Semua Bab The Playboy Stepbrother's Rules: Bab 61 - Bab 70

Paxton cooked.It wasn’t elaborate—pasta, garlic, whatever vegetables were left in Kevin’s fridge—but he moved around the small kitchen like he belonged there, sleeves rolled, phone face-down on the counter. Kevin sat on the barstool watching him and tried not to turn every quiet minute into a question about someone else’s house.“You’re staring,” Paxton said without looking over.“You’re in my kitchen. It’s a novelty.”Paxton glanced back, mouth tilting. “I’ve been in your kitchen for weeks.”“Not like this. Not without a crisis on the table.”Paxton drained the pasta, mixed it, and set a plate in front of Kevin. “Then eat before one arrives.”They ate at the counter. Kevin talked about a shift change at work. Paxton talked about a contractor who had lied about a timeline. Ordinary complaints. Ordinary laughter when Kevin nearly knocked his water over and Paxton caught it without comment. For a stretch of the evening the Morrison house felt far enough away to ignore.After the plates

The second day of Silas’s order felt longer than the first.Alex logged into an online lecture he barely heard and took notes he wouldn’t reread. The house moved around him in careful patterns. Bridget left food on the counter without sitting down. Silas passed through the hall once, checked that Alex was at the desk, and said nothing. The silence wasn’t empty—it was supervised.At noon Alex stood in the kitchen doorway while Bridget unloaded groceries.“I can help,” he said.She paused with a carton of milk in her hand. “I’ve got it.”He stayed anyway and put bread in the cupboard. Their elbows didn’t touch. When the bags were empty she wiped the counter in slow circles and finally spoke without looking at him.“I keep trying to find the moment I should have known,” she said. “The closed doors. The way you two watched each other. I thought it was tension. Ordinary tension.” Her voice thinned. “I hate that I lived here and didn’t see it. And I hate that seeing it doesn’t tell me what

By the fifth day without a relay, the quiet had weight.Alex moved through the Morrison house like someone learning a new floor plan. Online classes. Meals taken at odd times to avoid the full force of the table. Silas spoke to him in practical sentences—schedules, reminders, the occasional hard look that asked whether the terms were still intact. Alex answered the sentences and let the looks pass through him. He did not ask about Troy. The not-asking had become its own discipline, sharp enough to cut if he breathed wrong.At night he lay awake and counted the days since the doorway, since the bag, since Kevin’s last forwarded line. The phone stayed face-down. No channel left that didn’t risk the study door and a worse version of the wall.Across town Troy stopped pacing and started going still for long stretches, which Paxton said worried him more. He took a short contract job through an old contact just to put hours somewhere other than the apartment walls. He came back smelling lik

Silas made the arrangements without asking Alex for input.At four he called Paxton from the study. The conversation was short and formal: a time, a number, a condition that Troy would be alone on his end and that the call would be on speaker. Paxton agreed to have Troy ready. When Silas hung up he found Alex in the hallway already waiting for news.“Seven,” Silas said. “My study. You will not coach each other into a private language. You will not discuss returning to this house. You will not turn five minutes into a negotiation. If either of you starts, I end it.”Alex nodded. “Understood.”The hours between four and seven stretched. Alex tried to read and absorbed nothing. Bridget stayed in the kitchen and didn’t hover; every so often her eyes flicked to the clock and then away. At six-fifty she squeezed Alex’s arm once in the hall and whispered, “Keep it simple,” before disappearing toward the back of the house as if her presence might tip the balance of Silas’s patience.At six fi

The day after the reassessment felt longer than the days of pure silence.Alex had a number now. Every three days. The next mark sat on the calendar like a pin through skin—visible, fixed, still too far. He did his online work. He ate when Bridget put food in front of him. He avoided the study unless Silas called him in for something ordinary and sharp-edged, a reminder that the house ran on terms that were not his.At lunch Bridget asked, “Are you going to survive until tomorrow night.”“Yes,” Alex said.She didn’t look convinced. “If you start climbing the walls, come find me. Not him. Me.”He nodded. The distinction mattered. She was the crack. Silas was still the lock.---Troy tried to fill the hours with work.Paxton got him onto a short site job that left his hands dirty and his mind only half-occupied. He came back to the apartment sore, showered, and stood in front of the bathroom mirror counting forward to seven o’clock the following evening like someone counting down a sent