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There are two distinct sides to Kate, almost like she’s two different people, that much becomes abundantly clear as Tyler gets to know her. It’s not that he minds; he just has to figure out which one he’s dealing with.
He starts mentally annotating her, like he’s taking notes: This one is scared. The one he saw panicking when he’d first seen her and Javi out in the field. The one who touched his hand reverently after the Stillwater tornado, in awe that he was still there. The one who ran away afterward.
And this one is wild. The one with the open-mouth grin in his passenger seat when they tested the solution. The one who drove into a tornado on her own. The one who pulled herself out of his wrecked truck and had the audacity to spin his tornado salute.
But he’s spent most of his adult life learning to read weather patterns, and he’s determined to learn to read her just as well.
1.
When he shows up at the airport, she doesn’t look surprised. She looks like she expects him. It makes sense; they’ve been joined at the hip for the past three days – and after El Reno, he could hardly stand let her out of his sight. He’d only given way to Javi on her urging. She said that Javi had promised door-to-door service and that it was her responsibility to hold him to it.
She told Tyler that she’d see him again, that she’d come back, that they’d work on this together. He wanted to ask which this she was talking about.
So many times in the past three days, he’d wanted to kiss her, and just as many times, he told himself it wasn’t the right time. She was leaving, and he was staying. That often seemed to be the way things went.
“When will you be back?” he asked.
“Tell ya later,” she teased.
The Wranglers were set up just south of Tulsa when Javi sent him the flight information with no other context. He took that to mean that they were on their way. Tyler got to his feet in such a rush that he sent the team scattering, all of them thinking there was a storm to chase. And maybe there was – but it was his, not theirs.
When she looks at him, she looks sure. About what, he doesn’t know, but he hopes it’s him. Maybe she’s just sure he would come. He wishes he could be as sure that she’d come back.
“Still not tellin' me when you’re coming back?” he says.
“I dunno. This might be it.”
“I can’t tell if you’re joking.” Please be joking.
If she left and never came back, his life would go back to what it was. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s been left behind. His father left when he was six, and his mother dropped him off at his aunt’s house six months later. He didn’t see her again until he was 12, at her funeral. His aunt died when he was 16, and for two years, he was juggled around between a handful of great-aunts and second cousins for long enough to satisfy DHS – until he was 18 and didn’t have to be anyone’s responsibility anymore.
And his life right now, with the Wranglers, it isn’t a bad life. He’s grown quite attached to it, in fact. But he’s gotten real attached to something else recently, and even though he knows that he’d go back to his pretty-damn-good life, he thinks he’ll always wonder what would’ve happened if that life included her. And that’s the thing about when people leave: he’s left to wonder how things would have been different if they’d stayed.
She purses her lips, steps toward him, and holds his gaze. “Maybe if you feel it, you should chase it.” His heart thunders in his chest, but he’s so thrown by the wicked gleam in her eyes, he can’t say or do anything. It’s a challenge; he understands that much. He’s been so careful not to push any expectations onto her, and maybe she’s had enough of him standing on the sidelines. Maybe he’s had enough of it, too.
She immediately turns away from him and pulls Javi into a hug. As she enters the airport, she doesn’t look back.
And of course, he chases her.
This one is impulsive.
2.
It’s fitting that bad weather delays ground her flight, though having her back in his passenger seat only reminds him that he’ll have to say goodbye again. The weather is just prolonging the inevitable. He tries to focus on the here and now, racing down the highway toward towering clouds in the distance. She’s directing him somewhere without even looking at a map; these suburban Tulsa roads are familiar to her.
“Pull off here,” she says.
He obeys and zags the truck onto an access road through a wheat field on their right. “Keep going?” he asks.
She doesn’t say anything, and when he glances over, he notices she’s white-knuckling the tablet in her hands. Her eyes are glassy, and her breaths are shallow and quick.
“Kate?”
When she doesn’t answer, he slows the truck to a stop and throws it into park. She’s still in the same position, death grip on the tablet and all. She doesn’t react when he calls her name again. He reaches across the console to touch her arm, and she nearly jumps out of her skin.
