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“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. More 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.
The side of her curved lips.
How her lashes framed her cheeks.
Tell her, his heart demanded.
How much longer could he wait?
“Chip called,” Malachi lied.
It was for the best.
He forced himself to think that way.
To believe it.
The news perked Gracen up in bed even more, blinking fast. “Oh?”
He found sadness when she pulled the blanket back a bit more, and the shadows between them went away. Malachi untangled from her and rolled to his back. There, he stared at the ceiling because it was easier than lying to her face.
“Yeah, when I stepped outside earlier,” he said.
Her next breath washed against the side of his arm. She didn’t say anything but stroked her fingertips down his arm and wrist, trailing the thick veins she’d proclaimed to like best about his arms.
The silence urged him to speak.
Lie again, really.
“He’s got a small project starting up tomorrow and could use another guy. I didn’t feel right saying no.”
If there was trouble brewing inside the church on the hill, he’d keep her far away from it. Starting now.
If not for her sniffle, he might not have looked down in enough time to see her wipe at her eyes.
“Don’t cry,” Malachi said as he rolled back into her. Their limbs tangled under the blankets all over again as he urged her, “Come here, let me hold you.”
It took her a few seconds to mutter a low, “Sorry.”
“For what?”
She refused to lift her face from under his chin. “It’s silly, I guess. I was planning the week like we’d have more time.”
He hugged her close. One hand up the back of her sports bra, and another tight on her warm, soft hip. “Come on, we will,” he insisted, his mouth pressed against the top of her head. Just not here; not right now, he refused to add out loud. Malachi had time to work those details out. “We’ll find some time to carve out for each other. If we want to, it’ll be there.”
Cheesy, maybe, but true.
They’d gotten this far, so that had to count for something.
“Well,” came her mumbled, sad reply, “what time are you going?”
He squeezed her a little harder.
“I don’t know, probably early.”
Which meant most definitely.
Gracen’s shoulders shrunk down even more.
“Don’t do that,” he told her, planting a kiss on her head.
A sigh answered him back, but she didn't pull away.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” he urged.
Although, he almost certainly knew the answer.
Gracen stayed quiet until Malachi forced her hand by rolling them both her way. With his lower half fitted tight between her open thighs, he used his arms to loom over her laughing form on the bed. Their movement knocked the duvet down around them.
“I do have work in the morning, you know,” she said, her hands curving around both his wrists.
“Mmhmm, in a bit,” Malachi agreed before he dropped a kiss on the soft skin on the high points of both her cheeks.
Then, he placed one to her lips.
Gracen’s smile stretched wide while her legs wrapped around his waist to hook at heels on his back. “Just say you want sex.”
“I do,” he admitted—with her, always—unashamed, “but I also want you to tell me what’s on your mind. It doesn’t help to stuff it down, and I don’t want you to do that with me, babe. I can’t make it better if you do that to me.”
She stilled under his gaze. Nervousness fettered over her pursing lips.
“If you’re heading out tomorrow, you can’t make it better, anyway,” she explained quietly.
“Try me.”
He just had to push.
The woman beneath him finally broke.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like I needed someone to stay, so it’s hard to know that asking you to do so won’t make it real. Maybe I need some time to figure out how that makes me feel, or what it really means. A part of me doesn’t want to need someone at all, but I don’t think it’s normal to feel like that, either.”
They both faced their own double-edged swords, apparently, even if the weapons didn’t look the same. It felt cruelly fair for hers to hurt him, too, especially when his secrets would undoubtedly do the same to Gracen.
The truth had to hurt.
For Malachi, it wasn’t anything new.
Gracen blinked away another stray tear that disappeared before it finished falling down her cheek, and said, “I don’t like being sad with you. Five minutes ago, we were great.” Her hands grabbed tighter to his wrists. “Can’t we go back to that place?”
Could he pretend—isn’t that what she really meant to say?
For her ... well, he could.
He would.
Tonight.
