Page 2 of Wrap Around (Forbidden Goals #7)

GIDEON

I feel him before I see him. My skin prickles with awareness that screams I’m being watched. I feel his eyes boring into me, burning me from the outside in.

I pretend I don't know he's there for as long as it takes to finish rinsing the soap from my hair and body, refusing to give him the attention I'm sure he's looking for. Then I stay longer, eyes closed under the spray of hot water, my only shield from his stare.

Eventually, I have to open my eyes. And there he is.

Standing there with his wide-eyed expression of…

what? Innocence? Regret? Like he wishes the past didn't happen.

Like he doesn't know exactly what he did the day he kissed me, only to stand beside my sister and announce their news to our parents like it never happened.

Like he doesn't remember what it felt like to be connected through flesh and tongues and touch.

But I do.

I remember. I remember everything. And I hate him for it.

I hate him for what happened then, and I hate him for the way his eyes are devouring me now.

I hate him for the tension that curls in my spine from having his gaze touch me.

He doesn't even have the decency to look away.

He's just standing there, quiet but bold, like he has the right to look at me like that. Like I was ever his to begin with.

He lost that right the second he touched me with the same hands that wrapped around my sister's shoulders and held her close while my parents took in the news of their pregnancy. The same hands that would cradle her stomach after they'd traced my abs in the sun.

When his mouth opens like he might say something, I nearly snap.

He doesn't have the right to look at me, to touch me, to think about touching me, or to talk to me.

I don't want to hear his voice. The voice that whispered my name like a prayer, then turned around and whispered comfort and promises to her instead.

How fucking dare he.

Walking past him should be easy. It should be as simple as an instinctual reflex to protect myself.

But it isn't.

It takes everything in me to keep walking. To keep my face neutral. To clench my jaw instead of my fists. To not scream or take this rage out on his face.

To not fall apart.

Because every day for the last three years and however many months it's been since I walked away, I've lived with the truth that my sister has the only thing I ever wanted.

That I had a moment, a sliver of time where I thought I wasn't the only one to feel that way.

But he turned around and gave it all to her instead.

The one person I loved more than anyone else on this earth— more than God, even—betrayed me. Then he betrayed her. The woman he vowed to love and honor not even two weeks later.

Somehow, I keep moving. I walk straight to my locker like every step doesn't feel like falling into quicksand. Like every breath doesn't burn.

I dry myself quickly, as if he didn't just see every inch of me. Like I didn't let him look for so long because I was too weak to confront him. I don't sense him looking anymore, and when I turn around, I don't see him.

The locker room buzzes with the noise of two dozen athletes coming down from their workouts, digging around in their lockers, tossing equipment bags, chatting and laughing like it's the beginning of any other season.

Training camp is always rough, but this time it's going to be absolute hell.

Torture. Pure excruciating torment. Fire and brimstone have nothing on the agony I'm about to endure, and I know this because I've only had a taste, and I already want to drown.

Because he's here.

Silas fucking Caldwell.

He’s still lean, but he's filled out a lot.

His shoulders are broader, the line of his chest stronger.

There's a shadow of dark scruff along his jaw, making him look more like a man than the boy I left behind.

I can only imagine what shade of hazel his eyes would be right now.

Are they pale gold like they were when they glinted in the sunlight, or dark chocolate and dimmed the way they were when he stood beside Lily and faced the wrath of our father?

I was too weak to look him in the eye long enough to notice their color when I saw him in the showers, and I'm sure as hell not going to look now that he's walking into the room and heading to a locker way too close for comfort.

What a fucking day .

I only found out this morning that the coaches were trading in another player from Grand Rapids to replace Lyle Baker, our former first line center who got in an idiotic motorcycle accident a few days ago.

Tim Landon is supposed to move up to the first line to replace Baker, which leaves the center position open on my line.

I never, in a hundred thousand years, would have expected to hear his name.

I honestly thought I was hearing things.

I knew he was playing in the AHL. Someone had mentioned a player making headlines from my same small town in rural Tennessee.

It’s not that small of a world, so I knew it could only have been him.

Since then I've made every effort not to look him up or seek him out.

The odds were still in my favor that we'd never cross paths.

How did this happen? How the hell did he end up here? Did he make this happen somehow? I can't figure out how that would work out, but the whole thing is impossible.

Am I being punished with the one temptation I couldn't resist?

He's already taken everything from me. Hockey is the only thing I have left. It’s the only part of our shared past that I've let myself keep. Who I was, where I came from, what I wanted—all of it is gone.

I fled before dawn the morning after my world crashed down around me.

Took a bus to Nashville, where an old teammate let me sleep on his couch.

I got a job mopping floors at a shitty ice rink, sharpening skates for kids with more promise than I had left.

I was drowning in my pain, but the ice kept me sane.

While working on my GED online, I focused on that job like it was my last lifeline.

I showed up early, stayed late, and hit the ice any chance I got.

A local peewee coach took notice and told me about a showcase tournament that was coming up.

I entered on a whim, no sponsor, no support.

No name, no past. But I skated like the devil was behind me and showed no fear when defending my team’s zone with everything I had.

And it paid off. A scout took a chance on me, and I got the chance to go to training camp in Arizona.

Exactly one thousand eight hundred and fifty-two miles from home, but it still didn't feel far enough.

Then came the call that a NHL farm team was interested in me. It was more than I could have hoped for. The Red Valley Blaze in Alberta, Canada. A new country, and another thousand miles between me and my pain.

I took the position. Not just because it was my shot at eventually getting to the NHL, but because it was about as far as I could get from the person I used to be. I could remake myself in a whole other country.

I've never once called home. I left a note on the kitchen counter for my mom, and my Bible in my father's study, an earmark left as an explanation for my absence:

“Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” (2 Timothy 2:22)

My dad, who’d overseen my years of struggle, work, and prayers to redeem myself, probably understood.

My sister sent me an email with a picture of my name on the bulletin board prayer list, but other than that, I'm a ghost to them.

My father has never mentioned me publicly that I'm aware of.

A sports reporter went to my hometown after I made some sports news headlines as an upstart future draft pick, looking to interview my family and friends for a piece on my rags to riches story.

My father rebuked them in the name of the Lord and slammed the door in their face.

The rest of the congregation, which is pretty much everyone in our small rural town, followed his example .

Meanwhile, I was in the thick of it. I pushed harder.

Trained longer. Ran drills until I puked.

Skated until I was ready to collapse, until I was walking away from every practice so tired my wobbly legs could barely hold me up.

And I'd fall into bed each night too exhausted to think.

Too sore to remember the boy with messy dark hair and freckles, who kissed me like I meant something to him, then tore the rug out from under me like it never happened.

Like he hadn't just opened up an entire world of possibilities, only to slam the closet door and lock it shut again.

Now he's here. I can't get over how he could possibly be here.

Is this what I get for running?

Is this my punishment for falling?

Or is this just a reminder that no matter how hard I work, no matter how far from home I run, no matter who I pretend to be, it all comes back to bite you in the end.

The first official day of camp is all drills and discipline. Sprints until your lungs burn and your legs give out. Stick work until your fingers are numb. Puck control, passing, line rotations, and skating drills that make your thighs scream. It’s Hell on a good day.

This week, it's worse. Far worse.

Silas is on my line. Because of course he is.

Coach doesn't know what he's doing, putting us on the same line. Or maybe he does, considering we’ve been playing together since we got our first pair of skates.

Maybe he sees the undeniable chemistry born from a lifetime of reading each other on the ice.

It's still there. The rhythm, the instinct, the unspoken connection that once made us unstoppable .