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“I can’t what?”
“You know what! You owe me!”
“What do I owe you, Cadence?” he yelled. “Huh? What? What do you think I owe you.”
Her chest heaved with her anger and she jammed a finger out at the water. “Don’t hurt her. She’s important.”
Silence descended on the cave. He looked from face to face, but he didn’t understand. “If she’s so important, why is her name way over there, while all of yours are there?” he asked, pointing. “Why does she feel so far away from you? Why, after all these years, does everything feel the fucking same? Why is she still on the outside?”
“You think she’s on the outside?” Kru asked.
“Isn’t she?” he challenged him.
Kru and Cadence exchanged some look he didn’t understand. Kru told him, “You should visit where she works.”
It was enough. Enough riddles, enough half-answers, enough guessing what everyone meant. “Won’t be here long enough,” he gritted out, and then dove for the waterfall.
He needed to find her. He needed to explain his feelings. Fuck, he needed to figure out his feelings! He knew he liked her. He knew she was interesting and funny, and he thought she was so fucking cute when she was quirky and clumsy. He knew he hadn’t wanted a woman as bad as he had wanted her tonight, ever.
He needed to erase the disgust from her voice.
He swam for the other bank, barely coming up for breath until he was there, and he slogged out of the waves and onto the rocky bank.
Torren had stayed behind and was sitting in a chair, nursing a drink. “She’s gone.”
“Which way?”
Torren twitched his grim face in the direction of the trucks.
He bolted for them, but something shiny on the ground dropped his heart right to the earth.
A sequined bikini bottom was laying there, and a few feet later, there was her top. He knelt at something white tucked under one of the strings.
He lifted a white feather, speckled with brown, and closed his eyes against a pain in his chest he didn’t understand. He lifted his attention to the sky as he stood, but she was nowhere to be found.
“Long gone,” Torren said behind him.
Lucas ran his hand down his beard and faced the other silverback.
“I’m not good here,” he admitted softly. “Feels like everything rips me up. Outside of here? I know what I’m doing, I know who I am. I’m steady.”
“I know what your job is, Lucas.”
“Everyone knows. I’ve worked for Damon since I left here.”
“I mean, I know what he has you do.”
The hairs bristled on the back of his neck and Lucas stood up straighter. “And?”
“That’s why you feel steady. Bringing people in line. That responsibility to the dragon. Fighting. Fighting, fighting, fighting, always fighting, and you know what? I used to do the same damn thing to keep the animal sated enough so that I could pretend to have moments of normalcy. You can’t go on like that forever. At some point, you have to recognize the dead-end and pick a different road. This is your fork, Lucas.”
Torren used to be a beast. He was the son of Kong, and he’d had just as much trouble controlling his inner gorilla as Lucas had when they were younger and maturing to silverbacks. Now he was different. He just seemed…good. Steady. Happy, even. His story wasn’t Lucas’s story though. Even if he secretly wished for Torren’s destiny to mirror his, that wasn’t how life worked.
Lucas spun the white-speckled feather between his fingertips and leveled Torren with a look. “I’ll see you at the fight barn.”
And then he turned and headed for his truck without waiting to see Torren’s reaction.
He might be paired up and settled with his mate, but Lucas was offering him a beautiful release.
