Filed to story: Addicted To My Hockey Stepbrother
The second his mouth touched mine, every rational thought I’d had in the last fifteen minutes evaporated like water on a hot engine. He kissed the way he played hockey – instinctive, consuming, three moves ahead of everyone else in the room. His hand tightened on the back of my neck and my fingers fisted his shirt and suddenly we were back in bar-bathroom energy except worse, infinitely worse, because I was sober and it was daylight and I knew his name and he was saying mine against my mouth like he’d been practicing the shape of it.
Naomi.
Not Nomes. Not Ellis. Naomi – the full thing, breathed against my lips like it cost him something.
My back hit the edge of the table. His other hand landed on my hip – steadying, gripping, pulling me closer. The kiss deepened. Opened. His tongue against mine and my hands pulling him in by the shirt collar and both of us making sounds that had no business existing in a university library at two in the afternoon.
We broke apart.
Ten seconds of silence. Both breathing hard. His hand still on my neck. My fingers still twisted in his shirt.
He recovered first. Because of course he did.
“Convincing enough?”
I couldn’t answer. My brain was static. My lips were swollen. My body was screaming at me to pull him back and finish what we’d started and to hell with every rule I’d just written on that form.
“That was – sufficient,” I managed.
“Sufficient.” He repeated it like he was tasting something bitter. “I’ll take it.”
We agreed to never discuss the practice kiss again. We were both lying and we both knew it.
We staged our first public appearance soon after: walking across campus. His arm around my shoulder. Heavy, warm, possessive in a way that felt nothing like performance. My heart hammering so loudly I was sure he could hear it.
The whispers started before we made it past the quad.
Is that Maddox? With the Ellis girl? Caleb’s friend?
Phones angled toward us. Eyes tracking. The gossip machine spinning up in real time.
Rhys’s arm tightened around me. Not for the cameras. For Caleb – standing thirty feet away, outside the athletics building, watching us with an expression that could have curdled milk.
My phone buzzed.
Caleb: Why the fuck are you still with Rhys Maddox?
Campus also had opinions.
The Thornfield gossip machine ran on coffee and cruelty, and Rhys Maddox walking across the quad with his arm around Naomi Ellis was premium fuel. By Monday morning, it was everywhere – group chats, Instagram stories, a thread on the anonymous campus confessions page that had three hundred comments before lunch.caleb’s girl moved on FAST – that’s not moving on that’s upgrading – she’s rebounding with the transfer?? – messy! – have you SEEN him though. i’d rebound too – wasn’t she obsessed with caleb like two weeks ago? – this is embarrassing – plot twist: it’s hot actually
I read them all. Shouldn’t have. Did anyway. Sitting in the library with my laptop open and my Gatsby essay untouched, scrolling through strangers’ opinions about my love life like it was a spectator sport.
“You’re doing this to get back at me.”
I closed my laptop.
Caleb was standing at the end of my table. Hands in his pockets. That expression – concerned, measured, the golden-boy mask firmly in place. But his jaw was tight and his eyes were hard and I could see the real thing underneath the performance.
“Doing what?”
“The Maddox thing.” He sat down across from me without being invited. “You’re not subtle, Naomi. Everyone can see what this is.”
“And what is it?”
“A reaction. You’re hurt. I get it. But parading around campus with the new guy just to make me jealous is-“
“Not everything is about you, Caleb.”
He leaned back. Studied me. The way he always studied me – like I was a puzzle he’d already solved and was mildly irritated to find had rearranged itself.
“You’re not the type to just move on. You and I both know that. You’re doing this because you know it’ll get to me.”
Six months ago – six weeks ago – that would have worked. The implication that I was still orbiting him, still reacting to him, still organizing my choices around his feelings. It would have worked because it would have been true.
“Let me live, Caleb.”
“I’m trying to talk to you.”
“And I’m trying to leave.” I stood up. Packed my laptop. Didn’t rush, didn’t fumble. Steady hands. Steady voice. “When you’re ready to have a conversation that isn’t about your ego, you know where to find me.”
I walked out of the library. Didn’t look back.
My phone buzzed.
Unknown: Practice until 5. Door’s open. Let yourself in. 📍 [Location shared]
***
His apartment was small. Off-campus, second floor, the kind of place that came furnished and stayed impersonal. Except it wasn’t – not entirely. There were details. A motorcycle helmet on the kitchen counter. A copy of The Great Gatsby on the coffee table with a cracked spine and dog-eared pages. A hoodie thrown over the back of the couch that smelled like him when I sat down – which I knew because I sat in the exact spot where the hoodie was and I didn’t move it and I wasn’t going to think about why.
I set up at his kitchen table. Laptop open. Notes spread out. Professional. This was tutoring. This was the deal. I was going to be here when he got home and we were going to study and I was going to maintain every boundary I’d written on that evaluation form.
