by Bethany-Kris
It wasn’t the first time Gracen sought a clear head using the ground under her feet and the sky over her head. She also doubted it would be the last when she had a busy couple of weeks staring her and the Haus down.
Prom and graduation.
The beginning of summer always meant more weddings, too.
She’d never taken a vacation. Only sick days when she was actually sick, and didn’t need to share her germs. Not once did Gracen consider slowing down because the larger her savings and investment accounts grew, the safer she felt about a future she couldn’t yet see.
Present, but forever planning.
When would she get to enjoy it?
Why didn’t she know what that happiness looked like?
Gracen had all the answers—hated them, too. Once upon a time, she dared to dream. With so little extended family, only a handful of close friends, and a single boy who had told her that he loved her when she needed to hear it the most, well, the future she painted for herself with Sonny should have been beautiful.
It never was.
She built a life for herself around a man, folding into his family and world for years, because she had practically nothing and no one else. They made it easy; seemed like they genuinely cared. The young girl inside of her had been screaming for a family. To be loved. Except he was the same man who forgot to tell her that every smile and act of kindness by people like his mother and sister had been a façade made of glass. Including every word that came out of his mouth, too, and every lie he promised to Gracen because, for a time, he was happy. She’d given him every part of herself to make him that way.
Sonny didn’t offer her the same.
The bubble had to burst.
It shattered, really.
No wonder she found it a little hard to look forward now.
Chapter 13
Malachi squinted at the flood of light exposing him in the back alley of The Rose. A restaurant in the valley known for its beautiful setting upriver with a sprawling green lawn and towering oaks framed by the mountainous forest that made for beautiful pictures, it was one of a few venues that people could use for social events requiring something larger than what the average home afforded.
The place also doubled as a golf course, but as that had never been Malachi’s game of choice, he didn’t even know the specs offered by the place. He had, however, seen the inside of the restaurant enough times over the years to know not much about the dark wood interior or its red and white accented settings had changed.
In a place like this, nostalgia for yesteryears almost always reigned.
He’d been using the flipped down tailgate of Nader’s truck as a seat, and since he couldn’t make out who the shadow was currently standing in the rear exit doorway of The Rose, Malachi remained still. The person, not entirely distinguishable to him in the much brighter halo of light, didn’t notice him or the truck, but he could hear their gulps of fresh air. Night fell and the darkness provided him a haven parked in the back, along with some clarity from a mentally terrible week.
He hadn’t shown up to his sister’s engagement dinner to cause a problem—at least, that’s what Malachi told himself. Despite the folded invitation showing up under his friend’s front door with no indication about who sent it, well, Malachi opted to be careful.
He showed.
Just not his face.
Not inside.
Except his plan wasn’t all that great because if no one knew he was there, what good did his presence really do?
Malachi hadn’t fucked up.
He was, though. Fucked up. Being back in this place did that to him, unfortunately. It’d taken him too long to figure it out.
He hadn’t been able to ignore the urge to be close to his family when he knew where they would all be. At the same time, too. Did his mother still wear the same medication-induced smile? Despite seeing pictures of Alora grown and a young woman, she was still the annoying kid sister he had to leave behind in his head; back when she still called him Mally and collected Barbies.
God, he still hated that nickname.
Never mind the fact that Malachi could barely wrap his mind around the other siblings. Four girls with names he knew only because of third parties, but he couldn’t honestly put on the correct faces. Did Frankie still like to loom higher than people when he yelled or preached?
Almost compulsion-like the knowledge of them being so easily exposed to him, so he could maybe fill in some of the blanks that had been created in the most recent handful of his twenty-seven years left him coming up with justifications and fantasies about why someone would leave him that invitation.
Fifteen minutes before the arrival time on the invite, he had parked in the back and settled in with his windows rolled down. He’d heard the arrival of family and friends. Swore he’d even recognized a few of the louder voices that managed to echo over the building into the back where he sat stewing in the truck.
Malachi owed Nader a lot. No questions asked, the dude really showed up and showed out for Malachi when it counted. From giving him a place to sleep to an ear to listen when he questioned his purpose for being in this shitty little town.
It felt better when Malachi admitted there was a part of him that had never wanted to come back here. Where he’d been hurt and abandoned by people who should have loved him. Less so when a smaller piece of him found comfort and familiarity rolling down the streets. Thinking about the what ifs and still clutching to hope for things yet to be.
That shit hurt, too.
Just in a different way.
The rear of the restaurant was nothing more than generator systems in case of power failures for the large fridges and freezers, and a row of dumpsters for trash and recyclables sitting on the same smooth asphalt that paved the drive and front parking lot. The one light dimly illuminating the rear exit overhead the row of dumpsters wasn’t enough to expose where Malachi had parked his friend’s Chevy once darkness cloaked the sky and cloud cover hid the moon and stars.
Hoping it would only be an employee at first, he realized his mistake when the shift of material made him do a double take. He’d never known the employees of The Rose to wear dresses.
