The Long Road Home (These Valley Days, #1)

by Bethany-Kris

  “Not really. I will say you were right, though. There’s no way I can pretend like these people didn’t hurt me for the sake of someone else. Bexley told me tonight I don’t have to come to the engagement party, which made me think they felt like they had to give me an invite because I agreed to do the girls’ hair for the wedding, but not because anybody wants me there.”

  Ouch. That probably stung.

  “Was the food good at least?” Gracen asked.

  A weak laugh answered that.

  “Mostly, but then my mother walked into the house, and I lost my appetite,” Delaney said.

  Yikes.

  Gracen didn’t want to be nosy regarding the dinner meant to serve as an informal way to bring the bride and groom’s family and close friends together before their official announcement, but she couldn’t help it. At least the pit of anxiety digging deep in her stomach proved her reason for being curious wasn’t jealousy.

  Right?

  “Was the happy couple—”

  “Happy,” Delaney interjected. “I talked to Sonny ... he said hey.”

  “Hey,” Gracen echoed.

  If she heard how irritated it sounded to her own ears, Gracen could only imagine the way it came off to Delaney.

  “Yeah, hey. Hello, you know? I guess he asked how you were, too, but frankly, at that point I zoned out because why should he even ask? If he gave a fuck, he could call and ask you himself. It’s not like your number’s changed or anything. He felt obligated to ask me because it was me, that’s all. And it kind of pissed me off that he did when he could have just not bothered in the first place. Don’t pretend to care. Lots of people actually do.”

  Gracen blinked, not expecting Delaney’s tirade.

  “Was that before or after you saw your mom?”

  Delaney only sighed.

  Noisily.

  “I just ... Listen, I don’t have the Bluetooth connected so the phone is on speaker, and I can’t hear you that well.”

  Lies, Gracen knew. They’d been talking just fine until that very moment.

  “Roll the window up,” she said.

  Delaney didn’t.

  “I’ll see you when I get home—”

  That wouldn’t work for Gracen. “Well, I was gonna head out—”

  “We can talk about it when you get back from your run,” her friend added before Gracen could tell her she wasn’t taking her nightly jog on the boardwalk while the lights across town turned on. She wouldn’t get the chance, either, because Delaney ended the call.

  Oh, well.

  Delaney would figure it out.

  Eventually.

  That left Gracen staring at the list of last contacts, and the newest just below Delaney’s. Bike Boy. She opened the last messages from Malachi’s number. His text me later when she’d gotten a minute in between bites of poutine with Margot to tell him she was currently tied up in plans, but later was possibly open.

  It was foolish, really.

  Gracen understood that.

  An early morning with a full day ahead plus the glass of wine earlier meant Gracen’s bed should be the only thing on her mind, but she couldn’t bring herself to head back upstairs. She’d only just realized that past weekend how nothing about the things inside the space had changed since Sonny left her despite the fact it wasn’t even the same room they’d shared. Her sheets—different ones now, yes—were still the same color. She’d simply rearranged the artwork on the walls to fit the new space she and Delaney moved into after their last salon sold. Even the furniture was the same.

  White walls like the rest of the house, clean, and modern too, yes. From the upcycled bed frame, a family heirloom, to the accent wall mirrors that had come from her grandmother’s beloved childhood home still standing at the far end of town.

  All things Gracen loved.

  So why did it feel full of ghosts when she was alone?

  Maybe the real reason Gracen couldn’t bring herself to go to bed alone instead of chasing a beautiful distraction came from a fear she wasn’t ready to admit outside of the safety of her mind. If nothing else about her life had changed since her ex left, did that mean it was just a reflection of her, too?

  Was she just the same?

  Unchanged.

  Stuck there. Back where Sonny left her, holding her entire world together like Gracen had needed to do for her entire life. No, nothing really changed, did it?

  That was terrifying.

