Chapter Text
Tyler didn’t know what drew him to Kate. He’s gotten out of his rig and looked over at Javi standing by the Storm Par trucks and something in his mind just went “that’s her.”
It was like looking at the sky for the storm that would give them a tornado and knowing “that’s the one.”
It was instinctual.
Then she had the gall to lie to him like he couldn’t see the exact same storms she was looking at.
The competitive side of him sprang up when he followed Storm Par -and Kate- toward the funnel cloud felt like he was tightening the rope down on a bull and waiting in the chute to open. He didn’t know what was about to happen, but it was going to be a hell of a ride.
He wasn’t sure what exactly had Javi looking so pissy when he passed them one last time before heading into the funnel, but he smirked at the stunned look Kate gave him as he took off. The fireworks mirrored the sizzle-pop of elation he felt at showing her he knew a thing or two about storms too.
Something about her; it was intriguing.
“You like her.” Dani grinned as she passed him a beer after he climbed down from the top of his truck where he had been checking to make sure the storm hadn’t knocked any of their equipment loose.
He’d stopped Kate on her way to her room and she’d volleyed back just as good as he gave and, in the end, her last dig had stopped him short before he snapped back that he was more trustworthy than anyone who worked with Storm Par. There were things that he knew he probably couldn’t come back from and he’d only met her that morning. No point in burning that bridge before he figured her out.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, taking the beer from Dani and cracking it open.
She snorted. “Come on, Tyler. I’ve known you what? Four years now? I’ve seen women throw themselves at you everywhere we go and not once have you looked at someone like you look at her. You like her.”
“She’s…interesting,” he acquiesced, though it felt like it cost him something to admit. “I don’t know, there’s just something about her that’s…”
Her eyebrows raised as he trailed off. “Likable?”
“Oh, shut up,” he groused, drowning his frustration with a gulp of lukewarm beer.
Dani’s grin only widened.
The next day, after Kate had picked the right funnel and the one he chose had gone out like a drained battery, Dani just had to go and grind it in a little further.
It made him realize he would rather have Kate in the truck with him, then it made him frustrated that she was with Storm Par of all groups. Anyone else, maybe he wouldn’t have been so green with envy.
Okay, maybe he would have been, but it wouldn’t have set him out of sorts the same way. He wasn’t usually a sore loser. Just…Storm Par.
That was probably why he’d snapped when Kate came into the tore up town alongside Javi and Scott. They oiled their way through the town with Marshall Riggs shmoozing people who hadn’t even had a chance to catch their breath yet after their whole lives had been wrecked.
Then Kate, who didn’t know a damned thing about the Wranglers, acted like Storm Par was somehow better than everyone else. Better than Tyler and Boone and Lily and Dani and Dex who had all seen more tornadoes than anybody out there, but who had also shown up and helped people dig through the rubble of their lives after countless storms.
“We are better than you, Cowboy.” Scott had said. And there she was, practically saying the same thing.
Either she didn’t know or she did and she was just as bad as they were.
He stewed over it in the thirty minutes it took to find the rain soaked and dirty golden retriever he’d been searching for. Boone took one look at him and figured out that he was pissed at something and decided to ride with Lily on their way to the motel in Stillwater. Tyler wasn’t offended when he suggested Ben do the same. He was pissy after all and probably bad company. He drove around the streets of Stillwater for a while, decompressing from the tense half hour when he couldn’t find the dog and the confrontation with Kate.
He needed to know, once and for all, if she knew what Scott and Javi were up to. He wanted a real read on her, not whatever lie she told him that day during their quasi-flirting exchanges over the storms on the horizon.
Which meant he needed to figure out where the hell she was.
He drove to two different hotels before he found Storm Par at a third. Kate wasn’t there. She had told them she wanted some space and one of the guys thought she was staying out by the rodeo.
“What’s her story? Do you know?” He asked one of them. They’d run into each other a few times over the years. Tyler thought his name was Brad or Brian. Maybe Trevor?
Whoever he was shrugged. “Javi knows her. Supposed to be some kind of storm savant or something. That’s all I really know. She’s kind of kept to herself since she got here.”
