Puck Me Harder: A Stepbrother Romance [BL]

Noah’s POV

What a fool I was.

What an absolute, fucking fool I had been.

Leaving Micah all alone at the mall just to buy a stupid phone. In my head, I had justified it. I told myself he was a grown adult. I told myself he needed space, that he was capable of handling a simple errand by himself, that letting him take small steps of independence would keep him from feeling suffocated by me.

Bullshit. Complete, naive bullshit.

I should have known better. I should never have let him out of my sight for a single second, especially when I knew damn well those Jenson bastards were actively plotting revenge. Who would have guessed those spineless cowards were literally stalking us, tracking our movements from the moment we pulled out of the driveway?

Worse, that emergency call from my coach? It wasn’t an accident. It was completely orchestrated by them from the start.

Those fuckers had used their administrative connections to push our championship match forward to this upcoming weekend. Three days. They gave our school three days to prepare, hoping to catch us off balance, forcing an impossible deadline onto our roster: either sign the revised tournament agreement or forfeit the championship title entirely.

Reading that dirty, corrupt contract in the coach’s office had pissed me off so badly that I came within an inch of punching the man’s lights out right across his desk. An incompetent coward who couldn’t even tell when he was being used as bait. A real coach would have told them to shove their contract, thrown it in the trash, and handled the athletic board without dragging his players into the mud.

Why did he have to drag me all the way to the arena? Because I was the team captain?

If it weren’t for that useless meeting, I would still be right beside Micah. I would have been holding his hand in that store. Nobody would have dared touch him.

"You still haven’t seen him?" I barked into my phone, my knuckles white as I fought the steering wheel, weaving violently through midday traffic.

"Not yet," Damon’s panicked voice crackled through the car speakers. "I’m running down the stairs to the mall security control room right now. I’m going to pull the live surveillance feeds."

"Fuck," I spat, stomping on the accelerator and blowing straight through a yellow light. The engine roared, tires screaming against the asphalt. "I’ll be there soon. Don’t leave that security room until you have eyes on where they went."

"I won’t," Damon replied, his breathing ragged on the other end.

I didn’t disconnect the call. I kept the line open, tossing the phone onto the passenger seat so I could hear everything in real time. If Damon tracked them down and they were already moving across the city, I wasn’t going to waste time parking at the mall. I’d turn the car around and hunt them on the highway myself.

Five agonizing minutes crawled by. Every second felt like a drop of acid burning through my stomach.

"Noah! Are you there?" Damon’s voice suddenly cut through the line, louder and sharper.

"Talk to me," I ordered instantly.

"It’s Jenson’s men," Damon said, his tone thick with cold fury. "I’m looking at the basement parking footage right now. Four guys. They cornered him near the service hallway, forced him down the maintenance elevator, shoved him into a black SUV, and sped out the rear gate. I got the license plate off the exit camera. I’m sending you the photo right now."

"Do it," I commanded.

A split second later, my phone chimed with an incoming image.

I swiped the call onto speaker, grabbed the phone, and forwarded the image straight to my butler’s line while keeping my eyes glued to the road ahead. I didn’t even wait for a confirmation text. I dialed his number immediately.

The line barely finished its second ring before it clicked open.

"Do you require assistance, young master?" the butler answered in his usual calm, low tone.

"Check the image I just forwarded to you," I snapped, cutting him off without hesitation. "Black SUV. Commercial plates. I need every surveillance asset we have on this vehicle right now. Pull city traffic feeds, private toll cameras, and municipal tracking grids. I want all hands on deck, and someone better report its exact coordinates to me immediately."

"Right away, young master," the butler replied, the rustle of papers and rapid keyboard typing already audible in the background. "I will deploy the sweep immediately."

"You have five minutes," I snarled into the mic. "Hurry the fuck up."

I hung up, tossing the phone back down.

My heart was hammering against my ribs, driven entirely by fury. If George Jenson or any of his cheap hired thugs dared to lay a single finger on Micah... if they even scratched his skin or made him cry... I wasn’t just going to break fingers this time. I was going to carve their names into the floorboards and leave their bodies for the city sanitation crews to shovel away.

Micah was fragile. He frightened easily. He couldn’t handle violence, and he certainly couldn’t defend himself against grown men with weapons. The mere thought of him trembling in the back of that car, crying out for me while those animals laughed at him, drove me completely out of my mind.

I swerved around a delivery truck, cut across two lanes, and took the off-ramp toward the central commercial district.

Somehow, pushing my car far past its limits, I reached the mall’s outdoor perimeter before my butler even had time to call back with a location.

I pulled into the VIP parking bay near the main plaza, slamming the brakes so hard the vehicle lurched to a halt.

Stepping out of the driver’s seat, my eyes swept the open concrete lot. It didn’t take long to spot what was happening near the lower entrance.

Damon was standing outside his bright red sports car, pacing back and forth with an expression of stress. But he wasn’t alone. A girl with sleek hair and high heels had blocked his path, waving her hands in the air and screaming at the top of her lungs, completely losing her composure.

I recognized that shrill voice and that face immediately.

Jennifer Riley.