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

by Bethany-Kris

  “Considering the last time we talked, you were two weeks off being shipped to juvie—”

  “I never went to juvie,” Malachi said before anything else was. He also didn’t plan to offer any further information on the topic. His history wasn’t the most important thing that needed attention between the two men.

  “My point is, yeah, it’s been a while. Think about how I must feel to hear you’re in town one day, and you show up the next.” Sonny even gestured broadly at Malachi, his bike, and the rest of the driveway scene in front of him. “Like this, no less. What should I think?”

  Hopefully, nothing good.

  He wasn’t here to make friends.

  “Right,” Malachi returned, even managing a smile for Sonny. Not that it appeared true or kind. He also didn’t intend for it to. “So, imagine my shock when I log onto Instagram two weeks ago for the first time in six months to find out my sister was getting married—”

  “Was it really a shock?”

  “To you,” Malachi finished without missing a beat.

  Didn’t even blink.

  “Alora would like to see you,” Sonny said like everything else wasn’t a big deal.

  Malachi took note of the invitation, but offered nothing else in regard to his little sister, nonetheless. The oldest, and only full blood, of his siblings. The one sister he’d been allowed to know before his refusal to fall in line with his stepfather’s beliefs and rules forced him out of the family entirely.

  Well ...

  He’d been given a bed to sleep in, anyway. There was always food to eat. Love and attention that wasn’t manipulation or abuse, though? No, he’d just been cut off, left to his own devices, finding trouble quickly, and the system stepped in after that. His mother, and her husband, were all too happy to let him go. They wiped their hands clean of him and let the system do his raising after that. Malachi was convinced, in a way, that it wasn’t entirely done with him. After all, his twenty-seventh year of life had taken him nowhere in the end except right back here.

  “Listen,” Sonny muttered, breaking the silence between them, “you need to move the bike in case the cops—”

  Malachi only scoffed. “Let’s not. It’s noon and the one car the copshop keeps is already up the hill getting his lunch before he parks down by the bridge to give some tickets. She’s eighteen, man. You’re twenty-five, what are you doing?”

  Sonny’s gaze surveyed the street over Malachi’s shoulder as calm as ever. Perhaps life in a prominent valley family had done something good for the man. His confidence was on point, but that had very little to do with the obvious discomfort Malachi created for them both. His mother had always liked to say that everything was perfect until he stuck his dirty hands into it.

  “She’s not an angel,” Sonny eventually replied.

  Not coolly.

  Or indifferently.

  Not even teasingly, to his damned benefit. Because if he had been cocky about that remark, Malachi would not be responsible for the way the pretty gray gravel under their feet would look with Sonny’s blood seeping between every crevice and crack. A guy could only take so fucking much. Even if Malachi and his sister had been estranged for reasons that were not entirely by their choosing.

  “And,” Sonny added, his tone lifting slightly with his second point, “for what it matters, she is eighteen. So, I guess I should say it doesn’t matter, and leave it at that which is my right. But for the respect of it, and you being her brother—”

  “Did it matter two months ago when she was still seventeen? I saw the Harvest Ball pictures. It was cute,” Malachi deadpanned, “even your orange bowtie and vest matched her scarves.”

  “You’ve been away for a few years, Malachi,” Sonny interjected quietly as his gaze shifted down to the gravel between their feet. “You don’t know everything about everybody, you know what I’m saying? Some of those people might not want me sharing their stories. So, here’s what I can tell you of mine, and you can take what you want from it, and go from there.”

  Malachi released the air he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in, opting to keep his rising irritation hidden. “Try me.”

  “The town’s done some fundraising over the last year with different organizations and businesses that were mutually beneficial. Or so my father put it when he had to sign over that fifty thousand,” Sonny said, shooting a glance over his shoulder like he was trying to check for observers inside the business. The place seemed quiet. “The tabernacle had an invitation to the fundraising as well.”

