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CHAPTER 51 - TWICE A DAY
publish date:
2026-03-15 19:42:09
Latest chapter
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE TWENTY-FOUR - MELTED
Rhys' POVThe contract is on the counter where we left it yesterday.I’ve walked past it nine times in two hours. Coffee. Water. Checking if the coffee is still hot even though I poured it four minutes ago and coffee doesn’t go cold in four minutes. With each pass, the number on page three pulls at something behind my ribs – the same pull the ice used to have when I was twelve and the rink was the only place with enough room for me.The number would fix everything.I pour the coffee. It’s hot. It was always hot.Naomi is at the table with her laptop closed. The laptop has been closed more than open for weeks now.I stand at the counter with the contract three inches from my elbow and the silence is doing what silence does in our kitchen when something large is sitting between us unnamed.Then I feel it.The freeze. My sternum first then outward. Shoulders tightening. Arms going heavy. Fingers locking around the mug handle with a tight grip. My body using the only defence it knows, whi
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE TWENTY-THREE - FREEDOM
The offer arrives by courier on a Monday afternoon in a manila envelope with the kind of return address that makes your stomach rearrange itself before your brain can read the words.By the time I’ve opened the envelope and seen the number at the bottom of page three – a number with enough zeros that it looks like a typo until you read it twice and realise it isn’t – Rhys is standing beside me at the counter reading over my shoulder with the stillness of a man whose entire future just changed shape inside a piece of paper.The team is in a city I’ve never been to, and the place exists on the opposite edge of the country from Portland and from Thornfield and from every geography we’ve built since a bar on Valentine’s Day.The contract is offering more money than either of us has ever conceptualised as a real number. It's the kind of money that solves the foundation’s funding gap and the financial anxiety that’s been sitting in our bank account since the PR scandal stripped the sponsors
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE TWENTY-TWO - FAMILY
The phone rings at 8 AM on a Saturday and the name on the screen is RICHARD MADDOX, which is a name that has never appeared on my phone.The fact that his name is on my screen instead of his son’s means something has shifted in the architecture of how this family operates.I answer standing in the kitchen with cold coffee in the chipped mug and the laptop closed on the table because the laptop has been closed for three days – since the leak since opening it means seeing the notifications of my signature on that paper being digested by strangers.“Naomi.”His voice is the same voice it’s always been, but there’s something underneath it today that I haven’t heard before.“The exposure will escalate before it settles,” he says, and the sentence has weight. “These organisations have legal teams whose job is to reframe the narrative until the person at the centre of it can’t recognise their own story. You need representation.”He pauses.“I know a firm.”Of course he knows a firm.“Richard
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE TWENTY-ONE - HOW IT FELT LIKE
The document surfaces at 6:47 AM on a Thursday while I’m brushing my teeth, and by the time the toothpaste hits the sink the internet has already decided what it means.My signature. My actual handwriting on a page that says PARTNER VISIBILITY MANAGEMENT at the top and REDUCED PUBLIC PRESENCE in bold underneath, the words printed in the careful, contractual language that Victoria’s firm used to make my disappearance sound like a marketing strategy.The document is real and the signature is mine and the handwriting is unmistakable because I dot my i’s with the specific, aggressive stab of a woman who was taught penmanship by a mother who believed that how you formed your letters was a reflection of your character, and my character is currently on display across every sports gossip platform within reach of a screenshot and a caption.The leak came from a disgruntled employee at Victoria’s former firm, and that could matter later, but at 6:47 AM with toothpaste foam on my lip and my phon
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE TWENTY - HERS
NAOMI'S POVThe bed has been a crime scene for three months and neither of us has acknowledged it until tonight.I stand in the doorway of our bedroom and look at the mattress intently.This is the bed where I lay awake after the conference room while he slept on the floor. This is the bed where his phone buzzed on the nightstand and his eyes went to the screen for three seconds before they came back to me. This is the bed where I flinched my hand away from his chest in a motion so small it might have been invisible and so large it rearranged the entire architecture of how we sleep, because after the flinch I stopped pressing my palm flat against his heartbeat at night and started curling my fingers inward against my own sternum instead.He’s behind me in the doorway with his hand on my hip.“The bed,” I say quietly.He doesn’t answer with words.His hand on my hip tightens and he turns me toward him in the doorway, then his mouth finds mine with a slowness that makes my ribs ache.He
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE NINETEEN - NOT A LIABILITY
RHYS’ POVI call Victoria from the car because the car is the only place where my face can do what it wants without Naomi seeing it.The aim today is a phone call, and the phone call is enough.“The arrangement is over,” I say, and my grip on the steering wheel is tight enough for the leather to crease under my knuckles, but the tightness in my hands is keeping the rest of me steady, so I carry on. “Send the final invoice to Derek.”“Rhys, I think we should discuss–”“I said no.” My voice the low, controlled register that Naomi calls the weapon voice. “The arrangement is over, Victoria.”I hang up and sit in the car with the engine running and my hands still gripping the steering wheel and the adrenaline still sitting in my forearms.Derek calls.“Victoria’s telling the front office Naomi is emotionally compromised,” he says carefully. “The word ‘volatile’ was used.”My hands tighten on the wheel again.“Set a meeting with the GM,” I say. “Noon. Today.”***The GM’s office is too cold
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