Page 1 of Wrap Around (Forbidden Goals #7)

PROLOGUE- SILAS

Three years, five months, and eighteen days.

That's how long it's been since I've seen him in person. Since the last time we were together.

Since the kiss I stole from him sent me into a tailspin that changed the entire trajectory of my life.

And now he's less than twelve feet from me, blocked only by a waist-high partition and a haze of steam.

My eyes take him in greedily, running over his exposed skin like the hot water that sluices down his back before disappearing below the partition of the communal showers.

I know I should look away, but I can't. Not before I categorize every dip and valley of his muscular back and count every scar and inch of ink on him. He has tattoos now?

The first one that catches my eye is the snake on his right bicep.

It looks alive. Coiled tightly around his arm, the tip of the tail vanishing into the shadow of his triceps, its body twisting and writhing with each subtle shift of muscle.

It's not until he turns to the side that I see the apple on the front of his bulging bicep, the snake's mouth open, its fangs flashing near the fruit it's so tightly curled around.

It's biblical and blasphemous and impossibly beautiful all at once.

I can't imagine his father knows about that one, or any of them.

Pastor Shepherd would never have allowed it.

He would have sat him down with a Bible and a belt and preached Leviticus at him until the damned ink faded.

I wonder if that's the point of having them?to wear something permanent, unrepentant, unapproved.

The ultimate rebellion. Well, that and kissing his best friend.

Not that I ever told anyone. Or ever would.

I kept his secret, and he kept mine by running so far away, none of his family could reach him except by prayer.

Gideon hasn't been home in almost three and a half years. He just up and disappeared the day after everything fell apart. I've always wondered if he ran from the shame, or if it was his disappointment in what I did next that chased him off.

His back is broader than I remember. Stronger.

The kind of strength that doesn't come from training. It’s the kind that comes from a lifetime of shouldering the weight of truths that could have broken him.

There's a hardness in him now that shows in his posture.

Even with his eyes closed and his head tipped up towards the shower spray, I can see the tension.

When he turns to fully face me, I can see more ink.

In the center of his chest, taking up the wide expanse of skin between his pecs, is a knot of something.

Thorns? Is that a human heart? Red and angry, dripping with blood in spots where it's wrapped tightly in a creeping vine.

A strangled heart. Of course.

I've felt that same painful grip around my own heart since the day he left.

He's inked his pain, expressed it in a way I never could.

I would have been too afraid of what their parents would think.

I've already been an outsider. A disappointment.

A charity case. A bad apple that will never be good enough for their daughter, despite doing the right thing and marrying her to save her from shame.

Not that it matters. I'll never be good enough.

Even if none of it was true.

Even if the story they believe, the one we fed them, and the truth that I carry with me are night and day.

The whole thing was a mess. Sometimes I worry it was a mistake.

But at least I got something good out of it.

Adaline is the light of my life, and I'll always love her, no matter how she came to be in this world.

And finally, now that I've found a more secure placement with this AHL contract, we'll be together again.

I'll be able to squish her chubby cheeks and kiss her soft hair and hold her while she falls asleep in my arms like the little angel she is.

Lily and our almost three-year-old baby girl will make it to our new home before I do, and I'll get to meet them there after training camp. I can't wait.

Ending up here, on the same team as Gideon, wasn’t luck.

I busted my ass, working my way across the country team by team just hoping to get closer to him.

It was too much to hope that I’d ever make it to any professional team, much less the same team as him.

I don’t know how I made it happen, honestly.

It should have been impossible to make my way up to a specific professional team all the way in Canada from backwoods Tennessee.

Lily believes it was something more. That maybe God had something to do with it.

I like to think He did, mostly because I want to believe He loves me the way I am.

The way Lily insists he does, despite it going against everything we were taught growing up.

Maybe she's right. Because how else could anyone explain how I got here? At an AHL training camp, staring at Gideon Shepherd like a ghost who just walked out of my past and slammed me back into the place where it all went wrong .

I've been following his career since the day he exploded over the headlines on every sports network.

I still don't know where he went after he vanished, but by the time I was starting my senior year and Lily was starting to show, there he was on ESPN. A stoic kid from rural Tennessee lighting up the ice on an AHL team out of Tucson, Arizona of all places. From that moment on, I was glued to every score, every stat, every rumor of trades and drafts. When Red Valley picked him up, I celebrated in secret. Not just because his father, the pastor of our congregation and unspoken leader of our small community, had set a standard of pretending his oldest child and only son didn’t exist.

He was two thousand miles away, but I still felt the weight of him. The warmth of his skin on mine. The brush of his breath across my lips.

My journey to this locker room wasn't as epic or smooth. I was suddenly a husband and a provider. I barely finished high school, worked two jobs, and helped support Lily when she was forced to quit school and get her GED. I didn’t sleep much, but I found ice time whenever I could.

After graduation, I played on a junior team out of Knoxville, never thinking I’d do more.

Until a coach pulled me aside and told me I had a chance.

"You're more than good enough, Caldwell. If you want this, really want this , it's a real possibility. But you're going to have to make some hard choices."

By hard choices, he meant leaving my family behind while I chased a dream.

I chalked it up to just a dream and was ready to let it pass me by, but Lily wasn’t having it.

She pushed me to make a go at it. We talked about it.

Prayed over it. Agonized over every detail and possibility.

In the end, we agreed I'd take one year to pursue hockey as a profession, and go from there.

