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)
“No, I’m just trying to think out loud.”
“Go ahead, then. I’ll listen.”
Gracen smiled, but it faded when she moved to the details of the situation at the salon that urged her friend to call. “Delaney hasn’t talked to him in years, but he walked into the salon today while she was washing out a color for a client to tell her that Bexley would no longer be in contact with her, and Alora wouldn’t need her services for the upcoming wedding.”
Malachi blinked. “I didn’t know she was helping with that or—”
“Delaney’s cousin is a friend.”
Right.
She’d mentioned that before, he was sure.
Gracen’s stare narrowed at something on the wall, but the white paint remained bare of any objects for her to find. “The problem was when Delaney told her uncle that her cousin and Alora could let her know she wouldn’t be needed themselves. She said he got really cold, repeated what he said the first time, and made it clear she wouldn’t like what would happen if she tried to contact them herself.”
“Is he part of the church?” Malachi asked carefully.
“Yeah, her whole family. Extended, too.” Gracen’s pained expression dropped from his view. “Delaney said the girls—her cousin and your sister—they removed her from their socials and chats. Or she was blocked on some of them, apparently. She checked before she called me.” She looked up again, her brows high and blue eyes wide. “That’s strange, isn’t it? It’s not normal that their church controls everything about their life right down to who they’re allowed to talk to, right?”
Malachi remained unruffled at the fast fire of her questions. “You don’t really need to ask me those things. I think we all know the answers.”
Except the members of the fundamentalist sect didn’t know anything different. A good majority of them had been born into the church as it was strong and growing in the community and surrounding areas for longer than he had even been alive. Facing punishments like shunning from their family and community should they leave, the world probably seemed like a scary place. Speaking from experience, Malachi knew it to be a fact.
“You didn’t mention Delaney having any issues with her family over the past couple of weeks,” he noted.
Not accusingly.
Malachi just put two and two together.
“Is her uncle showing up just entirely out of the blue?” he asked.
Gracen cleared her throat, but it took a beat or two before she answered. Like she had to think about it. “Maybe.”
“I’m gonna need more details than that.”
Gracen didn’t hide her cringe, then, or the worry in her blue eyes when she peeked up at him again. “Don’t be mad at me, please?”
“Whoa, hey.” All at once, Malachi dropped to his knees. In front of her, so he could place both his hands on her thighs. “Why would I be mad at you?”
“It could be because I went on a walk with Sonny,” Gracen said, her voice barely above a whisper.
Okay.
Now he understood her preface.
Malachi didn’t remove his hands still cupping her upper thighs. “A walk.”
It wasn’t a question.
She shrugged. “Not because I wanted to. He showed up at the end of the day asking to have a chat. We went over every reason why he should never show up and ask me for anything ever again, and then he walked back to the salon alone.”
Holding back a smirk, Malachi let out a chuff. “Oh?”
Gracen nodded, saying, “I did a circle on that side of town and walked home alone.”
He had a few questions. Some for his own selfish reasons, and others because of the little green monster hiding on his shoulder. Jealousy was a real bitch, but Malachi wasn’t the kind of man to stoop down to that level.
Instead of giving into those feelings, he asked Gracen, “Did it help—the walk with Sonny?”
Her past was a bag of pain she carried on her back everyday. He blamed it on the lack of answers, and the fact she wouldn’t allow herself to grieve. When the only path forward was getting on with one’s life, it didn’t leave a lot of time to linger in the past, but it made it harder to forget, too.
“It didn’t make things worse,” she settled on saying.
“That’s good.”
Gracen grinned a bit.
“What?” he asked.
“Could you say that without your jaw clenching around the word good?” she returned.
Malachi shook his head. “No, this is as much as you're gonna get for that, sorry.”
He was a man, after all.
Even if he was a reasonable one.
Gracen’s hands slid over his on top of her thighs. “Anyway, that’s the only thing I could think of that might make somebody mad from Delaney’s side of things. Not that I understand why—they never seem to have very valid reasons for the way they treat her.”
“They find ways to justify what they do,” Malachi said, “but it always fits their narrative.”