He cursed himself internally when the figure stepped beyond the exit door, and used an empty milk crate not far away to keep it propped open.
She wasn’t leaving.
With her back turned to him and the alley dim again, he couldn’t make out who the woman was while she rifled through her purse. It was only when she leaned against the restaurant and flicked the lighter in front of her face for the cigarette hanging between her lips did Malachi relax. The flame illuminated her features before it was gone with her first inhale of a brown-filtered cigarette. Black, wavy hair. Almost sprite-like in size.
Delaney Reed.
He wouldn’t have taken her to be a smoker.
Not wanting to scare the woman who worked and lived with Gracen—not purposely, anyway—Malachi figured it was safe to let her know he was there.
Literally.
In the shadows, sitting on a tailgate practically right in front of her. If she cared to look harder into the darkness.
“Is this where all the cool kids hang out to smoke?” he asked the other soul breathing in the shadows.
Malachi pressed the power button on the side of the cell he’d been toying with only seconds before Delaney pushed open the exit door. The glow of the screen accompanied his words, so she could plainly make out she wasn’t alone.
She couldn’t swallow the yelp of shock, and her hand pressed over her racing heart. Now that Delaney could see his hidden spot beyond what the one light over the dumpsters offered, she openly glared, as half-hearted as it was, at his waving figure on the tailgate.
“Make some damn noise or something,” she snapped at first.
Almost instantaneously, it was like Delaney realized the item between her fingers and that the cigarette was also visible to Malachi. Her familiar hug of the cigarette with two f
ingers turned into an awkward reach away from her body. Maybe the way someone who had never smoked a cigarette in their life would do when handed one without warning.
“I, uh ...”
She couldn’t come up with a quick lie.
It was sad, really.
Malachi gave her an out, saying, “Hey, could I bum an extra?”
Delaney went back to holding the cigarette the way she had before, and even took a drag while eyeing him sideways. Clearly, seriously considering his request. Not. “You say nothing to no one that you saw me, and I’ll think about it.”
Malachi cocked a brow. “At all?”
“What?”
His laugh cracked through the quiet night. “I shouldn’t tell anyone at all that I saw you—that’s it?”
“Oh, smoking,” she clarified. “I don’t smoke. That’s a lie. Or that’s what I will boldfaced tell anyone who asks me different. Got it?”
Seemed simple enough.
And an okay trade.
Malachi was more than aware how it worked only to Delaney’s favor in the grander scheme of things as she pulled what appeared to be a brand-new pack of cigarettes out of her purse, and walked one across the way to him. Once he had the smoke between his lips, he produced his own zippo to light the cigarette, Delaney retook her spot against the wall.
“And anyone—really?” Malachi questioned.
Delaney wasn’t ready for the question if the quick snap upward of her chin was any indication, but he gave her credit where it was due when she came up with a snappy response all the same. “You already agreed to the deal—smoke it.”
Malachi rocked with a chuckle on the tailgate, thinking damn. Maybe he understood why Gracen and Delaney complimented one another as friends. Visibly, the two were like ying and yang. Except there was a certain confidence and self-assuredness that radiated from both women, who frankly, were barely into their adult life. It was obvious at first glance, though, that their responsibility and life load was huge.
No wonder they showed up and got shit done.
Where was their choice?
Life kept trotting on.
Quietly, and without prompting again from Malachi, Delaney said, “And if you meant anyone ... like say Gracen, she knows I smoke.”
Actually, that had been what Malachi meant. The fact Delaney caught on to it and felt like she should go back to the topic to clarify even if it was none of his business, told him that she knew of his recent activities with her roommate and friend. She expected him to see her friend again and should the topic of her smoking come up—well, she already made herself clear.
Delaney pointed a finger his way. “And she’ll tell you and anybody else who asks the same thing. I don’t smoke.”
“None of my bu—”
“No, but I don’t care to talk about why I do it. What are you doing back here, anyway?” Delaney asked, redirecting the conversation all at once with no warning.
“Uh—”
“Listen, you can choose not to call me on lies for the sake of politeness, but I stopped doing that with people I like a long time ago,” Delaney interjected before he could even think up a reasonable half-truth.
“Who said you could like me?” he joked.
It softened the remaining tenson.
Delaney even smirked. “Who said I did?”
“You also never said you didn’t.”
She gave up the pretense. “Well, if Gracen does, you know ...”
The sentence was fine to trail off.
He wasn’t sure what he was doing with Gracen Briggs when he’d barely dealt with being back in his own personal hell. Things that didn’t need his attention because it wasn’t causing him some sort of distress got left alone by his mental or physical meddling.
“We’re just ...”
Delaney’s eyebrows, as dark as her hair framing alabaster skin, lifted high as she waited for him to come up with something to finish his statement.
Nothing did.
“I don’t really care what you’re doing with Gracen as long it’s not done in my bed,” Delaney eventually muttered around a drag on her cigarette.
