Chapter Text
The screen in front of Kate shows the static image of a cold front sweeping down from the north, a warm tongue of Gulf of Mexico air reaching up over Texas. North-central Texas still carries some instability from the most recent storm system; when the new fronts collide, as they’re likely to do tomorrow, the possibility for spin is there.
It’s only early March, but that collision is going to spin off some nasty beauties. In her mind she sees the image shifting, crimson shapes curling into hook after hook after hook.
A knock on the glass of the Storm Prediction Center modeling room startles her. Javi, dressed sharp in a way she still has trouble connecting to her grad-school buddy who spent a good bit of time drunk or hungover, smiles at her from the doorway. “You going to skip this meeting, Kate?” he says.
“Oh, no. No.” But even as she collects a tablet, pen, and notebook, her gaze goes back to the static image of storm coming.
The conference room a few doors down is prepped, and Kate’s boss Dr. Cooper is already at the head of the table. Javi’s StormPar colleague Scott – whom Javi slapped back hard last year when he took control again of his company and his tech – sits, tightly wound and quiet, beside Coop. Kate’s colleague Mia, who oversees the budget for R&D, is across the table with her omnipresent laptop.
“There you are,” Coop says warmly. “Come on in. It’s partially your research that we’ll be testing, after all.”
Kate manages a smile and sits, as Javi slides into place across from her.
Javi’s in charge, though. He runs through the plans for merging StormPar data-collection with the deployment of Kate’s reagent during the next big system—
“Which will be here tomorrow,” Kate says, interrupting his flow. “Or, not here, but in north Texas. Haskell County, looks like.”
Javi grins at her. “Not that far! But it’s probably good that our, um, subcontractor is already close.”
Kate swallows hard. Tyler had come into town two days ago. They’d celebrated his return (after a week’s absence) with sex on the kitchen table and Doordashing from her favorite Tex-Mex place. Even here in this chilly conference room, she can feel his warm hands sliding up her thighs, moving her into place for his mouth.
Even here, safe, she can feel the battering of cyclone winds against the Tornado Wrangler truck outside El Reno, she can feel it coming in the hook after hook after hook. Even here, she has to push down panic.
Dr. Cooper clears his throat and asks Javi a question about protocol, and Mia follows up with budget questions. But Kate just sits there, making herself breathe, willing her hands not to shake.
“You’re off shift now, Kate,” Dr. Cooper says as the meeting ends, “but I have you on for tomorrow. That okay with you, or do you need to, er, take time off? Data to collect too?” He flicks a glance at Javi.
“You always got a place to ride along,” Javi says cheerfully, “in fact, more than one.”
She looks down. Empty notepad, blank tablet screen. Colors colliding, dark red into hook upon hook—“No, I’m good here.”
“Just let me know if you want to take a couple of days,” Dr. Cooper says as everyone troops out.
She doesn’t know what she wants. She really doesn’t.
Okay, that’s not entirely true. When she walks into the townhouse she leased after the New Year, she finds Tyler in the second bedroom, the one she uses – they use – as a study. Barefoot and wearing only jeans and an open flannel shirt, he’s standing at the desk she got him when she moved in, talking into a Zoom window. It’s not the Wranglers, she sees as she walks in. But it’s not really business attire, so—
“Hey, Kate.” He throws one of his brilliant smiles over his shoulder. “Just a minute more.”
“No, Ty, it’s all good,” the man on the screen says. He’s blandly handsome, like an aging frat guy. “I’ve got your instructions, I’ll rework the payroll like you say.”
“Thanks, D. Speak to you next week,” Tyler says, and ends the meeting.
“Hey, cowboy,” she says, striving for normal. The way she wraps around him in her hug, however, probably is a clue to how shaky she feels.
He hugs back, kisses her forehead, then eases her far enough away for him to scrutinize her. “You all right, baby?”
“Fine,” she says, and burrows back into him and his freshly showered smell, rubs her face against soft cotton and hard chest, wishes this moment would last. But it won’t. That storm is coming.