  Gracen didn’t bother to text Malachi like he’d requested. The number was a cell—if he was like everybody else, the phone wasn’t far from his reach. To get as far out of her head and away from those silently screaming questions, Gracen chased the distraction she had available to her—would it be one more thing for the universe to laugh about later?

  Malachi answered on the second ring. “I wasn’t expecting a call.”

  His easy tone made Gracen grin.

  “At all, or just this late?” she asked back.

  “Honestly? I figured tonight was a wash. I was gonna take you out to eat somewhere, talk maybe. Except nothing’s open now but this fucking pizza shop and you’ve probably already ate, so—”

  “I did eat,” she interjected smoothly.

  “See?”

  Gracen laughed, adding, “But I don’t refuse pizza.”

  Suddenly, the man on the other end of the line perked up. “Is that so?”

  “Even cold.”

  “Cold pizza,” he deadpanned.

  “In the bath is my favorite,” Gracen tacked on.

  Just for good measure.

  A low whistle cut through the phone’s speakers before Malachi muttered, “Girl, I was trying to be a fucking gentleman over here, but you’re making that hard.”

  “What if that’s the plan?” she asked back.

  “You should be warned,” he told her, “I’m elbow deep in grease at the moment. I gotta keep my end of the bargain and earn my spot to sleep by taking an old engine apart. I really did think the night was a wash, but—”

  “You said the pizza place, right?”

  What were the freaking odds?

  “Did I?” Malachi asked.

  “Yeah, is that where you’re renting?”

  “Staying for a bit,” he corrected. “It’s a friend’s place. Why?”

  Gracen put the phone on speaker as she headed out of the front of the house. That would make things easier when she explained, “Are you working on the old Mustang in the alley beside—”

  “Checkered & Cheese—stupid name,” Malachi interrupted, his tinkering noise in the background quieting quickly. “Why?”

  “Just a lucky guess. I’ll be over in thirty.”

  “Minutes?” he asked as she stepped outside of the house on Mainstreet next door to the pizzeria with an alley that connected to a rear apartment with a garage. Gracen stopped more than once to admire the vintage car that was far from its former glory—the body was poorly but the open hood displayed an engine inside the Mustang on blocks beyond the mouth of the garage, but she’d never been nosy enough to ask anyone about it. “I can work with that.”

  “Seconds, actually.” It was funny how some things just made more sense after the fact. “Apparently, it’s been your bike waking me up at six every morning. You’re five minutes earlier than my alarm clock every day. Let me guess—you’ve been in town a week, huh?”

  “Let me be clear. I am not interested in crazy, Gracen.”

  Did he think she was stalking him?

  Cute.

  Well ...

  “What are you doing that early in the morning, anyway?” she asked.

  “I like black coffee. My friend doesn’t keep anything that his mother hasn’t cooked or bought in his kitchen. Are you going to explain—”

  “Yep, I’m almost there.”

  “What?”

  Gracen lied. Only a little white one.

  It took maybe sixty seconds to get from her front doorstep to the pizzeria’s. She walked past the glowing
windows, waving at the familiar waitress bussing a table close to the doors, and then rounded the corner into the private alley on the other side of the building. She hadn’t even stopped to check both ways on the street that ran down the west side of their rental house before crossing over to the pizzeria’s small parking lot.

  She found Malachi at the end of the alley, inside the garage, still leaning over the hood of the car while he squinted at his phone sitting on a mechanic’s table he’d rolled within his reach. He hadn’t been exaggerating about the grease, but he could have mentioned the fact he was shirtless so Gracen could at least prepare.

  She was such a sucker for a good back on a man. Strong, muscled, with shoulders wide enough to wrap her up and swallow her whole—the very sight of his fit, toned form was enough to make her shiver. The attraction took Gracen off guard. She hadn’t felt that for somebody else in a long time.

  Malachi’s denim jeans hung low enough that she could see the black waistband of his underwear, and the sheen of sweat up his back glistened under the alley’s lights.