  “I get it, your circles crossed. Get to the point.”

  Sonny sighed hard. “Could you relax? I barely even know you as her brother, Malachi. Back when we talked, life looked a lot different. You’re—”

  “Her brother,” Malachi cut in with no regrets. “It’s the only thing that matters to me. So again, I know you’ve been seeing her for a while, but she’s only recently turned legal, so ...”

  He didn’t really have anything else left to say.

  The only left were Sonny’s answers.

  “Just say it,” Sonny told Malachi, his upper lip twitching as if he were holding back a sneer. “Say it, what’s the problem? Are you fucking my—”

  “Don’t be a prick. I came here and did this with you like this so neither one of us had to be fucking crude.”

  If the respect of the matter counted for something in Sonny’s playbook, then Malachi’s efforts should matter. At the very least. Because there was an important reason why he’d come here to ask Sonny these things in the first place.

  It went deeper than just his sister.

  He needed to get back to that.

  “You’re right,” Malachi said, “I’ve been gone for a while.”

  “She said the last time you talked was when you were eighteen, just after you’d signed up for bootcamp.”

  “It was made clear I wasn’t welcomed at home,” Malachi said, choosing every word carefully.

  Sonny’s jaw grinded over his thoughts while he eyed Malachi. “He’s still like that with them—all of them, really.”

  He.

  Was that the closest Malachi could get Sonny to saying something negative about his future father-in-law? Talking badly about a man like Frankie Beau could be a dangerous thing. Depending on a person’s level of threat to the church—or more specifically, the pastor preaching from the pulpit—well, it determined the level of response action.

  Cars had been pushed into the river before.

  A beating happened, once.

  In almost every case, Frankie Beau believed intimidation worked. It kept people out of his and his church’s business. There could be consequences for those who dared to look what was beneath the smiling, beautiful veneer.

  “One has to be careful with all of that, though,” Sonny added under is breath. “How I’ve gotten this far with Alora is a miracle, Malachi. From second one, it’s been chaperones and his rules. Don’t worry—Frankie’s made it known to me what happens if I step out of line.”

  Sonny confirmed a lot of Malachi’s suspicions about his sister’s current predicament and the underlying motive to her upcoming marriage. And didn’t even know he did so.

  “I’ve got half-sisters I’ve never met,” Malachi noted. “I bet he’s pissed I’m back in town.”

  “Just ... don’t provoke it?”

  “Didn’t you say my sister wanted to see me?” Malachi asked, trying to wrap his mind around how that would work. His stepfather controlled his family even more than he did his congregation if possible. If Frankie didn’t want Malachi around his children, adult or not, the man would find a way to make it happen.

  “She’s not an angel,” Sonny repeated. Only that time, making the point clear when he met Malachi’s stare. “There are ways to make things work, if that’s what a person has to do.”

  Jesus Christ.

  So little truly had changed.

  The whole place was still a shithole.

  “You know, I really hate
reading between the lines,” he bitched under his breath.

  “Yeah, well ...” Sonny nodded once. “She wants a life outside of this town, too. Away from him. All of it. Alora, I me—”

  “I know who you mean.”

  “If you really gave a shit,” Sonny told Malachi with another easy, unbothered shrug, “you could help with that, man.”

  The better question now was how to make it happen.

  “Don’t park the bike there again,” Sonny said as he turned to head back the way he’d first came, “and otherwise, maybe don’t start unnecessary trouble.”

  “About Alora,” Malachi returned to the man’s retreating back.

  Sonny didn’t turn around as he reached the front doors, but he did stop long enough to listen.

  “I’ll text you, so you’ll have my number,” he finished.

  “Got it, big brother.”

  Stupid fuck.

  Who was being the prick now?

  Chapter 10

  Gracen heard the rumble of what she thought was a familiar engine only a few seconds before Margot’s question.

  “Were you still doing walk-ins?” Margot asked.

