Filed to story: Addicted To My Hockey Stepbrother
He looked like he hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours. Grey circles under those grey eyes. Hair unwashed. Same shirt I’d seen him in three days ago, wrinkled now, like he’d been sleeping in it. Or not sleeping. The apartment behind him was dark.
I opened my mouth to say we’re done.
“I hit a guy at my old school,” he said. Before I could speak. Before I could end it. His voice raw and scraped clean of every wall he’d ever built. “Because he was assaulting a girl at a party. She was a freshman. He was the coach’s son. I walked in and I didn’t think – I just hit him. And I kept hitting him until someone pulled me off.”
He leaned against the doorframe. Not casual – exhausted. Like the words had cost him something physical.
“The school protected him. Expelled me. My dad paid for the silence. And I transferred here because it was the only program that would take me.”
I stood in his doorway. My rehearsed speech dissolving. My anger collapsing into something messier and harder to name.
He looked at me with those sleepless eyes and didn’t ask me to stay. Didn’t reach for me. Just stood there – cracked open, emptied out, letting me see the thing he’d been hiding since the night we met.
We’re done died in my throat.
I didn’t say anything. But I didn’t leave either.
“Her name was Sophie.”
He said it still standing in the doorway, like he couldn’t let me inside until the whole truth was out. Like the apartment behind him was somewhere I could only go if I knew everything first.
“She was a freshman. Eighteen. Barely been on campus two months.” His voice was flat – not emotionless, but controlled. Holding the words at arm’s length so they couldn’t touch him. “The party was at the hockey house. Coach Murray’s son – Tyler – had been following her around for weeks. Everyone knew. Nobody did anything because his dad ran the program and the program was everything.”
I stood on his doorstep and listened.
“I walked into the upstairs bedroom because I heard something. She was saying no. He wasn’t listening.” His jaw tightened. A muscle ticked beneath the bruise that was finally fading. “I didn’t think. Didn’t calculate. Didn’t consider the politics or the scholarship or any of it. I just – hit him. And I kept hitting him until two guys pulled me off and there was blood on my hands and he was on the floor.”
“Fractured jaw,” I said quietly. “Three broken ribs.”
“Yeah.” He looked at his hands. The taped knuckles. The scars that never fully healed because he kept splitting them open. “They called campus security. His father called the dean. By Monday I was expelled and Sophie had transferred out and Tyler Murray was back at practice with a wired jaw and a story about a bar fight.”
“And nobody-“
“Nobody believed us. His father made sure of it. My dad paid the settlement to avoid a lawsuit, told me I’d embarrassed the family, and found me a spot at Thornfield because it was the only school that didn’t google my name before accepting the transfer.”
The silence between us was heavy. Full. He was looking at me the way he had that first night at the bar – like he was waiting for a verdict, braced for the worst, too tired to perform anything other than the truth.
“Caleb found the disciplinary record,” he said. “Not the real story. Just the headline – expelled for violence against a teammate. He’s going to use it. You know that.”
I knew that.
“Rhys.”
“If you’re going to leave, just-“
I kissed him.
Not gently. Not carefully. I grabbed the front of his wrinkled shirt and pulled him toward me and pressed my mouth against his and put everything I couldn’t say into it – I’m not leaving, I’m not scared of you, I see what you did and it makes me want you more, not less.
He froze for half a second. Then his hands came up – my face, my jaw, my hair – and he kissed me back like a man who’d been holding his breath for three days and had just remembered how to inhale.
We stumbled backward through the doorway. His hand fumbled behind him for the door – missing it once, twice, finally shoving it shut with his shoulder while his mouth never left mine. The apartment was dark. I didn’t care. I knew the layout by now – hallway, kitchen, the bedroom door that stuck if you didn’t lift the handle.
He lifted the handle without breaking the kiss. Muscle memory. The door swung open and we fell through it together.
This time was different from every time before.
Not the bar – frantic and anonymous and fueled by mutual destruction. Not the restaurant – stolen and forbidden and dripping with adrenaline. Not even the first night in his bed – slow, yes, but still careful. Still performing the version of intimacy that felt safe.
This was none of those things. This was terrifying.
He laid me down on his bed and hovered over me and his hands were shaking. Actually shaking – this man who’d scored four goals in his first game and shoved Caleb into a wall without blinking, his fingers trembled against my jaw like I was something he wasn’t sure he was allowed to hold.
I reached up. Touched his face. Traced the scar through his eyebrow with my thumb. His eyes closed and something in his expression broke – not dramatically, not with noise, just a quiet fracture. The last wall coming down.
“I’m here,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He kissed me again. Slower now. Deeper. His hands found the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head, then stood back for half a second just looking at me – my bra, my skin, the marks he’d left days ago that were still fading on my collarbone. His thumb traced one. Then he unhooked my bra with one hand and his mouth was on my breast before the fabric hit the floor.
I gasped. His tongue circled my nipple – slow, wet, deliberate – before he sucked it into his mouth hard enough to make my back arch off the mattress. His hand found the other one, rolling, pinching, his mouth and his fingers working in tandem until I was squirming under him and making sounds I couldn’t control.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured against my skin. Then his mouth moved lower.
He kissed down my stomach. Hooked his fingers into my jeans and pulled – jeans and underwear together, one motion, leaving me completely bare while he was still half-dressed above me. The imbalance should have made me self-conscious. Instead it made me feel like something he was unwrapping with intention.
His mouth landed on my hip bone. Then my inner thigh. Then higher – so close I could feel his breath against me, hot and uneven – and I was already wet, already aching, already gripping the sheets because I knew what was coming and the anticipation alone was enough to make my thighs shake.
He licked me once. One long, slow stroke from entrance to clit that made my entire body jolt.
“Fuck-“
“I know.” Quiet. Almost reverent. Then he did it again. And again. His tongue moving through my folds with a patience that bordered on sadistic – tasting, exploring, learning what made me gasp versus what made me moan versus what made me grab his hair and pull. He found my clit and sucked gently and my vision went white.
