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

by Bethany-Kris

  Margot opted to keep her bookings for the week, which helped because the place wasn’t left totally unattended throughout the day, and they didn’t have to put the CLOSED sign on during the typical business hours. Even if it was just across the river from the rental house.

  They actually didn’t stay in town.

  Well, toward the end of the week, anyway.

  Monday had been spent getting things together for Margot and the Haus, so the rest of the week would run smoothly bar the place burning down, of course. Delaney handled social media posts announcing the surprise week-long break, and made the phone calls to any clients who had booked the two during the period they would be out of the salon. She was far better at that sort of stuff than Gracen. It’d been a shamefully long time since she even logged into her social media, never mind handling the many profiles and pages for the salon. She could take the pretty pictures for Delaney to post, but not much more.

  It all felt fake, anyway.

  Gracen called in to cancel her usual Tuesday at the manor with a promise to make it up, but both she and Delaney went up in the morning to take Mimi out for breakfast at Debbie’s Diner, and an afternoon walk down the valley’s river boardwalk.

  Well, Mimi strolled along, of course.

  The purple hair was a huge hit with every person her grandmother came in contact with that day. Only instilling Mimi’s belief that she needed a color refresh because she could already see the fading after a couple of washes.

  She had been lucky enough to get more than a few pictures of Mimi on their day out. Grinning wide over a plate of French toast smothered in maple syrup next to Delaney at a diner table. Eating a cone of ice-cream as she scootered along across the bridge. Even her pile of audio books and an e-reader on her lap at the end of the afternoon after a quick trot to the falls for something new to keep Mimi’s time occupied.

  It was great.

  Better than a half hour at the end of a long workday because Gracen hadn’t been able to pull herself away from the work and life schedule that kept her constantly plowing through it. Whether she wanted to or not.

  By the end of day Tuesday, Gracen and Delaney had found their way downriver. Far down, in fact. All the way to the top floor where a double room suite in a four-star hotel overlooked the Saint John harbor. The four-hour drive coasted along with the darkening sky until they checked in a little after eight in the evening.

  The room was the most expensive part of their trip, really, at almost four-hundred dollars a night. The jacuzzi tub, restaurant with a harbor view, and great staff made the cost worth it, at least. Delaney and Gracen spent more time outside of the hotel, visiting the coast’s hiking trail and watching the phenomenon that was the Bay of Fundy for the first couple of days. For once, Delaney didn’t complain about early morning jogs or the occasional rain. It might have had something to do with the fresh salt air.

  As Thursday and Friday rolled around, the two made their way through the large mall on the east side and the massive farmer’s market in the middle of downtown.

  Delaney got Gracen out of the hotel for one night on the town—Malachi might have helped by secretly conspiring with her best friend to get Gracen to let loose when a VIP club pass for the hottest place in town showed up at their hotel room with a corresponding liquor card in the middle of a bouquet of flowers.

  Have fun, babe.

  That’s all he wrote.

  Delaney knew the right cards to play. Gracen said yes, but it was only on the agreement that she didn’t have to wear heels. A night bouncing from one club to the next with Delaney usually meant a lot of time on her feet either standing in line or dancing. Gracen refused to do that in shoes that felt like they were breaking her toes with every step.

  No heels? Check.

  In the end, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. After two clubs downtown, including the one where the VIP pass let them pass the wait at the front, both ended with the girls leaving because accepting a drink also meant saying yes to unwanted attention, they rounded out the night at the Dooley’s bar across from the hotel shooting pool with middle-aged businessmen who had won the rights to the closet table to the windows from a pair of bikers that later won it back.

  Gracen could have managed the night in heels, but was glad that she didn’t all the same. It meant everything from the soles of her feet to her thighs didn’t ache when she crawled into the hotel’s bed that night.

  She couldn’t help but call Malachi, too. Just to tell him how the evening played out and that she did make good use out of the liquor card, at least. The city’s lights and it’s timeless buildings and streets seemed so much prettier in the back of a yellow cab at night when she was a tad bit drunk.

  “As long as you had fun,” he told her, sleepy but the grin she could envision him wearing was audible in every word. “That’s what I wanted, Gracen.”

  “Yeah, I know, and we did,” she assured. “I’ll send some pictures tomorrow.”

  “Mmm, yeah, before you leave, huh? What time are you checking out?”

  “Before ten.”

  “Call me when you get home?” he asked.

  He didn’t even have to ask.

  “I’ll let you know when we roll back into town.”

  She could tell he’d rolled over in his bed—a place she only knew through the occasional video chat between the two where his apartment’s bedroom was in the background—by the noise, and his muffled grunt.

  “Go back to bed,” Gracen said.

  “What if I want to talk to you?” Malachi asked back.

  He didn’t work weekends, and the only thing she had to look forward to was the long drive home. The fact the time had just crawled past two in the morning, and she could already hear Delaney’s snores from across the suite in her own room, didn’t change that there was nothing else she would rather do.

  Gracen snuggled in under the top sheet and matching white duvet. “Let’s do that.”

  Malachi’s chuckles warmed her through the phone. “Miss you, babe.”

  No lies there.

  “Yeah,” she whispered, “me too.”

