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

by Bethany-Kris

  “Delaney’s Jeep isn’t going to show up roaring down here, right?” Sonny asked.

  Half serious.

  Gracen, in the mood, shrugged. “It’s hard to say.”

  She didn’t try to joke.

  For a second, Sonny couldn’t tell. “Oh, come on.”

  Gracen laughed. The loudest sound on the path next to the rustle of the summer breeze through the trees and bushes lining either side. She had to take in the wooded path a second time. Not being much of a smoker in high school, her crowd didn’t use the trail much, so she’d not appreciated it before.

  At least, it offered privacy.

  And pretty scenery for good measure, too.

  Gracen never broke stride, nor did Sonny. One final bend a good sixty yards or so ahead, and the end of the trail that connected onto the road leading up the hill could be seen. As well as the back side of the high school where the trees and bushes started to clear a bit.

  “That kind of hurts,” Sonny muttered.

  “Poor you,” Gracen deadpanned.

  She didn’t even try to be kind.

  That was when he glanced sideways at her. His look lingered—she felt his eyes on her, actually. Watching and gauging. Testing for himself if he thought she really meant her harsh words, or not. In a way, Gracen did, and she wouldn’t apologize for it. Another part of her was over what they once had, but that didn’t change the fact it happened and it ended, and she hurt because of it.

  “I always figured—knew, really,” he corrected with a nod at her. “I knew that you were mad at me. I guess I never thought you hated me, too.”

  All at once, Gracen’s walk came to a stop. Sonny’s pace halted alongside hers, but while he turned toward her crossing his arms over his chest, she continued staring at the path straight ahead.

  It was sad, truly.

  That he believed she hated him.

  How right he was, in a way.

  “It’s just not that simple,” Gracen said softly.

  “I’m all ears,” Sonny returned, but without the air of cocky confidence that usually set him apart in a crowd. “Try me.”

  Try me.

  She almost scoffed.

  Wanted to, but she desperately kept it stuffed down in the growing pit that had become her stomach. Had this been five years ago and the two of them were having this conversation, perhaps she could have blown right into Sonny with every wrong misdeed by his hands that left Gracen alone, lonely, and changed.

  That’s what still bothered her now.

  How he changed her.

  Except it wasn’t the past anymore. They didn’t live there, and she was never going to get over the wall she’d built because of what happened back then if she kept trying to.

  Today had landed Gracen in a different place with somewhat of an objective view over the things that happened in the past—including Sonny and their relationship. The anger might not have left, but she didn’t think it would do either of them any good for her to spill it all over him with the belief it could make things better.

  That’s not how this worked.

  “You know, I stopped in today for a reason,” Sonny said the longer Gracen remained quiet on the path beside him.

  “And?” she asked.

  Gracen couldn’t read minds. She never asked Sonny to walk through the front doors of her salon years after she needed or wanted him to, never mind park in the damn parking lot. Did he think a medal was earned for his step in her direction?

  She had big news in that regard.

  But an even better question to ask first.

  “Does your fiancée know you’re here?” Gracen asked.

  With me, she didn’t say.

  That part was obvious.

  Sonny didn’t ruffle. “Alora suggested it.”

  Gracen blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Requested might be a better choice in word,” Sonny said, shrugging one blazer covered shoulder. “I was honest with her—and she pointed out I should do the same with myself. So, here I am. I thought, genuinely, that none of this would matter after all this time. We were kids, in high school, Gracen. A few years after the fact, we should be a little more grown than—”

  “It wasn’t just high school,” she cut in.

  Still quiet, but now firm.

  If they were going to make some things clear, then it would be right, too. No excuses.

  “It wasn’t only high school,” she insisted a second time, but Sonny didn’t argue the point anyway. “We weren’t always stupid kids. And saying as much like it’s true really devalues how you left me at what I consider to be the worst time in my life, but that’s not even the most fucked up part about it. You never even apologized.”

  “It wouldn’t have made it better,” he said.

  “You still could have done it for me!”

  Her shout echoed down the path, but Sonny hadn’t flinched from the volume. She tried to put herself back on track; devolving into yelling wasn’t productive here.

  “You couldn’t give me the respect of explaining why. Nothing,” Gracen said, the word hissing from her lips as her hand cut through the air between them when she spun on him. “Not one thing, Sonny. I got a phone call, and your sister and mother came to grab your shit the next day. You knew that I had practically no family left, you were my best friend for almost half my life ...”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, averting the fire in her stare when the half-assed apology slipped from his lips.

  Gracen rolled her eyes. “Do better than that, Sonny. Make all the lies you told and every minute I wasted thinking you were going to be there for me worth anything. Did you even learn from me? I grew from you! Give me something except sorry. Please.”

  “It wasn’t all lies,” he mumbled while chewing on the inside of his bottom lip.

  “In the end?” she asked. “Yeah, it kind—”

  “The end is just one part of the overall picture, Gracen. The end didn’t adequately reflect everything that had come before it. Being twenty-something is a lot different than four- and sixteen. If I can admit that, then why can’t you?”

