Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Oklahoma was flat. It stretched out in front of their car with undulating fields of corn and wheat. There was undeniable beauty around them, but he knew better than anyone how brutal the weather could be. Freddy Wentworth’s new pickup truck rumbled along the rough-but-paved road. He saw the signs for their destination and unconsciously sped up.

Louisa glanced at him from the passenger seat. She reached out automatically and put a hand on his knee. “Are you nervous?” she asked. She was frustratingly astute when it came to his emotions. 

Sometimes he loved it. But most of the time…

He glanced at her, and the pinched, worried look disappeared from his face for a moment as he gave her the boyish smile she had fallen in love with. “No, honey. I’m just a little tired.”

Louisa’s mobile brows furrowed briefly, but she chased this expression away with a smile of her own. “It just…seems like maybe you’re nervous.” She sighed. Maybe she was reading too much into his tense silence because she was a bundle of nerves. She cleared her throat. “Do you think she’ll be there?”

“If I know Anne, she’ll be there. I bet she’s dragged her entire department out into the field. Especially on a day like today.”

Louisa glanced out the window. It was one of those overcast days that was still bright enough for sunglasses, but aside from the fact that it was a little windy, she couldn’t see anything that made the day special. Other than the purpose for their trip, of course.

“But she said she’d give you the ring, right?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She heard the slight hesitation in his voice. Looking back, it should have been her first clue.

But, as usual, her thoughts were interrupted by her cell phone ringing. She fished it out of her purse and flipped it open. “Louisa Musgrove,” she said in her clipped, professional tone. She always tamped down her Southern accent when she was on a call with a patient.

Freddy reached for her hand and kissed it gently. She gave him a brief smile before dealing with her patient’s latest crisis.

The car turned onto a dirt road, and she marveled at the way he maneuvered the truck over the massive potholes. It was like he knew every inch of the little country lane—or he had no fear of ruining the suspension on his new vehicle. It spoke to a recklessness that Louisa hadn’t witnessed in him before. 

Then again, the moment he stepped out of the car, he seemed like a different person entirely.

Half a dozen people rushed towards the car, and voices overlapped as they cried out to greet Freddy Wentworth. It was a welcome fit for a returning hero. One young man in particular—a heavy-set guy with shoulder-length blonde hair—called Freddy “The Extreme.” It seemed to Louisa like she’d been forgotten entirely, as Freddy embraced each person or gave them friendly slaps on the back. She straightened her white linen pantsuit and walked forward with a wide smile on her face. After all, this wasn’t really about her. Not particularly. 

The blonde-haired man was the last one to hug Freddy, and his light blue eyes drifted over her boyfriend’s shoulder towards her. It was only then that Freddy turned and said, “Oh, I’d like you to meet Louisa. Louisa, this is James Benwick. He’s been chasing storms with us since the beginning.” Before she could exchange a word with the man, Freddy turned back to James and said, “Where’s Anne?”

James, who had been eyeing Louisa with a curious sort of look on his face, turned and pointed to a line of mismatched vans, all outfitted with expensive-looking equipment. “She’s over by the doppler. It keeps breaking down, and we’re running out of grant money.”

Louisa had a lot of questions for her boyfriend, but Freddy just asked her to “hang out over here for a minute” before he kissed her cheek and turned to walk away. “And James, why don’t you explain to Louisa…why you are the way you are?” he said with a teasing smile to his friend.

James did a goofy sort of hop step before reaching for Louisa’s hand and grabbing it. He let out an equally goofy laugh, and it was clear that this James fellow was a bit of a clown. She didn’t protest as he guided her towards a slightly dirty RV nearby. Louisa’s eyes followed Freddy, and she saw that he was making a bee-line towards the tallest and most tech-outfitted van, where a young woman appeared from behind a large satellite on top. The tall, slim figure had to be Anne Elliot.

“Anne is going to wig when she sees he’s back,” James said under his breath.

As if in response to this, Freddy shouted, “I’m not back!” But the effect was diminished when another figure rushed forward and shouted, “the prodigal son returns!” Freddy looked annoyed by this, too.

Freddy had said in no uncertain terms that he was done with this storm chasing business. But he just looked so at home among these people.

Her attention was drawn back to the man beside her. Strangely, it didn’t feel awkward when she realized he was still holding her hand. It actually grounded her a bit. “Sorry, what was that?” she said, blushing a little when she realized he was staring at her expectantly. He had said something but she hadn’t heard a single word.

“I said you’ll probably be here for a while, so you should take a load off.”

Louisa nodded and allowed him to lead her inside the RV. She knew what he meant. This was supposed to be a quick visit—purely transactional. But Anne and Freddy had a mountain of history between them. As much as he didn’t talk about Anne, Louisa could read between the lines. She knew that this was going to be complicated.

“Make yourself at home,” James said as he helped her step up into the cramped RV. He let go of her hand to shift a pile of papers off of a camping chair. “And you can call me Jim. Everyone calls me that. Or Slim Jim, which is, you know…ironic,” he said with heavy sarcasm, making a vague gesture towards his stocky physique.

“I don’t think that’s very nice,” she said automatically. She couldn’t help herself. Therapy was in her blood.

He waved a hand dismissively. “We keep things light here.”

She hummed and glanced around inside his RV, taking stock. A home said a lot about a person, and clearly this RV was Jim’s place of residence. It was cluttered, but it functioned as both living and working space. Still, his personality shone through. Beneath the piles of paper, books, and technological instruments she couldn’t name, she saw novels and a few action figures here and there (there was a He-Man toy sticking out of a nearby drawer). And since the anxiety of this trip and its destination had been eating at her insides all day, she just decided to put her focus elsewhere. And Jim was awfully distracting—from his loud choice of clothes (a tie-dye shirt, green cargo pants, and a baseball cap emblazoned with the Ghostbusters logo) to the music blaring from his TV set.

He bounced along to the beat and mimed playing the air guitar. This managed to make Louisa laugh. Yes, it was easy to be distracted by Jim.

Freddy, meanwhile, found himself taking a steadying breath and counting backwards from 10 (something Louisa had taught him—it was a therapy technique). His eyes were transfixed by the sight of Anne on top of the van. She had taken her usual button-down top off and tied it around her waist. The white undershirt was pristine. It was clearly new, since storm chasing was hardly a clean job. 

“Hey, Anne,” he said.

He watched as her body froze at the sound of his voice. Her head was still partially obscured behind the doppler dish, but when she stood up, she had a carefree smile on her face. 

“Freddy! Hi!” she said brightly. 

“How are you?” he asked, his gray eyes gazing up at her from his position on the ground.

She used to love the color of his eyes. Like the sky just before a storm. Right now, she felt fidgety under his direct gaze. “Did you hear the sky today?” she asked, cleverly avoiding his question. And she knew him well enough to realize it would work. Storm chasing was in his blood.

He looked towards the horizon, where a dark storm cloud was spreading steadily across the sky. It had been creeping up on him all day—that feeling that something big was about to happen. And more than just seeing Anne again, he felt an unexpected wave of excitement at the prospect of seeing a tornado today. He either had the best timing in the world or the worst. 

He saw a flash of lightning and felt the distant rumble of thunder. “Yeah, she’s really talking,” he said, with a hint of chagrin in his voice. Because he knew what Anne and their— her team were about to embark on.

Anne grabbed a coiled cable by her foot and tossed it at him, only bothering to say “Catch” after it had hit him in the face. She hopped down from the roof of the van. “They say it’s going to be the biggest series of storms in 12 years. Lined up, one after the other. N.S.S.L. says they’ve never seen anything like it.” She walked around him and straight to the computer consoles, where she could examine the initial doppler radar readings. 

“Is that right?” he said, but his tone was far from intrigued. He had a purpose for this visit, after all. And it wasn’t storms. “So, Anne. About the ring…”

“Hey, Anne? Got a second?” It was Beltzer, their tech wizard as they called him, and he was excitedly gesturing for her to join him at his own van.

She wasn’t mad about the distraction, but Freddy was. Especially since everyone seemed to think he was back in business. That he was here to stay. They talked to him like he was going on the chase with them, and that was decidedly not the case. 

Anne could see the agony on his face, and so she decided to put him out of his misery. For a little while, at least. “So, you’re here for the ring after all?”

He shrugged. “I drove all the way out here, didn’t I?”

“I’ve got it in my truck somewhere.”

“Good. Let’s see it.”

She scoffed. “You need it right this second?” She gestured to the equipment, the vans, and the waiting crew (who had retreated a respectable distance to give the former couple some privacy). 

“It would be nice,” he said. 

She turned her attention to the console in front of her, wiggling a few wires and connections to make herself look busy. “What’s the urgency? You act like you’re getting married right away.”

“I am.”

Anne stopped fiddling with the wires. She met his gaze, and it felt as though they were each trying to say something without speaking. But without knowing what else to say, she just replied, “Wow. Is it…Lisa?”

“Louisa.”

“Wasn’t there a Lisa in there somewhere?”

He sighed, especially when she turned and walked off towards her truck. He knew she was stalling, but he didn’t know why. And it wasn’t just because of the storms, either. “There’s only been Louisa since you.”

“Wow, not much for browsing, are you?”

“No, I guess I’m not.”

She ignored the pointed note to his voice and pretended to search the glovebox of her car. What she actually did was to pull her class ring off of her right hand and cram it over the engagement ring she was still wearing. She had turned it upside down to hide the diamond, which was probably why Freddy hadn’t noticed (not that he was extremely observant when it came to jewelry). Something inside her stubbornly refused to give it up. Not yet. Not until she could safely remove it without giving away the fact that she had been wearing the ring nonstop since their breakup nearly 5 years ago. 

“Here you go,” she said, pulling a velvet ring box from the car and handing it to him.

But instead of pocketing it like she expected, he actually opened it. And then he just gave her a sardonic look. “Anne.”

“Oh, is it not there? I guess I left it at home.”

He ran a hand down his face. He was still just as handsome as he’d been 5 years ago. His voice still soothed her and distracted her like no other. “Anne, I was hoping we could just come here, be done with this, and then go.”

Her heart sank. “We? She’s here ?”

“Yes, she’s here. She’s over with Jim. Now, would you please just tell me where the ring is?”

“You left her with Jim? What’s the matter with you? He’s going to talk nonstop. The poor woman.” She spun on her heel and walked away.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to meet her.” 

He sighed. Why was she being so difficult? It was just a damn engagement ring. He called after her, but she wasn’t listening. 

She moved at her usual determined pace. She was above average in height and had a powerful gait. Sometimes Freddy, who was tall and well built, could hardly keep up. Right now, he was practically running.

As expected, Jim was talking Louisa’s ear off. But Freddy’s fiance didn’t look annoyed so much as confused.

“It’s called the suck zone,” Jim was overheard saying.

“The—what?” she said, laughing a little.

“The suck zone. The point at which the twister just…sucks you up.” He made a swirling gesture with his hand. “It’s not the technical term for it, obviously, but—”

“Hi.”

Louisa jumped when she realized the woman from the top of the van was standing in front of her. Jim couldn’t help glancing back and forth between the two women. It was clear that Freddy didn’t have a type—or he’d responded to his heartbreak over Anne by running in the opposite direction. Louisa had chin-length curly brown hair and was petite, whereas Anne was strikingly tall with long, sandy blonde hair and green eyes.

“I’m Anne Elliot,” she said, extending a hand.

“Louisa Musgrove,” she replied, shaking it.

Anne had a lovely smile on her face as she said, “Freddy’s just told me the happy news.”

“Which?” Louisa said automatically.

Freddy grunted. “Us. Marriage.”

Louisa felt a wave of mortification. She had to blame her shattered nerves for her momentary lapse. She laughed. “Right. Yes! Thank you so much.”

“It’s happy news,” Anne added with a smile that looked as forced as Louisa’s laugh had been.

Jim was simply watching the exchange from the driver’s seat of his RV. He wished he had a bucket of popcorn for this display of awkwardness.

“I guess it seems kind of sudden,” Louisa said, though she didn’t know why she had said it. Maybe she had sensed the tension rolling off of Anne in waves, despite her outward appearance of friendliness.

Anne turned her head with a curious look. “Sudden?”

“Well, because Freddy and I have only been dating 6 months. And you two were together for a long time.” Louisa knew she was rambling. She could feel it. 

“You two getting hitched?” Jim interjected. “Congrats, man!”

Louisa ignored this. “We just wanted to get it done before Frederick started his new job.”

“Oh, that’s right. He’s going to be a weatherman,” Anne said with the slightest smirk at the corner of her mouth.

Freddy narrowed his eyes at Anne. “What was that?”

“I said you’re going to be a weatherman. What’s the matter with that?”

“No, you had that tone!”

“There’s no tone. If you have a problem with being a weatherman—”

“I don’t have a problem with it.”

Louisa and Jim watched this exchange with mild amusement and dismay (though Jim was the only one smiling). Just then, Louisa’s mobile phone rang. 

She extended the antenna and answered the call. “Dr. Louisa Musgrove,” she said, and before Freddy could turn to leave, she grabbed his arm and gestured to her left ring finger. The ring , she mouthed.

“I know,” he whispered. “I’m trying .”

Louisa was distracted by the rush of words that reached her over the phone. It was her sister Henrietta, who was abusing her family privilege to bend Louisa’s ear for every little problem she had with her husband. “Wait, slow down. I’m not sure that having a sexual fantasy is a problem. Can you tell me exactly what he wanted you to do with the uniform?”

There was a suppressed snort, and she glanced up with flushed cheeks to realize Jim Benwick was watching her with a keen expression.

“Uh—just a second,” Louisa said before turning to leave. She didn’t know why she did it, but some impulse caused her to grab the He-Man figure and toss it at Jim, which narrowly missed hitting him in the face. She even stuck her tongue out at him before leaving the RV. Jim’s eyes were wide with surprise, but he didn’t look angry. More like…intrigued.

Freddy was getting more annoyed at Anne, especially when she was keen to change the subject. She immediately honed in on his new vehicle.

“New truck?” she asked, gesturing to the red Dodge Ram pickup. 

“Yes. Anne—”

“New truck, new job, new wife. It’s like a whole new you,” she said, tapping her knuckles on the hood of the car.

“Anne…” he tried again.

“This is very awkward,” she finally blurted out, running a hand under her bangs. She had cut her hair differently so it framed her tall forehead. He liked it, actually. It suited her. 

And then her words finally sank in. “I know,” he said with a ghost of an apology. “Tell me about it.”

“I thought you’d be coming out here alone.”

“I wasn’t expecting on coming out here at all. You said you’d meet me—”

“It’s about Dorothy,” she interjected. She knew this was the only way to get him to stay, and she was right.

“She’s here?” he said, his blue eyes sparking to life for the first time since he’d arrived. When she nodded, he reached out on impulse and grabbed her arm. “Show me.”

Louisa managed to hang up the call with her sister and slumped down into a lawn chair outside the RV. She happened to catch this exchange at the same time Jim did, when he was looking through the front window. He exited the RV and joined her under the polka dot umbrella he’d set up to protect his fair skin from the sun. His farmer’s tan was looking worse than ever, and he was going to be beet-red on his cheeks and nose tomorrow. He could feel it. His eyes followed Louisa’s gaze to Anne and Freddy’s retreating figures. Freddy didn’t drop his hand from Anne’s arm for several seconds. Too long to be friendly.

When he glanced back, he was sure he saw unshed tears in Louisa’s eyes. But she just turned to him with her chin held high. She was a proud woman. “Tell me more about the suck zone,” she said.

“Gladly.” He smiled, but it wasn’t his usual goofy grin. There was a little bit of pity there that Louisa didn’t like at all.

Chapter Text

Louisa found Jim’s voice soothing. He had a way of talking that was exaggerated and flowery, almost poetic at times. But she couldn’t help her therapeutic instincts. 

He was mid-sentence talking about how cartoons depicted tornadoes when she suddenly asked, “What’s your love life like? I mean, as a storm chaser, you can’t be devoting a lot of time to someone special, can you?”

Jim blinked at her for a moment. His eyes were on the small side, but they were no less expressive. He was smiling again, but she had to wonder if he was hiding the emotion welling up in his blue eyes. “No one at the moment.”

Hmm. Louisa could sense there was certainly more to that story. 

He leaned closer, wiggling his sandy blonde eyebrows at her. “So, you’re asking if I’m single?”

She rolled her eyes. This man clearly used humor as a defense mechanism. 

But without warning, he grabbed her hand again and insisted on taking her for a walking tour of the equipment. She didn’t pull away. Once again, she was struck with the level of comfort she felt with this strange man. 

Jim’s tour took them close to a yellow pickup truck, where Freddy was currently examining a large metal canister with a Dorothy Gale sticker on the side. It had all sorts of wires and gadgets attached to it, but Freddy looked at the object like he was a kid in a candy store.

“I thought you’d want to be here for her first time out,” Anne was saying as she smiled up at him. “It wouldn’t be right if you weren’t here.”

The two of them just looked at each other, and it was Jim who interjected to say, “The Extreme!” He dropped Louisa’s hand to give Freddy a double finger-gun salute. “It’s Freddy’s concept, you know.” He gestured to the metal canister, as if Louisa should be impressed. 

She mustered a smile despite the fact that she didn’t understand the significance.

“I helped a little,” Freddy said with a humble smile.

“Wow, it is great,” Louisa said, and then she cleared her throat and added, “...what is it?”

Freddy paused, and it was as if a hush fell over the grassy field. But Louisa refused to feel embarrassed. How was she supposed to know this stuff if Freddy never told her? He placed a a hand on top of the canister and said, “It’s an instrument pack for studying tornadoes. The first one in history.”

“It’s very exciting,” Anne added, her eyes shining. “Scientists have been studying tornadoes, but still—nobody knows how a tornado works. We have no idea what is going on inside because nobody has been able to take scientific measurements from inside the funnel. That’s what she’s going to do.”

Again, Louisa felt no shame with her lack of understanding. “How?” she asked.

“We put her up inside a tornado. She opens,” Anne paused to slam her hand against a button. The clear lid flew open and nearly smacked Freddy in the face. “And she releases hundreds of these sensors that measure all parts of the tornado simultaneously.” She held one up for Louisa to see.

The other workers (and Louisa counted at least 6, not including Jim who was standing beside her) had gathered around the truck. Their eyes were upturned towards Anne and Freddy as if they were a pair of roadside preachers spreading the Good Word. 

Freddy continued, and his manner was almost rehearsed, as if he and Anne had given this presentation dozens of times. “You see, Louisa, it’s like this. These sensors go up into the tornado and simultaneously radio back information about the internal structure. Wind velocities, flow, asymmetries—we could learn more in 30 seconds than they have in the last 30 years. We get a profile of a tornado for the first time.”

Louisa nodded, but she wanted to know more. She was a naturally curious person, and since this was the first time she was hearing any of this from her own fiance, she had to know. “And what will that do?”

“If we knew how a tornado really worked, we could design an advanced warning system,” he said.

“Aren’t there already tornado warnings?” At her question, several of the workers, including Jim, shook their heads. Well, this was obviously a huge gap in Louisa’s knowledge.

Freddy started to talk, but Anne spoke over him. “They’re not good enough. They’re nowhere near good enough. Right now, it’s 3 minutes. If we can get this new information out there, we can increase warning time to 15 minutes.”

