All Chapters of PUCKED BY MY STEPBROTHER: A FORBIDDEN HOCKEY ROMANCE: Chapter 141 - Chapter 150

Same rink. Same stands. Same seat.I was in the third row from the glass, laptop open on a document I wasn’t going to work on because the two people on the ice below me were making it impossible to look at anything else. The rink was empty – Rhys had booked it through some favour Cole owed the facilities manager, an hour of private ice that was supposed to be for his recovery skating and was currently being used to teach a thirteen-year-old how to shoot the puck like a professional.Miles was in full gear. Borrowed from the equipment room – the same equipment room that contained lockers and codes and the physical evidence of a sabotage that felt, from this seat, like it had happened in a different lifetime. Miles didn’t know any of that. He just knew the gear fit and the ice was empty and Rhys Maddox was standing behind him adjusting his stick grip with the patience of a man who had somewhere important to be and had decided that this was it.“Weight on your back foot. Not your front –

The silence in the apartment was too loud.For months, my brain had been wired to a completely different frequency. Sirens on the interstate. The sterile, rhythmic beep of hospital monitors. Lawyers barking over speakerphone. The constant, suffocating paranoia of Caleb’s shadow creeping into every room we took clothes off in. Every single time Rhys and I had slammed into each other, it felt like we were stealing seconds from a timer before the next bomb went off.Tonight, there was no timer.The kitchen smelled like ordinary life. French roast coffee. Strong detergent. The heavy, cedarwood weight of his skin.Rhys stood by the island, bare from the waist up. Grey sweatpants low on his hips. The low hanging light caught the hard, white scar tissue on his left forearm.My eyes glued to it.The fiberglass cast wasn’t just loosened – it was completely gone. Not the half-healed garbage from weeks ago where he had to pin me against the front door using only his good side because he was stil

RHYS' POVThe pipes behind the drywall woke me before my alarm could.I didn't reach out for Naomi. The sound of the hot water running through the bathroom door told me exactly where she was.The sound hit me straight in the gut as I recalled the memory of her pressed against the wet tile, her thighs locked around my waist, the water blasting her hair flat. The heavy weight of her mouth in the fog. The fact that holding her in that stall was the only thing that had kept me upright during the worst month of my life.I threw the duvet off without a second thought.Didn’t knock. Simply pushed the bathroom door open and stepped into the thick wall of steam.The glass door was completely fogged over, condensation rolling down in long, clear lines. I slid the panel back.Naomi turned her head, blinking against the draft. Water plastered her dark hair flat against the curve of her neck, trailing down the slope of her nose.She didn’t flinch. She didn’t cover herself. She looked at me through

The email sat in his inbox for four days before he showed it to me.I’d been bracing for the shutdown – the the monosyllabic grunts, the intricate flavour of silence he deployed when Elena’s name entered the atmosphere. Instead he put his laptop on the kitchen island next to my notebook where I’d written the first three lines of the book and said: “Tell her Tuesday.”Tuesday was a coffee shop in the brick basement of an old industrial building near the campus edge. Damp stone walls. Espresso that tasted like it had been brewed during a previous administration. A corner booth I chose because it had sight lines to the door and the exit, which was a habit I’d developed during the investigation and hadn’t managed to unlearn.The bell above the door. My chest locking on instinct.Elena Maddox walked in shaking rain from a black umbrella and the the genetic trajectory hit me again like something cold poured down my spine immediately I saw his eyes on her. That exact steel-grey, but worn in

My black notebook was open on my lap, but the ink had run dry mid-sentence. I sat on his couch, staring at the indentation his shoulders had left in the fabric, waiting for the sound of his motorcycle to cut through the street noise below.My phone buzzed against my thigh and I checked it immediately.Cole.A text, not a call. Cole didn’t text me directly unless something had gone structurally wrong. Our entire communication history was Sienna-adjacent – memes she’d forwarded, group chat logistics, the occasional thumbs-up on a game day photo.A direct message from Cole Brennan to Naomi Ellis meant the floor was moving.He’s going to come home and act like everything’s fine. It’s not. The closer team pulled the contract. Budget cuts. Portland’s the only one left. He told me not to say anything. I’m saying it anyway because I’m not watching this play out the way I think it’s going to.I read the message twice. Three thousand miles.I set the phone face-up on the coffee table next to th