Filed to story: Addicted To My Hockey Stepbrother
“The game’s starting,” I said. “Shut up.”
“Fine.” Sienna settled back in her seat, but she was grinning – the dangerous grin that meant she was storing this for later. “But imagine – just imagine – if the hot new transfer IS your mystery bar stranger. The one everybody’s losing their minds over.”
I laughed. Actually laughed – the first real one in days. “That would never happen. I’m not in a fairytale.”
“I’m just saying. Campus is small. Coincidences happen.”
“Sienna. I hooked up with a random guy in a dive bar bathroom on Valentine’s Day. That is the opposite of a fairytale. That is a cautionary tale.”
“The best love stories start as cautionary tales.”
“Please stop talking.”
The lights dimmed. The announcer’s voice boomed across the arena – starting lineups, sponsors, the usual. The Thornfield Wolves took the ice first, Caleb leading them out with his stick raised and that easy, camera-ready smile. The crowd erupted. I clapped. My hands felt mechanical.
Then the announcer said it.
“And starting in tonight’s lineup – number seventeen, transfer from Redmond – making his Thornfield debut-“
I don’t remember hearing the name.
I remember the way the arena lights caught the number on his jersey. Seventeen. I remember the way he skated – fluid, predatory, like the ice was afraid of him. I remember the dark hair visible under his helmet and the stick gripped in hands I’d watched wrap around a whiskey glass three days ago.
Then he turned.
Looked directly into the stands. Fourth row. Centre ice. Like he knew exactly where I was sitting.
Steel grey eyes.
Scar through the left eyebrow.
Bruised knuckles wrapped around a hockey stick.
My heart didn’t drop. It fell – straight through my ribs, through the seat, through the concrete floor of the arena, through the earth itself. Every nerve in my body fired at once. The bar. The bathroom. The way he’d pushed my hair off my face afterward like I was something worth being gentle with.
Number seventeen.
The stranger. The bar. The bathroom door. Good girl. Still with me? Eyes open.
He was here. He was on the ice. He was a Thornfield Wolf and he was looking directly at me with those grey eyes and that bruised face and he-
He winked.
One slow, deliberate wink. Like he’d been waiting for this exact moment. Like the entire week had been a countdown to the look on my face right now.
The whistle blew.
I couldn’t breathe.
I watched the entire game in a state of clinical dissociation.
My body was in the fourth row. My mind was in a bar bathroom three days ago with my legs wrapped around the waist of the man currently skating circles around every player on the ice.
Rhys Maddox. That was his name. The announcer said it every time he touched the puck, which was constantly, because the puck seemed magnetically drawn to his stick like it had a crush on him too.
He was unreal.
I’d seen four years of Thornfield hockey. I’d watched Caleb play hundreds of games and thought he was good – he was good, objectively, technically, the kind of good that came from discipline and coaching and doing everything right. Rhys wasn’t good. Rhys was something else entirely. He played like the ice owed him money. Every stride was faster than it should have been, every turn sharper, every decision made a full second before anyone else’s brain caught up.
The team tried to freeze him out. First game hazing – I’d seen it before. Passes that went everywhere except where Rhys was. Plays called without him. Line changes that left him stranded. The veteran players closing ranks around their captain, making sure the new guy knew his place.
It pissed him off.
I could see it in the shift of his shoulders. The way his jaw tightened under his helmet. The way he stopped waiting for passes that weren’t coming and started taking.
First period. Caleb carried the puck up the right side – clean breakaway, the kind he’d score on nine times out of ten. Rhys came out of nowhere. Stripped the puck off Caleb’s stick so cleanly it looked choreographed. Skated past three defenders like they were traffic cones and buried it top corner.
The arena went silent. Then it erupted.
Caleb stood at center ice with his stick hanging loose and his mouth open. I’d never seen that expression on his face before – not anger, not yet. Pure, unprocessed shock. Like a king who’d just been pickpocketed on his own throne.
“Holy shit,” Sienna breathed.
Second period. Rhys did it again. Stole the puck from Caleb’s line – not from Caleb directly this time, from his winger, but the message was the same. Your plays don’t include me? Fine. I don’t need them. He swiftly moved through two defenders, faked the goalie so badly the poor guy ended up facing the wrong direction entirely, and slid the puck into the net backhand.
The crowd lost their minds. People were standing. Phones were out – recording, posting, tagging. The energy in the arena had shifted from excitement to something more primal. Everyone knew they were watching something they’d tell people about later.
“He’s got four goals,” Zara said, leaning forward. “Four goals in his first game. That doesn’t happen.”
“That can’t happen,” Sienna said. “That’s not real. He’s not real. Naomi – Naomi, are you breathing?”
I was not breathing.