  “Mmhmm,” he hummed in the same way he did when he kissed the nape of her neck. If she closed her eyes, she could almost feel him, lips soft and pressed there. “Starting to miss not seeing your face in the morning—that’s new for me.”

  Gracen tried hard not to laugh, and failed miserably. “I must be deep in that brain, huh?”

  She didn’t hate it.

  Malachi replied, “Like a fucking lobotomy.”

  “Hey.”

  His shush quieted anything else she might say, and then he asked, “Which one of us said it was a problem, babe?”

  Well played.

  *

  Gracen sailed through the first week back to work. The second followed the same path, but by Friday she was always itching to get out of the salon. The respite was just beyond reach. Close enough that she could taste it. She looked forward to the weekends more because rearranging her schedule after the extended vacation was as much about self-care as it was letting go of the control she constantly had to have regarding the salon’s business.

  Not because she distrusted her business partner—Delaney had as much time and investment and love put into the Haus as Gracen—but because it was still hers, at the end of the day even if she shared it. A lot of her effort and life had been put into the salon and letting it do the work for her was easier said than done, but she wanted to. That’s what made her pull the trigger on a four-day work week. Tuesdays would still be spent volunteering at the manor because Gracen believed it did benefit Mimi, but the weekend was hers.

  Start to finish.

  Forty-eight hours of a phone on silent, but for the handful of exceptions on a curated call list that Gracen created with an app she had downloaded for two bucks. The salon wouldn’t also fall apart the second Gracen decided to make some changes.

  Life looked better when she could breathe.

  But it also mea
nt spending an extra hour or so at the Haus at the end of the week to work out all the schedules of the rotating beauty students who needed their hours. Gracen’s lack of a workday in her week meant there was one less licensed stylist in the salon. The girls who had been earning their practical hours on the weekend under Gracen had to be shifted to a different day, and it took a couple of weeks to work the kinks out of the new schedule.

  “Okay, take a look,” Delaney said, pulling the freshly printed excel sheet from the printer to lay it down on the desk in front of Gracen. “I think I fit everybody in—and switched the two who exchanged with my girls,” she added.

  Gracen tried to have a critical eye on the schedule, so she didn’t miss an obvious hole somewhere like the last time. Nothing seemed amiss between the ten students rotating their hours.

  “Looks all right to me.”

  “Great, I’ll post it for them in the group chat,” Delaney said as she stood from her chair with her phone positioned in her hands. She had to angle her phone just right and turn on the flash to get a picture she liked, but once she did and had shot it off to the waiting ladies online, she asked Gracen, “Did I hear your phone call right this morning that you might be getting a visitor this weekend?”

  “Maybe.”

  Delaney shot her a look. “Really? That’s all you’re gonna give me.”

  “It’s not for sure yet—he planned to let me know by tonight.”

  Gracen didn’t add that she’d been counting down the minutes to that call from Malachi. The job he’d been working with Chip and the crew should finish up today other than a few weekend tasks that he wasn’t responsible for. Malachi hinted that it would be a good week before they started on the next job, and he’d been considering taking a trip to the valley.

  “You don’t mind if he comes and stays for a few nights, right?” Gracen asked.

  Probably something she should have asked Delaney about the second Malachi’s trip had become a real possibility. Although, her best friend took to the new guy in her life without a lot of fuss.

  Delaney didn’t glance away from her laptop screen after retaking her chair when she replied, “Listen, you’ve got your own bathroom. He can leave your toilet seat up.”

  If that was all Delaney cared about ...

  Fair enough, Gracen thought.

  “I’ll pass the message along,” Gracen said.

  Delaney grinned with a double thumbs up.

  “Smartass.”

  “You know it,” her friend returned smoothly.

  Leaving Delaney behind in the backroom office, Gracen gathered her bag in the attached breakroom when she heard the familiar bell jingle over the salon’s front door.

  “Sorry,” Margot apologized from the front, “if the sign’s shut off, we don’t usually have to lock the doors, too.”

  Gracen didn’t hear who had greeted Margot while she finished sweeping, but as she came down the rear hallway, she couldn’t miss the second thing her friend said.

  “No, Gracen’s definitely not going to do a walk-in for you, Sonny.”

  Hearing her ex’s name was enough to set Gracen off balance on a bad day, but she didn’t miss a step as she came out of the rear of the salon to find the man in question still standing on the salon’s entrance mat.

  She shifted her messenger bag on her shoulder, but didn’t move forward to greet Sonny. In his usual slacks and blazer, with laced loafers and cufflinks on his sleeves, he looked better suited smiling for someone’s wedding photos. She never did get the appeal of dressing to the nines every day for work.

  “Gracen,” he said.

  She looked past him to the view into the parking lot. “Your fiancée isn’t with you today?”

  If he caught her subtle hint that she didn’t think he should be standing there inside her salon, Sonny never showed it.

  “She’s ...” he trailed off, and then flipped a hand indifferently. “She’s busy lately.”

  Fascinating.

  Not.

  Gracen decided to move straight past the pleasantries and get to the point. “What do you want, Sonny?”

  “A conversation, if you had a minute.”

