Page 33 of Worthy

“You don’t have sisters, do you?”

He shakes his head.

I pull out my phone and google bustles, showing Cade the images that come up. He looks between those and the frame he’s added to the bike and cracks a smile. “I guess it does kind of look like that. And now your little,” he waves his hand behind his butt, “makes sense.” He laughs.

″So, what’s left then?” I gesture to the bike.

″Ah, I guess a few more supports for this bustle, but maybe lower so Ally’s whole leg isn’t caged in,” he rubs the back of his neck again. “I won’t really know until I get something on there.”

″Can I watch? I mean, if you’re going to do something now?”

″I’m not ready to put anything on the bike yet, but I can show you something else, if you just want to see how it works,” he offers.

″Yeah,” I grin.

″Ok, gimme a sec to see what I have to work with.” He digs through different drawers, picking out some gears and what looks like pieces of thin metal pipe. One long piece he leaves straight, but the shorter ones he puts through some sort of press so they start to bend.

When he’s got everything where he wants it, he grabs a stool and sits down as he places the mask on his head.

″Best not to come any closer.” He warns as he gives his head a little jerk and the mask falls over his eyes. The movement is so casually sexy I kind of want him to lift the mask up so he has to do it again, but before I can embarrass myself with that request he turns on the welder, and it’s hard to see anything else.

He positions two pieces of metal together and holds a third tiny sliver of metal above them. The welder seems to melt it, binding the separate pieces along the seam he’s creating. He repeats the process over and over, attaching smaller curved pieces of metal to the one longer piece.

The garage heats up as he goes, but I don’t notice the temperature because I’m so focused on his hands. They’re covered with bulky gloves, but they’re steady, moving almost delicately to avoid missing a spot or straying off course. He’s absolutely still except for his hands, and I don’t know if that’s how it always is or if it’s because he’s working with small materials, but it makes me appreciate the concentration needed to create.

The process is slow, but not so slow that I can’t see it come together. The smaller pieces sticking off the large straight rod sort of resemble leaves, and I’m guessing he intends to use the large gear as a flower.

When he raises his helmet, I’m almost disappointed, because I really want to see the finished product. Then I notice the spark in his eye, and I feel my heartbeat pick up.

″Want to try?” He holds the tools out.

″Me?” I point to my chest. “I’m not really good with tools. I don’t want to mess up your flower.”

″You won’t mess it up, I’ll help you.”

He hands me a pair of gloves and an apron of sorts and adjusts a mask to fit my head. Then he guides me to the stool and stands behind me, placing the welder in my hand. I try to breathe normally with him pressed against my back, but there’s no stopping my heartbeat from accelerating, which it seems to do every time he gets close.

″We’re going to attach the stem to the back of this gear. The gear is our base metal, and this is our bond.” He gives me a sliver of metal like what he was melting earlier. “We’re going to bond the stem to the gear. Hold the bond metal where we’re going to connect the two, and we’ll melt that to join the two pieces together. Got it?”

I nod, and the mask drops down to cover my face. It wasn’t intentional, but it makes him laugh. “Why do I get the feeling you’re going to be a natural at this?” I catch his grin right before his own mask falls into place.

Cade turns the machine on and positions his hands over mine to help keep them steady. Together we move the bond metal to the parts we want to stick together. The heat coming off the welder makes the room stuffy, and it’s kind of nerve wracking to see sparks flying around as we work, but welding is kind of a rush, and I’m sort of amped when I see that the two pieces we forged together do resemble a flower.

″Wow.” I lift the front of the mask for a better look.

″Nice work.” He admires our effort while I take off the gloves and flex my hands. “I’ve never made a flower before, but it turned out pretty well.”

″What made you try it now?” I hold up the flower.

″You study plants and shit, right?” His tone is nonchalant, forcibly so, but that only gives the words more impact. And even though he’s not exactly right about what I study, the fact he made the effort to choose something that would be personal to me is endearing.

So much so, I set the flower down as I choke out, “What do you usually make?”

″Whatever comes to mind.” He takes his own mask and gloves off and goes to hang them on the far wall. “I just take what I have available and piece things together for fun. The bike is the first thing I’ve done with an end goal.”

″So, this flower just came to you from looking at what was lying around the shop?” I marvel.

″Yeah.” He shoves his hands in his pockets.

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