“I—I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know what happened.” She’s still half-panting with a concerned look on her face, as if she’s trying to understand where her breath went.
“It’s fine. You’re fine,” he says. “Just breathe with me for a sec.” He exaggerates his breaths, and she follows suit. He doesn’t know if she needs his guidance, but he tries just the same.
Just days ago, she’d driven this truck into an EF5. He’d been a fool to think she’d be ready to drive into another storm. He’d just felt desperate to recapture the joy he’d seen in her before. But that’s not the Kate he’s dealing with right now.
“How about we just watch this one from here?” he says.
She nods. Her teeth worry her lower up, and her cheeks flush. The look on her face says she’s holding something back.
“You okay?”
“I thought you’d kiss me at the airport,” she says, quick, in a single exhale. She doesn’t look at him. It seems that her response is just as unexpected to her as it is to him.
For a moment, he isn’t sure what to say. If he had it his way, he’d kiss her every day of the week, but he doesn’t know what happens when they cross that threshold. If he kisses her and she leaves, he doesn’t know if he can just go back to his pretty-damn-good life without her. He’s learned that sometimes it doesn’t pay to get close to someone; there has to be a boundary somewhere, and he’s picked this as his.
“Did you want me to?”
“I don’t—I don’t know.”
He takes her hand, and she lets him.
This one is unsure.
3.
He picks her up at the airport when she returns from New York, and he feels like he’s at war with himself. He’s not used to people coming back, and he doesn’t know how to act, doesn’t know what this means (if it means anything).
He and Kate have been in near-constant communication since she left, but half of it has been related to their burgeoning business partnership. He lives for the other half of their exchanges, sharing stories of their families or friends or favorites. When his phone pinged, he never knew if she’d be asking him about the Wranglers’ RPM metrics for the last month or his favorite ice cream flavor.
Her last text—Just landed—is the best text he can remember receiving.
He feels nervous, something he doesn’t feel that often. In fact, he’s much more likely to go in the entire opposite direction: doing or saying things that make other people nervous. But he can’t deny that he’s been feeling this way more and more since he met her, and he doesn’t know exactly what to do with himself now that she’s back.
He’s got a bouquet of flowers that he picked up from Reasor’s on his drive in, but he berates himself over the fact that he’s never asked her favorite kind; he’s never even asked her if she likes flowers. He twists the stems between his fingers until she emerges from the secure area. She looks determined, her eyes set straight ahead and her legs pumping. She nearly walks right past him, such that he has to do a little side-step in front of her.
“Oh!” she startles. “I still have to get my checked bags. I thought you’d be waiting outside.”
“Like I’m not going to help you with your bags. I thought you knew me better than that by now, Sapulpa,” he says and holds the flowers out to her. “Brought you these.”
The way her eyes sparkle when she takes them is enough for him to relax the tension he’d be holding in his shoulders. He feels lightness in his limbs; he feels untethered.
“They’re beautiful, Ty.”
He loves it when she calls him that. It’s a silly thing to love, really, the logical shortening of his own name. Plenty of people have called him that. But it’s different when it comes from her. It’s familiar in a way he craves; it feels like coming home.
They stand shoulder to shoulder to wait for her two checked bags, all that’s left from her New York City apartment that hasn’t already been shipped back and waiting in her mom’s barn. She absently summarizes a movie she watched on the flight, and he tells her what the Wranglers are doing for the weekend. When she leans against him, he dares to snake an arm around her waist, and the heady look she flashes makes his whole body flush.
She grins. Something is different; something has changed. He knows it, and the look in her eye tells him that she knows it. That she’s decided it. And maybe he has, too.
In the truck, she reaches across the center console and fists his t-shirt in her grip, but she doesn’t need to pull very hard before his lips crash into hers. His hands press to the sides of her face, and her fingers thread into the hair at the nape of his neck in a way that makes him shiver. He brushes his tongue against her bottom lip, and her breath audibly catches in her throat.
