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2026-04-14 21:04:02CHAPTER 4
Theodore~
“Mom, you can’t do that!”
My voice cracked and pitched higher than I meant it to. I cleared my throat, forcing myself to breathe through my nose before I completely embarrassed myself. Jesus Christ. How could she possibly think this was okay? Sharing a dorm was one thing.
Sharing a dorm with him?
“Theodore,” my mom said patiently, like I was five instead of nineteen. “You guys are brothers.”
“We can never be brothers, Mother.” The words slipped out harsher than intended. My jaw clenched as panic clawed its way up my spine. How do I suddenly become brothers with the guy who fucked me less than forty-eight hours ago?
It hadn’t even been two days.
She sighed, rubbing her temple. "Noah has nowhere else to go right now. The apartment he was subletting fell through, and with the semester already started, dorms are full. You’ve got that big single room all to yourself. It’s temporary. Just until housing sorts something out.”
“My room is built for one person.” The lie slipped out smoothly. Technically, there were two narrow beds shoved against opposite walls—a standard double-occupancy setup the university never bothered to reconfigure when my last roommate transferred. But no way in hell was I admitting that. “There’s barely enough space for my gear bag and skates. Adding another person? Another hockey player? It’s not happening.”
“Theodore.” Her tone sharpened. “I already spoke with the housing director. They confirmed there are two beds. You don’t have a roommate this year. Noah moves in tomorrow. End of discussion.”
She turned and walked deeper into the house—Jeff’s house. I trailed after her like a kid who’d lost an argument at ten.
“Mom, please. Just… think about it. We’re on the same team. Captain and new winger. Now roommates? It’s a recipe for disaster.”
She paused at the kitchen island. “You’re both adults. You’ll figure it out. And honestly, honey? I know I have never been this excited about anything since your father... This marriage… it’s good for both of us. Can’t you give a little?”
Guilt twisted in my gut. She looked softer than usual tonight—happier. The lines around her eyes had eased in a way I hadn’t seen in years. What kind of son refuses his mother the one thing making her glow?
I exhaled hard through my nose. “Fine. I’ll… try.”
My only real hope now was that Noah would put his foot down with his dad. Tell Jeff it was a bad idea.
*****
Bad news.
He couldn’t.
I stood outside the house near the driveway, trying to gather what little sanity I had left. The evening air was cool, but my palms were sweating. My heartbeat thudded so loud it felt like it echoed in my ears.
Footsteps approached.
“Hey.” He whispered quietly.
I turned.
Noah stood a few feet away, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. For the first time since I’d met him, he didn’t look smug or amused.
He looked tense.
“Hey yourself,” I replied, crossing my arms defensively.
“Look—” he started.
“See—” I said at the same time.
We both paused.
Then, unexpectedly, we laughed. It was awkward. “You can go first,” I muttered.
He nodded once and shifted his weight. “Look, I really didn’t know who you were. I swear. If I had known you were my new captain… or that our parents were—”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Trust me. The last person I’d choose to hook up with is my captain. And definitely not my soon-to-be stepbrother.”
There was no mockery in his tone.
Just blunt honesty.
“I don’t want to ruin this for my dad,” he continued. “He hasn’t looked this happy in years. Your mom makes him… different. In a good way.”
I nodded in agreement. “She deserves that,” I muttered. What kind of son would I be if I couldn’t compromise a little?
“Yeah,” he agreed quietly.
Another pause.
“So,” he continued carefully, “we can just… put this behind us, right? It was one night. We were drunk. It doesn’t have to mean anything and we can just forget about it?”
Forget the way he’d kissed me like he was starving? Forget how my name sounded when he groaned it against my throat? Forget the way our bodies had locked together like they’d been waiting for years?
But I nodded anyway. “Yeah. We can do that. Pretend it never happened.”
He studied me for a beat, then extended his hand. “Cool, Cap?”
I stared at his palm—long fingers, faint scar across the knuckles from some old fight or check. The same hand that had gripped my waist like it owned me.
“Cool, Winger.” I forced a small smile and shook.
Then footsteps echoed from the doorway.
“Everything good out here?” Jeff called.
We dropped each other’s hands immediately.
“Yeah,” Noah answered smoothly.
“Perfect,” my mom added, stepping beside Jeff with a hopeful smile. “I knew you boys would work it out.”
“So, I will move in tomorrow night. Just to give you enough time to process and perhaps clear the room, captain?”
“You can call me Theodore”.
“I’d rather not”.
Bab terbaru
Beneath The Ice : Claimed By My Stepbrother The Fall
Noah~The national news hit before lunch. I was sitting in the back of the lecture hall with Theo’s knee pressed against mine under the desk when my phone lit up with a breaking-alert banner from every major network at once. The volume on the muted classroom projector somehow managed to catch the crawl at the bottom of the feed someone had left open on their laptop two rows ahead. Blackwood University. Hockey star. Private messages. Photographs. The words “suspended pending investigation” scrolled past in white letters against a red bar while a polished anchor’s face filled the small screen, lips moving in the familiar cadence of manufactured outrage. I did not need the audio. The caption alone was enough. Theo’s name and mine sat side by side beneath a still of us walking across the quad that morning, hands linked, faces calm. The freeze-frame made the contact look deliberate, almost staged, which was exactly what we had intended and exactly what the networks now wanted to dissect.
