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Kate isn’t sure how she got from the car to the back of an ambulance, but she’s pretty sure the cowboy scientist sitting next to her had something to do with it.
“Hey,” she says, her voice unfamiliar and gravely.
“Hey,” he repeats. He has that same soft expression that he gave her after he and Javi hauled her the rest of the way out of the overturned truck. There’s still something pinched in his expression, something unfamiliar on his handsome face. It’s akin to how he looked just after the tornado passed, still crouched over her in the swimming pool. Fear? But something else too.
“Hi,” an unfamiliar voice shocks both of them out of their thoughts. The paramedic is standing at the opening of the ambulance, giving the two an amused look.
“Sir, can I get in there please?”
Tyler shoots up, a bashful look on his face. The sudden movement doesn’t agree with his injured leg and he sways, bracing his hands against the gurney.
“Can I get another medic over here,” The paramedic calls over her shoulder.
“I’m fine,” he starts to argue, but Kate gives him a pointed look that quiets his refusal.
“I’ll see you at the hospital,” he promises, dropping his head low to meet her face. For a second she thinks he’s going to kiss her.
He doesn’t. He just gives her a long glance before straightening and allowing the paramedic to help him out of the back where another is waiting.
Kate allows herself to fall back into unconsciousness as his figure disappears from view.
The next time she wakes up, she’s laying in a hospital bed, the familiar whir of machinery flinging her awake in a panic. She remembers this feeling from just after the F-5 that claimed the lives of her friends. Back then, she had remembered what had happened immediately, knew that they were all dead. That she wished she was too.
This time, however, it comes back slowly, in bursts of memories. Tyler’s leg trapped under the cable car. Javi appearing just as Jed had once to help lift the car away just enough. The movie theater. The feeling of letting go while strapped into Tyler’s car. No longer afraid of what was coming. Of what had finally caught up with her. The incredulity that she was alive. Tyler’s hand at the back of her neck, keeping her upright.
She was 90% sure everyone she cared about was alive and well this time, but she couldn’t help but look around the room nervously.
Her pulse slows when she sees the two men sleeping on the couch beneath the window. Tyler is leaning with his head back in an uncomfortable looking way.
His injured leg is propped up on the coffee table, a brace around his knee. Next to him, Boone is sleeping with his head on Tyler’s shoulder, snoring softly.
Kate smiles to herself, taking in the sight of the two men. Alive. Here.
Sleeping, Tyler looks younger. She realizes then she has no idea how old the man is. Doesn’t really know anything about him other than Arkansas and tornadoes and bull riding.
And that she’s 98% sure she’s falling in love with him.
As if her eyes were burning through his face, Tyler’s shoot open. When the pairs meet, he rises to his feet, causing Boone to fall over onto the now empty couch. Incredibly, he doesn’t wake as he repositions himself.
Tyler walks over to her slowly, noticeably limping.
“Your leg,” she tries to say. Her voice is even more hoarse than it had been earlier, like her lungs are full of dirt.
“Shh,” Tyler soothes her, reaching for the water on the bedside table. He lifts the straw to her lips and she takes a long sip. God, had water ever tasted this good?
“Better?”
She nods and when she tries to speak again, it comes out a little smoother.
“What’s the verdict?”
“On?”
She points to his leg.
“Aw, it’s just bruised to hell, nothing serious.”
“What’s the verdict on me?”
“Mild concussion, dehydrated, low blood sugar, a few scrapes,” he lists them off as if he’s memorized the doctor’s assessment of her.
“I’ll live?” She asks.
“Thank the stars.”
Slowly, she pulls herself up just enough to scoot over a little on the bed. Tyler raises an eyebrow at her.
“I don’t think you should be standing,” she tells him, patting the now empty space beside her.
“There’s an awful nice chair right here,” he counters.
“I don’t think you should be sitting so far away.”
She watches him taking a noticeable breath, as he lowers himself beside her, careful not to jostle any wires or bump against her too hard.
“I’m not made of glass, you know.”
“I beg to differ.”
Once he’s laying next to her above the covers, he reaches an armover to hold her around the shoulders. She immediately leans into his side, pressing the bridge of her nose into his throat. She can feel his breath catch, feel the muscles flex in his entire body.
“Your mom’s about thirty minutes out,” he says suddenly. She looks back up at him.
“Oh.”
“I called her when we got here. Figured she’d want to know you’re alive and also my truck isn’t exactly suitable at the moment to drive you home.”