Every bit of restraint, every bit of “no expectations” he has built up over the past month disintegrates. She came back, and that’s enough. That’s enough for him to let go.
When they finally pull away, she’s got that dangerous gleam in her eye, pupils blown wide. She moves the hand that’s on his neck to the side of his face and traces the curve of his lower lip with the tip of her thumb.
“Let’s not go to my mom’s quite yet.”
This one is certain.
4.
When Kate’s “Meet the Wrangler” post goes live, the comments go, as Boone puts it, “berserko.” You would have thought it was a wedding announcement instead of what it actually was, two pictures and a three-line bio. The problem is in the pictures, of course: one is just Kate, looking off into a storm cloud, the same from Ben’s article; the other is the Wrangler crew all together. Shouldn’t be an issue, except for Tyler’s arm around her shoulders. His face too close to her ear. Her smile too wide. And too many rumors already swirling.
“Goddamnit, Boone. What were you thinkin’ using this picture?”
Boone throws up his hands. “It’s just a group shot. How was I ‘sposed to know people would flip out?”
“You run our social media accounts. You know that people ‘flip out’ about everything!”
“Naw, I thought it was just a nice picture,” Boone says. “Honest!”
“Take it down before this goes too far.”
Boone shakes his head. “T, it’s too late. Fan accounts are already reposting. If we dirty delete then it’s gonna be even worse. Listen, I’ve got an eye on the comments; I’ll mod out any mean ones.”
Tyler sighs and scrubs his hand over his face.
Boone speaks in a placating tone. “Is it so bad, though? Don’t you think they were gonna figure it out eventually?”
“Figure what out?”
“That you and Kate are, ya know, boyfriend and girlfriend or whatever you wanna call it. You should see the live chat for every chase. The fans wanna know.”
“But here’s the thing, Booney.” He bends forward at the waist to get into Boone’s space. “They can’t know because we don’t know.”
It’s another line that Tyler doesn’t know how to cross. Another thing that he and Kate haven’t spoken about. What are we? and What comes next? It’s not that he doesn’t want to know; he wants to know more than he wants anything. That she’s all in. That she’ll stay. But he feels like it’s unfair to ask her for that, not yet and maybe not ever.
Boone takes a step back and lets out an honest-to-goodness gasp. “Y’all haven’t defined the relationship?”
Tyler rolls his eyes and stalks away.
He finds Kate in the barn, working diligently at her laptop with a pile of notes fanned out to the side. She doesn’t look up at him when he enters.
“Hey,” he says.
She flinches at the sound of his voice but breaks into a smile when she realizes it’s him. He has moments of doubt more often than he’d like to admit – not that he doubts he wants her, wants them, but moments when he isn’t sure she feels the same. But when she looks at him with that smile, he realizes that he doesn’t know why he feels that way.
“Hey, you,” she says. She sits back in her chair and reaches her hand out to him. He takes it and drops himself onto a stool beside her. When she focuses on his face, her smile drops. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Everything’s okay,” he says. “We’ve just got a social media problem.”
Her brows furrow. She’s still new to this, new to the idea that there even could be such a thing as a social media problem.
“Boone posted your introduction today, and he put in a picture of the Wrangler crew all together. And, well, you and me are a little close, and people are starting to speculate in the comments.” Speculate might be putting it lightly.
“About us?”
He nods. “It’s not a big deal. I just wanted you to know.”
She runs her teeth over her lower lip. “It’s a problem, you said. A social media problem.” She pulls her hand away from his.
“You know how people can be online,” he says.
“Saying mean things about me?”
“No, not so much that. Just, ya know, saying stuff about us being together.”
She’s sunk her teeth firmly into that lip now. Her eyes dart between his face and her computer screen, like she isn’t sure where to look. He thinks that she must feel awkward, maybe ashamed. Maybe she doesn’t want anyone to know about them. They haven’t been particularly subtle, but maybe she doesn’t want it to be so public.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he says gently. If he’s being honest, he says it more for himself than for her. As soon as she’d pulled her hand away, he’d begun to steel himself for the moment he’d lose her.