“Give people a chance to get to safety,” he added. “At least, that’s what these guys are trying to do.” When he turned and faced the others, shouts and cries of excitement went through the gathered group. Just like a tent revival.

“I can’t believe you guys actually did it,” Freddy added with a wide smile.

Anne was helped down from the truck, and Freddy jumped down beside her. “ We did it,” Anne said, smiling at him.

Louisa walked over to interrupt this litter interlude with another question. “How do you get it in the tornado?”

Freddy hesitated, almost as if he didn't want to tell her. “You’ve got to get in front of the tornado and get in the damage path…and then get out again before it picks you up, too.”

Jim leaned over to Louisa and said into her ear, “It’s the suck zone.”

She turned to him, realizing he was near enough to almost touch noses. “Oh,” was all she could manage.

A young woman by the name of Haynes rushed over and said, “We have major action! N.S.S.L. says the cap is breaking. Tower’s going 30 miles up the dry line.”

A flurry of activity broke out at that pronouncement, and Louisa had no idea what any of it meant. 

Anne looked at Freddy for a long moment. Something unspoken passed between them, and when he dropped her gaze, she realized he wasn’t coming.

“Alright, guys. Let's get a move on!” Anne cried as everyone ran around packing up their expensive equipment and tossing it into various vehicles.

Jim was struggling to get his umbrella and chairs put away, and he eventually just threw them in his RV with reckless abandon. Freddy walked over to Louisa and took her hand. He was gripping her a little too tightly, and she wondered if he was fighting the urge to run into the fray and join his comrades. 

He caught the uncertainty in her gaze and began to speak, but it sounded more like a pep rally for himself than anything else. “They can handle this. This is what they do. They live for this.”

Louisa didn't need her masters degree in psychology to untangle what he really meant. She could see the eagerness in his eyes, the way he watched everyone as they started their engines and roared away from the campsite.

“Are you sure you don’t wanna go along?” she asked him.

“They’ll be fine.” But his eyes followed Anne’s yellow truck as she drove Dorothy away. There were three other Dorothies spread out across the 5 vehicles. 

She breathed a sigh. She couldn't force him to do something if he insisted he didn't want to. “Well, did you get the ring, at least?” Louisa asked.

“Aw, shit!”

“You didn’t get it?” She had a sinking feeling in her gut. She had hoped this would be a quick visit, especially with how chummy Anne and Freddy were acting. The bickering was even worse than their little motivational science-y talk in the back of the pickup truck.

“If we hurry we can still catch her!” he declared, and he dragged her along as they raced to the red truck.

Beltzer leaned his head out of his own truck and shouted, “Hey, Freddy! Glad you’re back!”

“I’m not back!”

But Louisa could feel his excitement only growing as they jumped into the truck and raced after the caravan.

“Once we catch up with her, you take the truck and head home. I’ll get the ring and see you tonight, okay?” he said as he revved the engine.

But Louisa didn’t want to leave his side. “No, you know what? I find this kind of interesting. I’m gonna tag along.”

Freddy was about to protest, but a black minivan pulled up beside them. It had a huge satellite attached to the top. The van met their speed and remained next to them, and Freddy locked eyes with the passenger—a handsome man with a mean look on his face. The two of them nodded in acknowledgement, but it was hardly friendly.

“William Elliot. Son of a bitch,” Freddy said through clenched teeth.

“Elliot? Is he related to—?”

“No relation to Anne. Or, maybe distantly. Shit .”

“Who is he?”

“He’s a nightcrawler. We all started in the same lab, but he went out and got himself some corporate sponsors. He’s in it for the money, not the science. He’s got a lot of high-tech gadgets but no instincts.”

She watched as William’s minivan sped up, but it was followed by three others just like it, all with expensive looking equipment mounted to the top. 

She put her hand on Freddy’s arm, not liking the pinched, worried look on his face. “He doesn’t have Dorothy,” she assured him. 

He gave her a relieved smile before picking up the receiver of a HAM radio. She definitely didn’t remember that being installed. Its mere existence meant that one of Anne’s team had put it there, thinking that The Extreme was back in business. He was on the crew again. Louisa bit her tongue and listened while he switched frequencies.

“Hey, Anne. Come back,” he said.

“Hey. You change your mind?” she replied.

“Yeah,” he said, quite without thinking. Anne felt like he meant it, too. “What’s William doing here?”

There was a pause. “I’m not sure, but I bet he’s asking himself the same question about you.”

Louisa felt like she was missing something—a key piece of the puzzle. What was it about Freddy that made him so extreme? She loved him dearly, but he was hardly the spontaneous type. He could be passionate, when the occasion called for it, but there was a new sort of drive and determination she was witnessing in him for the first time. Some aspect of his personality that had, until now, been hidden from her. The therapist in her was intrigued. But the woman in her was pissed off.

A horn was honking insistently behind them, and Freddy glanced back in time to see a massive utility van riding their tail. Freddy moved over, but the van was taking up way too much room on the barely-one-lane road and was clearly not going to rest until it had caught up with William’s caravan. Freddy swerved a little too hard, sending the truck reeling up the side of the embankment and into a metal pole that was lying on the ground. Some farmer had been in the midst of repairing his barbed wire fencing, and he was in for a surprise. The wire wrapped around the axle, and they were lurched to a sudden halt. They heard the unmistakable hiss of air escaping the rear tire, too. 

Freddy let out a string of curse words and slammed his hands on the steering wheel. He jumped out of the car and used some wire cutters from a toolbox in the back to free his car from the barbed wire. He radioed Anne to say they needed to make a pit stop, and they limped along for half a mile before reaching a small diner and mechanic shop. Louisa excused herself to the bathroom while the mechanic checked to make sure there was no serious damage to anything other than the tire. 

Freddy, meanwhile, was still fuming. It didn’t help that apparently William’s caravan had decided to make a stop, too. He was just contemplating walking over there and offering a truce to his former coworker when he overheard something.

“How many lives can be spared with an early warning system?” William was saying. He was looking into a camera, and it was only then that Freddy noticed the TV news station van. “Well, D.O.T. 3 is the answer. The first digital orthographic telemeter. And inside, she holds hundreds of these little sensors.” He stepped aside, and Freddy was able to see an almost exact replica of his Dorothy design. 

Anne, who had been watching him from the corner of her eye, caught the way Freddy’s hands balled into fists. “Hey!” she cried, trying to get his attention. “Freddy, don’t even think about it.” 

But he wasn’t listening. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he shouted at her. 

He marched himself across the road and made a bee-line for William. As soon as he was within striking distance, he swatted William’s ball cap off of his head. Onlookers gasped, and Freddy shouted in the other man’s face, “You son of a bitch! You think I wasn’t going to find out about this?”

Anne and her crew rushed over and grabbed at Freddy to keep him from going in for a punch. William was furious, but there was a gleam in his eyes, knowing that the cameras were picking up everything. 

“You stole my design. You stole Dorothy!” Freddy continued.

“You want to take credit for my design?” William retorted.

“You’re a damn liar! She was our idea, and you know it!”

“Unrealized idea. Unrealized .”

“That ain’t worth shit!” Freddy lunged towards him again, but Anne stepped in between them.

“Could you get a grip, please?” she said, leveling Freddy with a hard gaze. “We all know he won’t get this thing up in the air.”

William was not to be outdone, not with the cameras still rolling. “Oh, really? Well, let me enlighten you people. This thing has comm-link, and it has onboard pulse doppler. Today, we’re gonna make history.” He turned his steely gaze to Freddy. “Stick around, because your days of sniffin’ the dirt are over.”

“We’ll see who gets there first,” Freddy muttered.

William turned back to offer one last retort. “Oh, and by the way, I really enjoy your weather reports.”

“You slime!” Freddy said, taking another leap towards William, but Anne and Jim held him back.

Louisa caught the tail end of the commotion as she exited the mechanic shop’s filthy bathroom. She was just bemoaning the small oil stain she managed to get on her new white pantsuit when she heard Freddy shouting. 

She raced across the road in time to hear Anne saying, “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

Freddy, who had been walking furiously away from her, spun around to face her again. “One day. I’ll give you one day . Whether she flies or not, I’m gone.”

Anne didn’t have a chance to respond. Louisa interjected at that moment. “What’s going on?”

He plastered a tight smile on his face. “Everything’s fine, honey.” And then he asked her to go into the diner and get some cold drinks for them. He needed to cool off for a minute by himself, anyway. 

He walked a few feet away from the parking lot and stared out at the open fields and sky in front of him. He heard the distant rumble of thunder. There was a certain smell in the air, a particular dance with the way the wind was kicking his pants legs back and forth. It was a sign of trouble not far behind, and he couldn’t help putting a parallel between the oncoming storms and his own muddied thoughts. His insides burned with anger about William's theft of their design - years of hard work that the man was just piggy-backing onto, getting his 15 minutes of fame. Freddy was more determined than ever to get Dorothy off the ground first. And then he thought about Louisa in her perfectly white suit. He thought about their reasons for coming here, and his insistence that he would not get involved in another storm chase. But here was another woman in white that was on his mind. Anne…the way she had looked standing between himself and William. The fire in her eyes. It had almost felt like old times again.

Get a damn grip , he chided himself. He bent down and grabbed a handful of dirt, letting it sift through his fingers and dance through the wind on its way down. 

Louisa stood at the checkout counter of the diner and asked for two lemonades to go. She watched with a bit of surprise as the lady behind the counter began to make fresh-squeezed lemonade. It was a nice, homey touch in the bustling diner, situated in the middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma. Louisa’s ears perked up when she heard Anne’s voice behind her.

“You’re sharing information with me?” 

William crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m just curious, given the fact that the storms are going to be much worse than we anticipated…which way you and your team will be heading.”

She paused. “Southeast. Towards the counter.”

Something was nagging at Louisa. A lot of somethings—especially when Anne stood near her at the counter. 

Anne shook her head and caught Louisa’s curious gaze. “That man is going to wait to see where Freddy goes.”

Louisa already had a suspicion that she only knew the tip of the iceberg when it came to Freddy and tornadoes, but she had to ask anyway. “Why?”

“He’s…well, he’s a genius when it comes to storms. Almost like he can read their minds or something,” Anne said with a shrug that was far from nonchalant.

“You’re saying he knows what a storm is thinking?”

“Something like that. My aunt always called him a human barometer.”

Louisa frowned. “He’s never really told me about any of this.”

Anne’s mouth thinned into a tight line. But what she said didn’t match the pensive look on her face. “If you need to pee, you should go now. We won’t be stopping for a while.”

Louisa just watched the other woman with a keen, piercing gaze. Dr. Louisa Musgrove had the softest brown eyes, but there was a sharpness to them. If a gaze could have a tone, hers was scrutinizing Anne at that particular moment. “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”

Anne was counting out cash for her coffee, but she froze. “Check, please,” she asked the lady behind the counter.

“Not that I blame you,” Louisa added. “I just hope this isn’t some desperate attempt to keep him in your life.”

Anne didn’t know what to say. And so, she just grabbed Louisa’s check from the counter and paid for both of their drinks. With that, she just turned and left the diner. 

Louisa took a moment. She counted backwards from 10. And then she grabbed her drinks and left the diner with her head held high. She was determined not to give up yet. Only, the moment she ran into Freddy, all hell seemed to be breaking loose again.

“We need to go,” was all he said.

“Greenage!” Jim added in an excited tone as he rushed past them, pointing at the sky, which had turned a sickly shade of sage.

“What—what?” Louisa spluttered, still holding the two lemonades in her hand.

“I need you to follow behind us in the truck. You’ll be right behind Jim, but I have to ride with Anne.” He jogged away, clapping his hands as if rallying his troops. “Okay, people, let’s go!”

“Where’re we goin’?” Louisa shouted, her East Tennessee drawl slipping out in her sudden panic. 

But Freddy didn’t answer. He just raced up to the yellow pickup truck with Dorothy 1 in the back and snatched the keys from Anne. “Thanks, I’ll drive,” he said. She stood there for a stunned moment before racing around to the passenger side with a barely concealed smile.

Chapter Text

Louisa managed to leave the lemonades on top of the truck. She heard them slip down and splash on the pavement as she raced to catch up with the caravan that was moving at a rapid pace. The radio on the dashboard was abuzz with activity. Voices conversed about what route they were taking and a bunch of other technical terms Louisa didn’t understand. But one thing she heard loud and clear was music blaring from the loudspeakers on Jim’s RV. It was “Child in Time” by Deep Purple. Despite the chaos of the situation, Louisa let out a soft laugh as Jim leaned his head out the window and whooped and hollered with excitement. These people really did “live for this,” as Freddy had put it.

Her phone rang, and she was doing her damndest not to run off the road as she answered it. 

“Oh, hello, Donald,” she said, recognizing the morose tone of the caller immediately.

She was still on call, which was intensely annoying, but she pushed her own struggles aside in an attempt at being professional with her client.

“This feeling of inadequacy is coming from you. Julia doesn’t resent you,” she said, cradling the phone against her cheek and shoulder as she attempted to turn the radio volume down. All she managed to do was switch frequencies so she was listening to someone hum along to the “William Tell Overture.” She had to raise her voice to be heard. “Donald, we’ve been over this. She did not marry your penis. Alright, she didn’t only marry your penis.” She slapped the radio, and suddenly she was privy to a very different conversation.

At the head of the group, the silence was almost deafening in Anne’s truck. And so, she decided to fill that silence with something. “So…” she began.“Amazing coloring, isn’t it?”

Freddy was relieved they were talking about the weather. “Yeah, look at that mammatus,” he said, commenting on the cloud formations high above them. 

There was another long pause. “So, does she work at the station? Is that where you met her?”

“Anne, I don’t want to fight.”

“I’m not fighting. I’m talking.”

“I don’t want to fight.”

Anne rolled her eyes. She wasn’t trying to pick a fight, honestly. “She’s nice,” she added.

He just grunted in reply.

She turned to him with an incredulous look. “What? She’s not nice?”

“I know what you meant. Don’t do this.”

Anne threw her hands in the air as if in mock surrender. “I’m making extremely civilized conversation here, and you’re biting my head off. Jesus!”

He sighed. “Yes. She’s very nice. And no, she does not work at the station. She’s a…she’s a therapist.”

“Oh,” Anne said, though she was clearly trying not to say something else. There was a long pause, and she decided to say it anyway. “Was she yours?”

“Christ. You couldn’t resist, could you?”

“I’m not saying you need therapy.”

“That’s exactly what you’re saying!” They started talking over each other until Freddy (accurately) called her out on her bullshit. Because that was exactly what she was saying. “You’re the one with the doctorate. You tell me. What would I need therapy for?”

“I don’t know, maybe…an inability to finish things? Rushing into things you can’t quite commit to?”

“Commitment?” he scoffed.

“You asked me!”

“That is such bullshit. I may have walked out, but you’re the one who never asked me to stay. You never had the slightest idea—”

“Would you watch the road?” she demanded, when he started to drift towards the shoulder.

“You never bothered to tell me what you wanted. You just kept it all to yourself until it was too late.”

Anne swallowed the rush of guilt and shame as she shouted, “Well, what I want right now is for you to watch the damn road!”

He cursed and immediately swerved to avoid a tractor parked on the side of the road.

The inside of the car was silent for approximately five seconds before Anne spoke again. “You should really warn her about your temper. She clearly has no idea what she’s getting herself into.”

“Stay the hell out of it.”

Inside Jim’s RV, he had switched off his music to listen to the much more entertaining argument happening between the former lovers. And which was being broadcast on a channel that any one of them could tune into. “They’re getting better at this,” he said aloud, as if diagnosing a situation he knew all too well. And then he felt a twist of guilt in the pit of his stomach—even though he wasn’t really the one who was going to be in trouble after all of this was over.

He lifted his receiver and said, “Come back, Louisa.”

She jumped and ended up dropping her mobile phone somewhere in the recesses of the car seat. She wasn’t too sad about that, though. But she was totally lost on how to operate the radio.

“Frequency 15. Use the dial on the right,” Jim added.

Louisa turned it. She fumbled with the receiver until she had the right button pressed down. “Is everything alright?” she asked.

There was a pause. “I was going to ask you the same question.”

Well, where should she fucking begin? For one thing, she was hurtling down a road in the middle of Oklahoma, chasing a tornado with a bunch of adrenaline-junkie-scientists. Her future fiancé was at the head of the group arguing with his ex-fiancé, and Louisa (and presumably the whole team) was privy to their entire conversation. “Is this a private line?” she asked, unsure how these sorts of things worked.

“Not really.”

“Then, I’m fantastic ,” she said with heavy sarcasm.

“Hang in there, kid,” he replied, a smile in his voice.

And for some reason, Louisa liked this even less than the pitying look he’d given her earlier. She was a grown-ass woman who knew how to handle herself. But one thing she hadn’t anticipated was Anne Elliot and the hold she still had over Freddy. Perhaps it was self-sabotage, but she flicked the dial back to the frequency for the yellow pickup truck.

The silence between Anne and Freddy was once again palpable. She couldn’t help herself.  “You know what, as long as you’re happy,” she added softly.

“Thank you. I am happy,” he said, a bit too forcefully. “I’m happy with my life. I’m happy with the way things are going in my life. I’m happy with—with—”

“Louisa.”

“I know her name! I’m happy with Louisa.”

“You look happy.”

“I am!”

Someone cut in on the radio with a terse tone. “Are you two going to wrap this up soon?” he asked. It was the one they called “Rabbit” for whatever reason. The one with all the maps.

“What?” Freddy all but shouted in reply.

“Oh, nothing. Just wondering if we were going to chase this tornado or catch the next one.”

Freddy let out a string of curse words, and the radio was abuzz with people yelling instructions. Louisa just followed as best she could, especially when Jim’s RV made a sharp left turn onto a dirt road. When she briefly lost sight of them, she rolled down her window and followed the sounds of Van Halen blaring from Jim’s loudspeakers. It was a nifty little trick of his, actually. But her heart pounded in her chest when she saw the tornado making its way across a nearby field. She hoped to God that Freddy was nowhere near it.

In reality, Anne was doing her best to get herself and Freddy as close to the tornado as possible. Another argument broke out between them about getting past the fence and into the open field next to them. They had a very small window of time before they lost track of the destruction path of the tornado that had just formed a few miles away. 

“Do you wanna drive?” Freddy spat.

“Yes, actually, I do,” Anne said in a calm voice. She insisted that he follow her advice and turn through an opening in the fence, but he was strangely reluctant to do so. He was either being stubborn or…well, there was only one other possibility.

Anne almost grabbed the wheel, but Freddy gently put out a hand to stop her. “Just hold on a minute!” he said.

She watched him for a moment. She saw the way the muscle in his jaw was twitching. He held onto the wheel with a white-knuckled grip. “Have you lost your nerve?”

Freddy scoffed. “Tighten your seatbelt,” he said, reaching out and yanking on the belt across her hips. 

With that, he hit the accelerator and sent the truck flying through a brief opening in the wooden fence line. Anne was holding her breath as they careened over the rough dirt. She couldn’t help staring at him. There was something about Freddy Wentworth being reckless that she just couldn’t resist.

But the feeling faded when she realized he’d basically trapped them in some sort of dirt drainage ditch. The sides were too high and made of loose soil, and so he couldn’t get the truck out and into the open field.

“Can you get us out of here, please? Sometime this week would be great,” Anne said.