  Gracen paused, half under her workstation with a trash bag clenched in her hand. “No, the schedule is usually booked straight through.”

  Straightening up to hand over the bag for Margot to take, Gracen noticed the scene Delaney wasn’t even trying to hide across the salon. Pointing with both hands toward the windows overlooking their parking lot and the river across the street, Delaney clearly mouthed to Margot, “That’s him—that’s the guy!”

  Gracen didn’t even need to check on who Delaney was attempting to point out to Margot. There had only been one person whom her friends had constantly prodded Gracen for more information about while whispering their opinions and assumptions when her back was turned. Not that Delaney or Margot did so with any real malice. Gracen didn’t give them much of a choice but to talk about a guy—and a hookup—she basically refused to discuss.

  Mostly because there wasn’t anything to tell.

  Honestly.

  Malachi hadn’t checked in—and never dropped off that coffee he promised, either—in almost a week. With her Sunday looking busy because Gracen had a special someone to make up to for her previous no-show the week before, she couldn’t say it mattered that Malachi did a disappearing act. Her work week kept her distracted; it was only her friends that wouldn’t let Malachi go.

  “Could you not?” Gracen asked Delaney without a lick of heat in her voice.

  Delaney, who had turned her back to Margot and Gracen, couldn’t hide the trembling in her shoulders as she poorly hid her laughter. “No offense, but this is the most exciting thing to happen here this week.”

  “She’s not wrong,” Margot put in, before checking over her shoulder to survey the problem who had recently pulled into the parking lot.

  The problem Gracen had refused to acknowledge.

  Fifteen minutes after closing, it wasn’t like she needed to rush to deal with the leather-wearing, motorcycle-riding issue outside. The cleaning of the place and closing of the cash had already been done. Margot finished by grabbing the small trash bags on the bottom floor while Delaney and Gracen had been tidying their stations. Even the wash—a load of crisp, white towels—was nearly done drying in the back room.

  Finally, Gracen peered over Margot’s shoulder to get a view of the parking lot outside the windows. As it seemed, Malachi had already parked and got off his bike, letting his black helmet hang from one handlebar while he leaned against the machine as if he had all the time in the world.

  Maybe he did.

  How would she know?

  “You know,” Gracen said, loud enough for her other companions in the salon to hear, “I didn’t even ask him what he did for a job.”

  That earned her a curious what from Delaney and an equally impressed whistle from Margot. The woman closest to Gracen only shrugged her shoulders like she wasn’t apologetic in the least for her reaction.

  “He is really cute,” Margot said, turning on the heels of her Nike runners and clapping Gracen on her shoulder as she passed her by to finish her work. “Not bad, girlie.”

  God.

  His looks had little to do with it.

  Right?

  Gracen eyed a grinning Delaney as Margot disappeared into the backrooms. “I blame you for this—I told you basically everything.”

  “Somebody in this place needs to get something exciting going on in their damned life,” Delaney returned, spinning her swivel chair around to face Gracen after she fell, unbothered, into the seat. “Right now, that just happens to be you.”

  “Your life isn’t boring.”

  “Men and sex wise? Oh yeah, it is.”

  “How’s that my problem, though?”

  “Don’t play dumb. Margot makes things slightly more interesting because at least she swings for both teams, and commitment scares the hell out of me, so we know I’m not doing anything in the romance department—”

  “You’re aware you don’t need a relationship to have sex, or a little bit of fun, right?” Gracen interjected.

  Delaney made a face. “I know. I just ... can’t follow through.”

  Different strokes for different folks.

  Gracen sighed and swung toward the windows with her arms crossed to proverbially—but not literally, yet—face the problem still waiting outside. Patiently, too. It was only her second good glimpse of Malachi that she noticed the plastic to-go cup he held in his hands. A small, iced coffee from the café up the hill.

  “A little late,” she muttered under her breath.

  “What?” Delaney asked, clearly not realizing their conversation was over.

