Chapter 1
ELIJAH
TWO YEARS LATER
Breathe, man. Fucking breathe.
Gliding to the dot in our D-zone, I grip my stick tighter, squat lower, and focus on my ragged breaths while the linesman stands to the side waiting to drop the puck.
“What you waiting for, Sylkes?” Jayden Morrow leans closer, tapping the heel of my skate with his stick, urging me to hurry.
Every face-off feels like the face-off of a lifetime. When we play Portland, it always hits closer to the heart—they drafted me out of the WHL junior league and gave me the chance to establish my career in the National Hockey League.
Five years later, here I am, opening game of the season, playing against the Portland Wolves.
“Yeah, what you waiting for, pussy?” Presley Tomes, the Wolves’ star forward, sneers.
The thing about Presley is that we have history.
We’re from the same town, attended the same church—my father’s church—went to the same schools, played on the same junior teams until I traded from the Hillsboro Bobcats to the Olympia Warriors.
For our whole lives, we’ve crossed each other’s spotlight, and he doesn’t like it one bit.
Especially the fact that his twin sister is my sweetheart.
Today is the first game in the two years since I left her in Portland that all the stars have aligned to bring us together again.
When I don’t find her in the crowd, Presley’s grin greets my disappointed frown.
“Looking for something?” His grin grows impossibly wider.
Where is she? Finley said she would be here today. It’s Presley’s two-hundredth game. Their whole family is here.
Except for Finley.
I drop my gaze to the ice with a shaky breath to center myself.
“Poor crybaby,” Presley coos. “Are you going to bawl when your daddy betroths her tomorrow?”
What? My stare flashes to his, searching for the curl of his lips that says he’s lying, even though, deep down, I know he’s not. I’ve known this day would come from the moment my father told me the Elders rejected my request to marry her before I left Havenview for hockey.
“Ah shit, that’s right... You’re not invited.” My teeth clench at his mocking coo, mirroring my white-knuckled grip on my stick.
“Ready?” the linesman asks, but I’m too frozen, too stuck in my head, too nauseated to do anything right now.
Even so, I nod with a muttered, “Ready.”
Desperately trying to clear my head, I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on the pounding of my heart above the ruckus of the crowd.
Leaning forward, I continue taking my time, and Presley continues jeering at me, “Do you even care, sissy boy?” His eyes glance to the side where Jayden is waiting. “It’s not even like she’s your type, right?”
Do not bite. I keep chanting to myself. Focus on the game.
The Wolves have just equalized, and we need this face-off to turn the play around. Jayden is to the left of me, ready to shoot the puck to one of our Comets teammates and close out the third period on top. Overtime is not an option.
“Eli,” Jayden barks, “let’s go, Man.”
Jayden is my partner on the ice, and since my move to the LA Comets, we’ve become best friends. It’s not a friendship I ever saw myself having. We’re complete opposites—maybe it’s why we balance each other out so well. I feel safe around him… with him.
He doesn’t ask questions that I can’t and don’t want to answer.
Dragging in another breath, I put my stick down and glance up.
The instant my dark stare meets Presley’s glacial eyes, he smirks.
He’s a smug bastard, and if I didn’t have the love of Jesus preached into my brain every day of my childhood, I might have done something about it already.
Instead, I hold in the urge to stick him in the jaw, and the second the puck hits the ice, I shoot it over Presley’s stick, straight to Jayden.
He’s rocket-fast. The precision of his moves is unlike anything I’ve ever seen while he maneuvers his way through the right wing, and I chase him down on the left, watching the trajectory of the puck while keeping track of the tilt of his body.
At this point, I can read him like a picture book, and when his eyes lock on mine over Presley’s shoulder, I duck and push forward toward the Wolves’ goal.
Their keeper is zoned in on the puck when Jayden shoots to Andersen, our center, and he sends me the puck with a stealthy flick of his stick.
Swerving Presley’s attempt to shove me out of the way, I glide around him.
As I shoot the puck to Hillier, our right wing, the bastard hammers me into the boards.
His entire body weight bounces me between him and the plexiglass.
Winded by the impact, I’m barreled with the images from my recurring nightmare. It’s been the only dream I’ve had for six years, and as the rattle of his body smashing me into the boards ricochets through me, it’s all I see.