  The request made Gracen blink.

  For a few reasons.

  In the end, all she came up with was a quiet, “What?”

  Sonny laugh, as awkward and weak as it was. It didn’t help when he fumbled to explain, “At first, I thought we could do it over a haircut, but let’s be real—”

  Margot, who had continued to sweep but behaved like the two weren’t within ten feet of her on either side, interjected, “You’re not the right person to sit in Gracen’s chair, Sonny.”

  Gracen shot Margot a look.

  Margot shrugged back. “What? It’s true.”

  Then, she looked back to Sonny and added, “But to be fair, if I were you, I wouldn’t sit in Delaney’s chair, either.”

  Well, she told no lies.

  Delaney would totally fuck someone’s hair up for the sake of Gracen’s pride. Best friends had to hold each other’s lines.

  Sonny nodded slowly as his gaze settled back on Gracen. “Good to know.”

  “I didn’t realize we needed to have a conversation,” she told him.

  “Technically, we don’t. Maybe I thought we were fine not having one because we never did, but several conversations have left me overthinking a lot of things lately. Including whether or not the two of us should sit down and talk.”

  “I think that’s called a conscience, Sonny. To be honest, I’m surprised you have one.”

  Gracen didn’t have to be mean.

  She wished she cared that she noticed Sonny’s hair wasn’t as perfectly in place as it usually was when she saw him from a distance—or on one of his many realty signs in town. Even the tie at his throat had been loosened, and his eyes never lied.

  There, she found the truth.

  “You look tired,” Gracen noted.

  He half grimaced in his effort to smile. “It’s been a long week.”

  “Wedding’s coming right up, too, huh?”

  “A month and a half.”

  That was hard to believe.

  It still felt like she’d just learned about it.

  “Did you have a minute?” Sonny asked. “Just for a walk down to the bridge and back, even?”

  All it took was the thought of walking to the bridge for Gracen’s memories to rush through like an ocean’s wave. It wouldn’t be the first time the two walked that familiar sidewalk together. Her favorite lunchtime activity in high school had been walking to Lissen’s Market by the bridge for a bag of mixed candy. Sonny never once said no when she’d ask to go.

  “That’s more like ten minutes from here, Sonny.”

  He gestured toward her, saying, “You know I can feel it, right? The way you just stand there and hate me?”

  Gracen didn’t bat a lash. “Are you looking for sympathy?”

  Surely not an apology.

  “Excuse me,” Margot interrupted, stepping between the two with a dustpan full of dirt. She headed behind Gracen into the back rooms to dump the pan despite the half of a dozen mini trash cans on the main salon’s floor. It wasn’t five seconds later that she could hear Margot and Delaney whispering.

  Of course.

  She had more pressing matters to deal with than the two of them when they meant no harm, anyway.

  “You’re allowed to hate me,” Sonny said quietly. “But wouldn’t you spend a lot of time and energy doing that after a while?”

  Fuck him. She folded her arms, and avoided his gaze. That was easier than trying to deflect how his words hit the mark right on the head. He didn’t take her defensive posturing as the hint she meant for it to be—unfortunately.

  “We’ve walked to the bridge a hundred times before,” he told her. “One more seems fitting, doesn’t it?”

  Gracen sighed and willed the irritation swimming under the surface of her skin to just relax. She wouldn’t continue to hand over her power—e
ven if it was just the control of her emotions. “Sure, but let’s start with not doing that—got it?” Sonny opened his mouth, probably to question her request, but she beat him to the punch. “That, Sonny,” she said, pointing at him. “We’re not going to bring up the past or remember better times or pretend like any of it mattered at all. In the end, it didn’t, and that’s all the two of us really need to know. One of us said things and meant those things. The other one didn’t. We both know which one was me.”

  Her accusations had to hurt.

  Hell, it almost killed her once, and despite thinking for a long time that Sonny was heartless for the way he left her, that didn’t mean he was a total monster. Or maybe that was all false hope because she was the one with the heart between them and that kept her looking for the good in every person. Even those that hurt her.

  Nonetheless, Sonny took the brunt of Gracen’s anger like a champ. “If you’re going to keep hurling shit at me, could we at least take a walk while you do it?”

  At the same time, a question floated out to the floor from the back.

  Delaney.

  “Everything good out there?”

  Fuck the entire day.

  This was not how Gracen wanted to end her week.

  Chapter 24

  Gracen refused to walk to the bridge—and had no intentions of going into the market for a bag of candy like old times—with Sonny, so the two compromised. They could talk. Hell, even walk while they did it. But she chose the route.

  Sonny didn’t complain.

  Not far from the salon, one could turn onto a backstreet with a beaten path at the far end that led to the town’s other walking trail. Stretching from the backstreet to the elementary and high school at the end of town, it didn’t see a lot of use other than a random ATV or the smokers trying to get out of the teachers’ view because it wasn’t a long walk.

  Gracen and Sonny made it halfway to their old high school before either of them broke the silence. Both had been content to walk along without acting as if the other one existed even though they walked in step. Sonny kept his hands loose in his slack pockets while Gracen clutched the strap of her bag over her shoulder, and her eyes on the path ahead.