Tyler thanked him and went to find food because his mama made sure he knew never to show up to anyone’s place with his hands empty. There wasn’t much on his way that was fast, so he ended up with gas station pizza and figured it was better than nothing.
He rethought that when she took it and shut the door in his face.
But it was only a moment and she pulled the door back open.
There was something about a dirt arena that called to him the same way he was called to storms and he wanted her to see it too. To find comfort in it the way he did.
He liked the look in her eyes when he told her he used to compete, like something clicked and she got it. Got him. He hadn’t been a Lane Frost or JB Mauney, but he hadn’t been bad. He was a better storm chaser. It wasn’t hard to admit now. He loved it just as much.
Then the wind turned and everything started going to hell so fast. He hadn’t hesitated even for a moment when Kate yelled over the violent wind screaming around them and told them to head for the empty pool. He clung to the exposed pipes with the echo of the clerk’s scream in his ears. He’d been right there. He should have been faster to get to him. If he had…if he had…
Kate was a warm presence under him as the mother next to them soothed her daughter, her words finally, mercifully drowning out the man’s phantom screams in his head. We’re gonna be okay. I’ve got you. He clung tighter to Kate, feeling her tremble even over the winds battering them.
Then it was over. His team was there. Javi and Scott, too.
Then Kate was gone.
“Where is she going?” Tyler demanded from Javi, who was crouched to the ground with his hands clamped too tight in his hair. The taillights of the Storm Par truck were a pinpoint of red down the road by now, he’d never catch up to her even if he could get the truck out of the debris right that second.
“I don’t know,” Javi rasped, looking up at Tyler with misery written all over his face.
Tyler stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out how Kate went from shaken but okay a moment ago to leaving without a word. He remembered her leaving after he’d confronted her at the clean-up. And how she’d retreated back into her room earlier that night when he’d brought her a pizza. How she was in New York when she so clearly loved storms and Oklahoma.
She was a runner, he thought. But what the hell was she running from?
“Hey,” he pulled Dex aside. “Kate left and I don’t think she’s okay. She’s from Sapulpa. You think you can find her? Kate Carter?”
“Wait, Carter?” Dex looked up, startled. “I know that name. Where do I know that name?” He snapped his fingers and tapped away on his computer. “That’s the storm that got me watching the channel, uhh, five years ago? You guys started the emergency fund after that one. She was in that storm. Her and some others. Give me a second. I’ll find it.”
It hadn’t taken long at all because Dex had worked his research magic and came up with an article about the storm he, Lily, and Boone had been in five years ago when they had spent days digging through rubble and came out the other side with the idea to start using merch to fund their emergency supplies. He vaguely remembered the news reporting three grad students from Muskogee State had been killed, but he’d been so entrenched in the clean-up that he hadn’t paid attention to names.
Kate had been the only survivor. Three others with her had been swept into the storm while she was able to take cover under an overpass.
He still heard the clerk’s screams as the storm sucked him into the air. It was the closest he’d ever been to a storm fatality and he knew he’d be hearing those screams in his nightmares and he hadn’t even known him. She had lost three friends. Her best friends and boyfriend, from a quote her mother had given the reporters when she asked for privacy for her daughter.
And then there was a fifth, Javi Rivera, who had been at a separate location, gathering data.
Tyler looked around for Javi and saw that Scott was with him, looking annoyed as ever. Even at a distance, Tyler could tell Javi had a thousand yard stare. Whatever Scott was furiously telling him, it wasn’t connecting. He could ask him again where he thought Kate would go, but Tyler already had a guess.
Even a runner eventually had to go home.
He didn’t set out right away. The mother and her daughter were cleared to go home, but their car had fallen victim to the storm, so Tyler cleared a path for the truck and drove them back across town himself. There were a few guys he had known who had been competing in the rodeo and he went back to check on them too. They were all okay, but there were a lot of horses on the loose and quite a few steers wandering town. There were enough cowboys hanging around that they didn’t really need help, but he didn’t feel right leaving without lending a hand.