“Your truck,” she says, realization hitting her as she looks up at him. “God, I’m sorry about the truck, Tyler.”
“Sorry for what?” He gives her a soft smile and runs an experimental finger down her cheek.
“I literally drove your car into a tornado.”
“That’s what it’s for darlin’. And don’t worry, it’s actually not in the worst shape. Just needs some glass replacement and such. Dexter and Dani are working on it.”
“So you’re not mad?”
“Mad? Nah, not about the truck.”
“Something else then?”
He catches her chin in his fingers to make her look him in the eyes again.
“You’re alive, so I can’t really be mad about anything. But if you were dead, I’d be pissed as hell.”
They stare at each other for a long moment. Kate isn’t sure what to say. Sorry? For saving everyone’s lives?
“Now I know why you did it and I know why you think you needed to do it alone.”
“Ty-”
“But next time you want to drive into an F-5, take me with you, okay?”
She lets out a watery laugh.
“I couldn’t…there…there was no time and your leg-”
“We don’t have to talk about it now,” he says, wiping a tear from her cheek.
“I couldn’t let anyone else die because of me,” she says in a low whisper. “Especially you.”
“Especially?” He beams. “Is that so?”
She shakes her head and settles back down on his chest.
“Well we definitely will be unpacking that statement later.”
The exhaustion catches up to Kate as she lays there tucked into Tyler’s warm body. His fingers stroking her hair and a song she can’t quite place humming on his lips.
She doesn’t even realize she’s fallen asleep until she wakes up again. Not in a panic this time, but slowly and softly. Like she’s resurfacing in a body of water.
Tyler is still next to her, fast asleep but somehow still holding her. She turns to the couch Boone had been on earlier and instead finds her mom. Cathay is holding a book, but obviously hasn’t been reading it as she smiles at her daughter.
Kate whispers “hi,”
“I figured you couldn’t be too injured if you were able to make room for the wrangler,” Cathy jokes.
Kate blushes as Tyler strengthens his hold on her. She knows her mom and her will definitely be talking about this later.
….
Kate is released in the morning after an overnight observation. She’s sore as hell and still mildly dizzy when she walks, but other than that she’s a “god-damned miracle” as one doctor put it.
Her mom drives her home. She’s scheduled to fly back to New York in two days
She resists the urge to ask Tyler to come with them. He’s busy dealing with the truck and making sure all the other wranglers are accounted for and know their next move.
“I’ll see you before you leave,” he promised her before she left the hospital. “That is, if you’re still thinking of leaving.”
“I have to,” she told him solemnly, “I have a job and an apartment to figure out. Not to mention this grants committee Javi set up.”
Javi had come to the hospital soon after her mom arrived. He was buzzing with excitement about her experiment working and where it could all lead.
“One step at a time,” she reminded him.
“You really are going to change the world,” he said incredulously. She saw then the flicker of what she had always seen those years ago. That Javi was a little bit in love with her. And maybe she too had been a little in love with him. Maybe she still was in the way that close friends can sometimes feel as intimate as lovers.
She spends the next 48 hours at her mom’s doing nothing but sleeping, eating, and showering. Something in the back of her mind is nagging her to get to work. To start running new tests and figure out what they can do with the data from the last tornado. But she knows there’s time. And if her mom found her in the barn doing anything, she’d be dragged back to bed.
She feels a little more like herself again when the morning of her departure rolls around. She doesn’t even look that worse for wear honestly.
When she hears the sound of a car pulling up the drive, excitement thrums in her veins.
She runs to her window, but instead of the red truck she yearns for, it’s a white StormPar vehicle she sees.
She knew Javi had said he’d drop her back off at the airport. Had promised he would since before she even came from New York. And Javi was nothing if not consistent and reliable.
She’s talking to Javi about the proposal when she hears a familiar voice cutting through the noise of the airport. She tries, she really does, to focus on what Javi is saying, but she can’t help the pull towards the man hurrying over to them.
Part of her wants to pull him to her, kiss him senseless and jump back in his car. But she knows she has to go back to New York, at least for a bit to get everything together. And kissing Tyler Owens would make it that much harder to go for now. So she teases him, gives him his own motto as encouragement for her return and heads into the airport.