  She didn’t get enough time to admire him before he noticed that he wasn’t alone. Gracen hung up her call first, but his amused laughter rolled down the alley as he stepped off the stool he’d been using to reach inside the engine of the old car. He wasn’t mad at her trick.

  “I always hated how small this damn town is,” he told Gracen with a shake of his head.

  “Where are you, right next door?”

  “Yeah, my roommate and I rent the house across the street with the fenced backyard.”

  She headed down the brightly lit—thanks to the security lights installed under the roof’s eaves—alley, passing Malachi’s familiar black Suzuki before she perched herself on an old barstool just outside the small garage.

  “Sometimes I think it only feels small here and then it finds a way to remind you that isn’t the case at all,” Gracen said.

  Malachi, turning to face her fully while wiping his fingers and hands with a rag he’d pulled off the mechanic’s table, eyed her with an arched eyebrow. She almost considered asking him how long he’d been working on the car, but the sweat-dampened hair hanging down in his eyes answered that question. “How so?”

  “I’ve never met you before.”

  That made his smile widen. “And?”

  “Did you grow up here?”

  “Just below Aroostook,” he replied, mentioning the small county just outside of town limits on the other side of the river.

  “Me, too. Ah, well, in town,” Gracen clarified with a shrug. “Class of—”

  “I didn’t go to public school,” he said, but not unkindly. “Either way, I didn’t make it past the tenth grade. A judge shipped me off to a boarding school in Ontario that was more like a bootcamp. But it was that or juvie, so at least they gave me some semblance of a choice. Can’t say I made the wrong one, all things considered, they got me a diploma and easy admissions across the board when it was said and done. I didn’t see one day of jailtime for being such a puke—it worked out.”

  Gracen blinked away her surprise at his blasé attitude about a less than savory history someone else might try to gloss over with another person they didn’t know. She appreciated that he was upfront about it, but on the opposite side of the same coin, would he want her fishing for more information?

  Better safe than sorry, she opted to say nothing.

  Not that his direct nature stopped the swell of silence that came after he shrugged at her non-response. Gracen fiddled with the sleeves of her gray hoodie while Malachi continued working the grease from his hands.

  Or trying.

  “This rag isn’t getting it done—give me five minutes?” he asked.

  It was almost painful for her to agree when the sight of his arms, roped with bands of muscles that spoke of strength, were far more interesting to watch as he cleaned his hands. She forced herself to let him do what he must with a quiet, “Sure.”

  Beyond the roof overhead, Gracen admired the stars dotting the sky’s black canvas. Malachi’s quiet hey brought her back down to earth for a second.

  Over his shoulder where he stood next to the car, just beyond the door inside the garage that must have connected to his friend’s apartment, he asked, “Did you still want the pizza?”

  Was that a real question?

  Malachi was still shirtless, too.

  And she liked the way he stared at her.

  More than she should.

  Suddenly, her schedule tomorrow didn’t really register like it had earlier. She barely even felt that one glass of wine, either.

  “Do you have any beer to go with it?” Gracen asked.

  “I’m sure I can find something.” His sexy grin winked her way before he disappeared beyond the white door of the apartment. “Don’t go far.”

  Right.

  No, Gracen was good.

  Her night already looked a hell of a lot better.

  Chapter 6

  I won’t be home until late. I met up with a friend. Don’t wait up, okay?

  Gracen checked her text to Delaney for a reply only to find it hadn’t even been seen by her friend yet. She’d heard the familiar rumble of Delaney’s Jeep across the river—probably pulling into the Haus—but she hadn’t been able to see beyond the alleyway of the pizzeria to confirm. Not that it made a big difference.

  Delaney would figure it out soon enough.

  “Is someone interesting telling you something on that thing?”

  The confusing question drew Gracen’s gaze across the now-closed hood of the mustang where Malachi had set up the greasy pizza box between them like a make-shift table. She pulled the stool to one side, and he produced another that appeared to be the same from the back of the dirt-floor garage.