By the time Dex promised him they could handle helping with the clean up and pushed him to go to his motel room and shower, it was early morning. He went back to the motel they were at and showered before setting out. He rolled into Sapulpa right around the time restaurants were cleaning up for after lunch rush. It wasn’t far from Tulsa, but also wasn’t a huge city. The waitress at the diner he stopped at for food knew some Carters who had a farm outside city limits with beef cattle who set up at the farmer’s market on Saturdays. A few trips around the town to different feed stores finally led him to a dusty pin board covered in business cards and a flyer for the Carter farm with an address and a phone number for the owner, Cathy Carter.
“Hello, ma’am, I know you don’t know me, but my name is Tyler Owens and I was with Kate in Stillwater when the tornado hit. I was hoping to check in on her,” he told her when she answered, trying to sound respectful and not like someone who had only known her daughter for three days. “Is she with you? She kind of disappeared after the storm.”
“Yeah, she’s here,” she replied. After a beat, she said, “You coming here? How far away are you?”
“I’m at the end of your driveway,” Tyler admitted, hoping that didn’t prompt Mrs. Carter to meet him down there with a shotgun in hand.
She chuckled quietly. “Come on down here. We’ll talk for a minute.”
Tyler was met with a glass of sweet iced tea and a pointed look at a chair at the kitchen table. He thanked her and sat in the chair.
“How long have you known my daughter?” She started with the hard questions to Tyler’s dismay when she sat down across from him.
“Three days,” he answered honestly as he brushed a line through the sweat on his glass with his thumb.
Mrs. Carter gave him a long and unreadable look that made him want to squirm in his seat. He didn’t know what she saw when she looked at him, but eventually she pushed a plate of chocolate chip cookies toward him. “You’re a storm chaser?”
He nodded as he took a cookie. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you know what happened to her five years ago?”
“I know what was in the news. She hasn’t told me.” The articles he’d looked up while he was eating lunch at the diner hadn’t given any more details than the first article Dex had found. He knew there had to be more to what happened than the basic details.
Mrs. Carter nodded like she had expected that answer. “I’ll let her tell it then. Why are you here?”
“We were caught out in the tornado that hit Stillwater last night. I wanted to make sure she was okay,” he told her.
She gestured for him to continue and there was a swooping feeling in his stomach when he realized that she was going to make him admit things that he really hadn’t even gotten around to discussing with himself yet.
He took a bite of the cookie in his hand, holding out while he tried to form that chest-pounding, breath-taking feeling of Kate into something that could be spoken in plain English.
“I think Kate is,” he sighed, trying to pull the words out. “She’s like a storm. She lied to me the first time we met and it was like- it was like when you see a cloud bank building up and it keeps all its secrets to itself until just the right moment and then it turns out a tornado and it’s the most beautiful storm you ever saw. She’s like that.”
“And you’re a storm chaser.” Mrs. Carter had the smallest of indulgent smiles.
Tyler wouldn’t say he was the type of man prone to blushing, but he could feel heat rising in his cheeks then.
He hadn’t thought he was a man who believed in love at first sight either, but here he was.
Really, given how his whole career existed because he saw one tornado up close and personal and couldn’t leave it be afterwards, that shouldn’t have been surprising either.
He took a bite of his cookie before he said all of that to Mrs. Carter, who, he reminded himself, was Kate’s mother and probably didn’t want to hear a love confession from the man she had just met and who had only known her daughter for three days.
“You got a crew or do you chase by yourself?” She asked him, getting up to refill her glass from the pitcher in the fridge.
“I have a team,” he told her. “We’re pretty big on YouTube. The Tornado Wranglers.”
”Wranglers, huh?” She glanced at him, then shook her head with a sigh. “You and Kate.” She sounded exasperated, but she was also smiling. “You can stay in the guestroom tonight. I’ll have dinner out before too long and you might as well stay. Kate’s out in the barn.”
“I’m not sure she’s going to let me stay,” he cautioned her, already moving for the door.
“It may be Kate’s home, but it’s my house. You’re staying.” She told him and he could see where Kate picked up some of her moxie from.
“Thank you, Mrs. Carter,” he said, tapping on the door jamb.
The science fair project in the barn was…endearing. So, were the stories Mrs. Carter pulled out about Kate that brought a pretty blush to her face.