Beneath The Ice : Claimed By My Stepbrother The Leak
I woke up to the sound of my phone vibrating non-stop against the desk. The screen was full of notifications before I even unlocked it. Messages from Melody. Messages from Jeremy. Group chats lighting up one after another. I sat up and opened the first link someone had sent. Then the second. Then the third. Photos I had never seen before. Screenshots of messages that looked real enough to hurt. Old posts mixed with new ones. Half-truths stacked on top of actual facts until it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Everything had landed at once.Theo was already awake beside me. He stared at his own phone with the same tight expression I felt on my face. The room was quiet except for the constant buzzing from both devices. Outside the window the sky was still early-morning gray. Campus had not fully woken up yet, but the internet already had.“They released everything,” he said.I nodded and kept scrolling. There were clearer photos of us walking together. Screenshots th
Beneath The Ice : Claimed By My Stepbrother Checkmate
I sat in the study with the lights low and the latest reports open across the desk. Every update from the last forty-eight hours was there. The press conference clip. The comments online. The quiet messages from people still loyal enough to keep me informed. Theo had walked into a room full of reporters and spoken like he was the one in control. He had refused to deny the relationship. He had said he was done letting other people tell his story. The words had already spread further than any of the earlier pressure points.I leaned back in the chair and stared at the paused video on the screen. My son looked calm. Steady. Certain of himself in a way that made the problem worse. He had always been talented. That was never the issue. The issue was the path he kept choosing. The people he kept choosing. Every decision pulled him further from the future that had been built for him since he first stepped on the ice.Legacy was not a soft word. It was the reason the company still held its po
Beneath The Ice : Claimed By My Stepbrother Press Conference
Theo~I walked into the small media room on the lower level of the athletic complex with my hands steady and my pulse louder than I wanted it to be. The decision Noah and I had made that morning still sat clear in my chest. No more pretending. No more letting the blurry photo and the hallway speculation write the only version of us that existed in public. The room was already half full when I arrived—local sports reporters, two campus journalists, a camera from the regional network that had been camped near the practice facility for days. They quieted when they saw me. Someone adjusted a microphone on the long table at the front. The air smelled like coffee and the faint metallic tang of equipment that had been running too long.I sat down without waiting for an invitation. The chair scraped lightly against the floor. A stack of notes I did not need rested under my hand. I had not prepared a statement in the formal sense. I had only decided that the silence was finished.The first qu
Beneath The Ice : Claimed By My Stepbrother Enough
Noah~I woke before the alarm and lay still in the dim blue light that filtered through the thin dorm curtains. Theo’s arm was heavy across my waist, his breathing deep and even against the back of my neck. The events of the previous night still sat close to the surface—the way he had broken down after meeting my mother, the raw comparison between her quiet gratitude and his father’s conditional control, the long minutes I had held him while the pressure of weeks finally found an exit. Something in me had shifted while I listened to him cry. The careful distance we had maintained in public, the half-truths, the way we still angled our bodies away from each other when too many eyes were present—all of it suddenly felt like a coat that no longer fit.I slipped out from under his arm carefully, sat on the edge of the bed, and watched the slow rise and fall of his shoulders. The room was quiet except for the distant sound of someone moving in the hallway and the soft hum of the radiator.
Beneath The Ice : Claimed By My Stepbrother Home
Theo~I walked back to the dorm with Reina’s words still sitting in the center of my chest, heavier and lighter at the same time. Thank you for loving my son. Spoken without conditions. Without a list of requirements I had to meet first. Without the quiet threat that the affection could be withdrawn if I failed to perform. I kept replaying the moment in the conference room—the calm way she had looked at me, the deliberate step around the table, the hug that had arrived instead of the interrogation I had braced for.The hallway outside our room was empty. I unlocked the door and stepped inside, closing it softly behind me. Noah was at the desk with his laptop open, headphones around his neck, the glow of the screen lighting the side of his face. He looked up the second the latch clicked and read whatever was written across my expression before I could arrange it into something neutral.“How did it go?” he asked.“She’s not what I expected.”Noah closed the laptop and turned the chair t
Beneath The Ice : Claimed By My Stepbrother 1
Theodore POVYou probably think it can’t get any worse than hooking up with a random guy after a win and then seeing him the next morning as the newest member of your hockey team.Try going home that same day and finding out your mom got a ‘fiance’ over the weekend.Try watching that same guy—same
Beneath The Ice : Claimed By My Stepbrother Melody & Reina
Melody~By the third week of pretending I was fine, I was ready to admit I was terrible at it.Not out loud, of course. Out loud I was doing great. I went to class. Answered questions, held conversations. I even laughed a few times when people expected me to. From the outside, I probably looked com
Beneath The Ice : Claimed By My Stepbrother 3
Theodore~“Do you know the new guy?”Joe’s voice was casual, but I could feel his eyes on me as we walked toward the lockers. I kept mine forward, jaw tight.“No. Why?”“You’re looking at him weirdly.”I let out a dry laugh. “Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I want to fuck every guy, Joe,” I mutte
Beneath The Ice : Claimed By My Stepbrother 2
A deep groan clawed its way out of my chest as my phone kept vibrating against my nightstand like it had a personal vendetta against me.For a split second, I considered letting it die.It didn’t.I snatched it up without checking the caller ID. “What?!” I barked, voice thick with sleep and last ni
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