When she forces herself to step back, he’s got that worry-furrow between his eyes. “Where’s your Route 44?”
She stares at him blankly. She hadn’t even thought to stop at Sonic on her way home from work. She never misses that stop.
“Didn’t make happy hour,” she lies, then distractedly walks over to his laptop. The Zoom window is still up, and a couple of tabs. One of them says Five Year Plan.
Her Tyler, the man who rides freaking killer tornadoes, makes a Five Year Plan? It’s enough to jolt her out of the fresh panic that’s building.
“Kate, did something happen at work? Javi texted, said the meeting went fine, so…”
“Everything’s great,” she says, and turns back around to him. “How ‘bout you? When are the Tornado Wranglers getting here? I’m guessing you’re heading out soon to the storms in Texas.”
“Tomorrow morning.” He smiles. “You coming too, Sapulpa? Nobody can read the sky like you can.”
“No. Gotta work on my dissertation,” she says. It’s not entirely a lie. She’s connected back in with the OU Meteorology Department – which is in the same building as where she works, right back where she started – and found a professor willing to be her adviser. The research into the reagent, the failure six years ago and the success last summer, was enough to get her back into the program; she was ABD, anyway, so Dr. Borrego is supervising the manuscript where she explains her process. She’s got a tentative date to defend in May.
Tyler rolls toward her, takes her in. “Now how are you going to work on that when your best editor is out of town?”
He means himself, and in fact he’s great at providing feedback on her work. After all, he’s ABD too; he left academia after his PhD adviser at Arkansas basically stole his data on wind shear. But he doesn’t want to finish, he’s told her. He is making his own road.
She thinks of that red truck bouncing through a field, heading toward a bad wind, and her face crumples.
“Kate,” he says now, soft but commanding, and pulls her over to the couch on the far wall. She goes, because she feels like he’s the only one who can keep her from spinning out into the storm.
Once they’re cuddled up, she closes her eyes. “Talk to me, Tyler, please. Talk me through it.”
She hears his concern. “Storm bothering you, baby?”
“Tell you later,” she says.
His low chuckle tickles her ear, but he takes the cue. “You have something special you want to know?”
She wants to know his why. She wants to know his plans. But that’s too heavy, too much, for her fear right now. “Who were you talking to when I came in?”
“Oh, D. Derek, my accountant. Buddy from college, he’s kept the books for the Wranglers since the jump.”
She smiles against his shirt. “But I heard you say ‘instructions.’”
“Gotta use my MBA, baby. I work my own business plan,” he says, and goes on to talk about his new podcast with other chasers and its revenue stream, the new Youtube series on drones and their tricks that Boone and Lily are running on the channel and its revenue stream. The details make sense, once she remembers that Tyler’s swagger is not all he is. “So anyway,” he finishes, with a kiss on her temple, “we got enough to give all the team a raise and bump up the contributions to the retirement funds.”
“That’s nice,” she says, still holding on, eyes still closed. “Have you told everybody?”
“I’ll tell them tomorrow.” His hand strokes up and down her arm, and it’s comfort, but it’s also warming her up. She’s a sucker for Tyler’s hands.
But that makes her think of the cold in the conference room, of panic and moving images of destruction, and she doesn’t want to think about that right now. So she reaches up and finds his mouth, opens them both up, begins the dance.
He kisses back deeply, then pulls back far enough to say, “What do you need, baby?”
“You,” she says, and falls back against the cushions, his weight protecting her. Wind can’t get her here.
Clothes come off. Hands and mouths map each other: the spot on her neck that makes her moan, the spot right beside her clit she likes better than direct pressure; a bite on his collarbone, a stroke on the underside of his cock. They know each other this way, the highways and backroads of their wanting. He rolls, he lifts her so she’s on top, he helps her slide down. They come together, like they’ve done a hundred times. In the aftermath there’s no damage.
As they shower together, however, her fears come back. He must feel the tension as he soaps her back, but he doesn’t say anything then. He waits until they’re dry and getting ready to fix dinner from the leftovers she has in the freezer. As he sets the table, he says quietly, “It’s later, baby. What’s really wrong?”