  “Nothing,” Gracen replied as she pulled off her black apron to discard it over the back of her station’s chair. “You good to finish up?”

  “We’re perfect here, have fun,” Margot called across the salon’s floor when she came out from the backrooms once more.

  Gracen gave Delaney one last glance as she stopped at the front desk to grab the mini backpack she’d been using all week for her bag. “Anything you want to say before I go?”

  “Yeah, this time let me know if you’re not coming home.”

  Fair was fair. The two women had enough to worry about without adding each other on top of the pile, as well.

  “Got it,” Gracen agreed.

  “And be safe,” Delaney sudden shouted—definitely loud enough for the man outside to probably hear—as Gracen pushed open the salon’s front doors. “Love you!”

  Gracen grinned while the door shut behind her, but not before she’d given Delaney a quick middle finger as her own I love you. Her best friend would understand and respect the gesture.

  “I was going to come earlier, but I figured you’d be less annoyed when you didn’t have clients if I dropped in to say hello,” Malachi said when Gracen finally stood outside with him.

  Using the bike’s double-leg kickstand to keep it steady while he treated the machine as a leaning post, Malachi extended the plastic cup in his hands to Gracen with a careful expression.

  “What’s in it?” she asked first, knowing good and well what it was.

  “Not poison.” He glanced sideways at the cup. “You can see the fucking logo—”

  “No, what did you get me?”

  At that, his expression turned a little more serious. Even if he also kept a playful glint to his gaze.

  “It was a bit like playing a game,” he told her.

  “Ordering coffee is a game?”

  “Let’s start there,” Malachi said as if he agreed with a suggestion she hadn’t even made. “First, I had to figure out if you were even the type to drink coffee. Or maybe tea? And then I remembered what you’d been drinking the day you gave me your number, and I got a good laugh at myself for overthinking something silly like getting you a drink. Especially when it was only supposed to be a buffer for me to apologize. I did mean to check-
in the past week. Shit just came up.”

  Gracen smiled. “Iced coffee is perfect.”

  Malachi pushed off the bike to step close enough for Gracen to take the chilly treat. He didn’t retake his previous, lazy position while she took her first sip using the straw poking out of the cup’s concaved cover. The ice rattled inside the plastic when she shook it up to get a bit more of the vanilla flavor on her next sip.

  “You asked for something extra,” she said. “I can taste it.”

  “I like caramel better,” Malachi noted.

  Gracen nodded. “Vanilla is a safe bet, though.”

  “Hey, you said it. Not me.”

  Other than the occasional vehicle passing the salon, the parking lot and the two people standing next to their respective vehicles remained silent. Gracen didn’t mind the stillness. She took a minute to enjoy the cold, sweet coffee while the sun started to set somewhere behind the salon. It painted the sky with pretty pinks and reds while the river glittered with the reflection, only broken occasionally by a random boat cutting across the surface.

  “Was it a busy week for you?” Gracen asked, breaking the silence first.

  Malachi, who had also been watching the passing vehicles and the movement on the river, glanced her way with a frown. “You did get my text, right?”

  “The sorry?” His one and only message to her the night after they’d hooked up. Not that it explained anything, nor did she look too far into it. “Yeah, but nothing else.”

  He squinted one eye. “Did you need something else?”

  Not really.

  “Maybe a hello might also have been nice,” Gracen settled on saying. “Anything but an apology when I didn’t really understand what you were apologizing for.”

  It didn’t feel like a lie.

  “My week sucked,” Malachi muttered the longer Gracen stared across the river instead of at him. “Let’s say I don’t have a lot of friends in the area, so to avoid a problem, I laid low for a few days to get beyond the worst of it.”

  That had Gracen curious.

  He opened the door.

  “Do you mean your family?” she asked. “The Beaus?”

  Malachi didn’t hide his surprise at her frank question. He even cocked an eyebrow when he asked her, “My last name was never Beau, but what do you know about them?”