Filed to story: Addicted To My Hockey Stepbrother
“You’re really ditching me for that punk?”
“It’s a school order, Caleb. I’m his assigned tutor.”
“Since when?”
“Since the email I got twenty minutes ago.” I stepped past him. My shoulder brushed his arm and I kept walking. “I’ll talk to you later.”
I didn’t look back. Four years of always looking back, always checking if he was watching, always making sure he knew I was still there. I walked toward the door where Rhys was waiting and I didn’t turn around once.
It felt like breathing for the first time.
***
The library study room was small. Glass walls, a table, four chairs, a whiteboard. Rhys closed the door behind us and dropped into a chair like he owned the building.
“No,” I said.
“I haven’t said anything yet.”
“No to all of it. The tutoring. The – whatever this is.” I stayed standing. Needed the height advantage, even if it was negligible. “I’m not doing this.”
“It’s a school assignment.”
“I’ll get it reassigned.”
“On what grounds? You don’t have a reason.”
“I have several reasons. Reason one: you had your hand in my underwear at my mother’s dinner table forty-eight hours ago. Reason two: you are about to become my stepbrother. Reason three: I don’t trust myself in a room alone with you and I’m not stupid enough to pretend otherwise.”
Something shifted in his expression. The smirk faded. Underneath it was something realer – not vulnerable exactly, but honest. Like I’d said the one thing he hadn’t expected.
“Reason four,” I continued, because stopping felt dangerous. “I just spent four years organizing my entire life around a boy who didn’t want me. I’m not doing it again. Not for Caleb. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
“I’m not Caleb.”
“You’re a hockey player who showed up in my life uninvited and is currently rearranging my schedule without asking. You’re close enough.”
He leaned back. Studied me. Those grey eyes moving across my face like he was reading something written there – not judging, not calculating. Just seeing.
“I need the tutoring,” he said. Quieter now. “I’m on academic probation. If I don’t get my grades up, I lose eligibility. I lose the team. I lose-” He stopped. Jaw tightened. Started over. “I don’t want random tutors who don’t know me assigned every few weeks. I want one person. Someone I can actually talk to without performing. You’re the only person on this campus who’s seen me without the act.”
“You mean because I’ve seen you naked?”
“I mean because you’re the only person who talked to me like a human being before you knew I played hockey.” No smirk. No deflection. “And yeah. The naked thing doesn’t hurt.”
I stood there. Wanting to leave. Wanting to stay. Wanting to be the kind of person who could walk away from grey eyes and bruised knuckles and the memory of his voice saying good girl against my ear.
I picked up my bag. Turned toward the door.
His hand caught the edge of it. Not my arm – my bag. Gentle. A request, not a demand.
“What if we make a deal?”
I don’t sit down, but I stop and turn around long enough to let him know I’m listening.
“Here’s the deal,” he said. “You tutor me. I keep Caleb off your back.”
“That’s not a deal. That’s a hostage negotiation.”
“It’s an exchange of services.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “You need someone between you and a guy who’s spent four years treating you like property he forgot to put a fence around. I need someone who won’t make me feel like a lab rat every time I misspell something.”
“You could get any tutor-“
“I don’t want any tutor. I want someone who’s already seen me at my worst and didn’t run.” He held up a hand before I could respond. “The bar doesn’t count. That was my best.”
I didn’t laugh. I wanted to. I didn’t.
“Caleb won’t stop,” he said. Quieter now. “You know that. He doesn’t want you but he doesn’t want anyone else to have you either. That’s not love – that’s inventory management. And right now, you’re an item he thinks got misplaced.”
It landed. Every word. Because it was true, and I’d known it was true for years, but nobody had ever said it to me that bluntly.
“So, what – you pretend to be my boyfriend and he magically backs off?”
“He backs off because the alternative is dealing with me.
And after last night’s game, he knows exactly what dealing with me looks like.”
I sat down. Not because I was agreeing – because my legs were tired and my brain was full and he was making too much sense for someone with bruised knuckles and a smirk.
“Ground rules,” I said.
“Whatever you want.”