“I’m trying!”

There was a pause while he swerved again, but no luck. He just sped up and hoped that this ditch ended soon, because the tornado was closing in on them. 

It wasn’t the time to ask. They were bouncing over the uneven ground in pursuit of a force of nature. Still, she said, “Are you mad?”

“I’ll be mad later. Right now, I’m trying not to kill us!”

She watched through the rear window as the tornado suddenly ripped through two corn silos and demolished a small barn. 

“It’s coming right towards you guys!” Jim was shouting.

“It’s starting to turn,” Anne said, her gut sinking. 

It was Beltzer’s turn to shout, “You’re too close. Get out of there!”

The drainage ditch suddenly dropped in elevation as water pooled at the bottom. It was too steep to get out of, and now they were starting to spray mud up both sides of the little truck. He hit the brakes, but it barely slowed them down as they started sliding in the mud.

“This was a great idea!” he shouted at her.

Anne just held on for dear life, watching as a small bridge loomed ahead of them. He couldn’t slow down, and so they just braced themselves for impact. The hood of the truck slammed into the wooden beam of the bridge, and they came to an abrupt halt. 

“See? That wasn’t too bad,” Anne said, having to shout over the roar of the tornado that was way too close for comfort. It was just on the other side of the ditch, swirling and throwing debris everywhere.

“Why can’t we spend a normal day together?” he shouted as they both jumped out of the truck and moved towards Dorothy. 

Anne didn’t listen to him. She was too busy loosening the straps on Dorothy. Freddy turned, and that was when he saw the tornado heading directly for them. He grabbed Anne around the waist before she could climb into the truck. As predicted, she put up a fight. She insisted they still had time, but Freddy wasn’t about to let her get sucked into a tornado alongside Dorothy. She was way more valuable than the equipment. 

She went unwillingly and braced herself against one of the beams of the bridge beside Freddy. But her own curiosity coudln’t be satiated. The wind whipped everything around them, and she could feel the unmistakable power of the tornado as it loomed closer, mere feet away from the bed of the truck. She released her hold of the bridge and started crawling towards the entrance.

Freddy tried to pull her back, but she was bound and determined. “I want to see it!” she screamed. 

He used all of his strength to yank her back into the safety of the bridge—and just in time, too. The back tires of the truck began to shake and lift off of the ground. The wooden planks over their head shook themselves free of their nails, bouncing and clattering together in a terrible dance. Debris hit the side of the truck with enough force to leave dents in the metal. He pressed his back against Anne’s, pinning her to the wooden post as the wind roared around them like some sort of monster. 

They heard the squeal of metal behind them but didn’t dare turn around. They shut their eyes as mud, dirt, and debris flew around them, scratching any exposed skin raw. 

And just as suddenly as it began, it was over. Like someone had flicked a light switch.

Silence, except for Anne and Freddy’s frantic breathing. He moved away from her and watched the last tendrils of the cyclone disappearing into the clouds above them. 

“It’s gone,” he said.

Anne looked behind them, her eyes wide. “Where’s my truck?”

Louisa, who was only just now catching up to the caravan, was just gasping at the sight of the ruined barn and corn silos when—something massive landed in the road directly in front of her. She screamed and swerved, narrowly missing the twisted hunk of metal that used to be Anne’s yellow truck. She came to a screeching halt within inches of Jim’s parked RV. 

It took several seconds for her brain to catch up with her body. She was trembling and whimpering intermittently. The driver’s side door swung open, but it wasn’t Freddy who greeted her. It was Jim. He helped her down and was suddenly cradling her face in his wide, warm hands. “Are you okay?” But instead of offering words of comfort, his full lips stretched into the biggest smile imaginable. “You just missed that truck. That was awesome !”

She wasn’t sure how awesome it was that she had almost died. She wanted to tell him he was crazy, but all she could do in her addled state of mind was put her hand over his and try to stop hyperventilating. There was something so grounding about his presence. And then she was sent into another tailspin of panic when she saw Freddy.

“Oh, my God, what happened to you?” she shrieked, seeing that he was covered from head to toe in mud. It was only then that she realized part of her fear was that he had been inside the truck that almost killed her. But then she saw Anne clambering up the hillside, looking in even worse condition than Freddy.

He assured her that he was fine and pulled her in for a tight hug. But Freddy’s eyes watched Anne as she walked over to the destroyed truck. He caught her gaze, and he saw the worry in her eyes. Dorothy 1 was probably destroyed.

“Hey, but look at the bright side,” Jim said. “At least we know she can fly!”

Anne didn’t find this amusing at all. It took her less than a minute to look at her poor upturned and battered truck to know that there was no salvaging the equipment. The small, sphere-shaped sensors littered the ground, and the sides of the metal canister were completely destroyed. 

“The auto club is here,” Jim announced, as William and his posse of sleek black minivans rumbled down the road.

William’s driver, Jonas, was overheard asking if they should stop to help. But William just smirked and shook his head. Jim spent plenty of energy taunting William’s crew for having missed the tornado entirely, but Anne’s heart wasn’t in it to find it amusing. Instead, she kicked the back window of her truck until it shattered. She grabbed her backpack from the rear seat and allowed her gaze to land on Freddy’s truck.

He caught the pensive look in her eyes, and he knew this only spelled trouble.

“Have you got full coverage on that truck?” Anne asked.

Freddy gave her a tight smile. “Liability only.”

“It’s a very pretty truck.”

“Thank you,” Louisa said automatically.

Freddy just shook his head with that stupid smile still on his face. “Don’t even think about it. No way.”

Anne stood to her full height. 

And that was all it took. In less than 15 minutes, Dorothy 2 was strapped in the truck bed of Freddy’s new car. Louisa was relegated to the backseat. It made sense, in a way, because she wasn’t as good (i.e. reckless) of a driver as Freddy, and Anne needed to be near the radio.

But when Jim asked to speak to the boss, both of them reached for the radio. Multiple times, their hands overlapping as they tried to out-nice the other person.

Louisa resisted the urge to roll her eyes. These two needed some serious therapy.

Chapter Text

7 YEARS AGO, 1989

She heard a knock on the door to the camper and sprang to her feet. She didn’t remember falling asleep.

“You okay?” Jim said as a form of greeting.

“Yeah. Why?” Anne said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

He frowned. “You were crying out.”

She shook her head, hoping it would clear her head. “I passed out for a bit. It was just a nightmare.”

Jim nodded. His small eyes studied her face. “The same one as always?”

“Yeah.” She swallowed hard. She hated how much hold that dream had over her life. But not everyone could boast about surviving an F-5 tornado, especially since it had come at a heavy cost. Losing her mother was one of them. The other was the memory of that night that plagued her constantly. 

But, like usual, she just shook herself and stuffed these feelings deep inside. She allowed the grief and fear to motivate her. It was the driving factor of her life, and she guessed it was the biggest price she had to pay. Tornados terrified and fascinated her at the same time.

“How’s our new recruit?” Anne said, gesturing with her chin to the beat-up Volvo at the rear of the caravan. “I’m not sure I trust him.”

Jim just looked at her in that irritating way—like he was peering into her head. “You get along with everybody. Why is this one so different?”

She didn’t want to tell him the truth, which was that she hadn’t stopped thinking about the new guy since he showed up on her aunt’s farm. He got under her skin like no one else. He was devilishly handsome, and she felt an instant connection she’d never experienced with another living soul. Aside from her aunt Meg, of course. She turned away to hide the flush in her cheeks. “Well, he was drunk for starters.”

“Tipsy, at best.”

“He threw a can of beer at a tornado, Jim!”

“He’s ‘The Extreme!’”

“Oh, God. You’ve already given him a nickname?” Anne sighed, realizing that her crew of wanna-be storm chasers had already accepted this Frederick Wentworth character into the fold. “Fine. He stays, but on a trial basis.”

Jim grinned at her and changed the topic. “Hey, did you get in touch with Frankie?”

“She said to give her a call back when you get a chance. She didn’t sound happy.”

Jim fished around in his pocket for loose change for the payphone nearby. “Ah, I’ll send her some flowers, and she’ll forget she was mad at me.”

Anne regarded him carefully. “You’ve been working too hard. Maybe you should sit this one out?”

“One last storm. I promise.”

She bit back the urge to argue with him again as he ambled down the street. If the gorgeous, sweet-natured Frances Harville couldn’t convince him to stay home for one season, then there was nothing Anne could do, either. She turned back to the line of cars and walked towards a man staring off towards the horizon. He cut a rather dashing figure against the endless picturesque farmland around them.

“Did you hear the sky today?” Freddy said, before he even turned around. He seemed to always know when she was nearby.

She blinked at him. “Yeah, she’s really talking.”

Freddy smiled. “You sure it’s okay if I tag along? Seems like it could be fun.”

Anne cleared her throat to hide the fact that her heart was beating its way out of her chest. There was something so magnetic about that boyish grin of his. “Just no more insane stunts like the other day, okay?”

He held his hands up in mock surrender. “I will be the perfect gentleman.”

Less than an hour later, they were yelling at each other about who was the better driver. It was the beginning of the end for both of them. Completely in love but maddeningly stubborn about it.

—

PRESENT DAY, 1996

Jim kept his eyes on the red truck at the head of the caravan. He could see the faint outline of Louisa’s curly head bouncing up and down in the backseat. For the second time since he started chasing storms, he felt a sudden rush of anxiety that he couldn’t ignore. It was oddly reminiscent of those first terrible days back on the job after losing Frankie, when he had been in the muck and mire of self-blame. Back then, he had punished himself by pushing even harder, doing more, not stopping for breath. He was almost as bad as Anne had been after breaking things off with Freddy. 

At the moment, the anxiety was eating away at him so much that he couldn’t even hide behind his goofy, carefree persona.

He had tried to convince Louisa to ride with him—short of bribing her. Well, he had offered her a stale donut, but she was clearly the type of person who was critical of every bite that passed her lips. In a fit of helplessness, he insisted on loaning her his lucky goggles (a very expensive piece of protective eyewear that Frankie had given him and which he was never without). 

Louisa was wearing them around her neck in the lead car of their caravan. She had thought it was silly at the time, but given Freddy’s erratic driving (and the palpable tension between him and Anne), she was actually grateful for Jim’s kind gesture. 

Besides, they were heading straight for the next string of tornadoes brewing a few miles away. 

Like clockwork, William Elliot’s crew of matching cars whizzed past them. William looked smug as he darted by Freddy’s truck. But Freddy took one look at the sky and knew the storm was going to veer off. He didn’t need all of William’s fancy equipment to tell him what he knew in his bones. What the storm was telling him as the wind shifted.

Without warning, he took a sudden right turn down a dirt road. Rabbit was furiously trying to keep up as Anne informed them of the new trajectory.

“The battle zone is east of 81,” Anne said.

Jim’s anxiety turned to fear when he heard the tone of Louisa’s voice on the radio. “Battle zone? What’s going on?”

God, she had no clue . She shouldn’t even be here. Jim was pissed off with Freddy, for more reasons than one.

Freddy glanced back at Louisa with a restrained look. “We’re going again.”

“ Again ? But you almost got yourselves killed back there!”

“No, that was just a close call,” he said with that stupid smile he wore when he was hiding something. 

Maybe Louisa should have taken Jim up on his offer to ride in the RV. Almost getting crushed by a truck falling from the sky was one thing. But actually driving into the destruction path of a tornado was a different scenario entirely. Still, she was stubbornly holding onto the hope that if she stayed close to Freddy, she’d be there to witness when he finally got the rest of this storm-chasing business out of his system.

Anne leaned across the center console and stared pointedly at the speedometer in the truck. She heaved a dramatic sigh. Freddy frowned at her, and without a word, he put his foot on the accelerator. Louisa glanced back and forth between them. She had just been privy to an entirely unspoken conversation. Only people with the deepest connections could do that. Louisa gazed out the window and hoped this last storm would get Anne out of Freddy’s system, too. 

The radio was abuzz with activity once again, but she noted that there was no music blaring from Jim’s RV. She didn’t find this comforting. It seemed that they really were gearing up for battle.

The wind was picking up outside, whipping a sudden spray of rain against the windshield. Freddy was going almost 80 miles an hour. Rabbit, Beltzer, and Jim said they couldn’t keep up. And when Freddy turned sharply onto a poor excuse for a road, they were lost from sight completely. Suddenly, Louisa saw the cyclone nearby. It had formed over a manmade lake that was situated on either side of the roadway. The water was rolling and undulating with the force of the tornado.

“We’re in the core,” Anne said. 

The cyclone split and paired off into two identical tornadoes.

“We’ve got sisters,” Freddy said.

They were in awe—while Louisa was barely keeping her shit together. 

She nearly jumped out of her seat when her phone rang, and despite the madness of the situation, she answered it. Her client was hysterical. Louisa tried to calm her down, but it was difficult in the present circumstances.

Anne’s heart was pounding with anticipation, especially when Freddy sent the car speeding at over 100 miles an hour.

“Julia, I know you’re upset. You’ve just gotta breathe. We both just gotta breathe!” Louisa was saying, more to herself than her poor client.

Debris was whizzing around them. A shape flew past the front of the truck in a blur of black and white.

“Cow,” Anne said in a matter-of-fact tone.

“I—I gotta go, Julia. We got cows!” Louisa hung up the phone and gripped the back of the seat.

Another black and white blur breezed past them going the opposite direction. “Another cow,” Anne said.

“Actually, I think that was the same one,” Freddy replied.

Anne gasped when she saw a third cyclone coming towards them from the opposite side of the road. “Get us out of here. Floor it!”

“I’m trying!” he shouted back. It seemed to be his favorite phrase today. 

The two sisters joined together again and made a bee-line towards them on the road. Freddy slammed on the brakes. He hit reverse but stopped just as suddenly when he saw the third cyclone coming towards them, too—pulled in by the force of the much larger cyclone next to them. They were suddenly caught directly between the two of them. It wasn’t large enough to lift the car into the air, but the force of getting caught in the middle sent the truck in a wild spin with its tires still on the ground.

Louisa probably screamed, but she didn’t really remember, because all they could hear was the roar of the unforgivable storm raging around them. 

And as with most storms, it was over just as quickly as it had begun. The wind died down, and the truck finally came to a slow stop. The storm had spun them in a complete circle, so they were back where they started. 

Louisa’s head was spinning. She was breathing heavily and struggled to come to terms with the fact that they had survived being inside an actual tornado. While Louisa was fighting off a panic attack, Freddy and Anne took one look at each other and burst into laughter. Quick as a flash, they exited the car and jumped onto the muddy road. 

“Did you see that?” Anne declared excitedly.

“It was incredible!” Freddy added, pulling her into a hug and spinning her around briefly.

Louisa, meanwhile, was trying to get out of the car, but her knees were so wobbly that she had to grip onto the side of the truck to stay upright. She was so distracted that she didn’t even realize the rest of the caravan had finally caught up with them. She had a sudden rush of deja-vu as Jim appeared in front of her. Only, this time, he didn’t grab her face. He really wanted to, but he didn’t. He just stood there, looking less excited than everyone else (who was whooping and hollering alongside Anne and Freddy, like they were conquering heroes). He had seen the tail end of the event, and he was out of breath from having sprinted to the truck.

“You okay?” he said quietly. Jim was rarely quiet, and this was what finally snapped Louisa back to reality.

She swallowed and stared at him. But she could only manage to say, “There was a cow.”

He chuckled, and she felt a rush of relief at the sound.

She felt emboldened to add, “Maybe these are lucky, after all.” She started to remove the goggles, but he stopped her with one hand on her arm.

“Nah, you can keep them. You need them more than I do, if you’re going to keep riding with Freddy.”

Her eyes drifted to the crowd of people around Anne and Freddy while they recounted the story in tandem.

“We were right in the middle of it!” Anne was saying.

It was Louisa’s turn to grab Jim’s hand. She felt a sudden need for the comfort this small gesture provided as he led them over to the group. It still didn’t strike her as odd that it wasn’t Freddy who had the same comforting effect on her, even when he hugged her and apologized for putting her through the ordeal. 

“Hey, we couldn’t help noticing how close we are to Wakita,” Rabbit said, in an off-handed manner. But from the covert looks being passed around the crew, this was clearly staged for Anne’s benefit.

Anne, who was in the bed of the truck examining Dorothy 2 for any damages, turned around to discover her entire crew looking up at her with expectant faces. “No,” was all she said.

“We crave sustenance,” Jim said, and he seemed to be back to his goofy persona once more as he exchanged some sort of secret handshake with Rabbit.

“We are not invading my aunt.”

“Food!” Jim declared. The others joined in the chant.

“We are absolutely not going!” Anne protested. But to no avail.

In 5 minutes, they were all packed up and heading towards Margaret Russell’s farmstead on the edge of town. 

Louisa was glad of the distraction. The drive to Meg’s was quiet, aside from the friendly chatter on the radio. She didn’t bother trying to make polite conversation, and neither did Anne or Freddy, who weren’t looking at each other. Louisa even switched off her phone. She was taking herself out of commission for the rest of the day—especially if she was going to be spun around in the middle of a tornado again. She shuddered.

However, she was surprised when they reached the farm. She had expected rolling pastures, wooden fences, and plenty of livestock. Instead, they pulled down a long, twisting driveway and ended up at a historic farmhouse with a full wrap-around porch. Instead of livestock, the front and side yards were covered in art. Massive, mixed media sculptures made of old farm equipment, broken pieces of ceramic, and welded metal that moved gracefully in the wind. It was a gorgeous addition to an already lovely property.

They pulled up to the house, and there was a sudden rush of greetings and hugs being passed around. Meg was overjoyed to see Freddy and was bending his ear about her newest art installations. Anne was pulled into a side hug, and Meg seemed reluctant to let go of her niece, especially when she caught sight of something in Anne’s expression that caused her to frown briefly. But moments later, she was back to her warm, welcoming self as she turned and hugged each one of Anne’s crew. 

Louisa was a little lost in all the chaos, but Jim was right beside her. “Get ready to eat the best food you’ve ever tasted,” he said in her ear. 

And since Freddy had been ushered inside to get cleaned up, it was left to Jim to introduce Louisa to the woman that everyone called “Aunt Meg,” since she treated everyone like family. 

And Louisa was no exception. “I’m a hugger,” Meg said, pulling the younger woman into a crushing embrace. “Now, get inside before Jim eats all the food.”

“That was one time , Aunt Meg. You know I eat when I’m depressed.”

Aunt Meg narrowed her steely gray eyes at him. “You must be depressed all the time, then,” she teased, poking at his belly.

“Hey, I like food, and I won’t apologize for it,” Jim said, but the tips of his ears were a bit pink. It was hard to hide it with his pale complexion.

She grinned at him. "Nor should you. But if you’re not going to help cook, the least you could do is sit and enjoy the weather before it changes,” Meg said with a loving scold as she gestured to the rocking chairs nearby. With that, she escorted herself inside.

The screen door slammed, but Louisa didn’t open it. She was normally an outgoing sort of person, but given the emotions of the past few hours, she was feeling completely drained. Besides, Freddy was upstairs taking a shower, which left her alone with a bunch of relative strangers. She paused at the screen door as she listened to the noisy cross-chatter happening inside.

“No, in a severe lightning storm, you want to grab your ankles and stick your butt up in the air.”

“He’s right. If you’re going to get hit, it’s the safest orifice.”