“You said it was a problem,” she repeats. “It’s a problem that they’re sayin’ we’re together.” Her face is flushed again.
It hits him then which Kate he’s dealing with. She’s not worried about people knowing about them; she’s worried that he is. His own concern is echoed back to him.
He leans forward in his seat and rests his palms on the tops of her thighs. “No, no. Not a problem like that,” he says.
She looks down at his hands on her lap and then back into his eyes. “Aren’t we together?”
“Yes,” he says. “If that’s what you want.”
“Is it…bad for your image?”
“I don’t give two shits about my image.” Sure, he’s built this persona online, and he keeps it up, but he knows how these things go. The fans will forget this happened, or otherwise, they’ll accept it. There’ll be a whole slew of new fan edits of the two of them together before nightfall. The Wranglers are part of his life, the fans are part of his life, and now she’s part of his life. They’ll all have to play nice together.
“Did you want to see other people?” she asks.
“No, Kate, no.” There’s still a part of him that wants her to say it first, that she’s sure, that she wants this, them, him. But he’s not sure he understands why he thinks she doesn’t. So he says, “I only want you.”
She exhales and puts her hands on top of his. “Me too. I mean—you.”
He’ll take it; it’s enough.
“Okay,” he says, smiling, “Listen, I’m sorry. Forget what I said. It’s not a problem. We’ll shout it from the rooftops.”
She laughs.
This one is fragile.
5.
He sees the cell on the radar about a half-second after she stands and nearly knocks over her camping chair.
“Hook on the cell to the northwest,” she says, her eyes wide and bright.
“Yup!” he says, elongating the middle vowel, verging on shouting. He’s on his feet as well.
They’ve been camped out in the same place for hours, tracking a line of storm cells that all seem to lose all potential before they cross the state border. The boredom had set in long ago. Half the team was napping, and the other half was staring absently at their phones. But the secondary line that has been slowly moving in from Texas is starting to ramp up, and tornado watches are turning up in its path.
“We gotta go!” She crosses the dusty pullout and reaches her hand through the truck’s open window to lay on the horn. Bedraggled Wranglers start popping out of their familiar places, all looking toward the truck. She stands on the running boards with an open-mouthed grin. “Up and at ‘em!”
Her energy is infectious, and the whole place is packed up in a matter of moments. Dani and Dexter take the RV, Lily and Javi are in Lily’s SUV, and Tyler, Boone, and Kate head for the truck. He’s rounding the tailgate toward the driver’s side when Kate plucks the keys right out of his loose grip.
“I’m drivin’,” she says in a sing-song voice.
Tyler begins to protest, but Boone’s already shaking his head and saying, “Naw, Tyler don’t let anyone drive besides—”
“Besides me,” Kate says, sure of herself. She dangles the keys and takes a few steps backward, her eyes on Tyler. He knows already that he can’t deny her, not when she’s like this, all spirited and eager. He’d comment about the last time she’d driven, but he holds his tongue, too afraid he’ll disrupt the storm whirling in her.
“Alright,” he says. “But this ain’t becoming regular occurrence, alright?”
Kate grins and spins around. She wastes no time heaving herself up into the driver’s seat. “Well, c’mon then,” she says.
Tyler shakes his head and makes his way to the other side of the truck.
Boone gives him a wide-eyed stare. “Does this mean that I can—”
“No,” Tyler says.
Kate is absolutely barreling down the empty highways, and she hardly slows when they cut off onto side streets and access roads. He’d be carsick if he weren’t so mesmerized, so affected by her energy rolling over him in waves.
Boone’s got the live stream up and running, but Kate’s the star this time. Her eyes are on the sky more often than the road, and she’s still wearing that wide, wild grin.
The storm starts to materialize right in front of them – of course it does, with Kate taking the lead. With a slight gasp, she snatches up the CB radio and says, “Dani, it’s about to turn. You got eyes on the road on the other side?”
“The other side of what?” Dani says.
