by Bethany-Kris
“There are better ways to reach me, that’s all,” Alora added, openly frowning.
“Sorry,” Malachi replied on autopilot.
All of this still felt surreal. So much so that he didn’t even think to mention how his presence at her workplace had little to nothing to do with her. He should have listened to his gut from the jump, though, because clearly it had been trying to tell him something.
Instincts never lied.
“You look ...” Malachi trailed off, hyper aware of the space between him and the only person he considered his family, and how much he wanted to close it to hug her. What should he say? She looked good? Grown? Alive? None of those things felt right. He let out a shuddering breath, muttering, “I really miss you. For a while, I tried to write to you all the damn time.”
It was all he had. The only thing he could do. Well, at first. He’d stopped with the letters after a couple of years passed with no response to the ones he sent out every month. Silence could be an answer, too, after all. But she had also been young, then.
Alora’s gaze darted away from him again, and back to the room she scanned while her lips moved with hushed words she didn’t intend for anyone else to hear. “I know. I found a few, but Mom and Frankie ...”
She trailed off, too.
At least, he didn’t hear a hint of heat in her tone, and with that came a sense of relief. Malachi thought he could deal with a lot of things—fix anything, really—when it came to Alora, but not anger. That kind of pain came from within; not to mention, personal experience told him the anger could be directed at a lot of people and things before it ever found the real reason why it existed in the first place.
“You don’t call him dad or—”
Alora scoffed, a hardness settling into her pretty features all at once. “To his face, maybe.”
Malachi didn’t hide his grin.
It made hers grow a little, too.
A lot could be said for his stepfather—and Alora’s father by adoption—and the way he seemed to find pleasure and joy in control and breaking the will of those around him, but a fire remained in Malachi’s sister. Had it been getting harder for her to hide it? He didn’t have a single doubt.
“Freedom’s close,” he noted.
Her hand tightened around the shoulder strap of her bag. “Don’t fault me for running for it, okay? The smallest thing could ruin it for me at this point.”
Malachi didn’t bother to ask what that meant—and he certainly didn’t need her fucking apologies. No one should have to apologize for doing what they needed to survive.
“I ended every letter the same, sissy.”
Alora pulled in a noisy breath, but the sharp nod of her head shrouded her gathering tears. “I’ll see you when I can see you.”
“This is not a goodbye,” Malachi finished. “Right. Don’t you forget it, either.”
He’d be here.
Whenever.
That wouldn’t change.
“I gotta go,” Alora muttered suddenly.
Malachi didn’t try to stop his sister from rushing off. In fact, he didn’t even survey the room in case there was a reason for her need to go. He simply stepped toward the machine to grab the coin in the return slot under the row of choice buttons as she darted off to the side.
In the corner of his eye, he noticed she had stopped.
Then, she glanced back.
“I miss you, too, Mally,” Alora mouthed. “I love you.”
If God really existed, then he’d just punched Malachi straight in the heart with no regrets.
He signed the sentiment back with one hand. I love you. Wondering all the while if the two of them might get a moment like this again. He dared to hope for it even though his past liked to linger in the back of his mind as a reason to prove his dreams useless.
The first thing he’d ever taught his baby sister when she was old enough to stare and smile back at him were simple signs from a book his librarian in school had given to him when he explained he needed to learn how to be a good big brother, actually. On her way out the front doors of the lobby, Alora signed back the same.
Gracen found Malachi in the lobby a few minutes later. Without water, and still flipping the toonie between his fingers, she came to stand next to him at the two vending machines.
“I was starting to think you got lost,” she teased.
“It ate my money,” he explained lamely, “and it’s old as shit.”
Gracen smiled indulgently. “Yeah, everybody makes that mistake at least once. We’re gonna head out in a bit and eat, anyway, if you want to wait? Otherwise, Mimi could share a glass of her water.”
His gaze stayed fixated on the front doors.
Gracen didn’t ask why. “Are you okay?”
Malachi shook off the heaviness in his shoulders and plastered on a happy face for Gracen. “Yeah, of course. Let’s get back to Mimi, eh?”
She fell for it.
Sort of.
“Sure,” Gracen replied, still studying him carefully as they headed for the block hall.
It took a bit longer for his reality to sink in. Gracen helped to snap him back to earth with the tangle of her fingers weaving with his while they walked side by side.
He could still hear Alora. His sister’s whispered truth echoed in the back of his mind.
The smallest thing could ruin it for me.
Malachi didn’t want to be that thing—the catalyst to life not of her choosing. The cruelty of his stepfather couldn’t be understated when the man had once beaten his stepchild with belts and rods; when a cold sun porch in twenty below weather was a suitable bedroom as punishment. No, Malachi intimately understood what it was like to live under the roof of a man like Frankie Beau. A monster who felt untouchable and even justified in his acts of abuse; his community only enabled the beliefs and bad behaviors with their lamb-like following at the ready on their knees at his altar. How they could never smell the rum on Frankie’s breath as he spat hellfire and lies from the pulpit stunned Malachi even as a child.