“Yeah, I’d like to get hit by lightning once. Just to see what it’s like.”

“Hey, this is real, fresh-squeezed lemonade. I’m moving in here, Aunt Meg!”

Louisa turned away and jumped when she collided with Jim.

“Sorry,” he said. “You were kind of—frozen. And in the way.”

It was Louisa’s turn to apologize, but she still didn’t move. Jim had instinctively put his arms around her. They were nose-to-nose.

He quickly dropped his arms to his side, taking a small step back. He cleared his throat and gestured over his shoulder. “Do you want to sit for a little while?”

Louisa nodded. That actually sounded like a great idea. Besides, she was dying to know a few things, and Jim was probably the best person to ask. She was still a bit rattled after the events of the day, so she wasn’t exactly graceful in starting the conversation. “You guys are crazy. You know that?” she said, walking to the other side of the porch so they were far away from the loud voices inside. 

He huffed out a laugh. “I know.” He settled into the rocking chair beside hers and they sat in silence for a few moments. 

Aunt Meg’s art installations chimed and clattered in the wind. It was quite pleasant. And Louisa might have enjoyed them, if she wasn’t preoccupied with about a dozen things. “So, what happened between them?” she finally asked.

Jim’s full lips pinched together. He didn’t have to ask who she was referring to. “I’m not sure it’s my place to say.”

She tossed her hands in the air in a frustrated gesture. “Well, he sure as hell isn’t telling me everything. I mean, when he said he chased tornadoes, I thought he meant that metaphorically, not literally!”

Jim’s small eyes were incredibly expressive, and she could see he was battling the urge to blurt out everything. Still, he was nothing if not loyal to his two friends—one of whom was his boss. “Let’s just say that it was a whirlwind romance. I mean, Freddy basically walked into her life with this encyclopedic knowledge of weather systems without having studied a day in college.”

“Yes, he’s very intelligent,” Louisa added fondly.

He hesitated. “Book smart, maybe. But with people…”

She sighed. “I get what you mean. I’ve come across this a lot with my patients.”

“What sort of therapy do you practice?”

“I’m a reproductive therapist.”

There was a long pause. “I see.”

She waved a hand dismissively. That was not what she wanted to talk about. “So, why did they end things?”

“They were going to get married, but he got offered his dream job. You see, Freddy has a pretty bad track record of getting focused on one thing and then dropping it cold-turkey to move onto the next. And that includes relationships. I guess Anne got it into her head—maybe from her aunt—that Freddy didn’t really have what it takes to stick it out in the long run.”

She grunted. Anne’s statements during their earlier argument made sense now. “Commitment,” she muttered.

“Exactly. So, anyway, I think Anne gave him an ultimatum, and he went for the job. But I really shouldn’t be telling you any of this.”

She gave him a quizzical look. “No, I’m glad it’s coming from you.”

He met her gaze and held it. He certainly wasn’t sure what to make of that, and neither did she. 

Instead, she rested her chin in her hand and leaned a little closer. “So, you mentioned something about your depression. Is that related to a loss that you experienced?”

He flushed and then quickly stood to his feet. “Okay, put your PhD away, and let’s go eat. I’m famished.”

Louisa smiled to herself. He was deflecting like crazy. And when he did a funny little dance through the screen door, she started to realize he hid a lot of pain behind his jokes. While it wasn’t necessarily her area of expertise, she couldn’t help feeling a strong urge to learn more about him. 

It would have to wait. First, they needed to eat. And she hoped she could learn a thing or two from Anne's crew, since they seemed more than happy to wax poetic about Freddy's past escapades.

Chapter Text

7 YEARS AGO, 1989

“Anne, don’t you dare,” Freddy said as he brought the car to an abrupt halt.

“I just want to get a little closer,” she replied, stepping out onto the road with her trusty camera. 

“You’re insane!” He watched the way the twister was moving in a zig-zag fashion towards them. But it wasn’t the twister he was worried about. The nearby barn started to fall apart with the force of the winds. It was an F-3, and it was gaining on them. He felt a sudden sensation in his gut, and he knew what he had to do. 

He leaned across the passenger seat of the small yellow pickup truck and yanked her arm until she was back inside the car. He grabbed the handle on her door and pulled it shut.

At that precise moment, a large piece of metal roofing flew past the door, knocking the side mirror clean off.

“Holy shit,” Anne said.

Freddy was still half on top of her, and he didn’t move away just yet. Both of them were mesmerized by the sheer size and power of the twister in front of them. 

“It’s going to move off in a second,” he said.

And somehow, in that strange almost psychic connection he had with storms, he knew he was right. Anne didn’t even question it anymore. It used to annoy the piss out of her that he had this almost supernatural sense about a storm’s direction, but over the last few months, she’d grown to rely on him.

Her heart was still hammering in her chest, even as the twister suddenly veered away from them and moved at a safe distance. Anne realized Freddy’s arms were still around her waist. Their faces were close together. 

“Thanks for saving me,” she whispered.

“Sorry? Did you just thank me?” he teased, gazing at her.

She rolled her eyes and turned to offer a retort, but Freddy closed the gap and kissed her. It was just a peck on the lips—so quick that if she blinked, she might have missed it. But she didn’t. And when she leaned forward to kiss him again, Freddy deepened it by pulling her impossibly closer. This was more than just a response to almost dying. This was something that had been inevitable, ever since their first argument. It was pure chemistry.

He leaned back and regarded her with those gorgeous dark blue eyes. “We should get married.”

“What?”

“I’m serious.”

“We just had our first kiss. We haven’t even gone on an official date, and you want to get engaged ?”

He nodded his head emphatically. “A long engagement. As long as you want.”

“You’re insane.”

“Come on, Anne. What difference does it make when we get engaged? I can wait a few months or ask you now. I just know I want you to be my wife. We get along like a house on fire."

She was suddenly blinking back tears. "Yeah, when we aren't biting each other’s heads off.”

“That just makes it more fun. We make a great team, don’t we? Don’t you think—”

“Stop talking. The answer’s yes, you idiot.” With that, she grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him into a searing kiss.

—

PRESENT DAY, 1996

Anne was more than happy to keep herself busy cooking over Meg’s ancient stove. She kept the fried eggs and steaks coming, and she watched with pride as her crew devoured them. She glanced over in time to see Jim helping Louisa into a chair at the table. And when Anne plopped the delectable plate of food in front of Louisa, she was privy to a hushed conversation between the two of them.

“I really shouldn’t,” Louisa said.

“There’s no way I’m letting you turn down this food. Top-grade beef from Meg’s own livestock, fresh eggs from the chickens out back, and gravy that could be its own food group.” While he spoke, he piled Louisa’s plate high with mashed potatoes and smothered everything in the gravy.

Anne glanced back to see Louisa giving Jim a scolding look as he pretended to scoop out another helping of potatoes for her. “Alright, I yield,” she said, pushing his hand away. 

“Besides, you deserve to treat yourself after a day like today,” Jim added in an off-handed manner.

Louisa’s response was swallowed up in the noise of Anne’s crew. But she couldn’t help watching the two of them for a moment. There was a certain sparkle in Jim’s eyes she hadn’t seen in over 7 years. Anne might have contemplated this a little bit further if she hadn’t collided with Freddy, whose shirt was completely undone. He was still damp from the shower, too. 

They apologized at the same time, but it was Anne who moved away first. Freddy’s gaze followed her retreating form as she worked on the last batch of food. 

“Oh, gross. William’s getting his 15 minutes of fame again,” Rabbit protested when he gestured to the TV set in the corner.

William Elliot was giving an interview to the local news station. “Well, for me, it’s the thrill of the hunt,” he was saying. “You know, man against nature.”

“As a scientist, can you actually predict tornadoes now?” the reporter said.

William’s smile was as brilliant and handsome as ever. “Well, no. They are very unpredictable. As some of my more unfortunate colleagues found out just an hour ago.” At that, he looked straight into the camera with a smirk.

“Smug bastard,” Anne muttered.

Freddy smirked at her from across the room.

“It all comes down to this new system that I’ve devised,” William continued.

“Ugh, turn him off!” Haynes shouted, which Beltzer was more than happy to do.

Freddy came to the table, and Jim eyed him carefully. “You know, he’s going to rue the day he went up against The Extreme.”

Freddy shook his head, but Louisa had to know. She turned to Jim and asked, “Why do you call him that?”

“Because he is The Extreme,” he replied, as if that explained everything.

“He’s the most out of control son-of-a-bitch in the business,” Beltzer said with a note of pride in his voice.

“No, I think I came second,” Freddy said, and his eyes met Anne’s.

“Tell Louisa about that day—” Beltzer began.

“Come on, you’ve got to get some new stories,” Anne said, rolling her eyes and turning away to hide her flushed face. She claimed she was next in the shower and sauntered off towards the stairs. But she stopped at the bottom step to listen to Jim as he spoke.

“We were chasing down a storm one day, and we were way too close. Anne was filming it, and she refused to leave until she got the shot she wanted. But anyway, this shitty little pickup truck pulls up, and Anne is yelling at him to get out of there. He stumbles out of his truck with a can of beer in his hand, and he’s naked .”

“I was not—”

“He was naked!” Jim insisted.

“Half-naked, maybe,” Freddy protested.

“Anne’s yelling at him to get out of the way, and he just strolls up to the twister, chucks the beer into it, and says, ‘have a drink.’” He paused while everyone laughed.

“The beer can never touched the ground!” Haynes added. “The twister sucked it right up.”

“The suck zone,” Louisa said, her eyes meeting Freddy’s across the table.

“Exactly!” Jim said. “So, that’s why he’s The Extreme.”

“This is all a tissue of lies, sweetheart.” His neck was a bit flushed as he raised his hands in mock surrender. “There was another Freddy—an evil Freddy. And I killed him.”

As everyone started laughing uproariously, Louisa could only manage a small smile. So, this was the big secret—among many—that Freddy had kept from her. His reckless behavior and his whirlwind romance. He was acting like it wasn’t even part of him anymore, but clearly that wasn’t the case.

Anne made her way upstairs just as they were explaining the Fujita scale to poor Louisa, who was looking more overwhelmed with each passing minute. Anne knew that the conversation was naturally going to deviate towards who had experienced the strongest tornado. Which had been Anne, of course. An F-5. The same one that had taken her mother’s life and uprooted Anne’s existence in one fell swoop. It had sent her on an inescapable trajectory of obsession, seeking to understand the incredibly destructive force of nature.

She took a bit longer to shower than was necessary. She just wasn’t ready to go back downstairs. Part of her couldn’t stand how wonderful it was to have Freddy back, like he’d never left in the first place. Another part of her was angry at how much she had missed him—and that she’d been talked into letting him go in the first place. 

Anne sat down at her aunt’s vanity and removed the two rings from her finger. She stared at the engagement ring for a long time and then looked up at her own reflection. She shifted her hair over one shoulder and then frowned and pushed it to the other.

“Doesn’t matter what you do,” Meg said, startling her. “You’ll always be beautiful no matter what.”

Anne sighed. “You’re biased. I don’t look the same as I did 5 years ago.”

“But you still feel the same.” It wasn’t a question. It didn’t take a damn rocket scientist to know that Anne was still hopelessly in love with Freddy.

There was a long pause before Anne nodded her head. “I never should have…”

Meg walked forward and put a hand on her niece’s shoulder. “Sweetheart, if I had known what he really felt, I wouldn’t have advised you to break it off. I just thought that he wasn’t ready. I thought you weren’t, either. I guess I didn’t realize—”

“It’s okay, Aunt,” Anne insisted, wiping at the tears as they started to fall down her face. “I’m more mad at myself, that I allowed myself to be persuaded. And now, it’s too late.”

“I’m not sure about that,” her aunt said with a smirk. “I thought the new girl was Jim’s girlfriend at first.”

Anne managed to laugh at that, but her expression sobered when she gazed at the ring again.

Her aunt sighed and leaned her chin on top of Anne’s head. “Freddy didn’t keep his part of the bargain.”

“Which part?”

“To spend his life pining for you and die miserable and alone.”

Anne’s laugh was more like a sob. “Is that so much to ask?”

Meg reached down and wrapped her arms around Anne in a tight hug. They remained this way for a long time, until Meg turned and grabbed a velvet box from her jewelry case. Anne gently placed her engagement ring inside and let out a resigned sigh. She decided it was time to let Freddy off the hook. It wasn’t fair to have dragged him into this again. She was just being selfish, wanting things to go back to how they were before.

And then they heard a shout from down below. It was Jim. “We got one, baby! It’s an F-3, just a mile away.”

Anne wiped her face and squared her shoulders at her own reflection. Her sandy blonde hair was thinner than it used to be. A bit less shiny, too. There were a few extra wrinkles around her green eyes, but she was still the same Anne Elliot. 

And she could handle an F-3 tornado in her sleep.

Anne reached the lower level to discover complete chaos had broken out. Everyone was up on their feet, grabbing their things, and scrambling towards the door. She happened to see footage on the TV of William’s crew packing up and heading down the road. They had to get there before William’s team. They just had to.

But first, she needed to find Freddy and tell him that he was done, that he didn’t need to stay for this storm. He should take his fiance and go home.

But Freddy had already made his decision.

Louisa felt like she was moving in slow motion as everyone else around her was moving at the speed of light. Clearly, time was of the essence as they exchanged bits of information on the fly and moved like a well-oiled machine. She grabbed Freddy’s arm as he raced past her.

“You’ll ride with Jim, okay?” he said, and he was gone again before she could tell him that this was exactly what she wanted, anyway.

Still, she found herself standing beside Meg, who was packing sandwiches into a large paper bag. Jim was the last one out the door, cradling his CB radio under one arm and taking the bag of provisions under the other.

“Tasty cow, Aunt Meg,” he said, kissing her cheek.

Then he leaned over and acted as if he was going to do the same to Louisa. “You and me, right?”

She blinked at him for a moment before she realized he was being a jokester again. He was grinning at her, close enough that she could feel his breath on her skin. “Yep,” she said, a bit tersely. Then, she turned to Meg. “It was a pleasure meeting you.”

“Likewise. You better run,” was all she said, in her usual blunt manner as she pointed to Jim’s retreating figure.

She barely had herself buckled in before Jim brought the engine roaring to life.

At the head of the group, she watched as Anne jumped into the driver’s seat of Freddy’s red truck. She took one look at Freddy and realized he was coming, whether she wanted him to or not. “Keys,” she demanded.

He tossed them to her. “You’re welcome,” he said sarcastically as he jumped into the passenger seat.

And just like that, they were off. Anne glanced back only once to wave at Meg, who was standing on the porch with her faithful golden retriever, Moose. Anne didn’t have the strongest faith in the world, but she sent up a little prayer—just in case. She wanted Meg and Moose and her beautiful farm to stay safe. She was all the family Anne had left in the world…or at least the only one that mattered. 

“Okay. Let’s get you wired,” Freddy said as he pulled out the headset that they would need in case things got hairy with Dorothy 2 and the F-3 tornado they were chasing.

Anne did her best to stay focused on the drive, but it was difficult when Freddy reached down and tucked the device against the waist of her pants. His face was so close to hers that he was practically breathing in her ear. She hoped he didn’t notice when she shivered a little. 

Freddy met her gaze briefly before moving to place the headset around her neck. And he hoped Anne didn’t notice that his fingers paused at the top of her collarbone, just long enough to feel the softness of her skin. He used to enjoy kissing that very spot. He leaned away from her and resumed his seat. They went over a massive dip in the dirt road, and without his seatbelt on, Freddy’s head hit the roof of the car. 

He winced and picked up the receiver on the CB radio. “It gets a little bumpy here, guys.”

Back in the RV, Louisa held on for dear life. Jim was even more erratic than Freddy. It clearly went along with the territory of storm-chasing, because he somehow managed to make hairpin turns in a bulky RV that had seen better days. But he never once lost sight of the car in front of him. Rabbit, with all of his maps and intimate knowledge of backroads and shortcuts, was showing up in a big way. He took them on dirt lanes that cut across farmland. It was a wild ride.

Others on the team were shouting and laughing with pure joy as they bumped over obstacles at rapid speeds. They lived for this sort of thing. 

Louisa, meanwhile, hit her head pretty hard on the window as they crossed a deep pothole. 

“Do you have a lucky helmet somewhere in all this mess?” she said, rubbing her temple and gesturing to the general chaos of items rolling around in his vehicle. 

When he handed her his Ghostbusters baseball cap from his own head, he didn’t expect her to actually put it on. But she did. “You’re turning into one of us!” he declared with a laugh. It was ridiculous, but she actually looked good in his hat and goggles.

Louisa just shook her head with a smile. “God help us.” 

She watched him for a moment. Part of his blonde hair was stuck in the neckline of his shirt, and she wondered when he last had his hair cut. Still, the slightly messy style suited his personality. He was a bit of a jumbled mess himself, from what she could gather in their brief acquaintance (good God, had she only met him earlier that day ?). 

“I don’t think you’re a real adrenaline junkie. Not like some others on this crew.” Louisa closed her mouth, because she hadn’t actually intended to say that aloud.

Jim’s carefree smile faded, and in one glance, she could tell that he was a little freaked out by her insight. 

“Sorry,” she muttered.

But the perfect distraction came when the caravan suddenly turned into a field of corn. It was only a tractor lane, and the stalks slammed against the side mirrors of the larger cars, like Jim’s RV. 

“Where’s the road?” several people were shouting over the radio.

“Any second now!” Rabbit declared.

Suddenly, they heard the squeal of tires and someone blaring their horn. Well, they had found the road—and almost driven smack into William’s posse of black minivans. Several voices overlapped on a shared channel as William shouted at Anne and she gave it right back to him about being more careful (even though technically Anne’s crew had been in the wrong). 

The skies began to darken, and Freddy had a sinking feeling in his gut. Everything on their data suggested that they should stay on the straight path. But absolutely every ounce of his own gut was telling him differently.

“We need to get off this road,” he said.

“Are you serious? Now is not the time for any wild guesses.”

“I’m not guessing. Just trust me.”

“Do you want to drive?”

“Just turn!”

Anne did as she was told and whipped the wheel to the right, sending them down another bumpy dirt path between corn fields. She half expected William’s crew to follow them (they have been known to do it before), but he remained on their course. Clearly he wasn’t willing to risk losing this particular race, since he had more to lose if his D.O.T. 3 didn’t get off the ground. His reputation was on the line.

But for Anne and Freddy, they were all about the scientific marvel of it all.

The radios were buzzing again as the crew argued back and forth about where the supposed “touchdown” for this twister was happening. And after a tense back-and-forth session, Anne decided that it was time to try and deploy Dorothy 2. This was their chance. 

“We’ve got hail,” Anne said over the radio.

And that was when the caravan pulled off to the side of the road. The red truck sped ahead of them and was driving directly towards the nastiest, darkest part of the clouds overhead. 

“We aren’t going with them?” Louisa said. Because as much as she wasn’t willing to be in the middle of a twister again, she had at least hoped to stay close enough to make sure Freddy came out of this alive. 

Jim shook his head. He was visibly excited, but there was a sort of reverence to it. He was aware just how much this mission mattered. “It’s all about Dorothy now. They’re the ones who are going to make her fly.”

