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

by Bethany-Kris

  Not even booming laugh from the paddling canoe on the calm river could tear her gaze away from Malachi as he rubbed his palms over her bare knees and up her arms. She hadn’t realized her entire body broke out with goosebumps until he made her aware.

  “I didn’t mean to make you upset,” he said, his brow pensive. “Look at you.”

  She did.

  But he was wrong, too.

  “It’s not you,” she said firmly. “You didn’t do it. It just happens.”

  Not often, but always with surprise.

  She didn’t explain that part.

  With one knee to the veranda, one of his hands on top of hers, and another clasping the chair arm’s edge, Malachi froze, but then he nodded. “I guess everybody’s demons are a little bit different, huh?”

  “Yeah? Well, what’s yours look like?” She hadn’t meant to sound so defensive, but that didn’t change her delivery, either.

  Malachi didn’t blink an eye. “Abandonment and anger issues. One’s better than the other, but that took a few years to sort out, too. Kind of like my attention seeking. I was always chasing one woman or the next looking for affection and attention in the wrong places and people until it got me into trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Pick your poison. Any kind of trouble. The last straw was when I got kicked out of basic training because I couldn’t keep my dick in my pants.”

  He laughed under his breath. “Well, all that came before I figured out it was useless trying to find something to fix me in other people because I would never get what I wanted from those I was really angry at. I was the only person left stewing in it all the damn time. Alone.”

  “I’m not sure this is something I can let go,” Gracen admitted.

  He stroked her knee. “Nobody said you had to.”

  The only thing keeping the warm July sun bearable was the light breeze rustling the branches of the trees surrounding the lodge. Gracen barely felt the kiss of wind with Malachi so close. She wanted to enjoy that more—the sense of being lost with him—instead of the panic that had been gripping at her heart.

  It wasn’t fair.

  “If it helps, because you don’t like to look forward, I guess,” Malachi said, shrugging at Gracen’s inquisitive glance. “If it helps—I wasn’t talking about five or ten years from now when it came to us.”

  She gave his hand on her knee a playful slap. “How does that help?”

  “Because I meant right now, and tomorrow. I’m not really worried about what we’re going to do who the hell knows when—I care about what’s going on between you and me today, babe. And maybe once all that’s figured out, we’ll get a better look at where we’re going from here. Or if we even want to go somewhere. That’s all.”

  He chose every word carefully.

  She could tell.

  Gracen didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the fact that he thought he needed to treat her like a baby deer caught in a car’s headlights. Confused, and easily scared, but stuck to the spot all the same. Or maybe it was a decent comparison, and she was just offended about it.

  She wouldn’t say.

  Wiping away any stray tear that might have fallen, Gracen asked, “So, what are we doing, exactly?”

  Malachi smirked. “We’re back to asking that?”

  “Isn’t that what we’re trying to figure out?”

  “Yep,” he murmured, still smiling in that sexy way. “I figure if we’re going to keep doing this dance together, then we might as well make a few things clear.”

  Gracen couldn’t help but grin, too. “What do you want to make clear, huh?”

  “Are you putting me on the spot?”

  “Or trying to ease myself into the conversation,” she returned.

  Malachi played along. “I want to get a call from you tomorrow when you get home—first thing, you know what I mean? I want to be the first person you call to say you made the drive back safe. And then next week, when I’m bored out of my mind and trying not to waste money at the bar for something to do, I want you to pick up every call. Talk to me for hours.”

  “I can do those.”

  That didn’t include words that implied situations she couldn’t necessarily control. It wasn’t putting her in the place of envisioning the impossible white picket fence and happily ever after that she simply didn’t believe in.

  No, it didn’t feel like that.

  “And I want to do more of these weekends,” he added, but that wasn’t a hard sell for Gracen.

  “I’ll never say no to this lodge, for the record.”

  “Nobody would, let’s be honest.” Malachi tipped his head to the side, his expression softening when he said, “Maybe we’ll work out a few weekends over what’s left of the summer if we can because I don’t know how to do the distance with somebody. I’m willing to try with you.”

  “It’s a first for me, too,” she agreed.

  “I want to know you’re mine, nobody—”

  “I’m not with anybody, and haven’t been except for you,” Gracen said before he could get out another word. Then, she narrowed her sights on him, adding, “And it better be the same for you—got it?”

  Malachi chuckled and straightened up fast to level her lips with a bruising kiss. She couldn’t stop the smile forming against his kiss, or the way she couldn’t control the urge to fist his T-shirt to drag him even closer. Malachi dropped a quick peck to the tip of her nose before finally pulling away.

  “I got it,” he told her.

  She still wouldn’t let him go.

  “I want those things with you, too,” she said.

  Malachi nodded, and ticked two fingers under her chin. “Then right now, that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

  “Together,” Gracen clarified.

  “Looks like it, blue eyes.”

  She pulled him down for one more kiss, but knew better than to let him linger lest she forget about the portobello mushrooms on the burger she could die for. Gracen pushed a laughing, grinning Malachi back to his chair, and pointed for him to stay when he finally sat down.