People acted like Frankie was the god. Malachi learned early he was just a fucking bully with a head full of bible verses at the ready to explain away everything he ever did.
An unholy slaughter.
Alora was close to escaping it all. Obviously, her intention was to leave. Malachi wouldn’t be able to handle it if he was the reason her plans—whatever they were—failed. He needed to make sure that was never the case.
“Can we take the food back to the house?” Malachi asked as they neared Mimi’s private rooms.
He knew Gracen enjoyed eating at the take-out, but now more than ever, he didn’t want someone to recognize his face.
“Yeah, of course,” Gracen returned, “if you want to.”
That was the shitty thing one had to learn early about life. Rarely did a person get what they wanted.
Chapter 29
“Do you want to hike to the water tower tomorrow?” Gracen asked as she moved from one white cupboard to the next in search of glasses.
“Uh ...”
Thankfully, Gracen didn’t notice Malachi’s hesitance in answering her question.
Instead, she moved onto something else. “I swear to God, whenever Delaney gets bored, she reorganizes something. Three months ago, these glasses were over there.”
She pointed at the cupboards across the kitchen from her current spot just left of the sink and window facing the front street. The space had a lot of counter space stretching around three walls.
“If she’s really stressed out,” Gracen added, “their spot can move every other week.”
“Bored and stressed are not the same thing,” Malachi pointed out.
Gracen rolled her shoulders indifferently. “I can’t help her vices, either.”
Fair enough.
She moved to the sink and pushed the curved lever back for the detachable tap to fill the glass from the cupboard with water. Turning her back to lean against the sink, Gracen sipped her
drink and watched him over the rim of the glass.
Malachi, sitting at the head of the oval table with a wooden top and painted white legs, could recognize that look in her eye. Especially when she arched an eyebrow challengingly.
“What?” he asked.
“You didn’t say anything about the hike.”
He glanced down at the boots on his feet. She refused to let him take them off at the door because between Gracen and Delaney, one of the two swept the main floors morning and night. Nonetheless, his footwear wasn’t the greatest for a hike into Montgomery Mountain.
“In these?” Malachi asked with an easy smile.
The cup lowered from her mouth to expose the smirk of her lips. “Next time, then?”
“Yeah,” he was quick to agree. “Next time, absolutely. I’ll bring better footwear, no worries.”
That seemed to do the job of pacifying her.
How long would it last, though?
Don’t be a fucking chickenshit, man.
Malachi just wasn’t ready to tell her that plans had to change. He had the distinct feeling the news of his departure—earlier than he initially planned—might not go over well with Gracen. Fuck him for not wanting to burst the little bubble the two of them created whenever they were able to be together.
Christ.
Shouldn’t that tell him something?
Is here where I want to be?
Or was it where he was supposed to be?
Malachi didn’t know how to make that happen considering he could barely stay two entire days in his old valley town without feeling like someone might run him out of it. Gracen, with her roots so deeply entrenched here, sure as hell wasn’t about to leave.
He couldn’t make it work.
At least, not in his head.
It only made things all the more fucked up for Malachi that it had to feel so incredibly right when he was with Gracen at the same damn time.
“Could we do something else tomorrow, then?” Gracen asked. “I have something I want to show you.”
The lie stuck in his throat like tar, but he forced it out anyway. “Maybe. Isn’t it supposed to rain?”
She shot him an odd look from the side at his random mention of the weather as the front door opened and then slammed closed. Delaney flew into the kitchen with a box of beer in both hands that she dropped onto the table with a thunk.
“See, I told you I’d grab a box,” Delaney proclaimed.
Gracen laughed and crossed the kitchen. “It's been in the back of your Jeep since yesterday, right?”
“Who said—”
Gracen ripped open the top of the box of beer to pull one bottle out. “Besides the fact that it’s warm, the liquor store is closed on Sundays.”
Delaney snatched the beer right back, and used the sleeve of her sweater to crack the top open. “Warm beer is still beer to me, so. Where’s the poutine?”
She punctuated that statement by tipping the bottle of beer up for a drink.
The bag of take-out in question waited on the kitchen counter. Malachi couldn’t lie and say that the girls’ distraction—digging through the food they’d ordered and separating the foam containers respectively—didn’t bring him some relief.
Gracen wasn’t looking his way anymore.
He didn’t have to keep up the lie for a second.
Simply put, Malachi was a coward. If he ever needed more proof of that fact, he only had to look back on this moment. Despite knowing he planned to leave town the next day and couldn’t see himself returning unless he knew it wouldn’t affect his sister’s plans to break free from her current circumstances, he couldn’t bring himself to tell Gracen. She’d seen firsthand the way the church affected and controlled its members. There were more than enough rumors to go around about just how dangerous it could be for the people who dared to oppose it or them in any way. He couldn’t ignore the fact that it was a possibility his presence could not only cause his sister trouble, but possibly Gracen, too.