She hasn’t even made it through security when a familiar presence is beside her. Neither of them say anything and she thinks, damn it, we have to kiss. This is the moment. But then the speakers inform them that all flights are delayed until further notice by the storms and Tyler is grabbing her suitcase before she can even think. They walk back out of the airport together, an unspoken plan passing between them.
And then she sees Tyler’s truck screwed into the pavement.
“What the hell?” She asks, but he’s running ahead of her to shoo off the airport attendant calling for a tow truck and a police officer.
“What did you do?” She asks when she catches up to him.
“You maniac!” The airline employee is yelling at Tyler.
“You see sir, I had to go in and do this whole grand gesture thing-”
“Grand gesture? You didn’t even say anything,” Kate muses.
“Well I would have if-”
“The police are on their way,” the no-nonsense man informs them.
In the end, the officers who arrive are familiar with Tyler and recognize Kate from news coverage of the El Reno tornado. He lets them off with a warning and a promise to pay for the damages to the road.
It’s only when they’re sitting in Tyler’s car, finally pulling out of the airport, that Kate realizes she doesn’t actually know what the plan is.
“Um, Ty?”
“Hmm?” He gives her a quick glance before returning his eyes to the road.
“Where exactly are we going?”
“Anywhere you want, darlin’.”
“I didn’t exactly have a plan,” she admits.
“Who does?”
“My flight is rescheduled for 5 AM tomorrow…we can’t go too far.”
“I know a place close by,” he says with a mischievous grin.
The place turns out to be an open field where they unpack the food they’d picked up on the way and eat on top of the car.
They checked the radar on the way over and whatever storm the airport thought was coming had dissipated to make way for a clear evening.
It feels so much like that first time they’d sat side by side eating sandwiches after her experiment had failed once again. So little time had passed between those two moments and yet also a lifetime had.
Tyler hadn’t exactly felt like a stranger back then. He never really did. But now he was so achingly familiar that it unnerved her how comfortable she was being beside him.
“Whatcha thinking about, Sepulpa?”
“Home,” she answers without thinking. He nods thoughtfully and takes a long sip of his beer.
When their takeout is finished, Kate leans her head on Tyler’s strong shoulder and takes in the setting sun.
“God, I love Oklahoma.”
“Me too,” he agrees, pressing an absent minded kiss to her head.
She really could stay here forever.
Eventually, the sun has set and the chill in the air prompts them to abandon their perch on the car.
“I’ve gotta be back at the airport in seven hours,” she reminds him when they get back in the truck.
“If only I could think of some way to pass the time,” Tyler teases. She rolls her eyes but allows herself to bury her face in his chest. It’s awkward, leaning over the center console, careful not to jostle any of the buttons and switches.
“I think we might be more comfortable in the back,” he offers and she pulls back, shooting him a warning look.
He raises his hands in innocence.
“I mean to sleep. You’ve got an early morning ahead of you.”
She waits as he goes to the back seat to pull out a worn looking duvet and two pillows. She can barely see him as he goes out back to lay them in the truck bed. When she finally creeps out to join him, he’s laying another blanket over the comforter and taps the truck bed invitingly.
“You do this a lot?” She asks.
“Sleep in my truck?”
“Try to impress girls by setting up this big romantic looking outdoor sleepover.”
“Well tell me how I’m doing and I just might make a habit of it.”
She bites back a smile and lets him help her up into the makeshift bed.
She’s surprised by how comfortable it actually is as she sinks into one of the pillows. Tyler climbs in beside her and rearranges the blankets to tuck her in snuggly.
“Comfy?”
She nods before undoing all his hard work to pull herself closer to him.
“No funny business,” she warns, even though she’s the one hitching a thigh over his leg to hold him like an oversized teddy bear.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
She doesn’t fall asleep immediately. She’s probably slept more in the last three days than in the last five years. Instead, she lets herself listen to the smooth beating of Tyler’s heart- counting the beats as if they were sheep.
She can tell when he finally falls asleep, his grip on her loosening a bit but not falling away.
“What am I gonna do?” She whispers into the night.
Tyler gets her to the airport with a respectable amount of time before his flight. Instead of dropping her off at the curb. He parks in the short term lot this time and walks her into the airport, insisting on holding her bag.
She turns to him as they approach the security line.
“Feels like we’ve been here before,” she muses.
“Yeah, I think I liked that ending better,” he says, reaching out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
“It’s not goodbye,” she promises.
“Definitely not,” he agrees.
They stare at each other for a long moment. Kate wants to memorize him. How he looks, how she feels with him.