  The bottles of beer—dripping with condensation—clinked together when he sat them in the middle of the opened pizza box. Maybe she should be grateful that he cleaned up and put on a shirt when he brought the pizza out, but that wasn’t what she felt about it. It was hard to ignore the way the lack of grease smudges on his jaw and under his chin and his hair slicked back made his features more angular, though.

  Even his gaze changed as he eyed her across the sanded hood, ignoring everything in between them to search for something in her.

  A lie, maybe?

  Gracen had news for him. “I was trying to let my roommate know I might be late.”

  That perked his interest enough to tilt his strong jaw upward. “Oh?”

  “Yeah.” Gracen used the stool’s bottom rungs and the hood as the place to support her hand as she leaned over the grab a bottle of beer with a familiar red and gold label, the caps on top emblazoned with a crown. “Bud’s my favorite.”

  She used the sleeve of her sweater to get a decent grip on the cap without hurting her palm to twist it off. The satisfying hiss of the freshly opened beer left her tastebuds tingling as if she could already taste the cold hops. “I had to fight my friend to get it in the fridge. His mother might find it. We compromised. I keep the hard liquor in the freezer and grab the beer two or three at a time from Checkered’s if I want some. They’re charging seven dollars a bottle, which should be a damned crime, but it is what it is.”

  Huh.

  “Is he not of legal age or—”

  “Twenty-five,” Malachi interjected as he reached for the other beer currently leaving a wet ring on the pizza box’s overturned cover. “Which is only a couple of years younger than me, but you couldn’t tell. It’s like he never got out of his teens half of the time.”

  “And he can’t drink?”

  That didn’t seem right to Gracen.

  Or rather, nothing about it sounded right.

  “Socially.” Malachi wet his lips after cracking open his own beer, and then he tipped it up for a drink that downed at least a quarter of the bottle. Smacking his satisfaction at the taste, he eyed the bottle and told her, “Within his circle.”

  Gracen’s gaze narrowed at what Malachi implie
d; she’d heard that same nonsense somewhere else before. “Is he Pen—”

  Malachi’s gaze cut to Gracen, and she didn’t even finish the question. The way he lifted one shoulder and subtly nodded before grabbing one of the three remaining slices of pizza answered her question without him needing to. He filled his mouth with a bite of cheesy pepperoni, but Gracen didn’t move to do the same.

  Even if the pizza looked good.

  Or maybe that was just Malachi eating it.

  Needing to get her mind—and attention—off the way the man across the way chewed his food, because it really shouldn’t be that interesting, Gracen took her first sip of beer. The crisp liquor and familiar taste of hops washed down some of her nerves.

  Maybe that was why she asked next, “Are you?”

  The beer and its chilly contents seemed like a better thing to focus on after she asked it, though.

  Gracen thought she already had the answer to her question if she added up a few facts—none of the church’s congregation would be caught dead outside shirtless. Even the men wore button downs folded up to the elbows when they worked in the nearby wood mills in the mid-summer when the temperature was the hottest. That was before she even factored in the beer, or how he’d easily invited her over; things he probably wouldn’t be allowed to do if he followed the church’s rules for its followers. Dating outside of their congregation was forbidden which was what made the upcoming wedding so curious to Gracen.

  Well, other than the fact it also involved her ex.

  She didn’t finish the question because she thought leaving it open-ended allowed Malachi to refuse to answer, if he wanted.

  Instead, he only barked out a laugh.

  “No,” he said with a shake of his head. “That’s the whole damn problem.”

  “What problem?”

  Instantly, Malachi quieted as he tossed what remained of his pizza slice to the box. While he chugged his beer and avoided Gracen’s gaze, she opted to give him an easy way out.

  “You don’t need to tell me,” she said, and then took another sip of beer.

  He plonked his bottle down to the hood.

  Not even on the pizza box that time.

  “Good,” he said roughly in a beer-induced sigh. “No offence, but I’m not really interested in getting into all of that tonight. And hell, it’s a little heavy, for a chick I didn’t even get on the back of my bike yet.”