  Hadn’t she?

  Didn’t she say he had been hers, once?

  Good.

  A safe place.

  Her first ever love.

  Everything that should be precious and cherished, but also hurt more because of the growth and love that had come out of two young people taking on the world together. It had been special. It was beautiful, and she clung to the more bittersweet memories of their earliest days. Back when she believed everything he said.

  He’d believed what he said, then, too.

  She honestly thought that.

  “The only reason I’ll even stand here with you—why I’ll look you in your face and acknowledge you exist—is because I loved you once, Sonny,” Gracen said. “Because there was a time when you didn’t hurt me. All the time, actually. Until one day you did, so that changed everything.”

  He said nothing.

  For once, Gracen was grateful.

  “But I don’t like you, anymore, because you turned the person you were into someone I couldn’t stand, and I don’t want you in my life for the same reason, either,” Gracen added, shrugging because just saying it and getting it out there took a weight off her shoulders. If it sounded mean, so be it. The truth sometimes was. “I won’t feel bad because after everything, I get the right to say how it really is for me, and the very least you could do is respect it.”

  “I’ll do that for you. I’ve been doing it, right?”

  “Keeping a distance has helped.”

  He nodded.

  A simple bob of his head while his throat flexed with a swallow, and he surveyed something beyond Gracen. Behind her in the trees. For a second, he looked like that same boy leaning against the brick wall of the high school with a lost gaze and a pretty face. It was only after they’d stumbled into one another’s lives that she’d learned how hard it could be for the son of a prominent valley family,
and the reason for those lost, puppy eyes. Sonny was older, now, sure. He’d exchanged the hockey jacket for a tie and blazer, gained some respectable age, but even the way he held himself there felt just the same. Were the same expectations still chasing him?

  Except this time was different because she didn’t fall hopelessly in love at first sight, and he wouldn’t become her entire world overnight only to ruin it as fast as it had begun.

  She still saw him, though.

  The human.

  His soul.

  “Well,” Sonny muttered, “I guess that’s that.”

  Gracen let out a soft laugh. “Jesus, I still haven’t figured out why you even showed up to do this with me today. Phones work, too.”

  Sonny chuckled, but massaged the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Let’s just say Alora will be happy to know you’re not harboring some deep, unrequited love for me after all this time. She knows what you meant to me; I can’t blame her for wanting everything to be clear for us both.”

  Gracen’s brow furrowed. “You’re saying she wanted you to give me closure?”

  Sonny opened and then clapped his hands closed. “Maybe me, too.”

  Huh.

  Gracen hadn’t been ready for that detail.

  Sonny cleared his throat and swung back to view the path from the direction they’d first come down. “Threatened to call the wedding off on me, actually. I’m starting to get used to that threat, though. Her father uses it daily.”

  Jesus Christ.

  Unsure of how to respond, Gracen just didn’t.

  Sonny shook his head like it didn’t matter. “It hurt with her—it’s an empty threat, otherwise.”

  “She’s young, too.”

  That counted for a lot. Alora Beau probably had some growing yet to do. What had her life looked like within the confines of a home and secular religion that kept her bound by tenants of a faith that was determined by the same man who could set her free.

  “She’s not the problem,” Sonny eventually settled on saying. “Alora’s the one damn thing I’m sure of, so I’m not willing to fuck this up again.”

  Again.

  “Once the wedding’s done, we’ll be past the worst of it,” he added, “and no one will have to keep playing nice.”

  His story felt like there were a lot of missing bits and bobs, but Gracen maintained the boundary she’d already put between them. They weren’t friends. His life would not intersect with hers. So, she wouldn’t ask about his problems if it was also at the expense of her proverbial line in the sand.

  “Is that it, then?” Gracen asked.

  Sonny rolled his shoulders. “Yeah, I guess. I can walk you back?”

  Gracen pointed to the bend in the path. “I think I might make a circle, actually. If Delaney’s still at the salon when you get back, would you tell her to go on across the bridge? I want to walk home today.”

  “Sure. And hey.”

  “Yeah, Sonny?”

  “You’re happy, right?” he asked.

  “Happier than I’ve been,” she answered honestly. “That’s all that counts to me, anyway.”

  “Good. For the record, Gracen?”

  She almost didn’t ask.

  This moment and their conversation could have ended on the better note of her happiness as his final parting gift. It was more than anything he’d given her before.

  “What, Sonny?”

  His lips pursed with a second consideration of his words before he said, “It wouldn’t have made a difference, okay? Had I told you the reason, it would have made it worse. For you. It was already bad for me. I knew how worthless I was—the sacrifice I could make. You didn’t have to know the money they threatened to stop shelling out for my education and to live was more important than the ring I gave you and the promise I didn’t keep, either. I knew the kind of woman I was losing that day. Ending it with you without explanation was the decent thing to do.”

  Getting the truth straight from the horse’s mouth—so to speak—should have hurt more than it did. Frankly, she didn’t care now.

  Over the years, though?