She surprises herself when she reaches up to cup his face in her hands. His eyes briefly widen in surprise, and then meld into fondness.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “For everything. When I came back here I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know how to be here with all this history and guilt and fear. I think you fixed something in me.”
Something flashes in Tyler’s eyes and before she can talk herself out of it, she’s launching herself up to kiss him.
His mouth is warm and soft and everything she imagined it would be. He holds her gently around the hips, pulling their torsos together and god, it feels so good.
When she pulls back, she keeps her hands on his cheek, stroking the rough skin.
“Something to remember me by,” she quips.
“Oh I’m gonna need a whole lot more of that,” he laughs as their lips meet again.
…
When she returns to Oklahoma exactly 65 days since she left, it’s Tyler who is waiting for her at the bottom of the escalator. She erupts into a fit of giggles at the sign he’s holding in one hand: Tornado Tamer. The other hand is holding a small bouquet of wildflowers, no doubt picked from some poor unsuspecting yard.
She doesn’t think as she launches herself into his arms. He catches her easily, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to hold her.
“Hey, City Girl,” he whispers into her hair.
“Hey, cowboy.”
They leave the airport with her only carrying her little bouquet and a backpack. Tyler, on the other hand, is pulling two full sized suitcases plus another duffle bag over his shoulder. He had insisted on carrying the bags, but apparently hadn’t anticipated there could be more than one.
“Damn, Sepulpa, you really don’t travel light, do you?”
“Hey,” she swats at him, “I’ll have you know this is my entire life.”
He stops moving at this, eyes meeting hers.
“You’re back for good?”
“Or evil,” she says with a smirk.
“Hey, I’m serious,” he drops one of the handles to cradle her face. “You left New York?”
“I told you I was coming back,” she says, nuzzling her check into his rough palm. Savoring the feeling.
“Yeah, but you didn’t say you had officially uprooted your entire life and were coming back forever.”
“So you’re not happy?” She asks, though she knows the answer from the glint in his eyes and the smile on his face.
“Oh, no no no,” he shakes his head and picks up her bags again. “I’m ecstatic. In fact, this may be the best day of my life.”
“Asshole,” she mutters with a laugh as they continue out to his car.
…
It’s a good hour and a half drive to her mom’s house, but it passes quickly from conversation and the occasional sing-along. Even when they aren’t talking and the music is just playing low from the speakers, Kate feels more at ease than she has in two months. Despite almost dying in it, being in Tyler Owens car may be her favorite place on earth.
Cathy is out on the front porch when they arrive, waving and smiling. After mother and daughter give their hugs and Kate is already inside with the first of her bags, Cathy gives Tyler a long once-over.
“Thank you,” she says softly.
“If I recall, I begged you to let me be the one to pick her up, so I should be thanking you.”
“For bringing her home,” Cathy finishes and he knows she doesn’t just mean from the airport. He’s sure he can’t be the only reason she’s moved back from New York, but damn he’ll take even a sliver of credit for it.
There’s a moment of awkwardness after Kate is settled when Tyler isn’t sure what to do. He’d brought her home. Check. Carried the bags in. Check. He hadn’t planned any farther ahead than that.
He’s about to make some excuse as to why he has to get back to his place or meet up with the crew, when Cathy announces dinner is ready.
He’s still considering his goodbyes when she adds that it’s meatloaf. Damn, even the mother knows him too well.
At dinner, he watches Kate as she eats and chats happily with both of them. It’s a perfectly clear and cool night. When she shivers, he’s immediately removing his flannel and passing it to her under the table.
“How chivalrous,” Cathy quips.
“Well I am nothing if not a gentleman.”
“That’s why the guest room is already made up.”
Tyler chokes on his water and Kate lets out a strangled noise.
“What?” Cathy looks between the two of them. “I don’t care what y’all are doing, but this is a respectable house.”
“No, it’s not…” he looks between the two panicked. “I just assumed I’d head home tonight.”
“Why on earth would you do that?” Cathy asks just as Kate asks: “What?”
He can see in her eyes that the idea of him not staying the night had never even crossed her mind. He tucks this piece of information away with the other moments of her he still isn’t sure what to do with.
“I mean I want to stay,” he says quickly, “I just didn’t want to assume or intrude. It’s your first night back after all.”
“And we have a lot of work to do,” Kate says, all trace of her moments before panic gone.
