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)
Too late now.
The cameras did, however, make Delaney feel safer in their rental house when she could just bring up her phone at any moment of the day to do a check on their cameras or run through the old feed to see if there might be something she missed. So, the cameras would stay. Gracen didn’t complain when her issues were fixed with a push of a button on her phone’s screen to quiet the many alerts.
A win-win, really.
Gracen finished the scrambled eggs, and plated the fluffy yellow goodness with butter and jam coated toast. Delaney, still scrolling through the camera feeds on her phone, helped by making two cups of coffee before the toast had even popped.
At the table, plates in front of them, Delaney finally glanced up from her phone.
“He left around four-thirty,” she said.
Gracen’s brow jumped in surprise. “What?”
That early?
It would have meant—after fucking, sex that had felt much more like lovemaking than anything else for the first time between them—Malachi barely had an hour or two to sleep before he got up, packed his shit, and left.
Just like that.
The way Delaney glanced back down at her phone, and avoided Gracen’s question, made her think she was missing something.
“What is it?” Gracen demanded.
Delaney let out an annoyed breath. “You’re sure he didn’t say anything—nothing happened at the manor yesterday? Because like, that’s all you two did, right?”
“No, nothing happened. Why?”
“The back camera just showed him getting his bike out and leaving.”
Gracen sat unmoved. “And?”
Delaney shrugged. “The front showed him meeting up with somebody before he was gone. I mean, wouldn’t they need to know what time he was leaving to be waiting out front like that?”
He met up with somebody, but hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort to Gracen. At her own home, no less. She definitely had a problem with that.
Gracen only had one question. “Who was it? Could you see?”
Delaney shoved her phone across the oval table with the tip of her finger until it reached Gracen. “You really should get used to checking the cameras, too. It’s not hard.”
“I hate all the notifications,” she said, picking up the phone. “It’s like it never stops, okay?”
“Well—”
“Sonny?” Gracen asked suddenly.
Her head snapped up from the captured video of the vehicle parked at the end of their short driveway and the familiar crotch rocket sitting idle next to it with Malachi straddling the bike. He’d not even flipped his visor’s helmet up to chat, but the talk lasted at least a minute.
“Why did he meet up with Sonny but he couldn’t even be bothered to say goodbye to me?” Across the table, Delaney didn’t flinch.
Gracen wished she could say the same.
For some reason, every part of her felt sick. She willed the anger to come back instead, but that wasn’t what she was left with in the end.
“Yeah,” her friend replied, not missing a beat, “I was pretty sure that was Sonny’s car, too.”
Gracen played the minute or two of video through enough times that her eggs and toast went cold. All the while, Delaney never asked for her phone back. At one point, Gracen put the phone to her ear to listen. The cameras picked up clear audio if someone was close, like standing on the front stoop, but it became harder to hear when subjects were far away.
She did hear something, though.
It sounded like Sonny saying, “A rare breed.”
What?
Malachi’s response was louder. Clear enough that she picked it up on the second listen though, actually. He’d replied, shortly, “I don’t need you to tell me.”
Her only question now was simple.
Why?
What happened and why?
From the other side of the table, Delaney had eaten halfway through her plate of food when she put her fork down to ask, “What are you thinking about?”
In other words: what are you going to do?
Gracen checked the time again—life always waited with demands for her.
“Work,” she settled on saying.
Delaney lifted one eyebrow. “If you need a day, you know the Haus is fine.”
Yep.
Absolutely.
Gracen would continue keeping on, though. So to speak. It’s what she did, and the Haus had become one of the few things she could truly count on. There, things didn’t change.
Not much.
The single mom who rarely got time out of her house if it wasn’t to go to work would value the hour and a half Gracen took to do her cut and color that morning. Not to mention, the new mom coming in right after for her first appointment since her mid-pregnancy. It never failed to amaze Gracen how people could sit in her chair and be transformed—not just physically, but also mentally.
Her clients needed her, too.
“Delaney,” Gracen said, sure of herself and her feelings, “I really just want to go to work.”
Chapter 31
Two rows of pin cherry trees framed the walkway leading Gracen deeper into the cemetery. Lines upon lines of gravestones carried over the small rolling knolls for as far as her eye could see. She stopped to step off the path at the sight of one grave near the edge where a vase of white roses had tipped over. Only a couple of the roses were wilted so the bouquet couldn’t have been placed too long ago.