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)
Delaney shrugged. “She said you’re just fucking, anyway, but hey—doesn’t matter.”
She had all his attention, then.
“Why not?”
“Lonely people find lonely people,” Delaney said, tossing her smoke to the asphalt with a flick of her fingers. Sparks from the coal danced before disappearing. “Who am I to say how the two of you should spend your time, right?”
No elaboration.
It left Malachi with an unsettled pit in his chest that he couldn’t shake off because he wondered if she could just look at him and tell he was alone in the world, like Gracen, or had her friend spent time discussing him when he wasn’t there to be a part of the conversation? Neither option was great. Life wouldn’t give him the time to think long about it, either.
After tossing her cigarette, Delaney had already started back for the exit door she’d previously left propped open. “I gotta get back in there before somebody knows I’m gone. I really thought I’d be able to grit my teeth through this night.”
“You’re doing better than me,” he replied. “I never even went inside.”
Over her shoulder, the comment made Delaney survey him harder. “That might have been for the better. All you missed was your father’s twenty-minute grace before anybody could eat. Yes, the food was cold.”
Some things never changed.
More importantly, though ... “He’s not my father.”
Delaney nodded once. “Right, sorry. I guess he didn’t adopt you like Alora?”
“Something like that, yeah. Don’t worry, it’s not a bad thing,” he said.
“So, I’ve heard. I’ll be seeing you, Malachi.”
“Don’t let them get in your head,” he called back before she’d kicked the crate out, and the door slammed closed.
That’s all the shit was, anyway.
Mind games.
It was a proverbial door closing for him, too. Like reality snapping back in place to tell him there really wasn’t any good reason for him to be there tonight. If his sister wanted to make contact, it was as simple as Sonny providing Alora with Malachi’s number. It didn’t have to be a secret meeting. The invitation could have even been a taunt, if he wanted to take it in such a way.
So far, Malachi’s presence in town hadn’t angered Frankie Beau enough to make the monster inside the man come out and play with his long, lost stepson. If anything, Malachi should see that as a blessing.
A chance to recalibrate the way he looked at his life, past, and present. It all led him down the same path in the end.
He shouldn’t have come home.
Malachi didn’t even want to be back here in the first damn place. He certainly wouldn’t overstay, but as he left the drive to take the road back to town, Malachi made sure the tires on the Chevy squealed on his way out. Nobody said he had to leave as quietly as he came.
Chapter 14
Gracen’s thighs burned by the time she reached the water tower’s lookout. Five hundred feet above the river, the looming blue tower with THE VALLEY in bold, white letters across the top overlooked the glittering lights of both sides of town, the connecting bridge, and farther to the horizon where the mountainous range decorated the landscape. As far as the eye could see, really.
It was a good hike.
A worthy one if a person enjoyed the outdoors, a constantly inclining trek, and a hell of a pay off at the end with the view. One could see farther from the section of trees that had been cleared for the tower on the very edge of Montgomery Mountain in the daytime, but Gracen preferred the view at night.
The moon and stars were so close it was as if she could pluck them from the dark sky, except the cloud cover that night kept her focus on the river and town down below. She left her pack—a small bookbag with water, her phone, and a small first aid kit against the base of the tower as she headed for the edge of the lookout. After a truck had gone off the side and plunged into the water—with no one inside, thankfully—before Gracen was even born, the town had installed metal garters to keep vehicles from going too far.
It was a heck of a lot faster to reach the tower through the private access road maintained by the town. Connected from the main rural highway that traveled through Montgomery Mountain through the rural counties before the next town, the drive took maybe fifteen minutes to get to the lookout.
The same could not be said for the hike.
As one would expect, the place was popular with teenagers who couldn’t help themselves when it came to doing things they shouldn’t—everything from used condoms to empty alcohol bottles had shown up on the lot. More than a few times. Not even RCMP doing routine checks of the tower at night had stopped the activity.