unfortunately,” Sophia answered before I could speak.I couldn’t help laughing. “I don’t think she’s very happy to see me.”“You’re surprisingly observant.”The receptionist cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’ll need your name.”“Noah St

Noah’s PovWalking through the doors of the Hawks’ training facility felt like stepping into enemy territory I had spent a decade trying to conquer, except now I was expected to call it home, and every part of me resisted the idea even as my legs kept moving forward because there was no version of this where I got to turn around.The hallway smelled like every other rink I had ever played in, ice and rubber and the faint sting of disinfectant, and yet nothing about it felt familiar, because for years this building had represented everything I fought against every single season.Reporters had been shouting questions outside for nearly twenty minutes before security finally cleared a path, and even now I could still hear faint echoes of their voices bouncing off the concrete walls behind me, asking the same question over and over in a dozen different ways, wanting to know how it felt to become a Hawk, wanting to know if I had spoken to Mason yet, wanting a reaction they could turn into

Noah’s PovI woke to the sound of my phone buzzing against the nightstand with a persistence that told me something was wrong before I even opened my eyes, and by the time I finally reached for it, the screen had already lit up with more notifications than I could process at once, texts from Ethan, missed calls from my publicist, and an alarming number of alerts from sports outlets I hadn’t even realized I followed.I sat up slowly, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I unlocked the screen, and the first headline that greeted me sent a wave of ice through my chest that had nothing to do with the winter air seeping through my apartment windows.HOCKEY’S BIGGEST RIVALS CONNECTED: NOAH STEELE SPOTTED WITH MASON BLAKE’S SISTER.Beneath the headline sat a photograph I recognized instantly, one taken from what must have been a distance, grainy and slightly blurred, but unmistakable all the same, Sophia and me sitting close together at the café, my hand covering hers on the table exactly the w

Noah’s PovThe days following Mason’s confrontation settled into an uneasy quiet, the kind that felt less like peace and more like the pause before another storm, and though Sophia and I tried to convince ourselves that the worst had already passed, something about the silence never quite sat right with me, as though the city itself were holding its breath waiting for the next disaster to unfold.Training continued at its usual relentless pace, though the atmosphere in the locker room had shifted noticeably since the news broke, teammates offering careful glances whenever Mason and I found ourselves in the same drill, coaches watching us with the wary attentiveness of men expecting an explosion at any moment, and though neither of us gave them the satisfaction of a public confrontation, the tension between us had only grown heavier, thick enough that even Liam had stopped making jokes about it.I tried to focus on hockey, tried to lose myself in the familiar rhythm of practice and fil