What if the pizza fire was Beau-family related in some way?
How would Frankie Beau react to learning just how close Malachi—and by de facto, Gracen—had came to Alora? She was already on Frankie’s radar through Delaney’s family connection. This was her home, too. Malachi didn’t want to give his stepfather a reason to make her life in the valley town a living hell.
Malachi couldn’t justify taking any risks when it came to Gracen.
Not while she was still smiling.
Happy.
He didn’t want her to think he was choosing someone else over her even if that’s exactly what it looked like. The world didn’t revolve around him, he was rarely the most important person in the room, and there were bigger things that meant more than his wants and needs.
“Double cheeseburger, right?” Gracen asked over her shoulder.
Her grin stretched wide while she stood next to her best friend—still happy and unknowing of the war inside him.
How she should be, he thought.
“Yeah, babe. Mine’s the double.”
Malachi could keep things just the way they were for her a little while longer. For the night, anyway. She deserved that from him, at least.
Another question lingered in the back of his mind, not quite ready to let go, all things considered.
*
It took a few hours for the beers to chill. Well, at a temperature Gracen considered drinkable. She still complained it was flat, and he had to agree. Still, they made do.
Malachi didn’t bring up his exit plans to Gracen in all that time.
Not while they binged a medical drama downstairs with Delaney before retiring to Gracen’s bedroom for the evening. Not as they slipped into the tub together, sinking deep into hot, bubbly water with two cold beers and a book for her to read. He’d held the book for her, flipping pages and reading a steamy scene when she begged him to.
Apparently, he had the voice for it.
Malachi asked what that meant.
“When it gets all ... smooth.” She’d wiggled against his wet chest while she said it, after adding, “And deep, too.”
What could he say to that?
He still didn’t tell her when they slipped under the sheets that he would be leaving soon. In a handful of hours. If he could help it, before the sun broke in the sky the next morning, even. The drive back to the Miramichi was better in the morning hours on a bike before the sun became high and unbearable. He hated when he needed to constantly make stops to break.
Maybe stupidly he thought he could soften the blow to Gracen—bring it up last minute like an afterthought because he didn’t want her to overthink it. She did that a lot.
Overthinking everything.
It had become painfully clear to him, especially after the way she reached for him under the covers to tuck herself as close as possible to him the same way she did every time the two of them found themselves in bed together, that a part of her found comfort in him, too.
Malachi had stumbled into lust more than once over his lifetime, but he never stuck around long enough to love the woman he’d been focused on staying inside. As crude as that was, at least he could admit it. However, he’d never once found himself craving another person every waking moment of each of his days until Gracen Briggs walked herself into his life. It couldn’t be random how the two of them fit so seamlessly next to one another or the way the world seemed less harsh with her there to soften it.
Everything looked less lonely.
Imagine that.
He also couldn’t ignore how they were practically passing strangers on the outside looking in. Two people who had spent a couple of weeks together cumulatively if it were all added up in a neat little row. Sure, every late-night phone call took them into the wee hours of the morning as their conversations could be endless, so it wasn’t like they hadn’t shared their lives.
He knew her favorite color was blue. That she couldn’t get in a vehicle for a year after her parents’ fatal accident. Mo
re than anything in the world, she wanted a kitten and maybe a puppy, too, but her current landlord wouldn’t allow animals.
The woman was a self-starter. A survivor. She got shit done. She loved her job—and complained about it as much as she praised it, but she’d also admitted to him once that it felt like the safe choice at the end of the day. If given another opportunity, what might she choose to do?
Maybe they didn’t have the physical time together, but what mattered was there. So yeah, these moments they had together felt sacred. He hated to make it end.
Malachi wasn’t blind. He could see the dichotomy in his circling inner thoughts while he snuggled Gracen in her bed, but it was a double-edged sword.
Fucked either way.
He’d never done this before.
The distance.
Would it kill it?
This thing between them that felt familiar and new meant something to him. He’d sought closeness in other people in different ways, but there hadn’t been someone like Gracen who pulled down his carefully built walls as if they were paper and slipped against his skin like a warm blanket every time they touched. Wasn’t that the universe trying to show him something? He could tell her every secret, if she’d just listen.
If they had the time ...
If she wanted to know.
“Hey,” Malachi mumbled against Gracen’s forehead.
He’d wandered off aimlessly in his thoughts for long enough that his silent breathing had started to match hers. But while his was caused by internal distraction relaxing his body, hers came from sleep. Well, almost.
His voice was all she needed to hear to peel her eyes open.
Gracen tipped her head back and blinked up at Malachi. Cute, and sleepy. “Hey,” she whispered back.
Under the blankets their arms and legs found their way around and over one another. He was a boxers-in-bed kinda guy, so the fact that she slept in cotton panties and sports bras kept them tangled close together in their warmth. In the darkness of the room, with the bed’s duvet pulled high around them and only a lamp on the bedside table for a bit of light, all he could see was the shadows of her face.