  Gracen had almost certainly figured his secret out. The way his family cut her off after things ended between them; they turned their noses up at the sight of her and deleted every last scrap of memory of her from their lives like they were happy to pretend she never knew them to begin with. They didn’t hide their true feelings and thoughts when their actions spoke loud enough for everything. It clued her in to the reason she and Sonny wouldn’t have worked.

  Not forever.

  She wasn’t good enough for them, but in the end, she didn’t want to be.

  “Your family never liked me,” Gracen said quietly, starting her walk down the path to make it obvious that the conversation was over. “Even if they pretended like they did for a while.”

  Sonny didn’t deny it. “Yeah, Gracen, they made things tough.” Behind her, she heard him add lower, “But I let them do it, too.”

  He sure did.

  Accountability could be hard.

  Being a coward, even harder.

  Chapter 25

  “How are ya, buddy?”

  Chip always started his calls with Malachi in the same way. His greeting never changed, but oddly enough, it was also the only time that Chip called him buddy. Probably because he knew that over the phone was the only time Malachi would let Chip get away with that kind of nonsense. It was akin to kid.

  “Don’t tell me you need me back there. It’s too late—the job’s supposed to be done, Chip. I just rolled into town.”

  Malachi would not be making the four-hour drive back to Miramichi unless there was some emergency that couldn’t be helped, and he was the very last resort on hand. Knowing Chip, he could easily start a conversation with the same friendly tone regardless of the severity of his circumstances.

  Chip’s laughter echoed over the phone. As booming as ever. “I’m just checking in on you, no worries.”

  Malachi breathed a sigh of relief.

  He’d earned this trip.

  Some time off.

  Not to mention—

  “So, you ain’t seen Miss Gracen, yet?” Chip asked as if he could read Malachi’s mind.

  No doubt, his friend wouldn’t ask much more about Gracen if Malachi didn’t offer the information first, but Chip had made it clear he thought she was great. So much so in fact, he opened the invitation to the lodge for Gracen at any time as long as Malachi went along to keep her company.

  An easy deal.

  “Well, did you?” Chip asked again.

  “I told you—”

  “Yeah, yeah. You just got into town,” he mocked. “Boring.”

  Chuckling, Malachi muttered something about Chip’s nonsense to deflect the question while he leaned against his parked Suzuki. Sipping from the cup of to-go coffee he’d grabbed from the cafe at the top of the valley town, Malachi placed the iced coffee for Gracen in the one cup holder his bike allowed. An attachment he’d needed to purchase separately from the bike.

  Most of the time, he didn’t trust it. A short ride could be okay with a bit of care. If he felt really risky, he used the cupholder to manage one drink while he balanced the other in his hand on the handlebar. A hundred percent, he did not recommend trying it. Malachi tried not to do it often, so he worked on emptying his own drink so he would have both hands firmly on the handlebars of the bike on the way down the hill and across the bridge.

  “I needed a coffee,” Malachi eventually told his friend. “I felt those last fifty kilometers in my stomach.” Which wasn’t an exaggeration. He, and the bike, had been running on empty for a bit. He got on the road early so that he wouldn’t roll into the valley too late in the day that the majority of his Saturday was a wash. Where was the fun in that? “Gracen is my next stop, actually.”

  Chip mumbled something unintelligible before his voice cleared on the call when he asked, “No trouble, right?”

  “Chip, I just got here. I—”r />
  “No trouble, right?”

  Malachi blew out an annoyed breath. “Not so far, man.”

  But he did just get here.

  Malachi surveyed the bustling parking lot of the cafe that was also attached to lots for the other businesses on the hill. It constantly moved with activity from the residents shopping, getting gas, or having dinner at the sandwich shop attached to the petrol station. Someone or something was always coming and going one way or another. Traffic came in off the highway to help keep the road and lot busy as well.

  Despite the movement and noise around Malachi, the sky was bright blue with the sun high and hot overhead, and the rest of the valley radiated calm. From his parking spot at the far end of the lot, he had a good view of the hill leading down to the lower portion of town, and even the peak of the bridge’s metal rails. He couldn’t see the river, but the upper landscape would have made for a nice picture if he cared to get Chip off the phone.

  He didn’t.

  Plus, taking photos of the valley was more of Gracen’s thing. He happened to think she was pretty good at it, too.

  “Well, I don’t trust ‘em,” Chip grunted, bringing Malachi back to the conversation at hand. “We both know that you shouldn’t either. For good damn reason, Malachi. It’s not coincidental that the night you use your friend’s truck—and leave town—is the same one when his place gets burned down.”

  “I told you, it was the pizza place. As far as I heard, the cocktails were seen on the security camera coming in through the front window.”

  “Yeah, but the truck and mustang burnt, too. You can’t tell me a couple of firebombs in the front are doing that to the back, Malachi.”

  Fair enough.

  The cop who’d called to question Malachi because Nader provided the officers with his information—with valid reason as he’d been in the apartment leading up to that night—hadn’t gone into details about the arson or what they’d suspected. Even the comment about the security footage had been a mistaken slip of the tongue that the officer warned Malachi not to share lest it impede their investigation.

  He kept his word.

  Mostly.