Filed to story: Addicted To My Hockey Stepbrother
I moved my leg. His hand followed. Settled. Stayed.
“Rhys, how are you finding Thornfield?” Mom asked, pouring syrup with the careful attention of a woman who wanted everything to be perfect. “Making friends? Settling in?”
“It’s been an adjustment.” His voice was easy. Warm, even – a version of himself I rarely saw, pulled out specifically for parents and first impressions. “But people have been welcoming. Naomi especially – the tutoring’s been a huge help.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Mom beamed at me. “See, sweetheart? I told you you’d be a great tutor.”
Under the table, his thumb drew a slow circle on my knee.
“She’s very thorough,” he said.
I reached for my orange juice with the composure of a woman who was not being touched by her future stepbrother under a table while his father sat three feet away.
“It’s so nice that the kids are getting along,” Mom said to Richard. Genuine. Glowing. The happiness of a woman who’d found love again after losing it, who wanted nothing more than for the pieces of her new life to fit together. “I was worried it might be awkward, but they seem like they’ve really clicked.”
I nearly choked on my orange juice.
Rhys’s hand squeezed my knee once. A warning and a joke at the same time. Don’t you dare laugh.
Miles looked up from his pancakes. “Rhys, can you teach me a slapshot sometime?”
“Anytime, kid.”
“Caleb’s been teaching me stuff too. He’s at practice now. He’s really good.”
The table shifted. Subtle – like a record scratch only certain people could hear. Rhys’s hand stilled on my knee. Richard glanced at My mom. I watched Rhys’s expression carefully for the crack, the flash of jealousy or anger that would give us away.
Nothing. His face stayed easy. Relaxed. But his hand on my knee had gone from teasing to anchoring – holding on to me under the table like he needed the contact to stay in his seat.
“Caleb’s a solid player,” Rhys said. Neutral. Costing him something.
“He’s the captain!” Miles said. “He said maybe I could be captain too someday if I practice hard enough.”
“You could be anything you want,” Rhys said. To Miles. But his eyes flickered to me for half a second – a look that said I see what he’s doing and I’m not going to make a scene at brunch but we both know this isn’t about hockey.
The rest of the meal was civilized. Polite. The performance of a family that didn’t exist yet, held together by cloth napkins and good intentions and the absolute certainty that everything underneath the surface was about to rupture.
***
Caleb called at 11 PM.
I was in my dorm, half-asleep, Sienna already out cold across the room. His name on my screen – not a text this time, a call. The intimacy of a voice in my ear, the presumption that I’d pick up, that I’d always pick up, because that’s what I’d done for four years.
I picked up. Old habits were the hardest kind to kill.
“Hey.” His voice was soft. Late-night soft. The version of Caleb that called when the walls were down and the performance was off and he sounded like the boy I used to love instead of the one I was learning to be afraid of.
“It’s late, Caleb.”
“I know. I just – I’ve been thinking about you. About us. About how things used to be.” A pause. Measured. “And I’ve been thinking about Maddox.”
“What about him?”
“I did some digging.” Another pause – longer this time, the kind designed to make you lean in. “On your boyfriend. His history. Why he transferred.”
My stomach tightened.
“You should ask him why he got expelled from his last school, Naomi.”
The line went quiet. Not dead – he was still there, breathing, waiting for the grenade to land.
“What are you talking about?”
“Ask him. And when he doesn’t tell you the truth – because he won’t – come find me. I’ll show you what I found.”
He hung up.
Caleb didn’t even wait for me to ask.
He found me before I could find Rhys – outside the English building, coffee in hand, that concerned expression he’d been perfecting since childhood. The one that made teachers trust him and parents love him and girls like me mistake control for care.
“Hey. Got a second?”
“Not really.”
“It’s important.” He fell into step beside me. Casual. Unhurried. Like we were still the kind of friends who walked together. “I didn’t want to say this over the phone. It felt like something you should hear in person.”
“You already said it over the phone, Caleb.”
“I said you should ask him. I didn’t tell you what happened.” He stopped walking. I stopped too – hating myself for it, for the way his gravity still worked on me even when I knew it was artificial. “Your boyfriend got expelled from his last school for nearly killing someone. A teammate. Put him in the hospital with a fractured jaw and three broken ribs.”
He said it like he was handing me medicine. Like the cruelty was necessary and he was sorry about the taste.