All I feel.
The white-hot pain in my feet throbs into my ankles. Making it impossible to move when the air stirs behind me, sending a frisson of goosebumps through my body. Awareness heightens in my pores as I move deeper into the shower, trying as hard as I can to hide from the person behind me.
My head is spinning faster and faster. The burn in my stomach radiates to my lungs as I shuffle right into the corner and allow the water to beat down on me.
“Crying again, baby?”
I freeze.
The limescale-encrusted tiles are slippery with steam from my scalding shower. In the near distance, voices boom in the room next door, smothered by the overwhelming, cloying scent of men’s body wash and spray.
My head is still swimming even though it feels like I’ve been in here for hours. I’m going to be sick again.
“Little pussy boy… D’you know what happens to pussies, Sylkes?” His hand grips the back of my neck, shoving me into the wall beneath the hot spray.
Soap runs from my hair, over my face. Stinging my eyes as I try to push back, but my hands slip.
“Stop!” Sucking in a lungful of soapy water, I choke on my yell.
Maybe it’s a scream with the way my throat rips raw. A garble of words I can’t quite think up with the sudden dark blankness. My heart hammers into my chest, warning me of the danger too late.
I can’t breathe as I push him off me. “Enjoy the foreplay, pussy boy?” Presley spits between us when I spin towards him with a hard shove, as he sneers, “Getting you all warmed up for your homo buddy. Disgusting faggo—”
I see red. And it’s not just my fist crunching his jaw shut so that his lip splits between his teeth, spraying blood all over my visor before he finishes his insult.
For years, this asshole has poked at me in every way he can. While I’m a firm believer in God’s love, I am just a man, and there is only so much shit I can stomach and keep pushing down.
So today, the gloves come off, and for all his talk, this punk is slow on the action as I grab him by the collar with one hand, the momentum jerking off his helmet, and keep beating my other fist into his face.
It doesn’t matter how forcibly the linesman tries to pull me away. Or that my fist is bloody. I don’t care that Presley’s hands are twisting in the collar of my shirt, making it harder to drag in my heated breaths while he desperately tries to hold himself up.
When he finally goes down, taking me with him, I straddle his legs and don’t stop beating him until I’m dragged away from his cowering form.
“Ignorant fuck!” My yell is drowned out by my bedraggled breaths, and my pulse roaring in my ears.
The full force of my disdain for him wrings my insides of any guilt or shame for my actions.
“What the fuck, Eli?” Jayden shouts, penetrating the boom of the crowd.
He’s in my space with his hazel eyes so wide; they might suck me in as his gloved hands hold my face.
My insides wrench as I push away brusquely, looking around to find our teammates closing ranks around us, stopping the Wolves’ players from getting to me.
I get to my feet with a bark, “Bastard had it coming.”
“Shit,” Jayden curses down at the ice, eyes narrowing with the worrisome pull of his brows.
Booing howls through the arena when the ref blows his whistle, gesturing for the fans to quieten.
“Comets, number twenty-one, five-minute major for fighting and match penalty for deliberate injury. Wolves, number fifty-seven, match penalty for spitting.”
Dammit!
“Way to go, Preacher,” Andersen groans when I skate off toward the bench with Hillier and Jayden coasting behind me.
Heading straight to the tunnel, I don’t stop to listen to Coach’s furious yells or the fans’ disappointed grumbles. One skate in front of the other, I go straight to the dressing room, the scars on my feet pulsing as I collapse in front of my cubby, replaying everything that just happened.
It was stupid.
I was reckless.
Still, Presley Tomes deserved every hit. And maybe next time the bastard will think twice before he opens his bigoted mouth to spew any more of his vile insults.
Maybe next time…
Maybe…
The nausea wrenches my stomach up into my chest as the screen shows replays of the lead-up to the fight, with the commentators trying to guess the exchange between us that resulted in this outcome.
Watching it, I recognize the exact moment he mentioned Finley. The same way my face drops on the screen, my heart drops to my feet. Again.
My stomach is swilling, my head spinning as I stare at the leather braid on my wrist. The one I’ve had to get fixed because I’ve never taken it off in the two years since Finley put it on me—the day I left the Bobcats for the Warriors.
When I left Portland behind, along with Havenview and The Fellowship.
The day I left her.