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)
“At him?” Malachi asked quietly.
Gracen waved a hand out from beneath the blankets. “At everything? I was fine to go on and pretend like he didn’t exist for the rest of my life because of how he hurt me, so maybe it fucked me up for a minute to have him smile at me while he hugged his fiancée like nothing ever happened, and it didn’t mean anything. I don’t care how many years it’s been—it’s over for a reason.”
“I get that,” Malachi murmured.
Gracen swallowed the swell of anger rising in her throat. “Just because I’m not beyond what happened doesn’t mean I give a shit about the person behind the hurt. I guess that’s part of what I had to work through. Accepting the situation stayed with me, but I wouldn’t piss on him to put him out if he was on fire.”
Malachi’s brow lifted high at the comment. “That’s kind of harsh.”
She shrugged.
“For you, I mean,” he added lower.
Well, he only knew her when she was kind and happy, bubbly and sweet. That’s how he treated her, what he brought out of her. He didn’t know her angry and petty and hurting. Not because of something he did, and he really didn’t want to learn the person she was like that.
“He left me out of the blue—a phone call, actually, that’s how he did it, shortly after we got engaged, so that probably had something to do with it. He never gave me an explanation, and didn’t talk again after that day,” Gracen said.
Malachi flinched. “Ouch.”
“It gets better—or worse, I guess, if you’re me,” she muttered with a shake of her head. “I already had nobody, he knew it, and not long after I graduated high school, my grandmother who had taken care of me after my parents’ accident started getting sick.”
Malachi’s arms dropped loosely to his sides, and then he ran a hand through the longer bit of hair on the top of his head. “I’m sorry, that must have been rough.”
Putting it mildly.
“Eventually, she went into the manor, I was a barely functioning adult with the power of attorney over the one person who had always been my caretaker, and he breaks up with me over a phone call,” Gracen said, feeling like that was a decent overview of the situation. “Yeah, it wasn’t a good time in my life but like with everything else, I didn’t have a choice but to get up the next day and get on with it. Nobody else was gonna catch me when I broke, so ...”
Gracen tightened the blankets around her frame again, but she couldn’t shake the coldness dancing over her skin. It had nothing to do with the temperature of the room, and more with the nonsense in her head, but that didn’t stop her from trying to block it out all the same.
“I really thought I was used to being alone when my ex did that to me because I already felt like the world left me with nothing and nobody, anyway, but that did something else to me, I think. Something worse.”
“Come on,” Malachi said, crossing the room faster than she could blink. Without asking, he opened her blanket and slipped in beside her on the couch, cocooning them once again in the gray comforter. Every last drop of chill in her body was gone with his arms around her while she found a safe spot with her cheek against his chest. “You’re not crying today, babe.”
Maybe it was the way her voice had broken on the last word, her chin trembling from holding back the rush of painful memories from a time that also left her wounded and scarred in ways the rest of the world couldn’t see, that triggered him into comforting her. Gracen wasn’t about to complain. She’d never been willing before to bare her scars and explain her history before, but if they were moving forward, even for a day, together, then she owed him the real reasons why she might hesitate every couple of steps along the way.
Gracen tried not to count the minutes that passed with the two of them on the tiny couch. She just melted into the strokes of his hands against her wavy, loose hair and the way their bodies seemed to fit so well together with practically no clothes on at all between them other than her undies and his boxer briefs.
He’d barely convinced her to get out of bed earlier, and only because he’d disappeared beneath the covers to do wonderful, wicked things with his tongue right where she liked under the hood of her clit, well ... Gracen got up, but it meant accepting their weekend would be over shortly. After breakfast, clean up, and goodbyes, sure.
Gracen wasn’t ready.
She’d desperately needed the break.
“This was a little heavy,” Malachi murmured against the crown of Gracen’s head.