Malachi cleared his throat with an awkward chuckle at that. “Fair enough, yeah?”
Delaney shrugged. “She said you’re just fucking, anyway, but hey—doesn’t matter.”
She had all his attention, then.
“Why not?”
“Lonely people find lonely people,” Delaney said, tossing her smoke to the asphalt with a flick of her fingers. Sparks from the coal danced before disappearing. “Who am I to say how the two of you should spend your time, right?”
No elaboration.
It left Malachi with an unsettled pit in his chest that he couldn’t shake off because he wondered if she could just look at him and tell he was alone in the world, like Gracen, or had her friend spent time discussing him when he wasn’t there to be a part of the conversation? Neither option was great. Life wouldn’t give him the time to think long about it, either.
After tossing her cigarette, Delaney had already started back for the exit door she’d previously left propped open. “I gotta get back in there before somebody knows I’m gone. I really thought I’d be able to grit my teeth through this night.”
“You’re doing better than me,” he replied. “I never even went inside.”
Over her shoulder, the comment made Delaney survey him harder. “That might have been for the better. All you missed was your father’s twenty-minute grace before anybody could eat. Yes, the food was cold.”
Some things never changed.
More importantly, though ... “He’s not my father.”
Delaney nodded once. “Right, sorry. I guess he didn’t adopt you like Alora?”
“Something like that, yeah. Don’t worry, it’s not a bad thing,” he said.
“So, I’ve heard. I’ll be seeing you, Malachi.”
“Don’t let them get in your head,” he called back before she’d kicked the crate out, and the door slammed closed.
That’s all the shit was, anyway.
Mind games.
It was a proverbial door closing for him, too. Like reality snapping back in place to tell him there really wasn’t any good reason for him to be there tonight. If his sister wanted to make contact, it was as simple as Sonny providing Alora with Malachi’s number. It didn’t have to be a secret meeting. The invitation could have even been a taunt, if he wanted to take it in such a way.
So far, Malachi’s presence in town hadn’t angered Frankie Beau enough to make the monster inside the man come out and play with his long, lost stepson. If anything, Malachi should see that as a blessing.
A chance to recalibrate the way he looked at his life, past, and present. It all led him down the same path in the end.
He shouldn’t have come home.
Malachi didn’t even want to be back here in the first damn place. He certainly wouldn’t overstay, but as he left the drive to take the road back to town, Malachi made sure the tires on the Chevy squealed on his way out. Nobody said he had to leave as quietly as he came.
Chapter 14
Gracen’s thighs burned by the time she reached the water tower’s lookout. Five hundred feet above the river, the looming blue tower with THE VALLEY in bold, white letters across the top overlooked the glittering lights of both sides of town, the connecting bridge, and farther to the horizon where the mountainous range decorated the landscape. As far as the eye could see, really.
It was a good hike.
A worthy one if a person enjoyed the outdoors, a constantly inclining trek, and a hell of a pay off at the end with the view. One could see farther from the section of trees that had been cleared for the tower on the very edge of Montgomery Mountain in the daytime, but Gracen preferred the view at night.
The moon and stars were so close it was as if she could pluck them from the dark sky, except the cloud cover that night kept her focus on the river and town down below. She left her pack—a small bookba
g with water, her phone, and a small first aid kit against the base of the tower as she headed for the edge of the lookout. After a truck had gone off the side and plunged into the water—with no one inside, thankfully—before Gracen was even born, the town had installed metal garters to keep vehicles from going too far.
It was a heck of a lot faster to reach the tower through the private access road maintained by the town. Connected from the main rural highway that traveled through Montgomery Mountain through the rural counties before the next town, the drive took maybe fifteen minutes to get to the lookout.
The same could not be said for the hike.
As one would expect, the place was popular with teenagers who couldn’t help themselves when it came to doing things they shouldn’t—everything from used condoms to empty alcohol bottles had shown up on the lot. More than a few times. Not even RCMP doing routine checks of the tower at night had stopped the activity.
The local newspaper, named after its respective town, wrote about the antics for weeks with letters to the editor waxing poetic about traditions and privacy on one side of the fence. Mostly anonymous. The other side, well ...
How some of those letters got published was a fucking mystery.
What else did the town have to do with their time, though? It gave people something to talk about over dinner between their regular shifts of work and the nuances of a quiet valley life.
Which was what eventually prompted the town to install security cameras at the tower. Back when Gracen had still been young enough to sneak up to the lookout with a boy who had a license and a backseat, however, the cameras had not yet been on site.
She tried not to care about the wisps of nostalgia—for a time she couldn’t get back, and didn’t necessarily want to when she knew how the path would inevitably end again—while she climbed over the metal railing. Not that she was supposed to. Clear, bright signs, even in the darkness with the help of a few spotlights on the tower and its power supply system, could be seen posted every ten or so feet.
Warnings.
Bylaws, too. For the sake of telling people they would be fined for littering or dumping trash.