Louisa bit the inside of her cheek and followed him out of the RV into the hailstorm. All she could do was watch the red truck as it grew smaller and smaller on the road ahead of them. While Jim got the camera set up, she listened to the CB radio, hoping for a sign that everything was going to plan. But more than anything, as the wind kicked up, she tried not to get blown away in the process.

Anne looked at Freddy. “This is it. It’s time.”

He met her gaze briefly and then nodded his head. “I’ll get her ready.” 

With that, he climbed through the rear window of the truck and onto the bed, where he suddenly recalled that hail hurt like a motherfucker when it was flying at upwards of 35 miles an hour. It was a struggle, but he managed to hit the right switches. 

Anne did her best to avoid debris as it started to get larger. Small twigs and leaves at first, and then it became larger branches and building materials. She swerved to miss a large plank of plywood as it flew towards them. Freddy was thrown to the side, and he cut himself on the metal handle of a ratchet strap. He had four of them to loosen before Dorothy would fly. He ignored his bloody knuckles and the stinging pain of hail and debris hitting every bit of exposed skin. It was now or never.

A massive branch slammed into the hood of the car, partially blocking Anne’s view. Still, she kept going. Next, a small boat flew through the air, narrowly missing Dorothy’s top antennae.

“This is close enough, Anne! We need to stop!”

“No, it could still shift! We need to get closer.” She kept going—but mother nature had different plans. A metal tricycle smashed into the windshield, effectively blinding her view of the road. “Ah, shit. This is close enough!” she declared before slamming on the brakes.

Freddy wasn’t prepared and managed to smack his brow against the edge of the window. Still, he just wiped the blood out of his eyes and got to work. They lowered the tailgate and started loosening the final two straps. 

They heard an explosion and glanced up in time to see that the tornado was heading directly towards them across the road, but it was taking out power lines along the way. 

“We need to go!” Freddy said, sensing the impending danger in his gut.

But Anne wasn’t giving up. Even when the next powerline pole lifted out of the ground. And the next, and then the next. Getting steadily closer with sparks of electricity spewing out of the transformers along the way. 

His anxiety was off the charts, and he was finally forced to grab her and pull her away from the truck—just as a powerline toppled on top of the truck. The wooden pole pushed Dorothy out of the truck bed and onto the pavement. Sphere-shaped sensors flew out of the cover and scattered across the asphalt. 

Suddenly, the wind died down, and the twister dissipated. The last tendrils of the vortex disappeared into the clouds overhead.

“What the hell happened?” Anne cried out over the headset.

“It was stable, and then it just—stopped,” Beltzer said. “It’s over, Anne. It’s gone.”

“No, wait,” Freddy said, looking up at the clouds. He could see distinct signs of rotation beginning again.

“It’s back-building!” Anne cried, and she dropped down to her hands and knees to start gathering the sensors. The tornado was going to form itself again, and if they could just get Dorothy upright again—if they could just—

“You need to get out of there,” Beltzer was saying. “The data’s incomplete. This thing could form anywhere! Get out of there, now !”

“Anne, let’s go,” Freddy was saying, but to no avail.

Anne was tossing the sensors onto her raincoat, which she had spread out on the ground. “Help me, Freddy! It’s going to drop near us, and then we can use the data from Beltzer to—”

He took her by the shoulders and lifted her to her feet. “It’s not going to drop near us, it’ll drop on us. Come on!” With that, he pulled her back into the truck.

She was almost kicking and screaming, trying to convince him to let her out again. The twister formed itself again just a few yards in front of the truck, but he was already reversing. Anne cried out when he hit the side of Dorothy 2, knocking the machine off of the road and crushing sensors along the way. 

“Go back, Freddy. Go back , goddammit! We can still do this!”

“Forget it, Anne. It’s too late.”

But she wasn’t finished. Not in the slightest. The minute Freddy came to a stop, she jumped out and ran back towards the sensors, which were rolling all over the debris-covered road. She was still shouting at him to help her, that there was still time. 

“Anne, stop!” He ran after her and put an arm around her waist.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she shouted at him, spinning out of his grasp. It was pouring rain, and the wind had completely died down. “It’s not over!”

“Jesus Christ. Listen to yourself—you’re obsessed!” 

“You’ve never seen what a twister can really do,” she retorted.

“I’ve seen it.”

“You’ve never seen it!” she screamed at him. She was filled with a fury Freddy had never seen before. He knew that this was all tied to her experience as a 10-year-old who had been forced to watch as her mother was sucked out of their storm shelter in the blink of an eye. She was reliving her pain right in front of him as she continued shouting at him. “You’ve never seen it miss every other house but yours. Because it was coming after you .”

“Is that what you think it did?” He felt a sudden sympathy for her, because clearly she felt that the twister that killed her mother and demolished her home had been possessed by some sort of vendetta against her. Some force of nature that was hell-bent on making her life a living hell afterwards. 

“I don’t know,” she said, and there was real grief in her voice. Because this had been their chance to maybe, just maybe, find the answer to that question. 

“Why can’t you just forget it?”

“You don’t know. You’ll never know.”

Well, Freddy had had just about enough of this, especially when she bent down and started picking up the sensors again. “When’s it going to be enough? How close do you have to get? Hey, talk to me.” He ran up to her and spun her around to face him. He finally allowed himself to say the things he’d been rehearsing in his head for years, ever since their breakup. “Anne, things go wrong. You can’t explain it. You can’t predict it. Killing yourself won’t bring your mom back. I’m sorry she died, but it was a long time ago. You have to move on. Stop living in the past and look at what you’ve got right in front of you.”

Anne looked at him. She didn’t move away from his grasp, especially with the way his grip had softened on her arms. He was just…holding her. She searched his eyes for the answer she wanted to hear. “What are you saying?”

“Me, Anne.”

Louisa realized she was suddenly a lot less drenched than she had been moments prior. She glanced up and saw that Jim was holding his beaten up, polka dot beach umbrella over the both of them. Because it wasn’t just Louisa who had been privy to that conversation through the headset—everyone had been listening, too. And more than anything, the tears that came to Louisa’s eyes were ones of mortification. 

Oh, hell. Not even Jim had had it right. Anne and Freddy hadn’t worked out for a lot of reasons, but it was obvious to her (and everyone) that it had nothing to do with either of them not loving each other anymore.

Chapter Text

Louisa was numb. It took her a solid minute to realize she was back in the RV. She was dripping all over the cheap linoleum flooring and staring blankly at the many TV screens inside. The doppler radar was kind of soothing, even if she didn’t understand the colors that spread across the screen. Though, there was a persistent crinkly noise behind her.

When she turned around, she discovered that Jim’s poncho had gotten tangled up in his bulky hoodie. And since everything was soaked, it was even more difficult to get himself un-stuck. Louisa let out a sound that was almost a laugh as she walked forward to help him. She was forced to rip the cheap plastic, effectively freeing Jim from his poncho prison. 

His hair was a tangled mess, and he swiped it aside so he could look at her. For once, she didn’t hate the look of sympathy on his face. It actually brought tears to her eyes. Jim said nothing—he just opened his arms wide. That was all she needed. She stepped forward and buried her face in his shoulder. His arms went around her and held her tightly. Somehow, he seemed to know that she wanted to be squeezed until she felt like she wasn’t going to fall apart.

“10…9…8…” she whispered.

“What are you doing?”

“It's a therapy technique. Supposed to use it when you're angry or stressed.”

“Does it actually work?”

There was a pause. “I'll let you know.”

With that, Jim just dropped his head against her shoulder and tightened his grip around her body. Louisa didn’t even care that he was sopping wet, because she was, too. Her arms went around his neck, and they stood this way for a long time. 

Both of them jumped when Haynes’ voice came over the radio.

“You’re going to get left behind if you don’t get a move on,” she said. 

Soon enough, they were on the road again. Louisa didn’t bother talking, and neither did Jim. But it was Louisa who turned on his radio and cranked it up. It was a Van Halen cassette, and she found herself tapping along to the beat. It was soothing, in a way. 

The caravan turned into some sort of small-town multiplex. There was a quaint drive-in theater, a tiny motel, and even a gas station. Louisa took one glance at the large screen nearby and saw that they were doing a horror double-feature with The Shining and Psycho . Louisa liked drive-in theaters and couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to one, but she had seen and experienced enough horror for one day.

They were parked, and other members of the crew outside were on the move. But when she turned to Jim, she saw that he was busy studying the screens and scribbling a bunch of notes on a clipboard. He hadn’t asked her to leave. He was giving her space to just exist, and for that, and much more, she was incredibly grateful to him.

Without a word, she took a seat in the camping chair beside him and kissed his cheek. He turned his head to look at her, and they were nose-to-nose again. 

“What was that for?” he asked, his eyes searching her face.

“Just…for being you, I guess.”

His frown only deepened. “Most days, I don’t want to be me.”

She hummed. “That’s the depression talking.”

His full lips lifted into a ghost of his usual smile. “You’re something else. You know that?”

Louisa’s own smile was tinged with sadness. “Not sure I feel like anything but wet garbage right now.”

He reached over and sifted through a disorganized mess of clothes and pulled out two towels, handing her one. “Well, what advice would you give yourself? I mean, if you were your own client.”

She blinked at him in surprise while she wiped her hair and face. “I'm not that kind of therapist.”

“But you're a naturally insightful person. Come on, just give it a try.” He bent over and twisted his hair into a towel like he was a woman stepping out of a spa treatment.

She rolled her eyes, knowing he was doing it for her benefit. Still, it elicited a smile from her. “Well, for starters, I would have told myself that this thing with Freddy was doomed from the start. There were signs, you know.”

“No, that's looking to the past. What would you tell yourself to do right now? This precise moment.”

Just then, a voice came over the radio. “Hey, has anyone seen Louisa?” It was Freddy.

Louisa and Jim moved away from each other. She didn’t recall having moved closer to him. Or putting her hand on his knee. Jim's presence alone was so reassuring that she couldn't help herself sometimes.

The momentary lull was broken, and he quickly pulled the towel off of his head. Jim lifted the receiver and gave her a questioning look. He was asking her what she wanted him to say.

She sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “Tell him he can come find me if he wants. I’m going to get a room.” 

Jim relayed the message exactly as she told him. 

She grabbed the small carry-on bag she had packed but hesitated before leaving. SHe turned back and replaced the Ghostbusters cap on his head. And then she just stood there, looking at him. “You should take your own advice, you know. It’s pretty good.”

He gave her a gentle smile. “Thanks, Doc.”

With that, she finally left the RV. The wind and rain had died down, but there was still something about the air that was oddly unsettling. But maybe that was just a reflection of her own internal struggles. While she reserved a room for herself with the hotel owner, she caught the tail end of a broadcast which stated that a nasty storm was headed towards the Canton area. She had no way of knowing if that was close to where they were, but she didn’t really care at the moment. She just wanted to get into some fresh clothes and bide her time until Freddy decided to make his appearance.

But after 10 minutes, he still hadn’t shown up. She switched on the TV and listened absently while the weatherman continued to talk about the oncoming storm. Louisa’s mind was miles away.

Freddy, meanwhile, was grappling with too many things at once. He knew that there were more storms on the way (hadn’t they said the day was “unprecedented” in the number of twisters?), and there was a different sort of anxiety in his belly. The air smelled strange. But maybe that was just his overactive imagination. Besides, he had plenty of other things on his mind. He wanted to talk to Anne, but he knew he had to speak to Louisa first. Maybe if he just got some coffee…

Only, Anne was standing there, waiting in line to order the same for her crew. He was on the brink of starting the difficult conversation, but when Anne looked at him, he could see that her emotional walls were higher than ever. She did not want to discuss it right now.

Fair enough.

“So, I’ve been thinking about the sensors,” he began, without preamble. “The way they scattered across the pavement today. Maybe—”

“They’re too light?” she said, finishing his thought. “I was considering that, too.”

“I think the whole thing is too light.”

“What are we going to do about it?”

He was just formulating an answer when his eyes fell on the TV inside the concession stand. They didn’t have it turned to the weather station (and why would they? It was run by a bunch of teenagers who much preferred MTV). But the feed blinked and turned to static for a second. For some reason, this caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end. And when the TV flickered and turned to white noise, his heart began to race. There was something else, too. Something in the way the wind had suddenly shifted. 

Anne caught the change in his mood, and she turned around at the same time he did to look at the massive drive-in theater screen nearby. It was the scene in The Shining with the two twin girls in the hallway.

“Come play with us,” they were saying. 

But Freddy’s eyes were fixed on the darkness beyond the screen. Anne stood beside him, and they flinched when several bolts of lightning lit up the sky. It felt like a real-life horror scene, because what they saw was almost impossible to wrap their heads around. 

Just then, Jim ran out of his RV to tell them what they already knew. “It’s coming! It’s heading right for us!”

But Jim’s equipment had at least a 5 minute delay. Freddy’s chest tightened with fear. He pointed to the massive twister. “It’s already here . Everybody underground, now!”

It was only then that the tornado sirens started to go off—way too late to be of any use to people who didn’t have a shelter nearby. God, they needed an earlier warning. 

There was a mad dash as a crowd of people raced to the storage shelter, which supposedly had a cellar for this precise situation. Jim was there, telling them to close the massive sliding doors as people poured inside. Everything was so chaotic, but Freddy caught sight of Louisa, who was standing stock-still in the parking lot, her eyes wide with terror as she looked at the massive twister just behind the movie screen. He knew how mesmerizing a tornado could be, and how deadly. He ran towards her and grabbed her hand, practically dragging her towards the shelter. 

“Freddy,” she began, but he didn’t give her a chance.

“We have to get inside.”

“No, look !” she said, grabbing his shirt and pointing towards the concession stand. Anne was working her way down the line of cars, yelling at people to get to the building. Bits of the wood around the screen were already splintering with the force of the winds whipping around the cyclone.

Freddy all but shoved Louisa through the door and into Jim’s arms. “Downstairs, now. And shut the door!”

“But—Freddy,” Louisa cried. Sure, she was pissed off at him, but she still cared about his well-being. And, by extension, Anne’s too. 

“Shut the goddamn door!” he shouted back, just before he raced into the fray alongside Anne.

Jim did as he was told, but Louisa felt like a caged animal all of a sudden. She reached out and tried opening the door again, but he gently pulled her back. “I’m sorry,” he was saying over and over. He was forced to practically pick her up and carry her down the metal stairs to the small underground area of the massive storage building. 

“We have to go back,” she said as he pulled her onto the ground beside him. He had to throw an arm around her to keep her from bolting back up the stairs.

“Freddy wouldn’t want you risking your life to pull him out of danger. Trust me, I know from experience.”

She met his gaze and realized that this sort of thing happened constantly. And it wasn’t the first time that Louisa felt a rush of anger towards Anne. She blamed her for putting Freddy in harm’s way again . But after she took a few steadying breaths, she recognized that Freddy probably would have done it anyway. She was learning that this was who Freddy was, at his core. 

The wind howled outside, and they could hear heavy bits of debris as it crashed against the sides of the storage shed. 

Above the noise, Louisa realized Jim was saying something under his breath.

“10…9…8…”

She tucked her face against his neck and joined in. “7…6…”

They reached 1, and suddenly the door flew open. Anne and Freddy bolted inside, along with about a dozen people. They scrambled down the stairs, just as the wind outside kicked up even more. It sounded like a freight train was bearing down on them.

“Will this thing keep us safe?” Anne said beside Freddy as they tucked their bodies among the others on the floor of the cinder block cellar.

He was already examining the cellar, noting that it was more like a depression in the floor than an actual basement. There was no covering over their heads. Any of the boxes and equipment above could fall in on them, if the roof and sides couldn’t withstand the storm. He felt a wave of frustration, realizing this place was barely prepared to withstand tornadoes. 

Just then, the windows overhead shattered, spraying everyone below with glass. Bits of metal roofing began to disappear one by one, and the sodium lights inside illuminated the terrifying force of nature that was ripping the building apart. Screams filled the air, but they were whisked away in the wind. Everyone ducked down, grabbing each other and holding on for dear life. Some people prayed, others cried, and Freddy was heard shouting above all of them: “Just stay calm!”

His eyes drifted across the huddled mass of people. 

Anne was leaning against him, and she felt a sudden rush of anxiety. She lifted her head to ask, “Is Louisa okay?”

He finally saw her, tucked against Jim’s side with her head cradled in his chest. Freddy felt a twinge in his gut—regret mingled with… relief . “Yeah, she’s safe.” 

But Freddy spoke too soon.

Another window shattered overhead, and more of the roof started to dislodge itself. Suddenly, a car crashed through the side of the building, lifted by the gale-force winds. It landed directly across the opening above them, acting like a sort of makeshift roof for the pit. But this wasn’t exactly a good thing, as the car shifted and began to slide down. Louisa scrambled across the floor of the cinder block pit, but she glanced back in time to see Jim staring above himself in horror. Louisa grabbed him by the hood of his jacket and yanked him away just in time. They both fell against shards of glass, screaming in pain as it cut their skin.

Well, Louisa had had just about enough. She started yelling, alongside others who were screaming in terror. “I’m done! I want to get out of here!”

“Sweetie, you have to calm down,” Freddy said, and she realized he had crawled over to kneel beside her. 

Anne was sitting beside Beltzer, who had a nasty gash across his forehead. 

“When will it be over?” Louisa asked, gripping the front of his shirt with her bloodied hands. 

“Look out!” Jim shouted, pointing through the side of the building, which was completely gone.

The blinking marquee above them started to sway. The letters on the side read “A Night of Horrors” as it snapped free and smashed down towards them. Freddy fell back, losing his grip on Louisa who was scrambling across the ground—but there was hardly enough room to get away. Freddy watched in horror as the sign toppled down, directly on top of Jim, Louisa, and one of the teenage workers from the concession stand.

The wind overhead had finally died down. But the dangers weren’t exactly over. Loose pieces of roofing swayed overhead, and electric lights flickered and sparked nearby. Louisa, Jim, and the teenager were still pinned beneath the sign. Freddy jumped to his feet to get it off of them, but he wasn’t alone. Anne and anyone who was able rushed over to help. Soon enough, they were able to shift the heavy sign away and pull all three people free. 

Jim had clearly thrown himself over the two women, and his arm above the wrist was bent at an odd angle from where he had taken the brunt of the weight. It had broken on impact. He and the teenager were still barely conscious, but Louisa was out cold. She had a nasty bump on the side of her head and a deep cut at the base of her neck. 

They were all helped upstairs (with Louisa in Freddy’s arms), and someone ran to the concession stand to hopefully find a working phone. Freddy had a sudden inspiration and told one of the workers to run to Louisa’s hotel room for her mobile phone. This ended up being a lifesaver, since the landline was completely dead. Jim, who was sweating and in a great deal of pain, limped over to his RV to discover it untouched. But all around it was destruction. The main buildings were still intact, but the massive movie screen was completely demolished. Cars and large debris littered the ground in a crumbled mess. 

While they waited for an ambulance, Freddy sat beside Louisa, who was slowly regaining consciousness. He had removed her jacket and was pressing it against the cut on her neck.

“I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry,” Freddy was saying over and over.

Louisa just put a hand on his arm to silence him. “I chose to come with you. I just…I didn’t know it would be like this.”

He blinked back tears. “I’m sorry I never told you. We were lucky this time. The tornado just side-swiped us.”

Louisa closed her eyes briefly. Her head was pounding. “That was lucky ?” 

