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)
“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.