Page 26 of Wrap Around (Forbidden Goals #7)

SILAS

I find Gideon leaning on the kitchen window, breathing heavily.

"Gideon?"

He startles and flinches, turning and pressing his back to the glass and regarding me with a wide, wary expression.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he says shortly. But it's clear he isn't. He looks sickly, pale and sweaty and his eyes are bloodshot. His hair and shirt are drenched. "Too much wine, I think."

Ah. That makes sense.

"Want some water?"

"Oh—Um, yeah. Sure."

There's a glass on the side of the sink that wasn't there when we went to bed. By the droplets of water still rolling down the sides, I'm assuming he's already had a glass or two. I fill his glass with ice and filtered water from the fridge, hoping the colder water will help soothe him .

"Thanks," he murmurs. His fingers brush mine when he takes the glass from me. I pretend not to notice, but the contrast of body heat makes me wonder if I should take his temperature.

I don't think he's sick, exactly. He looks anguished.

I'd heard him pacing around in his room, and before that, I heard what I thought was talking.

I think he might have had a nightmare, which I can relate to.

I have them from time to time, especially if I'm overtired or very stressed. Which is quite often lately.

"Want to talk about it?"

"What is there to talk about?" he snaps.

Ooohhkay , so we're not going to talk about it, then.

Part of me wonders if I should force the conversation, but he looks ready to snap, and I don't want to wake up Lily or Addy.

I don't want them to worry, but I also don't want them to have to see Gideon this way.

This is for my eyes only. It's my punishment, because it's what I did to him.

But I can't keep quiet for long. Gideon finishes his glass of water, then moves past me to put his glass in the sink.

I turn my body towards him like a plant seeking the sunlight, my feet instinctively moving closer to him.

When he turns from the sink, we're only inches apart. I can feel his breath on my face.

"Please, Gideon. Just listen–"

"Don't do this to me, Silas." The anguish in his voice and raw pain in his eyes cuts me off, makes me pause. "I'm not strong enough." Those last words come out in a voice so small, so unlike the larger-than-life man in front of me, it causes me physical pain.

"You don't have to be strong." I tell him, begging him with my eyes not to push me away.

He leans into my space, until I can feel the warmth of his lips against mine. "Don't," he whispers, close enough that I can feel the movement of the one word.

My eyes flutter shut. He doesn't kiss me, or press into me, or really do anything. All I feel is his slow exhale.

And then he's gone. Before I can even think to open my eyes, the air around me is cold again.

Christmas morning is beautiful. Adaline's shriek of joy when she sees the little balance bike we got her almost makes me tear up, but the look on her face when she sees the playhouse is something else. I understand the magic of the holiday for the first time in my life.

She has a tiny meltdown when we have to force her into warmer clothes before she goes outside to play, but only because she's so excited her toddler mind can't process.

The moment we set her loose in her boots, puffy jacket, and winter hat, she's the happiest child on earth. We might never get her to come inside.

It does present the perfect opportunity to give Lily her gift, though.

She unwraps the large outdoor space heater with an excited shriek of her own.

We didn't want to do anything too extravagant or over the top.

It would be way too easy to go overboard for our first Christmas.

So we agreed that we'd only get each other gifts that were useful to the whole household.

We're both going to be thankful not to freeze our southern butts off in this cold, and Addy will get more outside time because of it.

Gideon, who otherwise hasn't so much as looked at me, helps me set it up.

We both stand back and watch while Lily orders an extravagant coffee drink through the playhouse window, to which Addy yells, "No!

" and then giggles riotously. I hand Gideon a cup of coffee, and he accepts it with a murmured thanks, but still doesn't make eye contact or try to talk with me.

I keep catching myself watching him. Waiting for him to crack again, to show any sign of how he's really feeling.

I just wish we could sit down and actually talk.

Open and honest, without all the tension and secrets between us.

After we apologized to each other yesterday, I'd hoped we might talk some more.

