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No mature silverback could turn down a good fight.
Chapter Six
Sparks flew.
This was the escape for Jenna—welding. Inside the safety of the welding mask, she could escape the world, and nothing else existed but her and the flame and the metal she needed a clean seam on.
She’d been so immersed in the metal that when someone tapped her on the back, it startled her.
When she turned, she was shocked to find Cadence. She turned off the flame and pushed her helmet back. “Are you okay?” she asked, thinking something was really wrong. Cadence didn’t come into dirty places like her shop.
Cadence’s eyes were full of something she didn’t understand, and the woman shook her head. Her bleach-blonde hair twitched with the movement. “Can we talk?”
“Listen, I’ve had a rough day, and I kind of just wanted a night to build.”
“It’s about Lucas.”
Jenna huffed a breath out of her lungs, and turned her welding equipment off completely. Shhhhit.
She wore baggy protective coveralls, and unzipped the front, assuming no more work would get done on this customer’s truck tonight. “I kissed him. It was on me,” she told her. Better to just come out with it and be honest. She’d always been an honest bird.
“Oh, I don’t care about that.” Truth. Cadence took a seat in the dusty chair in the corner of Jenna’s shop. “He said something today that has been eating at me.”
Feeling awkward, she didn’t know where to put her hands, so she just crossed them over her front and nodded. “Okay. Something bad?”
“He asked why you were still on the outside. He was angry. And a part of me got defensive, because I know your role in these mountains. I know how big your life is. But he wasn’t talking about that. At least, I don’t think so. He was angry that your name wasn’t with ours on the wall. He was angry that you are…I don’t know…not included?” Cadence shrugged her shoulders up. “The defensive part of me felt like he was accusing me of alienating you and I wanted to scream, ‘I’m trying.’ But I’ve been thinking about it for the last couple hours and I don’t know if I am trying.”
Jenna swallowed hard. This was the deepest conversation she’d ever had with Cadence. “What do you need from me?”
“I think I need to be asking you that, Jenna. What do you need from me?”
It caught her completely off guard. Her head had been wrapped entirely around Lucas’s rejection and the confusion of it all.
“What do you need?” Cadence asked.
“I…I don’t know what you mean.”
“What do you need to build a friendship? I can do this with everyone on the mountain. They’re easy. You’re work, and that’s not an insult. It’s just me coming to you and fully admitting, I don’t know how to fucking do this.”
“How toooo…”
“How to be friends. With you. I don’t want you to be on the outside. I want you to be with me. I want to understand.”
And this was the dream. She’d always dreamed of someone looking deeper and asking questions just like this, and of all people, Cadence was doing it. She’d perhaps been wrong about her in more ways than one.
“You aren’t angry with me kissing Lucas?” she tested.
“I probably would’ve been before he came back. When you’re young, your mind builds things up and they feel huge. He came back and I didn’t have all those feelings I thought I would have, and that’s the proof, you know? The proof we weren’t meant to be paired. It was puppy love, not being mated. You know I’ve dated since him? Since Gunner, too. That was a mess, but I moved on and tried to find my person. And someday I hope I will.” She shook her head and looked directly at Jenna as she said, “Lucas isn’t mine, and really, he wasn’t ever mine. Our animals didn’t choose each other. So what do you need from me?”
“I think I need someone to talk to.”
“I can do that.”
“About boys. About life. About work. Sometimes I really wish I had what you girls have with each other, you know? Girls’ nights. Even just feeling included and invited.”
The smile that stretched Cadence’s face was a tired one, but genuine. “I can be that. I want that too. I bet if you get practice with me, it won’t be as hard with the other girls. That’s why you work with the men, right?”
Jenna shrugged. “They just don’t make me feel…less than, you know?”