  Thankfully, he did. Who knows what kind of show the canoe on the river might have witnessed if Malachi didn’t oblige Gracen’s request.

  Her self-control was weak with him.

  Gracen replaced the plate, the burger still warm to the touch, in her lap. “I do need to eat sometimes.”

  He was already reaching for his own plate when he replied, “I’m not making any promises about what happens when you’re done.”

  *

  Gracen didn’t expect to feel like a tiny dark rain cloud had followed her into the evening and following morning, but as Malachi moved around the bedroom suite picking up their things so she could pack her overnight bag, she couldn’t deny it any longer.

  Malachi appeared unaware.

  Frankly, she didn’t give him any reason to believe otherwise when she went straight to old habits. They were so hard to kill, after all. She’d made old friends with hers. There was comfort in familiarity.

  Malachi had just dropped her hoodie and jean shorts from the day before to the pile of dirty clothes on the bed when she decided to finally chase the rain cloud away. He’d given her a weekend away from the rest of the world, and she felt like she owed him an explanation for why this had been so important in the first place.

  “I don’t know if I mentioned this before,” Gracen said, drawing Malachi’s attention where he stood at the end of the log-frame bed, “but I’ve only ever been in one long-term relationship.”

  Malachi turned to face her a little more, folding his arms over his chest with a hint of curiosity in his expression. “Oh?”

  “I had two boyfriends. One lasted a week, and the other ...” Gracen rolled her eyes, knowing the exact year, month and number of days she had been with Sonny, but she refused to give that relationship more respect than she could emotionally afford. She, on the leather loveseat across from the fireplace, lifted her naked shoulders u
nder the comforter she wrapped around her body like a cocoon. “Well, that one went on a lot longer. All of high school, basically, but he graduated two years before me.” She waved her hand as his stare lingered more intently on her, forcing herself to admit, “And a bit beyond.”

  “And was your last, I take it?” Malachi asked.

  Gracen sighed.

  The answer should be easy.

  Shit just complicated it.

  “I’m not going to say that anything that happened after that relationship ended was worth anything talking about,” Gracen said. “If you get what I mean.”

  “So, that was your last one.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the problem, Gracen?” Malachi’s gaze shifted from her to the frosted windows that seemed illuminated with the morning sunlight. “That first time we hooked up, maybe you thought I forgot, but you said you weren’t over your ex. If that’s what you’re getting around to saying here, then I need to ask about yesterday. What was that?”

  She didn’t begrudge him for putting it out there. It was a valid question, considering the circumstances.

  “I just said I wasn’t over him because that was how I felt at the moment.” As simple as that might seem, it was also true. “I’d only recently found out my ex—who I hadn’t spoken to in years—was getting married. It was basically the first time I’d heard his name in years. I had some shit to work through, but then I kind of stumbled onto you.”

  Malachi blinked, and his head tilted slightly to the side like he was trying to figure something out. Gracen decided that she would be the one to fill in the blanks for him. It was only fair.

  “I ran into my ex earlier this week—that’s why it was so shitty. Everything went downhill after I saw him because I realized I was still angry, but I didn’t really want to be.”

  “At him?” Malachi asked quietly.

  Gracen waved a hand out from beneath the blankets. “At everything? I was fine to go on and pretend like he didn’t exist for the rest of my life because of how he hurt me, so maybe it fucked me up for a minute to have him smile at me while he hugged his fiancée like nothing ever happened, and it didn’t mean anything. I don’t care how many years it’s been—it’s over for a reason.”

  “I get that,” Malachi murmured.

  Gracen swallowed the swell of anger rising in her throat. “Just because I’m not beyond what happened doesn’t mean I give a shit about the person behind the hurt. I guess that’s part of what I had to work through. Accepting the situation stayed with me, but I wouldn’t piss on him to put him out if he was on fire.”

  Malachi’s brow lifted high at the comment. “That’s kind of harsh.”

  She shrugged.

  “For you, I mean,” he added lower.

  Well, he only knew her when she was kind and happy, bubbly and sweet. That’s how he treated her, what he brought out of her. He didn’t know her angry and petty and hurting. Not because of something he did, and he really didn’t want to learn the person she was like that.

  “He left me out of the blue—a phone call, actually, that’s how he did it, shortly after we got engaged, so that probably had something to do with it. He never gave me an explanation, and didn’t talk again after that day,” Gracen said.

  Malachi flinched. “Ouch.”

  “It gets better—or worse, I guess, if you’re me,” she muttered with a shake of her head. “I already had nobody, he knew it, and not long after I graduated high school, my grandmother who had taken care of me after my parents’ accident started getting sick.”

  Malachi’s arms dropped loosely to his sides, and then he ran a hand through the longer bit of hair on the top of his head. “I’m sorry, that must have been rough.”

  Putting it mildly.

  “Eventually, she went into the manor, I was a barely functioning adult with the power of attorney over the one person who had always been my caretaker, and he breaks up with me over a phone call,” Gracen said, feeling like that was a decent overview of the situation. “Yeah, it wasn’t a good time in my life but like with everything else, I didn’t have a choice but to get up the next day and get on with it. Nobody else was gonna catch me when I broke, so ...”