But Kate’s already slung the wheel to the left, cutting through the open field beside them.
“Uh, okay then,” says Dani. “Due south, you’ve got a county road. You got it. Keep going. Dead ahead.”
“Perfect,” Kate breathes.
Tall cornstalks crowd the windshield and snap against the sides of the truck. They’ve got no visibility, but it doesn’t seem like Kate needs it anyway, so sure of where the storm is heading.
Tyler grabs the CB and says, “Hang back. Lily, Javi, y’all get the drone ready. We’re gonna light this one up!” Some portion of the excitement in his voice is put on for the viewers, but the other part is fueled by Kate’s contagious enthusiasm. He’s done the same things a hundred times before—plowing through fields toward bobbing-and-weaving storms on the horizon—but he’s so rarely been the passenger. The loss of control is equal parts frightening and exhilarating.
The stalks break and for a moment, they glance grey-green sky. All four wheels are off the ground; they’re almost soaring over the road in front of them. Kate turns fast on the wheel, and the back of the truck skids along the gravel roadside. Boone whoops. Tyler does the same, the unrestrained cry tearing from his throat. When she pulls the truck out of the fishtail, there’s a moment of stillness in which Kate fixes Tyler with such a cool stare that his stomach turns to ice.
“Christ, Kate, they think you’re crazy,” Boone says of the commenters.
In response, she presses her foot to the gas and the truck roars back to life, flinging gravel in its wake.
“Now it’s on your right,” Lily says through the radio.
“Not for long,” Kate replies under her breath. She yanks the wheel again, and they’re off the road into grasslands on the other side. “Here comes the rain,” she says, just before it hits. Tyler’s consistently in awe of her, but he’s never been more so than at this moment. If he wasn’t half terrified and Boone wasn’t pressed up between the front seats, he’d grab her and kiss her right now, tornado be damned.
The clouds in front of them are already rotating, the vortex reaching down toward the long grasses below.
“Strap in,” Tyler instructs. Boone ducks back to the backseat and does as he’s told, but there’s a moment in which Tyler thinks he’s going to have to strap Kate in himself. “Strap in, Sapulpa,” he says again, more commanding. She smirks but does as he says.
The thundering curtain of rain temporarily obstructs their view, and an unidentifiable piece of debris from a nearby farm skitters in front of them. Kate swerves, and the truck spins out on the now-wet ground. Tyler feels himself pressed to the back of his seat by the force of the spin, his stomach and head scrambling. When the truck comes to a stop, all he hears are the sounds of rain and Kate’s erratic breaths.
“It’s going to touch down!” Lily says through the radio.
Boone is still strapped in but trying to angle the camera around to every window he can reach. “Where is it?”
Kate still has her eyes on the sky. Her hand darts out to trigger the augers. “It’s on top of us,” she says.
Tyler cranes to look out and up from the front windshield. He tries to think of something quippy for the live viewers, but he can’t. His words and his breath are stuck in his chest. He can only watch the clouds swirl and churn as the funnel descends on top of them. He feels so very small but so very alive.
Kate flips the guards on the rockets and turns over her shoulder to look at the camera. She’s got that wicked gleam in her eye, and her hair’s fallen from her ponytail and floats around her head like a halo. “Let’s light ‘er up,” she yells, slamming her fingers down on the explosion button.
They feel the storm’s kick right as the rockets fly into the sky. He watches her face in the brief flashes of light, but there’s no fear or trepidation there. There’s only excitement, thrill, joy. Her mouth hangs open, and her eyes are still wide and bright. She throws one hand on his thigh and presses it there like she’s grounding him. There’s more than one storm circling around him – and one of them is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
When the storm moves far enough away, Boone releases his harness and hops out of the cab to film its retreat. As Kate opens her door to join in watching as well, Tyler grabs her by the wrist, suddenly released from the fear that’s kept him from saying what he feels. Suddenly sure that everything is right.
“I love you,” he says.
