Page 8 of Thorns That Bloom
“From Torken, huh?”
“Weird,” someone notes.
Blake purses his lips. “Yeah. They never willingly send people here. Maybe somethin’ happened? Probably isn’t anyone important, otherwise they would’ve done that whole welcome meeting thing.”
The topic dies down, and the others return to finishing their lunches. I stay with my waist twisted around until a person at the man’s table notices my prolonged stare, so I quickly turn back to face my plate.
I’ve never noticed him before. Then again, I usually turn my brain off when on a break and focus only on work otherwise. And I didn’t catch that he was pregnant, either, with how fast he ran off. Did he even hear me apologizing?
I thoughtfully rub my fingers together, still confused at my body’s bizarre reaction.
What is it? I’ve never felt this way.
Is my rut about to start? My thoughts are always all over the place when it does. Calculating quickly in my head, I conclude that it shouldn’t bother me for a few more weeks.
Never mind, I tell myself and dig into the tiramisu, seeing how little time I have left of the break before having to get back to the manufacturing floor. Still, somewhere inside me, there’s a faint buzzing sensation. A light fluttering at the bottom of my stomach, and a comforting heat pooling underneath my skin.
We all get back to work shortly after. I quickly settle into the predictable, calming rhythm of handling the machinery, even though, at the back of my mind, something stirs. The smell keeps coming back to me, sharp in contrast to the harsh scent of metal and dust.
It’s a few hours of comfortingly monotone work until I zone back into my surroundings and notice Madison arguing about something with Blake not far away. She holds a tablet in her hand, pointing at it and rolling her eyes while saying something to him.
A smirk pushes against my lips—I know that scene pretty well. Some issue again. Usually, I would ignore it and let her deal with it. Let her worry about going up into Engineering and fighting with them about missing materials or wrongcalculations or nonsensical instructions.
This time…something inside me tightens with urgency.
“Hey!” I blurt out as she’s passing me with a stride that clearly says she’s not letting someone hear the end of it. Raising her already arched brow, Madison pauses while I quickly struggle to put the machine in front of me on standby.
“Theo. What is it?” If I didn’t know she’s just irritated with Engineering’s mistakes, I would maybe take her annoyed tone personally. “I’m a little busy. Through no fault of mine,” she notes grumpily, shifting at her hips, and glances down at her tablet.
I make a wide step toward her with a smile.
What the hell am I doing?
“You’re going up again, right? I gotta go there to sort something anyway, so do you want me to deal with it?” I ask, raising my brows and making my most ‘happy to help’ expression.
She looks me up and down, her head quirked and her brow furrowed.
“I know the drill, Mads,” I say with a chuckle. Glancing over, I quickly scan the screen of the tablet. “We’ve had this problem before. I think it was just a wrong part identification number. I know you go there all the time to shout at them, so how about I go and save everyone the blood pressure spike, huh?”
Madison narrows her eyes behind thick glasses. I don’t think she’s more than a decade older than me, but somehow she commands a lot more respect than the other managers.
“Usually, you people stumble over each othernotto have to go up there and argue with those pricks, but…whatever, I guess.” She finally relents with a sigh, lazily handing me the tablet. “I need a smoke break, anyway. My god,” she grumbles, “the incompetence of those people is going to kill me one day.”
I feel like a giddy kid who just got the exact toy they wanted.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got it,” I say with a wide smile.
Madison shakes her head, chuckling while her hand searches inside the pocket of her overalls for a pack. “You’re cute, aren’t ya,” she says, more to herself than to me, and turns to walk away. “Just leave the tablet on my desk later. And don’t be too soft on them. If they bitch, ask for Mitchel.”
“Yes, ma’am!” I holler back at her, saluting, but she doesn’t turn.
Looking at the tablet in my hands, I take a deep breath before waving down Ben across the manufacturing floor. He studies me from his station. Motioning at the tablet, then my station, and pointing upstairs, I let him know I’ll be right back. He gives a confused nod.
It isn’t until I am outside the room and walk down the hall to the elevators that I notice my heart drumming inside my chest. I look down, meeting eyes with my reflection on the tablet’s screen, and have to ask myself,again, what the hell I’m doing.
The moment I realized where Madison was going, all I could think about was that it meant an excuse to maybe see him again.
The man I saw in the cafeteria for a few seconds.