  Gracen tightened the blankets around her frame again, but she couldn’t shake the coldness dancing over her skin. It had nothing to do with the temperature of the room, and more with the nonsense in her head, but that didn’t stop her from trying to block it out all the same.

  “I really thought I was used to being alone when my ex did that to me because I already felt like the world left me with nothing and nobody, anyway, but that did something else to me, I think. Something worse.”

  “Come on,” Malachi said, crossing the room faster than she could blink. Without asking, he opened her blanket and slipped in beside her on the couch, cocooning them once again in the gray comforter. Every last drop of chill in her body was gone with his arms around her while she found a safe spot with her cheek against his chest. “You’re not crying today, babe.”

  Maybe it was the way her voice had broken on the last word, her chin trembling from holding back the rush of painful memories from a time that also left her wounded and scarred in ways the rest of the world couldn’t see, that triggered him into comforting her. Gracen wasn’t about to complain. She’d never been willing before to bare her scars and explain her history before, but if they were moving forward, even for a day, together, then she owed him the real reasons why she might hesitate every couple of steps along the way.

  Gracen tried not to count the minutes that passed with the two of them on the tiny couch. She just melted into the strokes of his hands against her wavy, loose hair and the way their bodies seemed to fit so well together with practically no clothes on at all between them other than her undies and his boxer briefs.

  He’d barely convinced her to get out of bed earlier, and only because he’d disappeared beneath the covers to do wonderful, wicked things with his tongue right where she liked under the hood of her clit, well ... Gracen got up, but it meant accepting their weekend would be over shortly. After breakfast, clean up, and goodbyes, sure.

  Gracen wasn’t ready.

  She’d desperately needed the break.

  “This was a little heavy,” Malachi murmured against the crown of Gracen’s head.

  Her heavy breath rocked them both.

  “What’s that for?” he asked.

  It wasn’t over yet.

  “Your sister—”

  “She’s still not contacted me, but I figured that might be the case,” he interjected, clearly not seeing where Gracen meant to go with the conversation. “At least until she’s out of that house and church, anyway.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed softly.

  She felt him glance down.

  So, she looked up.

  There, his blue eyes stayed stuck on her like glue.

  “Did I miss something?” he asked.

  “Your sister is getting married to my ex,” Gracen said.

  The one thing she’d not been able to just come right out with.

  Malachi pulled in a breath that lifted his chest, and her on top of it. “Sonny.”

  “Oh, good,” she deadpanned, “you even know his name.”

  And all of the sudden, she wished she hadn’t told Malachi the truth at all. Not because of the way he reacted, but mostly from the way it left her feeling empty and irritated all at the same damn time. She didn’t like the idea of letting someone live rent-free inside her head, but that seemed to be the case more often than not, lately, where her ex was concerned.

  Malachi still hadn’t spoken.

  Gracen’s nerves grew to the point she decided it was time to get up and move. Sitting straight, and letting the blanket fall away, she muttered, “I guess I should get my bag packed before someone wants break—”

  Malachi grabbed tight to her wrist. “Not yet.”

  She peered his way expecting to see some frustration staring back. Instead, she fo
und his playful smile. It took a special kind of man to sit through a woman whining about her ex, especially when he was interested in said woman.

  Gracen appreciated Malachi’s patience.

  “Sonny’s a privileged, and stupid, prick, but those are just my personal experiences with the guy,” Malachi informed, unsmiling but unbothered all the same. “You can probably guess that I didn’t need another reason from you to hate him. I already do.”

  Gracen couldn’t help but laugh. “I already feel like I’m mean enough to him inside my head without verbalizing all of it. Plus, I try not to be a horrible person and all ...” She trailed off, but screwed one finger beside her temple. “I can’t help what goes on up in here, though.”

  “Either way, thank you for telling me about him—all of it.” Malachi shrugged, still comfortable in a prone position on the loveseat. “Sometimes getting it out is what makes you feel better, actually. Even if it’s mean. It’s just knowing who is safe to let it out on, Gracen. I can be that; just be honest with me about it.”

  Yeah, that seemed simple enough.

  “I’m trying,” she told him.

  Malachi pulled her back down into his embrace, and his lips ghosted along the line of her forehead when she watched him. “That’s all I’m asking for.”

  Chapter 23

  The very second Gracen arrived home, she couldn’t imagine getting up and going to work the next day. The weekend was not enough to settle Gracen back into her everyday routine, and she had decided to try a new thing.

  Taking care of herself first.

  Wasn’t that why she worked so hard? Why she saved instead of spent year after year? She couldn’t explain the renewed desire to get out and really live, but it was there. Right in the middle of her chest, palpable with every breath.

  Gracen was done ignoring it.

  And what she needed.

  It took little to no convincing to get Delaney on-board for an extra week of extended vacation—this time, including her. After all, Delaney found herself working ten or more hours a day, six days a week on her feet at the salon just like Gracen. Perhaps their reasons for doing so were different, but they were allowed to have a life, live it, and enjoy it, too.