I would call every night, send money when I could, visit home when I could.

But I was going for it, making my way north bit by bit.

I signed with a team nine hours away in Michigan.

Nine hours away from my baby and wife and the only life I'd ever known.

But for the first time, hockey was my only focus.

After two years in the juniors, I finally got noticed. A scout from a team in Michigan came to me with an offer to try out for their AHL affiliate. I kept my head down and pushed harder, building up my stats and a reputation for being one of the fastest rising players in my division.

A few calculated conversations with a very confused agent who still doesn’t understand why I didn’t want to accept an offer to play for a better ranking team in the US, and some lucky trades, and here I am.

It was just my luck that the still new Red Valley Blaze were looking for a faster center to round out their roster.

I can't drag my eyes away from the man in front of me.

My best friend from before I can even remember.

My first love. My first kiss. A stupid, foolish kiss that wrecked everything.

Maybe if I'd never kissed him, he wouldn't have left the way he did.

Maybe we could have stayed best friends, become brothers-in-law, and he could have stayed.

I tell myself I was only trying to hold on to something before it slipped through my fingers, but the truth is, it's my fault. I should have known better.

Gideon is a wound that never healed. He’s the thing I want most in this world and can never have.

The world jerks to a halt when he opens his eyes and turns to look directly at me, catching me staring at him like the pathetic, obsessive, terrible person I am. I am the snake.

His expression is flat at first, blank and unreadable.

Then it changes. Sharpens . His jaw locks.

His brows crash down, and his nostrils flare.

Veins bulge and pulse in time with my own rapid heartbeat.

His face flushes deep crimson, the color crawling up his throat and over his cheeks, fueled by a fury I know I deserve.

His eyes—green, furious, and familiar—find mine and hold.

He stares me down like the sad, pathetic little man I am compared to him. Not just in size, but in worth.

He knows I've been watching him, taking him in like I still have that right. Like I ever truly did. And the worst part is that I don't look away. I can't. It's impossible to move.

We just stare at each other. The tension is a livewire, humming in my teeth. His jaw ticks like he can feel it too.

Instinctively, I brace myself. He's going to say something. Scream at me. Take a swing at me. Throw a punch or throw me back in time with words sharp enough to make me bleed out.

Part of me wants him to. I haven't been punished enough, and I crave the sanctity of retribution.

But he doesn't say a word.

He turns off the water, grabs a towel, and storms past me. So close our arms nearly brush. The scent of his soapy body wash, of skin and sweat and past mistakes, hits me so hard I hold my breath.

The door slams behind him. And just like that, he's gone. Again.

I blow out a heavy breath and press my back against the tile, wet with condensation. It's all I can do to hold myself together.

God, I'd rather him hit me. At least a busted lip would be honest. At least pain has a sound. At least I could have felt something other than the same pain I've been feeling for years and months and days, only it’s worse because he was right there.

But this silence?

It's so much worse.

It's not just anger, it's a dismissal. A refusal to acknowledge me and everything we've been through together .

And it's so far from everything we used to be.

Not like the summers on the lake, barefoot and sunburned, daring each other to jump off the cliffs and doing flips off the tire swing.

Not like the nights we stayed up too late making up elaborate handshakes before peewee tournaments.

Not like the boy who used to pass me the puck like he could read my mind, always knowing where I'd be.

Not like the guy who used to look at me like we were more than teammates.

And certainly not like he was the last time we were together.

That day, in our favorite secluded spot on the bank of the lake we spent our childhood swimming in, everything changed.

Opened up a new world of possibilities I'd never considered.

Because as much as I'd been in love with my best friend for as long as I could remember, I never dreamed it was a possibility that he saw me, too.

There was something about the way he looked at me that day, his green eyes shining impossibly light in the sun. Sweat and beads of water trickled down his washboard abs. His lips parted like he was waiting for me to say something. Do something.

Lily, his sister, had told me just that morning that she was pregnant.

I'd promised her, hours before I met her brother at the lake, that I would make it right. Protect her. Do the right thing. Marry her and raise the baby together. I knew everything was about to change. Every plan we’d made to make it to the NHL together and leave this place behind.

Every secret dream I had of being brave enough to live my truth someday…

all of it died with two little lines and a promise.

But still, I kissed him.

Because I knew my future was over. Irrevocably changed. And I wanted this one moment to look back on. Because no part of me ever believed he was interested in me that way.

For a moment, I thought I’d made a grave mistake. But then he kissed me back.

He kissed me back for real, pressed into me and slipped his tongue into my mouth. The earth dropped out beneath me, leaving me floating in the impossible ether of all my wildest dreams.

Our sun-heated skin was even hotter pressed together, hands wandering where they never should, bodies writhing like temptation incarnate, like every sin we'd ever been warned about come to life.

I was the snake. And he was innocent, unknowing about the temptations I'd been harboring since I was old enough to recognize my feelings for what they were.

Since I could look at him and know he was beautiful.

Since being near him made me hard and sweaty and uncomfortable and filled with a shame I couldn't quite name.

That night, when Lily and I stood before their parents and confessed, he only stared. His eyes burned into the side of my head, then locked on mine when I turned to look at him. I thought God might strike me down where I stood, called solely for that purpose by Gideon's scathing look alone.

I ruined everything. I chased him away.

But I can never tell him the truth.

Not about what happened that day.

Not about Lily. Not about Adaline.

Not about how the entire life I've built since the day he kissed me back…

…is all a lie.