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)
Except it didn’t.
Where was a future with him?
She didn’t pretend like she could see it.
“Okay,” Delaney said the longer Gracen remained quiet, “I won’t talk to your secret tonight.”
At the sight of a familiar couple taking a stroll along the river’s boardwalk across the street, Gracen acted like she hadn’t heard Delaney’s comment as she waved hello. They only lived a few houses behind theirs.
“A secret fuck,” Gracen eventually said to Delaney, quietly. “That’s all.”
“Well—”
“No, really, Delaney.” She wanted to make this clear. “It was all random and stupid choices before last night. Now that I know who he is” —and how close he was, barely a stone’s throw, from her ex— “I see even less of a reason to get more involved with the guy than I already am. Besides, he’s not planning on sticking around town for long. Where exactly am I going, huh?”
Delaney didn’t have a quick comeback for that.
Gracen sighed. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter, you’re already late, and I just wanted to ask if you would—for your information—say hello and tell him I said hi if you see him there. He wasn’t sure if he should go, either. Or that’s what it seemed like last night. Looks like you’re not the only one with a shitty family in this town that doesn’t deserve you.”
Unfortunately.
The unspoken felt most obvious.
Delaney shifted the purse from her shoulder to the crook of her arm and nodded at her waiting Jeep. “I gotta go.”
“Right. Be good, say hi, if you can.”
“I can do that. If he shows up, you know?”
Who knew what the night would bring?
Gracen waited for Delaney to back out of their driveway onto the main street before she, too, left their rented house. She locked the door, then hooked the key ring onto her lanyard she used for running. Although, she didn’t have anyone or any specific thing in particular to get to like her friend did. Just a long hike down the ATV trails at the back of town, and if her mind wasn’t clear by the end of it, then she’d continue up through the trails into Montgomery Mountain until she reached the water tower lookout.
It wasn’t the first time Gracen sought a clear head using the ground under her feet and the sky over her head. She also doubted it would be the last when she had a busy couple of weeks staring her and the Haus down.
Prom and graduation.
The beginning of summer always meant more weddings, too.
She’d never taken a vacation. Only sick days when she was actually sick, and didn’t need to share her germs. Not once did Gracen consider slowing down because the larger her savings and investment accounts grew, the safer she felt about a future she couldn’t yet see.
Present, but forever planning.
When would she get to enjoy it?
Why didn’t she know what that happiness looked like?
Gracen had all the answers—hated them, too. Once upon a time, she dared to dream. With so little extended family, only a handful of close friends, and a single boy who had told her that he loved her when she needed to hear it the most, well, the future she painted for herself with Sonny should have been beautiful.
It never was.
She built a life for herself around a man, folding into his family and world for years, because she had practically nothing and no one else. They made it easy; seemed like they genuinely cared. The young girl inside of her had been screaming for a family. To be loved. Except he was the same man who forgot to tell her that every smile and act of kindness by people like his mother and sister had been a façade made of glass. Including every word that came out of his mouth, too, and every lie he promised to Gracen because, for a time, he was happy. She’d given him every part of herself to make him that way.
Sonny didn’t offer her the same.
The bubble had to burst.
It shattered, really.
No wonder she found it a little hard to look forward now.
Chapter 13
Malachi squinted at the flood of light exposing him in the back alley of The Rose. A restaurant in the valley known for its beautiful setting upriver with a sprawling green lawn and towering oaks framed by the mountainous forest that made for beautiful pictures, it was one of a few venues that people could use for social events requiring something larger than what the average home afforded.
The place also doubled as a golf course, but as that had never been Malachi’s game of choice, he didn’t even know the specs offered by the place. He had, however, seen the inside of the restaurant enough times over the years to know not much about the dark wood interior or its red and white accented settings had changed.