She pauses, looking back at him with that untamed sparkle still in her eye. She pushes back some of the hair that has fallen around her face, playfully preening. Then she rolls her shoulders and says, “I know.” She winks at him as she drops to the ground.
This one is fearless.
6.
That night they’re in bed in a shitty hotel room outside of Gage when she sits up suddenly, his name a hoarse whisper on her lips.
She has nightmares. Not all the time, but often enough that he understands what’s happening. He can track when they’ll happen, too: they’re always tornado-triggered, though she’ll never admit it. And today, she’d driven into a tornado. Case closed.
He props himself up on one arm and reaches out to her with his other hand, brushing it gently over her shoulder. “I’m here,” he says.
But she doesn’t relax. She puts her hands over her face and releases a slow exhale, but it catches in her throat and drags out a shuddering sob.
He sits up instantly, drawing an arm around her shoulders and pulling her into him. This must’ve been a rough one; she’d gotten to the point where she could shake them off most nights. He can’t remember the last time she’d cried.
“I dreamed I lost you,” she says between sobs. She hides her face in the fabric of his t-shirt. He trails his fingers down her arm.
“You didn’t,” he says. “You can’t lose me.”
“I have before,” she says. She doesn’t mean him exactly, but he understands what she’s saying nonetheless. And he doesn’t have a response. He can’t promise her that nothing terrible will happen; he only knows he’ll love her for as much time as he has. He doesn’t say it, though – too worried that if he says it again, says it to this Kate, he’ll break her.
“I know, baby,” he says instead. He tightens his grip on her, presses his lips into her hair, and rocks her gently. She tangles her hands in the hem of his shirt and cries.
When she catches her breath, she says, “I’m sorry about today.”
“What about?” he says. “You did great today.”
“I scared you,” she says. She’s right; she’s always right. He’d never known he could be so afraid and so happy at the same time.
“I just gotta get used to not having control of the wheel,” he says.
She brings her face away from his chest to look into his eyes. Her lower lip is caught between her teeth, and he has the urge to kiss it away. But she says, “I love you too. You know that, right? I didn’t say it.” She takes a shuddering breath. “But I do. So much, you wouldn’t believe.”
The truth is, he doesn’t believe. He can’t imagine she loves him even half as much as he loves her, but he hopes he’s wrong. He hopes that he’s worth it. Hopes he’s finally worth coming back to.
Tears fill her eyes again, and though she tries to brush them away, they creep down familiar paths. “And—and I’m scared,” she says.
Love and loss are bound together for her. For him, too. He loves her, but he can’t deny there’s a lot of fear rolled up in that. Some of it natural, the fear of giving away your heart, and some of it learned, the fear of what has happened before. The fear that she’ll leave, the fear that she won’t take him with her, the fear that maybe he’s just inherently unlovable.
He doesn’t know what to say.
“Me too” is what he finally decides on. Her gaze softens in understanding. By now, she knows him, knows his past. She knows she’s not the only one who has felt the sting of loss, the cost of love. There’s some mutual comfort in knowing that they’re both scared.
She ducks her head back to his chest, tucking in under his chin, and relaxing in his arms. “Don’t leave,” she says, so softly she might not have realized she’d said it out loud. He doesn’t know why she says it because he’s not going anywhere. But it’s exactly what he wants to say to her.
This one needs him.
Tyler knows that both sides of her are equally her, that she wouldn’t be his Kate without both.
All of her parts together fit some lacking piece in his life, something that he didn’t know he was missing until he saw this wild, scared, impulsive, unsure, certain, fragile, fearless woman drive his truck into the El Reno tornado. Until she came back. Until he let himself be loved by her.
He finds that it’s becoming easier to read the clouds of her moods. The hook of the oncoming storm: that dangerous glint in her eyes or the dent of her teeth in her lower lip. They hold each other through the kick, pick up the pieces together afterward. Where once he didn’t know which Kate he’d get, now he can predict it.
He’d like to say it’s because he loves her, and when you love something, you'll spend your whole life trying to figure it out.
But the truth is simpler than that: he learns to read her so well because she is his reflection.