But when I had the opportunity last night, he shut me down again.

I probably shouldn't have followed him downstairs.

After I heard him sneak out of his room, I'd clenched my fists and tried to keep myself in bed where I belonged.

But I'd had too much wine, and I was agitated listening to him pacing in his room.

I'd wanted to go to him, to comfort him.

To touch him. But I knew better than to trust myself to go into his room.

And I should have known better than to go downstairs.

I just couldn't stop my feet from moving.

Lily knocks me out of my thoughts, nudging a square, flat box into my lap. It's wrapped so perfectly, I'd almost assume she had them professionally wrapped. Except that when I look closer, the wrapping paper makes me snort.

"Are those…ball sacks?

Lily is laughing so hard she's not making a sound, but her shoulders are shaking and there are tears streaming down her face.

The shiny, light blue paper is in fact decorated with crudely drawn testicles in various flesh tones, wearing little red Santa hats.

There are little lines of text that read, "Jingle Balls. "

Even Gideon is losing his shit, laughing loud enough that Adaline pokes her head out of her little playhouse kitchen window to see what the ruckus is about. When she sees Lily crying with laughter, her little face scrunches up with confusion and she asks, "Mommy sad? "

After reassuring her that everyone is happy, I open a set of grilling tools and accessories, confused.

Lily sends me to the garage, where there's a shiny gas grill with a big red bow on it.

It's a great grill that even has a flat top attachment, so I decide to cook breakfast on it.

Gideon has to help me carry it up the garage steps and through the house.

While I'm getting started on the opposite side of the porch from Addy, Lily hands Gideon our gift.

It's wrapped in shiny black paper with Santas on it, only the Santa's are turned around and bent over, in the process of pulling down their pants, displaying rosy round buttcheeks and lacy black panties.

My wife is the freaking best. Without even realizing it, she's been able to break through the worst of the tension this morning. I'm sure she thinks it's because of the holiday, having no real idea about what's going on between me and her brother.

Celebrating holidays is pretty new for us, given that we didn't celebrate growing up.

The church we were raised in believed that holidays not specifically commanded in the Bible were worldly distractions at best, and dangerous heresies at worst. Celebrating mainstream holidays was seen as compromising the purity of our faith, idol worship disguised as tradition, pagan abominations that the modern world has adopted under Satan's influence.

When I first left home and experienced life outside of our small town, we had so many conversations about how different the world was outside of our upbringing.

We decided, together, that we wanted to move away from many of the church's teachings, as well as put distance between us and our families.

It's not that we don't still have love for our families and friends back home, or that we didn't have any good experiences growing up.

But we have the opportunity to shape our own worlds now and change many of the things that we struggled with growing up.

Mostly, we didn't want our child to grow up in an environment where she felt that she couldn't be free to be herself, to grow into a strong person capable of making her own decisions and following her dreams. Lily grew up being forced into gender roles she never felt comfortable with, unable to speak her mind or have life goals outside of the church and being a wife and mother.

And I grew up under the thumb of a cruel father, being taught that homosexuals were immoral, depraved people who had unnatural and dangerous urges to corrupt children.

We needed to get out.

It's been a journey already, and it's barely just begun. We're both still growing and unlearning much of what we were raised to believe. The hardest part is finding a balance between that and the truth. Because if so many of the things we were taught are untrue, which beliefs are real?

Does God really hate me if I'm different? Will He turn his back on me if I can't meet the expectations that were instilled in me? Or is he loving and accepting of our differences, the way many people seem to believe. Does he truly even exist?

We're questioning everything, which I think is healthy.

Or, at least, Dr. Shelton seems to think it is.

She also says it's okay to be wrong sometimes, that making mistakes is part of the learning process.

As long as we aren't hurting anyone, what's the harm?

We didn't fit in back home, for many different reasons.

But we aren't bad people. I made mistakes, and did hurt someone in the process, but I'm not evil at my core.

I didn't mean to hurt him. I meant well.