Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
The topic was a sore subject, apparently.
Gracen still had questions.
“Delaney says she’s probably still going to go—out of respect, but she isn’t gonna stay long,” Gracen added fast because Delaney sure had needed to make sure the detail was clear to her friend when she explained it. “She says your sister is really sweet, plus her cousin is the maid of honor, or something. You said you got an invitation earlier, so I was curious. That’s all.”
“Small world,” her companion muttered around his bite.
Gracen made a face. “Chew and swallow first.”
He did, but only to immediately tell her, “You know, I’d say you sound like my mother when you talk like that—just to shut you up—but if I’m honest, I can’t even remember what my mother sounds like. It’s been a long time. If I didn’t have social media and a couple of pictures saved to my phone, I wouldn’t even know what she looked like.”
Damn.
Gracen didn’t know how to respond to that except for a quiet, “Same, but I guess not for the same reasons, huh?”
He quirked a brow high at that question. “You knew yours loved you. I know mine don’t.”
“Maybe I wasn’t trying to see it that way.”
Malachi shrugged where he’d sunk into the driver’s seat to eat his food. “I learned really fast that I couldn’t lie my way through my situation. My family shunned me as a teenager, did nothing to defend me when I needed it, and their influence could have saved me from juvenile lockup, and in a way, now that I’ve had a few years behind me to think about it, that was the best thing my mother—specifically—ever did for me. I couldn’t give a fuck about Frankie Beau. That was the problem, you know?”
“What, he’s your stepdad, right?”
“That was the problem,” Malachi repeated, nodding. “I couldn’t see him like that; wouldn’t, so it made me a target in the house, and that gave me every excuse to get out. It’s not hard to find trouble when you’re always trying to keep from going home. I’m not mad that I got away from my fucked up family and their church, okay? I’m mad that they pretend like they didn’t do it to me.”
And the way they did it, she suspected.
Even if he didn’t want to outright say it.
She focused on picking her favorite fries—and the only ones she would eat in the familiar red sleeve—out, the longest and well salted, and popped them into her mouth. Malachi finished chewing what remained of his burger, but his faraway gaze zoned in on the falls instead of the woman in the seat next to his.
She hadn’t meant to do that.
Make him sad.
“I came home when I heard my sister was getting married because this feels like the first chance I’ve had to get something back that was taken from me,” Malachi said, crumpling the burger wrapper and tossing it into the bag on the middle console. “Nobody gave me a choice back when I was a kid—my whole life was taken away overnight. A friend I talked to before making the trip told me I didn’t need to come all the way back here for answers. The fact no one has ever contacted me since I left my family should tell me everything I need to know.”
Gracen frowned, muttering, “Some friend.”
“He didn’t mean for it to be cold.”
“Well, it sounds that way. Mean.”
Malachi sighed. “He might have also been a little pissed because I couldn’t work an upcoming job for his company. He’d already got the go-ahead on his bid for the build, I’d signed on for the contract—”
“You’re in construction?” Gracen asked, clamping onto the newest detail of his life that he hadn’t shared with her up until that moment.
“I’ve done different things,” he replied, moving right along like it wasn’t important. “I don’t have or need a lot, so work can be a secondary thing every once in a while, if that’s what I want to do.”
Huh.
“I’m tied to my job six days a week,” Gracen said.
He smirked her way. “Yeah, but I bet you make good money, too.”
“I do okay.”
The salon overall did exceptionally well.
It took the whole team.
Malachi slowly reverted to his somber mood as he focused on the water rushing past the opened doors of the dam to crash over the falls. “I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow.”
It took him a long time to answer her initial question, and it didn’t leave her with any respectable answers, but Gracen understood why he came to his current conclusion.
“Do you think anything would happen if you showed up?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing bad.” Malachi laughed and rubbed at the pinch forming between his eyes. “My mother and stepfather aren’t the type to make a scene in public.”
“I’m more concerned about what these people might do in private.”