“Hey guys,” Jim called out from the RV. “Storm’s headed directly towards Wakita.”

Anne’s face paled. “Aunt Meg. Has anyone tried to call?”

“We can try on Louisa's phone, but landlines are down within a 30 mile radius,” Beltzer said, cradling his forehead which was still bleeding.

Haynes and Rabbit were already plotting out a route to Aunt Meg’s farm. “We can get there,” Rabbit said.

“Come on. Let’s go!” Anne cried. But she spun around and looked at Freddy with a question on her face.

“I can’t,” he said softly.

Anne just nodded her head and rushed over to the RV, where she began arguing loudly with Jim who insisted he could tag along. “Not with a broken arm!” she shrieked. “Give me the damn keys.”

Freddy’s gaze was intensely focused on the crew. Louisa gripped his hand, drawing his attention back to her. “I can’t compete with this. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“I’ll come find you at the hospital, Louisa. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She carefully shook her head. “No. You’re going to go rescue Aunt Meg, and then you're going to save a lot more lives with your research. As soon as I’m released, I’m leaving, and you're not coming with me. It’s as simple as that.”

“Don’t do this now,” he pleaded.

She lifted a hand and placed it on his cheek. “Sooner or later it would have ended. We both know that.” She swallowed and waited for the tears to come, but…they didn’t. “The funny thing is, I’m not really that upset. What does that mean?”

Freddy dropped his head for a moment, and she heard a tell-tale sniffle. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

Jim walked over at that moment, cradling his injured arm in a makeshift sling. “Anne won’t let me go. But…there’s room for one more,” he said, looking intently at his friend.

“You should go, Freddy,” Louisa added. She gestured towards the RV, where Anne’s voice could still be heard. “She needs you.”

“What about you?” Freddy asked, gazing down at her. He was clearly struggling to decide. Leaving Louisa now would look terrible. But Aunt Meg and Anne…they needed him, too. 

“Who, me?” Louisa said, with some of her old spark shining through. “I’ll be fine. You know I will. Besides, someone has to keep an eye on Jim or he’ll bust out of the hospital to chase after y’all.”

Freddy managed a soft laugh at that. His gaze shifted to Jim, who was looking a little uncertain. But Freddy just clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder and said, “Take care of her.”

For some reason, it felt like he was giving Jim permission to do so, and it was exactly what he needed to hear.

After promising to call as soon as he learned anything, Freddy leaned down to kiss Louisa on the forehead before he raced over to the red truck, where Anne was double checking Dorothy 3. Anne gave him one look before passing him the keys.

Louisa watched as a much smaller caravan moved down the road, including Jim’s camper. “Are you sad you can’t go?” she asked him.

His eyes met hers. “Only because I’m worried about Aunt Meg.”

She hummed. “Well, I’m sure as soon as they get you patched up, you’ll be on the road again in no time.”

He took a long, steady breath. “I’m not so sure about that.”

“I find that hard to believe—someone who’s so in love with storm chasing like you are.”

“Well, I’m not sure about that , either.”

“I thought as much,” she said, giving him a considering look. “So, tell me. Why do you punish yourself by working so hard? Is it that great loss that you won’t talk about?”

“Goddammit, Louisa,” he said, only half meaning it. “How do you do that?”

She didn't get to answer as an ambulance finally pulled in and they were prepped for the long drive to the hospital.

Chapter Text

Clearly, this part of Oklahoma was so rural that the closest hospital was almost an hour away. A few ambulances stayed behind, alongside the firefighters who were working diligently to tend to the other injured and maimed people. But the “worst” of the bunch were getting premium treatment—like being rushed off to the hospital immediately. After all, there was very little they could do for Jim’s broken arm and Louisa’s serious concussion. 

It was all a bit of a blur for Louisa. She answered the same questions over and over. Her name. Her birthdate. What day it was.

Tuesday…no, Wednesday. God, it was still the day she had arrived in Oklahoma. They should have been asking her how many twisters she’d survived, or how often her rattled brain was replaying those terrifying moments as the movie marquee fell on top of herself and Jim. 

“That girl…” she mumbled, blinking at a vaguely Jim-shaped figure to her right. The two of them had been placed in the same ambulance, which was racing down rural streets with its siren blaring. Something that told Louisa, in her addled state of mind, that things didn’t look good for either of them.

His blonde hair was stuck to his forehead and neck in a sheen of sweat from the pain (they could only give him something mild until they reached the hospital). His eyes looked a little glassy, too, as he said, “The teenager?”

Louisa nodded. But this was a bad motion to make. She groaned and leaned over to puke into a bucket that the ambulance worker had brought out, for this exact circumstance.

Jim watched with intense sympathy while she dry-heaved (and fought back the urge to do so himself, for her sake). He had to wait for an opening when the worker had returned to the passenger seat to confer with her partner. He leaned forward and put his good hand on her arm. “She’s okay. Just a few bumps and bruises.”

Her eyes opened just a sliver to regard him. “Thank you.”

“What for?” he said, baffled.

“You took most of the weight of that sign.” She could just glimpse his mangled arm, which was held tightly in a temporary sling.

“Only after you pulled me away from that falling truck.”

She hummed. “So, we’re even, then.” After that, she lost consciousness.

Louisa’s awareness of her surroundings was punctuated by dreams. Nightmares. She even found herself in the middle of an imagined scenario for a young girl that looked a great deal like Anne. The same sandy-blonde hair and green eyes. Louisa’s dream eyes watched as Anne’s mother was pulled out of the tornado shelter by the force of an F-5 twister. 

And then her mind transitioned to something she had experienced first-hand. It was getting all jumbled up, like her thoughts were tossed in a blender—a strange mix of reality and fiction. A yellow truck landed on the road in front of her. And then it crushed her inside Freddy’s new truck. Then, she was in the backseat while the cyclone spun them in a wild circle. At one point, she was holding onto Dorothy 1 for dear life as she spun inside a tornado, alongside a cow that was gently mooing in protest.

Finally, she blinked. She was staring at acoustic tiling and fluorescent lights that had been turned off. Louisa swallowed and felt as though she had a cotton ball in her throat. Something tugged on the skin at the base of her neck as she looked around her.

Just then, the door opened, and a nurse walked towards Louisa’s bed. 

“I thought you might be waking up soon,” she said softly. She used the remote to lift Louisa’s bed into a semi-upright position.

Louisa happily accepted the cup of ice water and drank it while the nurse asked her questions.

“Name?”

“Louisa Jane Musgrove.”

“Date of birth?”

“February 14th, 1966.”

“Aw, Valentine’s Day. How sweet,” Nurse Mary said.

Louisa resisted the urge to roll her eyes (mostly because her head was throbbing). She’d heard it her entire life. 

“And, let’s see…name of your fiance?”

“My—I’m sorry, what?” She said, choking on her water.

Nurse Mary’s brow furrowed. “Oh, dear. I think the doctor should definitely complete a full assessment, just to make sure you don’t have any lingering amnesia.”

“I’m just confused.”

Mary patted her arm with a sympathetic look. “I’m sure, sweetie.”

“He’s—here? My fiance?”

“Yes. We had trouble keeping him out of your room, actually. He was barely out of surgery before he was escaping—”

“Surgery?” Louisa’s mind was a whirl. How long had she been asleep? Did Freddy and Anne run into some horrible trouble on the way to Aunt Meg’s? Was he here, breaking out of his room to see her?

Just then, a shout was heard in the hallway. “Mr. Benwick!”

“I just need some water,” he replied, his voice getting louder.

“I know damn well that isn’t the truth,” a sassy nurse replied. “Get back to your room before I break out the restraints! I told you, she’s not ready for company, and you won’t be discharged for another—”

“Oh, let him in,” Louisa said, when she caught the long-suffering look on Mary’s face. Clearly, Jim had been making a nuisance of himself.

Mary huffed out a sigh of relief and disappeared through the door to handle the situation as calmly and professionally as possible. The sassy nurse didn’t seem too pleased about it, but Mary was heard smoothing things out. 

Though, Mary seemed a bit prone to exaggeration. “You wouldn’t want to keep them apart, would you? They’re in love!”

The sassy nurse was heard scoffing.

Finally, a minute later, Jim was escorted into the room. The sassy nurse gave him a stern look before she turned to Louisa. “You know this crazy man?”

She smiled and nodded gently.

Nurse Henrietta’s eyes narrowed slightly but she seemed satisfied by Louisa’s response. Though, she turned back to give Jim a long, hard look that rivaled one of Aunt Meg’s steely gazes. “Listen, one lick of trouble from you, and I’m going to use those restraints.”

Jim was gracious enough not to argue with her and promised he’d be a model patient. 

Henrietta shook her head and saw herself out. The door closed, and Jim turned around to discover someone else was glaring at him. He gave her a sheepish smile.

“You’ve been busy,” Louisa said. “And telling a few white lies?”

Jim’s pale face reddened. It was impossible to hide when he was embarrassed. His small eyes looked anywhere but at her. “They wouldn’t give me any updates, and it’s been hours . I had to improvise.”

“Well, your little fib about being my fiance almost landed me in some sort of amnesia assessment.”

“Sorry,” he said, looking suitably remorseful.

She shook her head and gestured to the nearby chair. “Might as well keep me company.”

“Maybe I should let you rest?” He hadn’t meant it as a question, but there it was.

Louisa saw right through that. Still, she decided not to call him out on his reluctance to part company. “No, I’d rather not go back to sleep right now.”

Jim settled his stocky frame into the cushioned armchair, but it was a little too small for him. He grunted and spun his body so his legs hung over the armrest. He looked like the picture of relaxation, if he wasn’t bruised, scratched, and wearing a full cast on his arm. 

“You had surgery?”

He shrugged. “I was only under for an hour, I think. They had to go in and, uh…well, I won’t bore you with the details.”

She hummed and let her eyes go a bit unfocused as she gazed at him. A familiar sense of ease and comfort was already settling into her tired body, and she was determined not to second-guess it. She was just glad he was there. “I know what would keep me distracted. Something to stimulate the brain cells.”

He gave her a questioning look, but despite the fact that she said nothing, he seemed to see it in her eyes anyway. He took a long, steadying breath. “You want me to tell you about Frankie.”

She shouldn’t have been so surprised at his alacrity. He claimed she was insightful, but for all his faux-goofiness and adrenaline-junkie-persona, he was very good at reading Louisa. She decided not to think about this, either. Not yet. “Yes, please,” was all she said as she gingerly took a bite of red Jell-O.

He shifted so he was facing her. “Well, I met Frankie through Anne. They went to school together, and she thought we’d make a good match. Which we did. We got on like a…what’s the phrase?”

“A house on fire?”

He smirked. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. We were true opposites. She had refined tastes, and I’m more relaxed. She wanted to stay in, and I was always…out.” His mirth faded into something sad. “You see, the storm chasing can be an addiction, even for someone who isn’t really a thrill-seeker like myself. Anne could always draw me back in. ‘One more storm, Jim. Just one more…’”

“And Frankie didn’t like that.”

He frowned. “She supported me wholeheartedly. That’s what made leaving so hard every time. So, I promised her I would stay home for a season. But we were saving up for a house and getting married in a few months, and I really needed that sweet, sweet grant money to give my girl the best wedding. So, ‘one more storm’ turned into 5.” He paused, and she could see that he was having trouble speaking.

She reached towards him, and he had a bit of an awkward time scooting the chair close enough so he could grab her hand. But it didn’t really destroy the mood. Jim was as serious as she’d ever seen him as he continued.

“Well, I wasn’t there for her that night. She was just going to pop down to the gas station for something to drink, and—God, it’s just so unfair. Fuck drunk drivers, you know?” His head dropped, and she couldn’t see his face. “I should have been there with her.”

“It might have changed the outcome. But it might not, Jim.” She dropped his hand so she could encourage him to look at her. “You loved Frankie. And she knew that you loved her. Right?”

“But, I broke our promise. I left for that one last storm, and—”

“At the end of the day, she knew you loved her.” She sighed and felt bold enough to rest her fingers gently against his jaw. “Trust me—we women know when it’s the real deal. But you’ve got to stop punishing yourself for something you couldn’t change, even if you had been there. Take your own advice, Jim, and stop looking to the past.”

He managed to nod his head only once, and he blinked furiously to keep his tears at bay. He let out an attempt at a laugh. “Jesus, you’re good, Doc.”

She sighed and decided not to correct him again. She didn’t actually have her PhD, after all. “Ugh, I just realized I haven’t had my phone on for hours. I’m sure my patients are—”

“Going to be fine. I refuse to let you think about anything work-related right now.”

Her smile was tender, especially when he rested his wide, warm hand on her shoulder. She felt a sudden rush of emotion in response to Jim’s sweetness. Frankie was a lucky woman to have earned his love. Clearly, he still held a candle for her, long after her death. 

She blinked back her own tears as she decided a change of topic was necessary. “Any news on Freddy and the crew?”

“They’ve been playing the same story on repeat for the last hour. Hopefully they’ve got something new to share with us.” He took the TV remote and switched on the news. 

They sat through an entire cycle, where the same overhead shots of the demolished drive-in theater were displayed. The reporters were very excited to list no casualties and only 10 injured. The twister had gone straight for the screen and scattered cars across the nearby field. The storage shed had been torn apart, and they kept showing footage of the car that had crashed through one of its walls. 

Then, a breaking news segment began, and they saw a completely different scene of destruction. 

“The tornado that hit Canton briefly lifted and then touched down again outside of Wakita. It was registered as an F-3, but it only missed an F-4 classification by a tiny margin.”

They both gasped when they saw several homes that had been completely leveled to the ground. Nothing but rubble remained. It was such a chaotic scene, with ambulances and people rushing to and fro. They reached for each other’s hands at the same moment. As the minutes passed, they hoped and feared to see familiar faces.

—

“Freddy.”

He didn’t respond.

Anne swallowed and hazarded a glance in his direction. His jaw was clenched so tightly that she feared he might crack a tooth. For added measure, she made sure the radio was switched off, so they weren’t broadcasting this particular conversation. This was private, and it needed to remain so.

“Hey,” she tried again, reaching for him.

He swallowed hard before gripping her hand tightly.

Anne didn’t know how to word her question other than to say, “Do you still need the ring back?”

Freddy kept his eyes on the road and quietly shook his head.

“I’m sorry.” She felt a rush of guilt settle into the pit of her stomach.

He finally turned and met her gaze. “It’s not your fault.” And then the tiniest smile twitched at his lips. “Not entirely.”

Anne squeezed his hand but felt the need to let go when Rabbit came over the radio.

“Main road is blocked with several fallen trees. Reports of ambulances and firetrucks on the way, too.”

Her guilt turned to ice-cold fear. She told Freddy to turn off the road and warned her crew to be ready for some off-roading through Mr. Croft’s property. Though, she was having trouble getting her bearings, especially when she realized Mr. Croft’s gorgeous red barn was completely gone—and so was his house. She gasped when she saw two figures emerging from an underground bunker.

Freddy brought the car to an immediate halt so Anne could jump out and wrap her arms around her aunt’s oldest (and grumpiest) neighbor. Mr. Croft didn’t even skip a beat. He just hugged Anne tightly.

“We had no warning,” he said against her ear.

Anne’s chest tightened. She was fighting the flashbacks that kept coming to mind, of the F-5 that tore her family homestead apart and ripped their mother out of their lives for good. No warning…no warning…

“But we’re okay,” he reassured her.

She pulled back and studied Mr. Croft and his wife, who were both blessedly unharmed. But Mrs. Croft was in shambles at the little that remained of their gorgeous, historic home. Anne could empathize. She truly could.

“You should get to Meg’s,” Mr. Croft said, encouraging Anne to get a move on since it smelled like rain was on its way.

She had to bow to Mr. Croft’s expertise (he was almost as good at predicting the weather as Freddy, except the older man used his arthritic knee and blood-hound of a nose to sense things). With that, Anne hopped back in the truck, and they raced over the tilled earth towards her aunt’s house.

“Oh, my God,” she said under her breath. She fought back tears when she saw that her aunt’s farmhouse was still standing—though it had been knocked off of the foundation and was leaning heavily to one side. 

Almost every sculpture and art installation had been ripped to shreds. The truck was barely stopped before Anne jumped out and raced towards the front door. Freddy was right behind her, holding her back with one arm. 

“We can’t just rush in there. This place looks like it’s going to collapse at any minute,” he said.

In her addled state, she had to recognize that he was right. She could hear the boards of the house creaking. Glass shattered somewhere—probably a window. 

Her crew had gathered around, and it was Haynes who had a stroke of genius. “Moose?” she cried out.

Faintly, they heard the dog barking.

“Upper window,” Rabbit said. He wasn’t just a genius when it came to navigating roads. He was the first to realize that the second floor window, across the broken down porch roof, was the only way in. The front door was jammed shut with the beams of the porch, which had snapped in half.

Anne started to climb up, all while Haynes kept calling for the dog. Suddenly, the golden retriever poked his head out of the window, his tail wagging furiously. 

“Good boy,” Anne said, her voice choked. “Take me to her.”

The dog spun around and scrambled across the floorboards, which were leaning at a wild angle. She felt like she was in a funhouse at a carnival. They slid down the floor, landing on the opposite wall alongside shattered photographs and familiar knick-knacks. 

Moose barked and stared through a hole in the floor. They could see through the first floor straight to the basement, where Meg’s head was just visible above the joists.

Anne cried out for her, and they heard a soft moan of pain. Freddy had to dangle Anne above the hole in the floor until she found a secure enough spot. Haynes, who was much lighter than Freddy, jumped down beside her. The two women picked their way through the rubble and made it to the basement. They had quite an ordeal getting Meg unpinned from the wooden beams, but she was conscious enough to stand upright, supported on both sides by the women. Freddy and Rabbit had to use all their strength to pull Meg up to the top floor and through the window. A nearby dresser toppled over and crashed to the basement just as Freddy pulled himself onto the roof of the porch.

The house let out a groan of protest before it practically imploded. God, they had gotten there just in the nick of time. A moment later, and…well, Anne was almost sick just thinking about it.

Meg was carefully placed in the bed of Jim’s RV, and the caravan rushed towards the center of town, where they were sure to find firefighters and ambulances. The devastation was unbelievable. People stood outside in the dark, staring at the crumbled remains of their homes. There were small electrical fires everywhere from the downed power lines and transformers. Water poured out of burst pipes and hissed along the cracked pavement beneath them.

Anne was crying in earnest. “They had no warning, Freddy.”

“I know.”

“We have to do this.” She gestured to the bed of the truck, where Dorothy 3 was poised and ready. She was their last hope.

He turned to her again. “We will.”

She didn’t have to ask if he was coming with her. She knew from the spark of determination in his eyes that he wasn’t about to give up on this mission yet.

They reached the center of town and flagged down an ambulance to take care of Meg. Initially, Anne’s aunt insisted that she was fine. 

“Just put me in my truck and I’ll drive myself to the damn hospital,” she said.

“Meg, your truck is in a tree,” Beltzer said with a small smile.

In addition to that, she had to admit defeat when the ambulance worker declared she had a nasty bruise on her lower back, and it was only then that Meg confessed that she had very little feeling in her legs. Besides, she was bleeding from her temple and had cuts all over her body.

“I’m coming with you,” Anne insisted.

