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 want to be able to do this with you without thinking—or worrying—something bad is going to happen because I’m not used to feeling like this with someone else,” Gracen said, offering part of her truth knowing it didn’t fully explain the whole picture to Malachi. She had to figure out a way to do so without unintentionally making him believe that he was the cause of her reluctance to even have a conversation about being in a relationship. It wasn’t about him. She was the broken one here. “But you should know that there’s not one part of you that makes me feel the way I do. That’s all inside of—”
“Like it’s all doomed, anyway,” he interjected.
She just stared at him, silently listing the things about herself and her life that proved the doomed theory to be true. Her parents died when she was young; distant family that never cared; a grandmother whose health didn’t recover; and the perfect relationship that had always been made of thin glass. All of it worked—or would—out the same.
None of it was good for Gracen.
“I try not to take the don’t bother route to prove myself wrong, but that’s never worked out, either.” Gracen shrugged. “I can’t help it. I look at everything that way. All I see ahead of me is nothing. I guess you should know that because I can’t promise it’ll change. You deserve to know if you want to be with someone who can’t see their life in ten or fifteen years—I mean, if you expect for it to include you. I don’t like what I don’t know, Malachi.”
It didn’t have to make sense or be rational. Gracen managed to deal with her bleak outlook for the last handful of years—what were another few, after all?
“Don’t worry,” she added to him the longer their silence stretched on, “I’m aware that’s probably something I should take to a therapist.”
Gracen had never pulled the trigger on doing so, though. How would it help to sit across from another human and spill her pain and trauma when none of it had really stopped her from succeeding or achieving? Just to say it was real? That it hurt? She could do that without paying someone two-hundred dollars or more an hour.
Oh, sure, she had weak moments of private breakdowns in her bedroom and an ingrained inability to hope for a future, but other people came out of the same situations Gracen had lived with far worse scars than hers. She considered herself lucky.
Malachi frowned. “Gracen, nobody knows the future. That’s the point. It’s what lets us make what we want of it, babe.”
She’d heard that before.
It didn’t help.
“The whole it’s yours, because it is, okay?” he asked.
She still didn’t answer.
Malachi sighed, and placed his plate with a half uneaten burger to the table on the other side of his chair. Seconds later, he reached across the space separating them and his fingers curled around hers. At her wrist, she’d started subconsciously massaging the tendons and soft tissues because it eased the heaviness that always seemed to settle down on her shoulders when she was forced to think about things that were easier ignored.
Maybe that was Gracen’s problem. The real reason why she needed therapy, or something. If not for pretending like her problems, as internalized as they were, didn’t exist then that would be all she thought about constantly. Who could live like that?
Malachi’s thumb stroked circles over the knuckle of every finger on Gracen’s hand. He said nothing, but didn’t stop grounding her with his touch until her own self-soothing gesture slowed enough that he could take her hand off her wrist and into his. Both his hands cupped hers, then, wrapping them in warmth that seemed to soak right up her arms.
But she couldn’t lift her head.
He’d see her tears.
Why bother to cry?
It also didn’t help a damn thing.
“Hey,” he whispered. Gracen pulled in a sniffled breath but managed to lift her head all the same. Malachi smiled encouragingly, his thumb still roving back and forth against her hand. “Better?”
Not a lot.
“Just enough,” she said.
Sometimes, enough was all she needed to get through it. Wasn’t that what counted?
He laughed, and it made happiness explode in her chest, but sadness chased it. Here she was in this amazing place with an equally special man who smiled at her like it was as easy as breathing, but she couldn’t help the hurt, too.
Gracen drew in a shaky breath, finding the will to ask Malachi, “Have you ever hated being human?”
“Yeah,” he said, “because sometimes it fucking sucks.”
Good to know she wasn’t the only one, then.
Eventually he released her hands—well, one of them—to reposition the plate with a sadly forgotten cheeseburger to the side. Hopefully, it would still be warm when she felt like going back to it. At that moment, just the man kneeling in front of her took the spotlight.