“The storm system. It’s…it’s going to be a bad one. More than one cyclone,” she says, and presses Start on the microwave. The leftover enchiladas begin to spin. She sees hook upon hook upon hook as the food rotates.
“Yes. I thought the same,” he says. He pours water in the glasses he’s filled with ice. He waits for her answer.
“Tyler,” she says, and then the microwave beeps.
She doesn’t answer until they’re sitting down. As he cuts his first forkful, she says, “I’m worried about you. And Javi, and the team, but…I’m scared.”
“After last summer, I’m not surprised,” he says, and takes a bite. He’s still waiting.
“I can see it coming,” she says. “And you’ve planned, we’ve planned, and I know you’re ready for the next test of the reagent. But it scares the hell out of me, all the same.”
He puts his fork down. “Are you asking me not to chase?”
“No. You feel it, you chase it.” She can’t quite pull off a smile. “But what I feel isn’t something… I don’t know how to go forward.”
His eyes are so focused on hers. “Aren’t we going forward now? Together, here?”
“I think so, but I don’t know when the wind is going to change,” she says.
But then his phone goes off – Lily with an update on their plans to arrive in Oklahoma, Boone chiming in to say that he’s bringing Tyler’s chasing truck. Javi calls five minutes later to coordinate departure times. It’s going to be early so that they’re in place before the cold front gets the party started.
She eats three bites of her enchilada, then pushes her plate away.
She gets a couple calls of her own from work, then an email from Dr. Borrego asking her if she’s going into the field tomorrow. She doesn’t answer them. She clears away her stuff and then goes into the living room, wraps herself up, clicks on the TV. Not the Weather Channel, not tonight, although she knows that Tyler is likely to do a call-in to their headquarters tomorrow when he’s chasing.
He’s moving around in the bedroom, then goes into the study for a few minutes before he joins her. “Move over, Sapulpa,” he says, and takes control of the throw so they’re both covered, and puts his bare feet up on the coffee table. “What are we watching?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, holding onto him. She feels his chest rise and fall on his soft sigh before he clicks to some show they’ve been watching together on Netflix.
They go to bed early. He’s set his alarm for 4:45, and she’s worn out by all her damn stupid anxiety. They don’t have sex, but he spoons her, holds her still and warm. She thinks of Jeb in the underpass, she thinks of Tyler hanging onto her in Stillwater, and she wriggles around so that they’re connected face to face. She wants to see him if she wakes in the night.
But somehow she misses when his alarm goes off. She doesn’t wake up until he kisses her, his new-shower scent reaching her in the midst of bad dreams. The bedroom is a hazy block of light from the open hallway door. “Gotta go, Kate,” he says softly.
“Come back to me,” she says groggily, her arms reaching for him.
“Count on it.” He kisses her again, there in the circle of her arms, before he gently detaches himself. “I’ll text, I’ll call.” His grin is a slash of white in the dimness. “And you can always watch the livestream.”
“Shut up, Tyler,” she says, and rolls over to bury her face in his pillow. It’s half a joke. It’s half a way to hide ridiculous tears.
After he leaves, though, she gets up. The bed’s too cold without him.
Once she makes herself some tea, she goes into the study – to do work, she tells herself, but it’s really to check the radar. Beside her laptop, however, there’s a new sheet of paper. It’s headed “Five Year Plan.”
Tyler saw where she was looking, she realizes, and then she reads the first item on the list.
Kate, it says. That’s all. That’s enough.
It’s like when he swerved the truck that first time to head into the storm. She feels wind battering at her, she doesn’t have the wheel. She says “Shit!” very loudly.
But she also understands better where and why she’s heading this way, and damn him, damn him, he isn’t going anywhere without her.
It’s not until she’s almost out the door, showered and dressed, a change of clothes thrown into her backpack, that she checks the radar. The front’s moving faster. The spin’s going to be a beast.
She’s got to catch up to him before he goes in without her.