He wasn’t sure what he was expecting when he went snooping around the barn after Mrs. Carter shooed him away from the table, but it wasn’t a dozen notebooks full of calculations and years of storm data. It wasn’t discovering Kate was more than just “some kind of storm savant” as the Storm Par guy had put it. She was a researcher. He knew as much from Mrs. Carter telling him Kate had been going after a Ph.D, but this…
She was a problem solver who wanted to help people.
That ‘this is right’ feeling that he had felt when he’d met Boone, Lily, Dani, and Dexter finally clicked into place.
But it was too intense. Too much. He pushed the wrong button because he didn’t think about why she had abandoned the research she’d started.
It pained him to see her blame herself. He’d realized he’d been thinking of her like a storm coming into his life the way he saw storms. Beautiful, wild, and captivating.
And she saw saw herself as the storm that leveled towns and tore lives apart.
She wasn’t either. He saw it now. She was Kate, who could be beautiful and damaged at the same time.
Good thing he had picked up the pieces of a lot of storms. It was second nature now.
He retreated, aware that he’d done what he could and had to hope that was enough. Didn’t stop him from staring up at the ceiling as the storm rolled in during the early hours of the morning, sleep evading him even though he’d been up all night the night before too.
It was still pissing rain the next morning and Mrs. Carter plied him with more food before patting him on the shoulder and looking regretfully up the stairs that Kate had yet to come down.
His hat was the only thing keeping the torrents of rain coming down from blinding him as he walked to his truck. He didn’t even bother with his button down. Might as well try to keep it dry for later when he made it back to the others.
Kate knocking on his window jolted him out of the pouting funk he’d let settle over him during the short walk from the house.
He didn’t expect her to ask for his help, but he was glad she did. It meant he got to see her face when they plugged the data into his model and watched it do exactly what she wanted it to.
A swelling feeling started to tighten in his chest when she took him up on the offer to try her experiment again and continued to roil around like a cyclone of butterflies during the couple of hours to get to that storm west of Enid as she pilfered around his truck like it was the most fascinating thing she had ever seen.
He considered the truck something of an extension of himself, so he hoped that meant something good.
They found a funnel exactly where he thought it might be and he couldn’t help crowing out his excitement only to hear it echoed by Kate.
“She’s gorgeous.”
He turned and the feeling that had been building and building like a storm in his chest burst and then it was calm and delighted and he really was in love with her. It should have scared him, but he’d always had a strange relationship with fear.
The first experiment didn’t work.
It was frustrating. It should have worked. He wanted it to work for her.
She was on to something, he thought, thinking their model might be wrong. It was the latest data available, but it didn’t mean it was the best or a complete picture.
Kate called Javi.
Tyler was surprised when he showed up at the farm and he couldn’t help following her out onto the porch, just to let Javi and Scott know she wasn’t alone.
Maybe to rub it in their faces a little that she was with him now. He was possessive of his people, he knew that about himself.
The Storm Par data was impressive. It didn’t take but a minute to figure out the problem the old model wasn’t showing them.
Silver iodide rockets were the answer. And for that, he needed Boone.
Who wasn’t answering his phone.
He finally got ahold of Lily and had everyone meet them at the lot for a trailer dealer he’d found after some quick googling. By their calculations, they needed way more sodium polyacrylate than Kate’s old trailer could hold.
Kate flowed into the Wranglers like she had always been with them, getting Lily to set up data monitoring with Cairo while Tyler went to Boone with his proverbial hat in hand to apologize for disappearing for a few days.
He’d never, not even once, gone into a storm without Boone. He hadn’t even thought about it with Kate by his side, but now he felt an acrid regret.
The good thing was Boone was the type to forgive easy and Tyler could smooth the way with the promise of explosives.
Once they had a trailer and the barrels and the sodium iodide, Boone and Kate put their heads together to figure out how high they needed the rockets to go. He watched it all with a wide grin on his face. Dani bumped his shoulder on her way to climb up on the truck to help Kate load the silver iodide rockets while Boone filmed for the channel. He couldn’t stop his smile from growing even wider when she gave him that “I told you so” look.
They were going to tame a tornado that day. Everyone was smiling.