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CHAPTER 96 - THE FIRST ROUND
publish date:
2026-04-23 04:17:15
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PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 166 - FOR THE DRINK
Mom saw the ring before I said a word. FaceTime connected and her eyes went straight to my left hand on the counter like she already knew what was happening.She dropped her dish towel and cried quietly. It felt like it was the healing kind that meant the walls of the last three years had finally finished coming down and what was left was a woman watching her daughter wear a gold band on a video call and knowing it was right.Richard’s response arrived six hours later in the form of a text.Congratulations. He chose well.Four words. I read them three times. In Richard Maddox’s vocabulary, that was a concession speech. An admission that the architecture his son built with the girl he’d tried to remove from the blueprint was stronger than the concrete fortress Richard spent twenty years maintaining. It meant I was wrong and I know it and I’m not going to say those words because I’m Richard, but these four words carry the same weight if you know how to read me and by now you should.I k
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 165 - YES
We were drinking the cheap champagne Cole had brought to the reading as a gift. We’d carried it home unopened because drinking in a bookstore basement felt wrong when the book was still warm in my hands.Rhys popped it in the kitchen with his left hand and the foam ran over his wrist, but neither of us reached for a towel.He poured two plastic cups because we didn’t own champagne glasses yet.“To the writer,” he said.I drank. Set the cup down. Pulled his mouth to mine.The sex was different from everything that came before it because we were celebrating this time.He lifted me onto the kitchen counter – our counter, the one I’d measured with my eyes during the apartment tour and he’d caught me doing it and said “I know what you’re doing” and I’d said “I don’t know what you’re talking about” – and I wrapped my legs around him and we laughed when the champagne fell off the edge and shattered on the tile.We moved to the bedroom – his hands on my hips steering me backward, my hands pul
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 164 - THE READING
A few days after. The bookstore smelled like damp cedar and newsprint. A cat was sleeping in the window upstairs. I was behind a small oak podium with my book between my hands.I was staring at the front row.Seven people crammed into folding chairs with their shoulders touching. Cole on the far left. Sienna beside him, already crying. Zara next with the faintest trace of a real smile. Then Mom. Between Miles and Elena.The arrangement that shouldn’t have been possible – the current wife and the ex-wife of Richard Maddox, sitting shoulder to shoulder on plastic chairs in a Portland basement. Miles in his varsity jacket, fingers tracing the edge of his jersey, the bridge between two versions of the same family.Richard on the far right. His hands flat on his knees. His eyes on the podium. He’d bought a ticket and a preorder copy and he was HERE.I looked to Rhys in the centre. Leather jacket. Hands in his pockets. Grey eyes tracking my face with an intensity that made the back of my ne
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 163 - A GOOD ONE
Miles was fifteen and three inches taller than the last time I’d seen him in person, which meant the hug at the airport arrivals gate involved me standing on my toes and him pretending not to notice.He was wearing the number seventeen jersey – not the old one from the championship, a new one, his own, the junior varsity version with ELLIS on the back because he’d earned the number through tryouts and not through anyone else’s name.He’d brought his gear. Of course he had. The visit was three days and he’d packed like he was relocating – sticks in a travel case, skates wrapped in his practice jersey, tape in three colours, because Rhys had told him over FaceTime that black tape was for forwards and white was for defencemen and Miles had said “what about blue” and Rhys had said “blue is for people who want to get chirped” and Miles had still packed blue anyway.Rhys rented ice time at the practice rink. An hour on a Tuesday morning when the building was empty and the lights were indust
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 162 - THE WAY WE ARE
The light through the curtains was amber for once. Not the usual Portland grey – actual sun, like the city had decided to give us one good morning as a reward for surviving many months of rain.I was propped against the pillows with my laptop on my knees, formatting the final front matter. Title page. Table of contents. The editor needed files by noon and I was running the finishing line with intense focus.The bedroom door opened. Espresso and cedarwood hitting the air before his shadow cut through the light.Rhys. Grey sweats. Chest bare. Hair destroyed by nine hours of the deepest sleep he’d had since the draft.He set a mug on my nightstand. Climbed onto the bed. His arms coming around my waist, his mouth finding the spot where my neck met my shoulder.“I’m working,” I said.“I know.” He bit the skin softly. A slow, lingering pressure that sent a shiver straight down my spine and into territory that had nothing to do with formatting.“The file is active, Rhys.”“Save it.”His hand
PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE CHAPTER 161 - FROM DAYS TO MONTHS
The book proposal got accepted on a Saturday at 10:14 AM, which meant Rhys was sitting across from me in our corner booth at the coffee shop with a paperback he was actually reading when I screamed loud enough to make a poetry major spill her latte.I built that. The reading. Gave him book after book during the long-distance months until he stopped pretending literature was homework and admitted he’d been devouring everything I recommended. He was on his third Toni Morrison. The margins of his copy of Song of Solomon looked like his Gatsby – crammed with observations that were too good and too personal to be called notes.Saturday mornings were ours. The brick-basement coffee shop two blocks from his apartment. I wrote. He read. The barista knew our order without asking. We had a ROUTINE – the word alone made something in my chest do a complicated thing, because I’d never had routines that lasted longer than a crisis. Routines required peace. Peace required trust. Trust required two p
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