“No, sweetheart. You’re not,” she said. She already knew what was on Anne’s mind, and Margaret Russell wasn’t about to stand in the way of her niece’s dreams for the second time in her life. She wouldn’t let Anne throw away 6 years of research just so she could be trapped in a hospital room with her ailing aunt. "It's going to happen to somebody else, you know. The sirens went off seconds before it hit. You've got to go out there and stop this."

"I - I don't know how."

"Yes you do. You've been chasing these things since you were a little girl."

Beltzer poked his head out of the RV. “There’s an even stronger storm developing just 25 miles away. Looks like an F-5, Anne.”

She swallowed hard, but it was Meg who said, "Go, Anne. Go do what you do best."

Anne bit back a sob as she hugged her aunt. Moose hopped into the ambulance alongside Haynes, who insisted she'd keep an eye on Meg. 

Anne hugged everyone and then jumped down onto the ground with a heavy sigh. Freddy was beside her with his arm around her shoulder. It was the only thing that could have soothed her in that moment. Her mind was miles away, back at her aunt's farmhouse. She recalled one of her favorite sculptures- a device with multiple spinning parts in a vague impression of a twister. 

And suddenly, she turned to face him. Her eyes were wide as she said, "I know how to do it."

"Do what?" he said, baffled by her response.

"I know how to make Dorothy fly."

Freddy dropped his arm, but his gaze held hers. This was their chance. He trusted her completely.

“You ready?” she asked him.

An old, familiar smile tugged at his lips. “Always.”

Chapter Text

“You’re looking at a recently discharged model patient,” Jim said as he sauntered into Louisa’s room in the wee hours of the morning, just before dawn. He struck a dramatic pose against the door, brandishing his cast like it was a battle wound.

She was still pretty groggy with a splitting headache (not to mention aches and pains all over her body, especially where she’d had to get stitches along her collarbone). But she just muted the TV and smiled at him. “You’re hardly a model patient. I bet Henrietta is glad to be rid of you.”

“Oh, she’s the one that expedited the paperwork.”

Louisa laughed for the first time in what felt like ages, and then she groaned when this made her headache worse. “I’m ready to get out of here.”

Suddenly, the room was filled with the shrill ring of a mobile phone.

Jim’s eyes narrowed at her. The accusation was clear as day on his face.

She was immediately on the defensive. “I had to. My boss was going to send out a search party for me and feared I was on the brink of death, because I always answer my phone. Besides, these patients need me.”

“Babe, speaking as a former workaholic to a current one, you need to stop that shit right now.”

Louisa blinked at him. First, she was surprised by the casual, easy way with which he’d slipped a pet name into the conversation (and she found it surprisingly…sexy. Though she wouldn’t admit it aloud). Second, it was the fact that he wasn’t wrong. And neither of these things were sitting well with her, in her present physical and mental state.

She dropped his gaze and stared at her phone on the nightstand, which was still ringing.

He took a few steps closer. “Is it ever an emergency, what these patients need from you?”

She thought back over the last year and a half of this current job, and she frowned. “There was only ever one, um…incident that required an ambulance.”

He couldn’t help chuckling. “And the other times?”

Louisa sighed. “It’s mostly people just needing to vent their frustrations at a third party, someone who will listen and sympathize and offer some harsh advice when needed.”

Jim walked over to her bed but didn’t reach out to touch her, even though he wanted to. “I’ve got to be honest. It seems like a waste of your skills.”

She finally looked at him. And it was Louisa who searched for his good hand and held it tightly. She didn’t know why, but she needed to feel his warmth. Holding onto his wide, callused hand helped her feel grounded and safe. “I think I picked this particular career path because it was comfortable. Easy.” She sighed. “And I guess that’s why I chose to stay with Freddy, even when I had my doubts.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, so he just nodded his head. He swallowed, looking a little uncertain, even as his thumb moved across her knuckles in a soothing pattern. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

“I guess…quit my job. Start over somewhere new.” She squeezed his hand so he would look at her. “And what about you? Back to storm chasing?”

His full lips pursed in a frown. “I think I need to quit my job, too.”

“No, what you need is a vacation. A nice, long one.”

Jim hesitated. It wasn’t the best timing in the world, but if he didn’t take a chance now, he’d never do it. She’d go back home, get herself a few more degrees, and carve out a wonderfully accomplished life for herself. She’d forget about the goofy, emotionally damaged storm-chaser who enjoyed teasing her. 

“When’s the last time you took a vacation?” he said.

“Never.”

He hummed. “Anywhere in particular strike your fancy?”

“A place where there aren’t any tornadoes. The opposite of flat.”

“So, the Alps. Got it.”

Louisa laughed, and it was a precious sound. “Got any hiking gear I could borrow?”

Jim wasn’t sure if she was explicitly inviting him to tag along like some lovesick puppy, but he felt a rush of hope all the same. He needed to get a few things in order before he took possibly the biggest risk in his entire life. 

But Louisa had something else in mind. “Hey. C’mere.” She startled him by tugging on his shirt sleeve until he was sitting on the bed beside her. He took up way too much room, but she didn’t seem to mind. “You need to go after them.”

“What?” he scoffed.

“You need to be there when Dorothy flies.”

“Louisa—”

“I’m serious, Jim. You’ll regret it for the rest of your life if you miss it.”

He took another risk and said, “I’d regret it more if I left you here.”

Her eyes searched the side of his face, and she saw that he was telling the truth. Still, she didn’t know if she deserved it. “You mean that?”

For added effect, he pulled the Ghostbusters hat off of his head and placed it on hers. He was literally and figuratively “hanging up his hat.” He was done with storm chasing. Louisa smiled and lifted herself up enough to pull him into a half-hug.

They stayed this way for a while, with Louisa’s head resting on his shoulder and one arm wrapped around his back. She had known this man for a day and a half, but this didn’t feel like too much. The longer she rested against him, the more she could sense that his mind was racing.

“You want to watch the news, don’t you?” she asked.

“God, I’m dying to know,” he said, and then he muttered an apology. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

“Don’t apologize.” She leaned back and handed him the remote.

But before he could remove himself to the uncomfortable armchair, she grabbed his shirt and pulled until he was leaning back on the bed beside her. And that was how they watched the news as it unfolded. There were massive storms brewing everywhere, and the F-5 storm was touching down again. They hoped and feared that they would see some familiar faces.

—

Anne and her crew worked as if their lives depended on it. Poor Rabbit had cut himself a few times on the aluminum cans, but after what felt like an eternity, things looked promising.

“You think this will work?” Freddy said, holding up one of the little spirals they had made out of a Diet Coke can. He was attaching it to one of the sensors with a bit of wiring. The hope was that they would help the sensors remain airborne, carried through the vortex of the twister like other pieces of debris.

“It better, or all this would have been for nothing,” Anne said, gesturing to the pile of windmill-shaped cut-outs. They had enough to do the sensors in both Dorothy 3 and 4. 

But Freddy sensed that she meant much more than that. Years of research were riding on their success. He knew Anne’s obsessions wouldn’t stop if this failed, because they only had two prototypes remaining. Anne would only drown herself further into her work, to the detriment of her own livelihood. 

He felt the need to reach for her hand and hold it. “It’ll work.”

Anne’s green eyes met his stormy blues, and a rush of confidence filled her chest. 

They didn’t have much time to dawdle. Beltzer said the F-5 was touching down again less than 2 miles away. 

They raced down the road in Freddy’s truck, hoping against hope that they had done enough. Other cars were driving in the opposite direction, honking their horns and shouting at the idiots in the red truck to turn around before they got killed. But that wasn’t how Anne or Freddy worked. They needed to be in the middle of danger for this to even work.

“Hey. I need to say something,” Anne said suddenly.

He glanced at her. She had an odd look on her face. He could have told her that this wasn't the best time, but it didn't matter. Anne was as determined to speak her mind as she was to drive straight into danger. “Yeah, me too. But you go first.”

There was a long pause while she gathered her thoughts. “I shouldn't have told you to take that job. I was…persuaded to do it, and I didn't listen to what I wanted.”

His hands gripped the wheel. “You didn't exactly listen to what I wanted, either.”

She studied the side of his face. She saw the confirmation of a long withheld hope, and the force of it caused tears to well up in her eyes. “You didn't want to leave. But I didn't give you much of a choice.”

He sighed. “No one would accuse us of being the best listeners.”

She wiped at her eyes. “Some would say it's our forte.”

He laughed and met her gaze. The air between them was charged—but they were quickly reminded of the mission at hand. The storm looked ahead of them.

Freddy slammed on the brakes, sending the truck in a wild, sliding arc across the road. The two of them hopped out and immediately got to work setting Dorothy 3 on the road.

“It’s still too light,” Freddy protested, voicing the same doubt that had been plaguing him all day.

“It’ll work,” Anne insisted. It had to.

He drove the truck a bit further down the road to what he hoped was a safe enough distance while Anne whipped out her handheld JVC camera. It was the biggest twister Freddy had ever seen. The entire thing was so wide that it went past their field of vision. It was a dark, spinning cloud of destruction, throwing large and dangerous pieces of debris around as if they weighed nothing.

A massive pine tree emerged from the twister and hurtled towards Dorothy 3. It missed the device by nearly a foot.

But the twister wasn’t done playing games yet. Another tree followed shortly after, and this time, it slid across the road and smacked directly into the device, knocking it over.

“Shit!” Freddy said, hopping back into his seat. The same tree was still moving down the road, making a bee-line for the truck. He grabbed the waist of Anne’s pants and physically pulled her back into the car.

“The wind could still pick up the sensors!” she cried, but he wasn’t listening. He was gunning the gas pedal.

It was too late, though. The trunk smashed into the back of the vehicle and swung them in a complete circle. The front wheel was lifted up and landed directly on the tree. His other tire spun helplessly in midair. Even the 4-wheel-drive was struggling to get them out of this particular mess.

“Oh, my God. What is that?” Anne said, her eyes fixed on the edge of the storm in front of them. 

Freddy was still trying to get the truck off of the tree, but he glanced up in time to see a dark shape spinning and flying through the air. A bit of light caught the side, and it sparkled like a disco ball. It was—an entire fucking oil tanker. And it was heading straight for them. 

“Move, dammit!” Anne screamed. 

Freddy was doing everything he could. But they were well and truly stuck. The tanker spun in the air and was carried by the backdraft. They were about to get t-boned by an oil-tanker that was flying through the air. It was getting closer. Anne and Freddy ducked down and reached for each other at the same time.

By some freakish miracle, only the cab of the tanker hit the road in front of them, knocking the tree and dislodging it from beneath the red truck. A backdraft carried the rest of the tanker over Freddy’s car and a little further down the road.

“Gun it,” Anne said, and Freddy was more than happy to do so.

Especially when the tanker finally made contact with the pavement and ignited in a massive explosion. They could feel the heat through the cracks in his windshield and Anne’s window, which was still open. They were blinded by flames and smoke for a moment, but Freddy somehow managed to swerve into the grass to avoid the explosion’s aftermath.

“Anne, Freddy—did you see that explosion?” Beltzer said.

Anne lifted the receiver, took a short breath, and said, “We saw it.”

Well, that was the understatement of the year. They were so close that it damn near singed their eyebrows off. She regretted to inform them that Dorothy 3 had failed. Everything was riding on this last one to succeed.

“This monster’s still moving northeast,” Beltzer added. “We can still catch it.”

Freddy turned to her and saw that she was holding the receiver with a frozen look on her face. “This is it, Anne. Last one.”

She met his gaze. “Last time,” she said.

He knew she meant it. 

Rabbit was giving them instructions on how to swing back towards the storm. Dorothy 4 was in the back of Freddy's truck, too, and this was their last chance. Suddenly, there was some cross-chatter on the radio as Anne hit the frequency button instead of the volume. They were privy to William Elliot’s crew, who was following the same storm. 

“The base of it is over a mile wide. We can’t see it anymore,” one of his men was saying.

“I can see it. It’s beautiful,” William said in his laid-back drawl. “We’re right alongside of it. Let’s get ready to play.”

Freddy sighed. “We had to know he’d show up sooner or later.”

Sure enough, the caravan of black vans appeared. They were hurtling down the road directly towards the twister. The smaller vans stopped, and they saw the news crew hopping out to catch the momentous occasion when William’s D.O.T. 3 finally got off the ground. When he made history with Freddy’s own design.

“They have position,” he said, pointing to William's utility van that was still in pursuit. D.O.T. 3 was primed and ready. “They could make it.”

But Anne had a sudden thought. Freddy had been right about Dorothy being too light. She knew what they needed to do. “Not if they don’t anchor the pack.”

Freddy looked at her, and he realized what this meant. William was about to put his own life on the line for something that would never work. He and his driver were in grave danger. 

Anne grabbed the receiver and switched to the frequency. “Hey, William. Do you copy?”

“Not now, Anne,” William snapped. 

“Listen to me, dammit. The pack is too light. The twister will toss it before it ever reaches the core, so you have to anchor it.”

“Oh, sharing valuable information now, are we?” he said in a dry tone. “I’ll consider it. Thank you.”

Well, clearly he wasn’t going to do anything. He was just as stubborn as Anne (possibly more) and was going to rush in there with his own plans, regardless of her warning.

“William, don’t be such a—” But she stopped when Freddy put his hand over hers.

His gaze was fixed on the massive twister ahead of them, and a familiar furrow had formed between his brows. He grabbed the receiver. “William, you are running parallel to the twister. But we’ve got a good view from back here, and it could shift its track at any moment. It could come straight for you.”

“How delightful to hear from you, too, Freddy,” William said, but his tone was less than friendly. 

They could hear his driver, Eddie, voicing his own concerns. Their sleek, black utility vehicle was right next to the base of the massive, mile-wide twister. Debris was flying past the window, leaving scratches wherever it collided with the car. 

“When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it!” William snapped at Eddie. “Just put your foot on the gas and keep going.”

“William, listen to me! It’s shifting,” Freddy said, his heart hammering in his chest. “This isn’t a game. Turn around now.”

“Get off this frequency, Freddy,” he retorted.

Once again, Eddie’s voice was faintly protesting, and once again, he was shot down by his boss.

So, Freddy decided on a different tack. “Eddie, I know you can hear me. Turn the car around right now! It’s not too late!”

But the radio went silent. William was getting his way no matter what anyone else said. His reputation was on the line, after all. They saw the truck swerve only once before it was shoved back onto the main path. The massive twister wasn’t playing games, just like Freddy said. It was an unfeeling force of nature, and so it was nothing at all to throw a bit of debris at William’s truck. They watched in horror as a telephone pole flew at the front of William’s car, directly through the windshield. And as the twister moved across the road, the utility vehicle was picked up and absorbed into the storm as if it weighed nothing. 

The news team and the rest of William’s team were forced to watch as the car crashed back down to earth in a fiery explosion. There was no possible way that either man survived.

Freddy slammed his hands on the wheel, and Anne assured him that there was nothing they could have done. They warned William, and it was his decision to keep going.

“Well, we’re not stopping either,” Freddy declared. They were going to do this no matter what—but they’d have to be smarter about it than William had been.

Chapter Text

Jim was quiet. Louisa didn't even bother to question it. She wasn't unaffected by William's death either, because it reminded her just how dangerous this line of work was. It could have just as easily been Anne and Freddy in that car.

Thankfully, Louisa found the best way to raise his spirits. She was discharged a mere half hour after the latest news cycle, but before Jim could lead them to the front door, Louisa took them on a brief detour.

The moment Jim saw Haynes, Meg, and Moose, his face brightened. He hugged his (former) coworker, and after ensuring himself that Meg was recovered enough, he pulled her into a tight hug, too. Even Moose was excited to see him. 

Soon enough, Jim and Haynes were lost in their own conversation about what had just happened. 

Louisa turned to Meg and asked how she was doing.

The older woman waved her hand dismissively. “Right as rain.” She smiled but there was a knowing sparkle in her steely gray eyes. “I take it things didn't work out with you and Freddy.”

Louisa blushed. “Not exactly. No.”

Meg hummed. “It's just as well. Didn't seem like you two were a match.”

That was a bit of an understatement, and all she could do was nod in reply.

“You know, I thought you were Jim's girl when you first arrived,” Meg added with a smirk. “I don't think I was wrong.”

Louisa was too startled to reply. She wasn't given a chance when Jim turned around and asked Meg a question. 

“No, you two get yourselves a nice hotel room and get some R&R. Haynes and Moose are doing a fine job of keeping me in line,” Meg insisted.

Louisa stood to the side to allow the others to exchange hugs and farewells, but Meg beckoned towards her while the other two talked. The older woman reached out with her good arm and pulled Louisa into a tight embrace.

“Look after Jim. He needs someone to remind him how to live again,” she whispered into Louisa's ear.

She was overwhelmed and a bit flattered, honestly. “I'll do my best,” was all she could say.

“Oh, I have no doubt about that.”

They said their last goodbyes, and suddenly they found themselves standing outside the hospital, feeling a bit aimless.

“So, I guess…” Jim began, shifting his weight from either foot. He was uneasy and restless, and it was clear he wasn't ready to say goodbye to Louisa yet.

Well, she wasn't, either. She told him to wait before she walked back into the hospital lobby. Moments later, a taxi service pulled up to the front entrance, and she encouraged him to get into it with her.

“We're taking Meg’s advice,” she explained. 

The first thing they did was to stop at a Wal-Mart for some essentials (clean clothes, toiletries, and snacks). And then, they got back into the waiting taxi which took them to a hotel.

Louisa didn't even hesitate when she asked for a single room. Jim was once again quiet, and she could feel his racing thoughts like a physical extension of himself.

“It's just…to get some rest,” she explained. “And I didn't really want to be alone right now.”

Jim's eyebrows rose in surprise, but he just nodded his head. He felt the same way. Still, he was visibly anxious as they settled into the room. He sat on one of the beds and turned on the TV as a much needed distraction. He was alone in a hotel room with Freddy's former fiancee, after all. 

But Louisa seemed perfectly content. She disappeared into the bathroom for a much-needed shower before encouraging him to do the same. This was such a relief that he felt his own nerves finally calming down. Still, his heart was racing when he saw the way Louisa was bent over, scrunching product into her wet, curly hair. It all just felt so…domestic. Comfortable. He wasn't used to this.

Still, he emerged from the bathroom with his hair wrapped up like an ice cream cone, causing her to laugh. 

Her mood sobered, however, when she pointed to the TV. “There's a breaking story about that William Elliot guy.”

Jim sat on the opposite bed as they watched the horrible news unfolding. 

“That's awful. Poor Eddie,” he said, shaking his head. He quickly added, “And William, too.”

“The storm's not over yet, is it?” She asked, watching the live coverage of the devastation after the latest string of tornadoes.

He shook his head, and he was wearing a deep frown. She reached out on impulse and ruffled his damp hair. Despite the excitement and dread of what was unfolding on the screen, she was suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. She was freshly bathed and wearing clean clothes. And the bed was going to be a marked improvement over the one at the hospital. 

Without hesitating, she rounded the bed and plopped down beside him. She snuggled under the covers and breathed out a sigh. “Wake me if anything interesting happens.”

He glanced down at her. He was tempted to tell her that this was pretty interesting—this thing that was happening so naturally between them. But her eyes were already closed. Instead, he turned back to the TV and watched with growing anxiety as he saw his own RV racing down the road away from the F-5 that was still raging. Freddy’s red truck was way too close for comfort.