“Right,” he nods slowly, “what kind of work exactly?”
An hour later, Tyler is standing in the barn with Kate and Javi, looking down at her laptop.
“So the grants committee wants these experiments done in the next year. We’ve got a lot to get ready before next season to make sure we have everything before the next season starts.”
Javi had shown up right after dinner and Tyler had tried his best not to stare at the long hug he and Kate shared. They’re friends, he reminded himself, he’s known her a hell of a lot longer than you have. They’re allowed to hug.
Javi had surprised Tyler by enveloping him in his own hug and a “What’s up, man?”
He guesses they kind of are friends now. They’d seen each other a few times after Kate left and had exchanged a few texts and emails. Javi wasn’t officially in the Tornado Wranglers, but he was adjacent with his new work.
“Well?”
Kate’s voice brings Tyler back to reality.
“Well,” he repeats, looking confused.
“Are you gonna call them up?”
“Them?” He repeats again like an idiot.
“Boone, Lily, all of them! Have you not been listening to anything?”
“Evidently,” he chuckles, he’s already clicking on Lily’s contact image.
“T!” She shouts through the phone. He can hear the others in the background and smiles.
“Hey, Li-”
“how’d it go?” She cuts him off. “Did you kiss her?”
Tyler nearly drops the phone. From the look of Kate and Javi’s faces, he knows they could hear her scream through the phone.
“Jesus, Lily,” he curses, walking a few steps away.
“At the airport! Did you kiss her? Did she swoon? Did you fuck?”
“When do you possibly think I would have had time to do all that?” He hisses into the phone.
“Ew, so that’s a no to all of the above?”
He ignores her.
“Lily, can you get everyone together to Kate’s mom’s in the morning? We’ve got work to do.”
He hears her whoop and then relay the plan to everyone else.
“See you lovebirds tomorrow,” she calls before hanging up.
When he walks back to the others, Javi has the decency to pretend to be busy reading something on the laptop. Kate offers him a shy smile.
“So….” she starts.
“Don’t say anything,” he pleads. She closes the distance between them and plays with a button on his shirt.
“So where was my airport kiss?” She asks playfully. In the corner, Javi is making a vomiting motion.
“Javi, you staying the night?” Tyler asks.
“Um, I can but-”
“Perfect. Guest rooms already made up.”
Kate screams as he swoops her into his arms bridal style and heads for her bedroom.
“Atta boy,” Javi chuckles, going back to his work.
…
The next few weeks go by in a blur of working with the wranglers, countless zoom meetings with investors and grantees, applications to return to PhD programs and other research institutes, and a lot of Tyler Owens.
At the end of each day, Kate’s exhausted and exhilarated. When they crawl into bed (whether it’s at her room at Cathy’s house, Tyler’s apartment in Little Rock, a motel, or the wrangler’s RV), she feels at peace.
“I love you,” she whispers into his mouth in the dark.
“God, I love you,” he replies as he pulls her down into himself.
She wonders how she could have missed all this for five years. But if she hadn’t left, would any of this had happened? Would she have met Tyler somewhere else somehow?
When she muses on this thought aloud he always says “yes” as fast as he can.
“How could I not have met you? Life wouldn’t make any sense.”
She smiles at the romance of it all but there had been a time he didn’t know her. So she tries not think about it too much. She did run away to New York but she did come back and met him and this was her life now.
And some nights, when she still feels Jeb around her, she cries. Not out of grief, but guilt. Guilt that she could ever feel for another person what she had felt for him. Except it isn’t really the same. She loved Jeb. She really did. She wouldn’t be surprised if they were married by now and she could have been happy with him for the rest of her life.
But this thing with Tyler…..as embarrassing as it is to even think, they really are like twin tornadoes. In sync to the point of her wondering if maybe they’re twins separated at birth who are also somehow six years apart. But then she shakes that weird semi-incestual thought from her head and admits to herself that maybe this really is what it’s just like to have a soul mate. A twin flame. She nauseates herself with these thoughts.
In the coming weeks, months, and years, there are close calls, long nights at now officially every motel in Oklahoma (as well as Arkansas, Alabama, and Kansas). There are broken ribs and cuts and scrapes and tears. But there is happiness. Smiles, laughter, heartbeats under ears, and kisses that remind them both just how alive they really are.
This is their life. And it’s more than Kate ever thought she deserved and more than Tyler ever thought he could attain.