Filed to story: Addicted To My Hockey Stepbrother
He walked in at 5:47.
I heard the door first. Then the heavy drop of a gym bag. Then footsteps – slower than usual, uneven – and when he appeared in the kitchen doorway, I understood why.
His knuckles were split open. Fresh blood, not dried – meaning he’d been hitting something recently, or something had been hitting him. His jaw was bruised on the left side, a deep reddish purple that was going to look worse tomorrow. He was holding his right shoulder slightly lower than his left, and when he pulled out the chair across from me, he moved like everything hurt.
“What happened?”
“Practice.”
“That’s not practice. That’s assault.”
“It’s hockey.” He sat down carefully. “Captain’s prerogative. Welcome-to-the-team body checks. Perfectly legal. Technically.”
“Caleb did this.”
“Caleb ran drills that happened to involve checking me into the boards six times in forty minutes. Coach warned us both.” He flexed his hand. Winced. “His accuracy is the only impressive thing about his game.”
I was already up. Already in his kitchen, opening cabinets – finding antiseptic under the sink, a box of butterfly bandages in a drawer, ice in the freezer. I didn’t ask permission. Didn’t think about it. Just moved.
I sat back down and took his hand.
He went still.
I cleaned the split knuckles first. Antiseptic on a paper towel, dabbing carefully around the broken skin. He didn’t flinch – sat completely motionless, watching me work with an expression I couldn’t read. I applied butterfly bandages to the worst split, pressing the edges of skin together with a precision I didn’t know I had.
“You’ve done this before,” he said.
“Miles plays hockey. Thirteen-year-olds are basically made of bruises.” I wrapped ice in a dish towel and held it to his jaw. “Hold this.”
His hand came up to take the ice. His fingers brushed mine. Neither of us moved away.
This was different from the bar. Different from the restaurant. Those were heat and urgency and the excuse of not knowing better. This was quiet. Domestic. Sitting in his kitchen holding ice to his face while his Gatsby book sat on the table between us and the evening light came through the window and turned everything golden.
This was the kind of intimacy that ruined people.
I realized I was staring at his mouth. The bruise sat just below his lower lip – dark against his skin, tender-looking. I was close enough to see the faint scar tissue above his eyebrow, the place where the skin had healed slightly uneven. Close enough to count the individual lashes framing those grey eyes.
“You’re staring.”
“I’m assessing the damage.”
His mouth didn’t move but something in his eyes shifted – went darker, heavier, the grey deepening like a storm rolling in.
“That’s not where the damage is.”
My hand was still on his jaw. Holding the ice. Holding him. The air between us was so charged I could feel it in my teeth – a low hum, electric, the kind of tension that didn’t build gradually but was just suddenly there, fully formed, daring someone to break it.
I pulled my hand back.
He caught my wrist.
His fingers closed around it – not tight, not forceful. Just there. Holding me in place. His thumb rested against my pulse point and I knew he could feel it hammering because there was no way to hide it, no way to pretend my heart wasn’t trying to crack through my ribcage.
He didn’t let go.
I didn’t pull away.
I came back to myself in pieces.
His fingers around my wrist. My pulse hammering against his thumb. The kitchen light turning his grey eyes silver. The ice pack abandoned on the table, melting into a dish towel neither of us was thinking about.
I pulled my hand free. Gently – but deliberately.
“We’re supposed to be studying.”
He let go. No resistance. No smirk. Just released my wrist and leaned back in his chair like nothing had happened, except his eyes said everything had happened and he was going to let me pretend otherwise because he was patient enough to wait.
I opened the Gatsby essay prompt. Spread my notes between us like a barricade.
“The green light,” I said. “Fitzgerald uses it as a symbol of-“
“Hope.” He said it flat. Dismissive. “Everybody says hope.”
“Because that’s what it is. It represents Gatsby’s belief that he can reach something better. That the future is worth reaching for.”
“No.” He leaned forward. Elbows on the table. Those bandaged knuckles inches from my notes. “The green light isn’t hope. It’s obsession. It’s wanting something you know will destroy you and reaching for it anyway. Not because you think you’ll get it – because the reaching is all you have. Because without it, you’re just a guy in a big house staring at water.”
He was looking directly at me when he said it.
Not at the book. Not at the essay prompt. At me. And the words landed somewhere below my ribs and stayed there, glowing, because we both knew he wasn’t talking about Gatsby anymore.
The kitchen was very quiet.
