Falling for my Brother’s Rival

Whispers in the Dark

Noah’s Pov

The days following Mason’s confrontation settled into an uneasy quiet, the kind that felt less like peace and more like the pause before another storm, and though Sophia and I tried to convince ourselves that the worst had already passed, something about the silence never quite sat right with me, as though the city itself were holding its breath waiting for the next disaster to unfold.

Training continued at its usual relentless pace, though the atmosphere in the locker room had shifted noticeably since the news broke, teammates offering careful glances whenever Mason and I found ourselves in the same drill, coaches watching us with the wary attentiveness of men expecting an explosion at any moment, and though neither of us gave them the satisfaction of a public confrontation, the tension between us had only grown heavier, thick enough that even Liam had stopped making jokes about it.

I tried to focus on hockey, tried to lose myself in the familiar rhythm of practice and film sessions and conditioning drills, but my mind kept drifting back to Sophia, to the baby, to the quiet fear that had settled permanently in my chest since the moment those photographs surfaced online.

It was Sophia who called me that Thursday evening, her voice tight with something I hadn’t heard from her before, not even during the chaos of Mason’s confrontation.

“Noah, I need you to come over.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I received a message. From an account I don’t recognize.” She paused, and I could hear her breathing unsteadily through the phone. “They knew things, Noah. Things nobody outside my doctor’s office should know.”

My stomach dropped instantly. “I’m on my way.”

I broke every speed limit getting to her apartment, and when she opened the door, her face pale and her hands trembling around her phone, I pulled her against me before either of us said another word, needing the physical reassurance as much as she seemed to.

“Show me,” I said gently once we’d settled onto her couch.

She handed over her phone, and I scrolled through the message with a growing sense of dread that settled deep in my bones. The account had no profile picture, no followers, nothing that would identify who was behind it, but the message itself left no room for comfort.

Six weeks, three days. Dr. Harper’s office, room 214. You should be more careful about who you trust with your secrets.

“This is exact,” I said quietly, rereading it twice to make certain I hadn’t misunderstood. “This isn’t a guess. Whoever sent this knows details from your medical file.”

“That’s what terrifies me.” Sophia wrapped her arms around herself, curling into the corner of the couch as though trying to make herself smaller. “How could anyone know that? I haven’t told anyone besides you, Emma, and Mason.”

“Could it be a hacked account? Someone breaking into the medical system?”

“I don’t know. I don’t understand any of this.”

I studied the message again, something uneasy stirring in the back of my mind, a feeling I couldn’t quite name but recognized instinctively, the same unsettled instinct that had followed me through years of half-buried memories about Tyler, about the camp, about everything I had spent so long trying not to think about.

“I think we need to take this seriously,” I said finally. “Not just as an obsessive fan or an angry troll. Someone went out of their way to access information that should have been protected.”

“You think someone’s targeting me specifically.”

“I think whoever did this wanted you to know they could reach you anywhere, even somewhere as private as a doctor’s office.” The thought alone made my jaw tighten with barely restrained anger. “I’m not letting this go unanswered.”

Sophia looked up at me; her eyes filled with an exhaustion that went beyond physical tiredness, the kind that came from carrying fear silently for longer than anyone should have to. “What if it gets worse?”

“Then we handle it together, exactly the way we’ve handled everything else.” I reached for her hand, lacing our fingers together in a way that had become second nature over the past weeks. “I’m going to talk to Ethan. He has contacts who specialize in exactly this kind of situation, people who can trace where messages like this originate.”

“And if they find something?”

“Then we’ll know who we’re dealing with.”

She nodded slowly, though the worry hadn’t fully left her expression, and I understood why. There was something deeply unsettling about an enemy without a face, someone capable of accessing private information with unnerving precision, someone patient enough to wait for the perfect moment to strike.

Later that night, after Sophia had finally drifted into an uneasy sleep against my shoulder, I sat awake staring at the message still displayed on her phone screen, turning it over in my mind again and again, searching for any detail that might explain how someone could have accessed medical records with such ease.

My thoughts drifted, unwillingly, back toward Tyler, toward the tragedy that had defined so much of my adult life, and though I couldn’t yet explain the connection, something about this entire situation felt eerily familiar, as though history were repeating itself in ways I hadn’t fully recognized until now.

Someone had manipulated circumstances once before, carefully enough that an entire tragedy had been buried beneath years of misplaced blame between Mason and me, and the thought that someone might be doing exactly that again, this time targeting Sophia and our unborn child, settled over me with a chill that had nothing to do with the late hour.

I gently brushed a strand of hair away from her face, watching her sleep peacefully despite everything unraveling around us, and made a silent promise that whoever was responsible for this would answer for it, no matter how deeply buried the truth remained or how long it took me to uncover it.