All Chapters of The Forbidden Puck: The Coach's Daughter Is Off Limits : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

POV: MarvelI hadn't slept properly in six days. I knew the exact number because the last good night of sleep I'd had was the night before the Falcons game, when everything still felt manageable. Before the loss. Before the look on Riley's face at the bar. Before Sienna started texting again like the summer had never ended.I sat on the edge of my bed at eight in the morning staring at my sneakers on the floor and made a decision.I was going to fix this.Sienna lived off campus in a small apartment above a laundromat on Greer Street. I'd been there four times over the summer. I stood outside the door for two minutes before knocking, my hands in my pockets, my jaw tight, rehearsing nothing because there was nothing to rehearse. What I had to say was simple.She opened the door in a sweatshirt and socks, coffee mug in hand, and when she saw me her expression moved through three things quickly before settling on carefully."Marvel.""Can I come in for a minute?"She stepped back. I went

POV: RayI couldn't stop hearing the voice. That person is still watching. I'd played it back forty times since the call ended. The woman's voice, calm and precise, like she was delivering information rather than a warning. I didn't recognize it. I had no way to trace the number. I'd sat at my kitchen table for an hour afterward, turning it over and over, trying to find an angle that made it less unsettling, and came up with nothing.So I walked.I did that sometimes when my head got too loud. Campus at night was different from campus during the day, quieter and more honest somehow, just the path lights and the wind and the occasional lit window where someone else was also awake for reasons they probably couldn't explain. I walked the perimeter of the athletics complex, past the main arena, past the training facility, not going anywhere specific.That was what I told myself. I ended up at the skating rink at two in the morning and noticed the dim glow coming through the small window b

POV: RileyPractice ran forty minutes longer than scheduled. Coach Farrow had us working on a synchronized sequence for the upcoming showcase, and the timing between the three lead skaters kept breaking down at the same transition point. We ran it seven times. By the eighth it was clean enough to move on from, but my legs were heavy and my mind had been somewhere else for most of it.I was unlacing my skates on the bench when Naomi sat down beside me. She had her phone in her hand and her expression had none of its usual sharpness. It was careful in a way I hadn't seen from her before. Measured. Like she'd been preparing what she wanted to say."I need to show you something," she said. "And I need you to let me finish before you say anything."I looked at her. "Okay."She turned her phone toward me. It was Sienna Voss's Instagram. I recognized it immediately, the same profile I'd found myself two nights ago. But Naomi had gone further than I had. She'd screenshot a series of posts and

POV: MarvelI didn't sleep. I sat on the edge of my bed after Sienna left and stared at the floor and replayed Riley's face in the doorway so many times it started feeling less like a memory and more like something burned directly into the back of my eyes. The way she looked at me. Not with rage, not with tears. Just that terrible calm. Like she'd already finished grieving something I hadn't admitted was broken yet.I left my scarf here last week. I'd like it back. Six words. Delivered like a closed door. I was up before six. I showered, changed, and stood in my kitchen trying to think clearly. The thinking didn't go anywhere useful so I switched to action because action was the only language I'd ever been good at when things got hard.I went to the coffee shop on the edge of campus that Riley liked. Ordered her drink, the oat milk latte with one sugar that she'd mentioned exactly once and I'd remembered because I used to pay attention to things like that. Then I went to the small flo

POV: RayI told myself I was just walking. That was the first lie of the evening. I'd seen Riley say yes to Declan from across the quad and I'd stood against that tree and kept my face completely still and watched them go inside her building and then I'd walked away in the opposite direction with my hands in my pockets and my jaw aching from how hard I was holding it.I walked three blocks before I turned around.The second lie was that I just wanted to know where they were going. Professional reasons. Hartwell wanted updates. I was doing my job.I followed them at a distance down the main street off campus, staying half a block back, hood up, hands in my jacket. Declan walked beside Riley with that easy unhurried posture he carried everywhere, and Riley had her bag on one shoulder and her chin slightly up and she looked like someone who had made a decision and felt good about it.They went into Lena's, a small Italian place on Garfield Street with warm lighting and small tables and t