—

The twister was picking up groundspeed, decimating anything and everything in its path. A tractor store was squashed flat in seconds, and all of the tractors were picked up, crushed, and thrown down like empty soda cans.

Anne and Freddy weren’t getting away fast enough, and they were suddenly veering around tractors as they crashed onto the road in front of them. Anne screamed out directions, and he followed every command to the letter. They worked best when they were on the same page—and right now, it was pure survival. They needed distance to regain their bearings.

But the twister had other plans.

“What now?” Freddy said, as the long arm of a combine harvester smashed the upper right corner of the windshield.

“I have no idea!” Anne shouted, feeling truly terrified and directionless for the first time in years. Not even Rabbit had anything to offer, since he couldn’t see which routes were blocked by debris.

Suddenly, an entire damn house landed beside the road. It rolled and came to a stop on its side directly in front of them. They were going way too fast to veer away or slow down.

“Oh, Jesus. We’re going in!” Freddy cried, just before the truck’s bumper smashed through the front window of the house. 

They were going almost 100 miles an hour, and the momentum helped them over the staircase, through two entire walls, and then out the back sliding doors of the demolished home. For added effect, a teddy bear bounced against the window just as they exited the house.

“I think we need to get off this road,” Freddy said tensely.

It was another understatement to say the least.

They checked in with their crew, who were just happy that Anne and Freddy were still alive. They had set up Jim’s RV less than a mile away, a safe distance away from the chaos but close enough to capture the sensor readings. 

Now, all that remained was to release Dorothy 4. It was Anne’s turn to climb through the back window of the truck and prep the device. She hit all the right switches, and the flashing lights indicated that Dorothy was ready. Anne climbed back into the car, where Freddy gave her his usual boyish smile—just before veering off the road and directly into a cornfield. He was truly in his element, and she loved seeing it. 

The twister was just ahead of them.

“Time to set the cruise control,” Freddy said. It was the truck’s task to punch the core. And they hoped that, strapped and weighed down by the truck, it would be enough to keep Dorothy grounded long enough.

“Liability only, huh?” Anne asked. She knew it wasn’t the time or place to tease him, but she couldn’t help herself. He was never going to see this truck again—at least, not in one piece.

He laughed. “Ah, screw it. This is a way better use of my money anyway.” He met Anne’s gaze, but they didn’t have a moment to spare for anything more meaningful than that.

He switched the cruise control on, and the two of them grabbed the door handles. They pushed the doors open, but it took a lot of strength to fight against the corn stalks that were crushing them on all sides. On the count of 3, they both jumped from the vehicle and had a slightly uncomfortable landing against the fresh corn stalks. But thankfully, they had both jumped clear of the truck that was hurtling past them.

They scrambled to their feet and practically occupied the same space on the ground as they watched the truck make a bee-line towards the twister. There was something terrifyingly beautiful about a tornado—something Anne had never gotten over since she was a little girl. Both of them were mesmerized by the sheer force of it. They were also watching years of research driving straight into the core of the twister. 

Suddenly, the top flew off of Dorothy 4, and like a beautiful dance, the sensors flew through the air, carried away by the vortex. Anne had tears in her eyes. She and Freddy were gripping each other, their hands seeking any point of contact and holding on tightly. It was glorious. And even though Freddy’s truck lifted off the ground and disappeared (probably for good), they shouted and jumped up and down with glee.

Anne’s crew was also celebrating, because the data was rolling in. The measurements scrolled across the screen in a flurry of activity. They had finally done it. They had achieved the impossible—something that William and Eddie had just lost their lives pursuing.

“Uh, guys…the twister is shifting,” Beltzer said.

Rabbit grabbed the radio and started shouting at Freddy and Anne, who looked like they were frozen in the middle of the corn field. But Beltzer was the one who noticed that Anne wasn’t wearing her headset. And so, they just had to watch and hope that the two of them reached cover in time.

“Oh, shit,” Anne and Freddy said at the same time, when they suddenly realized what was happening. The twister was headed straight for them.

Anne and Freddy raced through the field. They had seen a large barn nearby, and that was the only source of cover for miles. Debris was flying through the air, and they could hear the animals panicking in the stable. They raced inside, only to discover it was a rather flimsy old barn. The entire structure creaked and shifted in the increasingly strong winds outside. Not to mention the rusty farm equipment hanging overhead, including a scythe. It looked like a scene out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre . 

“I don’t think so!” Freddy declared, and he grabbed Anne’s hand and dragged her to the opposite door. 

The wind was so strong that they felt like they were running diagonally. Meanwhile, debris flew around them—increasing in both speed and severity. They ducked and swerved, rolling on the ground at one point to avoid part of a horse trailer that hurtled towards them. They saw a small outbuilding, and they just hoped to God this was more secure than the barn, which was getting torn apart directly behind them. The animals were scattering, fleeing to safety away from the tornado. They definitely wouldn’t have survived if they had stayed just a moment longer in the barn.

They pried the outbuilding’s door open and stepped inside, locking it shut with a simple metal bar. Anne had a panicked flashback to her childhood experience in her family’s storm cellar.

“That’s—that’s not going to hold. That lock will get blown off!” She was breathing heavily, almost hyperventilating. She didn’t want to get sucked into a tornado—but worse still, she wasn’t about to watch it happen to Freddy. The man she loved.

Freddy wrapped his arms around her, but his eyes scoured the small building for anything that might help. His eyes fell on a large metal pipe sticking out of the ground. This was an old spring house that had been converted to fit the standards for modern plumbing. “These pipes go down for miles. Come on, I have an idea.”

“We’re not—we’re not going to make it! We’ll get sucked out of here and die, Freddy,” she said, through gasps.

He grabbed two loops of leather from the nearby wall and anchored them to the pipe. He had to grab Anne’s face and force her to look at him in order to calm down. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

Her eyes searched his, and she saw the assurance that she needed. Finally, she nodded her head. She followed his instructions, and they both wrapped themselves in the leather straps. They held onto the metal pipe for dear life as the small building around them began to fall apart. The noise was deafening. They didn’t even hear the wood as it split apart because the roar of wind filled their ears. The very air they breathed kept getting snatched away by the twister. 

Soon enough, the force was so strong that their own feet started lifting off the ground. It was a strange sensation to be completely upside down, anchored to the earth by one metal pipe that they hoped to God was strong enough for both of them. 

And still, Anne craned her head to look—she had to see. She had to know what it was like. They were shrouded in darkness for a few moments before they suddenly saw a central spiral of air, leading up to a brief spot of daylight far above them. They were in the middle of the twister. The core. Something probably no one else had lived to describe—and hopefully, they would be two very notable exceptions to the destructive rule of an F-5 tornado. Tiny bits of debris whizzed past them, scratching and scraping against any bare skin. Freddy inched closer and risked his own life by wrapping an arm around Anne’s torso, taking the heaviest blows from the debris in her place.

Just when Anne felt like she couldn’t bear it any longer, the winds began to die down. They crashed back to the ground as the twister’s destruction rapidly came to an end. 

Breathless and scratched all to hell, Freddy and Anne sat up and examined each other. They were both in awe that any of it had happened. Dorothy 4 had flown, and they had just survived a tornado—together.

“Hey, would you look at that,” he said, pointing over her shoulder. “It didn’t take the house.”

Anne followed his gaze, and there were tears in her eyes as she watched a young family emerging from their storm shelter. A father, a mother, and three children. Something inside her chest knit itself back together at the mere sight of the unharmed family. Her own family hadn’t been so lucky, but maybe—just maybe—their research would mean that no other family would have to experience what she did. That lives could be saved. 

Part of the piping had come undone at one of the seams, and fresh spring water trickled over the pair of them until they were soaked. But they were blessedly alive.

She turned back to Freddy with a wide smile that rivaled his own. “We did it,” she breathed. Her hands curled themselves into the front of his shirt.

“Yeah, we did,” he said. His hand was warm against her damp clothes as he ran it across her back.

Anne wasn’t sure why, but she was overcome with sudden nervousness at their close proximity. Because now, there was nothing standing in their way, presumably. She leaned back and ran a hand down her face. “We’ve got so much to do. I need a grant approval for a new warning system. We need a bigger lab. And you’ve got to start analysis on all that data that we hopefully caught!”

“I do?”

“Yeah, we have to generate models and I need to run the lab.”

“No, you’re doing the analysis. I’m running the lab.”

“I don’t think so!” she argued.

“Seriously, Anne? It’s not up for discussion!”

“It sure as hell is!”

And just like that, they were back to their old dynamic, as if no time at all had passed. 

But Freddy’s mood sobered as he looked at her. “Do you always have to do things the hard way, Anne?”

She didn’t know why, but her eyes were suddenly full of tears. Happy ones. “Yeah. But you love it,” she retorted.

“I do. I really do,” he said, and Anne breathed a long sigh of relief as he gripped the front of her shirt and pulled her in for a kiss.

They were too distracted to notice that Jim’s RV had arrived. Rabbit and Beltzer jumped out and were excitedly talking about the data, how it was the biggest tornado on record and Anne and Freddy were insane to have survived it. But Freddy and Anne weren’t listening. It was Rabbit who finally cleared his throat and directed Beltzer’s attention to the radius of damage around them, and just how damn lucky they had been to survive. 

Anne and Freddy hit pause on their make-out session when the news crew arrived.

But they didn’t let go of each other’s hands the entire time.

Chapter Text

Louisa felt something warm on her arm, and a soft, insistent voice saying her name. When she opened her eyes, Jim was still sitting beside her on the bed. But he had a funny look on his face as he pulled his hand away from her, as if he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't.

“Did they do it?” she said immediately. “Anne and Freddy—is everyone okay?”

He nodded, but he was wearing a slightly strained expression. “They did. Everyone’s okay. But…we need to find shelter.”

“You’re kidding,” she said, rubbing her eyes as she sat up. “Another storm?”

He glanced at the TV. “An F-2, possibly an F-3.”

“Oh, is that all?” she said in a breezy tone. They had survived worse, after all.

He bit back a smile and helped her stand up. She was still extremely groggy and shaky on her feet. Jim grabbed a few things from the mini fridge on the way to the bathroom. They were on the bottom floor, so this was their safest option for the moment. 

“Grab some macadamia nuts,” she joked. “My boss is paying for the room.”

“Well, in that case…” he said, stuffing his cargo shorts pockets with whatever he could find.

Soon enough, they were huddled up in the bathtub surrounded by pre-packaged snacks, couch cushions, and pillows. The mattresses were way too big to fit into the bathroom, so this would have to do for the time being.

Jim had already opened the can of nuts, but Louisa snapped the wax seal off of two tiny bottles of cheap white wine. This called for something stronger.

“Congratulations,” she said, handing him one of the bottles. She saw the protest on his face before he even voiced it aloud. “You weren’t there, but you still helped the team get to where they are today, Jim.”

He resisted the urge to argue with her and just took a healthy swig of the drink. She was right, as usual.

Just then, they heard the unmistakable roar of an approaching twister. Even though it was “only” an F-2, small bits of debris were hitting the side of the building. Jim instinctively wrapped an arm around her, tucking her body against his side and shifting the pillows so they were on top of them.

She sighed, leaning her head on his shoulder. “You know, as eager as I am to get home and out of Oklahoma…I can’t stop thinking about Aunt Meg. She’s going to need some help.”

“Yeah, a lot of people will.”

“I’m not much of a carpenter. But I’d like to try.”

He turned his head and could just make out the shape of her face in the darkness of their makeshift pillow fort. His heart was pounding. “Does that mean you’ll be sticking around, Doc?”

She met his gaze and shrugged. “I know you said you were going to quit your job. But you’ll need to help them analyze all that data, won’t you?”

The implication was clear—that she understood he couldn’t get away immediately. And she wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him yet. Well, he sure as hell wasn’t ready to let her go, either. It had been such a long time since he’d felt like this. Invigorated. Genuinely excited. Alive .

“Jim?” She put her hand in the center of his chest, her gaze drifting down to his mouth and back to his eyes. 

He should have felt weird about how much he wanted to kiss her. She’d been engaged to his best friend only yesterday, and they’d only known each other a day more than that. Still, the invitation was right there on her face. And Freddy had all but given him the go-ahead, hadn’t he? It was clear from the news footage a few minutes ago that Freddy and Anne had picked up where they had left off. They had been giddy, finishing each other’s sentences while holding hands for the entire impromptu interview beside the ruined barn.

“Hey,” Louisa said, seeing the distant look in his eyes. “Where’d you go?”

He smiled. “I’m right here. With you.”

With that, he took the greatest risk and kissed her. He felt the way she smiled against his mouth, and he couldn’t help wrapping his other arm around her, too. The timing couldn’t have been weirder—given that there was an active tornado outside, and they were still basically strangers. Except, there was something undeniable between them. Something as inescapable as the connection between Anne and Freddy. 

Louisa shifted so her body was flush against his, and he instinctively leaned back. Despite the awkward position of being cramped in a bathtub, Jim was in awe. Louisa Musgrove was beautiful, intelligent, and way out of his league. But he swore to himself that he would do his best to deserve her. 

They heard a knock at the door, and it took a bit of effort (and plenty of suppressed laughter) to get themselves out of the tub and mountain of pillows. And then, it was a bit chaotic when Anne, Freddy, and the others burst into the hotel room. They declared that the F-2 had just missed the hotel, just as Anne’s crew was pulling into the parking lot. Congratulations and hugs were exchanged among everyone as conversation immediately shifted to the team’s latest accomplishment.

Louisa managed to catch a brief moment with Anne—who was wet and covered in scratches from head to toe. Freddy wasn’t in much better shape. Still, Louisa stepped forward and held her hand out to her. “Well done,” she said. “You should be so proud.”

Anne’s face was flushed as she shook Louisa’s hand. “Thank you. And…I’m sorry. For a lot of things.”

The other woman just shook her head with a warm smile. She appreciated Anne’s apology, but in the end, it wasn’t really necessary. This reunion between Freddy and Anne was inevitable. It was always going to happen. As for Anne, she looked at Louisa with a great deal of admiration. She was a resilient and forgiving woman. And Freddy sure as hell knew that he had never been worthy of her. He wrapped Louisa in a tight hug, whispering something in her ear. It was very similar to what Anne had said, and this time, she accepted his remorse.

Still, she did her best to absolve him of any guilt, seeing just how happy he was. He and Anne were practically glowing as they told everyone about their success—how they couldn’t have done it without each other. 

Louisa glanced over and caught Jim watching her. She winked at him and was gratified to see the way his ears turned pink in response. 

It seemed as though Freddy and Anne needed that last little reassurance from Louisa before they could fully celebrate getting back together. They opted to find a hotel closer to Aunt Meg’s farm, where they hoped to set up the base of their operations once the house was fully repaired.

But in the meantime, they were hardly through the door of their hotel room before Freddy pulled Anne into his arms and pressed her up against the nearest wall in a passionate kiss. Anne went willingly. She had imagined such a scene over all those years pining after him.

He pulled back suddenly with a spark of mischief in his eyes. “You know, you teased me about ‘not browsing’ more after we broke up. But I don’t recall hearing any news about you seeing other people, either.”

She narrowed her green eyes at him. “So, you were keeping tabs on me, huh?”

Well, that backfired. “I was, actually. Called Aunt Meg a few times when I was at my lowest point. When I was missing you terribly.”

“She never told me that,” she said. “I wish she had.”

He huffed out a humorless laugh. “She was pretty hard on me, though. I guess she felt like by taking the job, I was just fitting into her preconceived notion of me—of not being able to commit to anything.”

“I’m so sorry, Freddy,” she said, feeling a wave of remorse for the second time that day. “I know my aunt was just looking out for me, but I shouldn’t have listened to her. I was the one who told you to leave when I wanted you to stay, and I’ve regretted it ever since.”

He shook his head and brushed a tender kiss across her lips. “Maybe we needed the time apart to fully appreciate what we had.”

“That’s bullshit,” she said with a laugh, thinking back on all the years of heartache. She’d take them back in a second. 

“Yeah,” he agreed with her, for once. And then he kissed her again, letting his hands explore her bare back once he removed her shirt. “Let’s make up for lost time, then.”

And that’s exactly what they did.

—

Things settled into a routine over the next week for Louisa. She split her time between phone calls and helping out at Aunt Meg’s farm. It felt good to do something tangible with her hands after dealing with abandonment issues all day from her clients. Besides, she had an important role to play.

Not only was she surprisingly good at hanging drywall, she was the only one who could keep Jim from working himself to death.

She glanced at her watch and realized she hadn’t seen him since before breakfast. It was well after nightfall. When he wasn’t going the extra mile helping to rebuild Meg’s home, he was holed up in his RV going over the data from the F-5 twister.

Louisa didn’t bother knocking and just let herself in. She walked over to the portable TV and turned it off. Jim was too busy muttering to himself and scribbling something down on a notebook to even notice.

“Time for a break,” she said.

“I just need 5 more minutes.”

“That’s what you told Haynes two hours ago.”

“That can’t be right,” he said absently.

Finally, Louisa walked over and stood next to him. “Come on. Up.” She tugged on his shirt sleeve, but he didn’t budge.

“Just 5 more minutes.”

She wasn’t giving up yet, though. She put a hand under his chin and turned his face towards her. “Your 5 minutes are up.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but Louisa bent down to press her lips against his. He sighed and leaned into the touch. She used this to her advantage and took a step back, forcing him to follow. He was out of his chair, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him with her. She took a few more steps backwards, and finally, they collapsed onto the cot he’d set up in his RV. She relished the feeling of his weight on top of her. For a few moments, her entire world was just Jim. Wandering hands, lips, exchanged breath. 

And then…

She chuckled and rolled out from under him. He was completely passed out. This technique had worked two nights in a row, but she was going to have to get more creative if he kept this up. Still, it was pleasurable for her as well. She allowed herself to lie there for a long time just studying him. He was so handsome, even though he claimed he was too fat and unattractive anymore after years of neglecting himself. She tucked his hair behind one ear and pressed one last kiss to his cheek before she moved to stand up.

But Jim’s arm was like iron around her waist. It was only then that she saw the slight smirk on his lips.

“You’re pretending,” she chided.

He just grinned and tucked her more tightly against his body. And then he sighed, sending a warm puff of air against her forehead, causing her to shiver. “Just one or two more days, and I should have it all compiled.”

She hummed in reply, unsure whether or not to believe him. 

His eyes were open just a sliver as he gazed at her. “Freddy tells me there’s an opening at the National Weather Service center in Maryland. I was thinking a desk job might suit me for a while.”

She smiled. “That sounds perfect. You need a steady 9-5 to keep you on track. Otherwise, I’d never see you.”

His heart lurched happily at the implication. She wanted to see him. “You ever been to Maryland?”

“I’ve always wanted to see it. I’m actually officially unemployed as of next week. Maybe we could take a road trip.”

He yawned and nodded his head. “That sounds perfect, babe.” With that, he was asleep.

Louisa felt a rush of affection towards him. It was funny how quickly they had slipped into something domestic and sweet. It was unlike any relationship she’d ever been in before. Even with Freddy, they had had to go on those awful “get to know you” sort of dates for a few weeks before they felt comfortable around each other. But she was perfectly content around Jim. She felt secure in a way that made her want to do reckless things, like throw herself into his arms and get married right away. 

But they would be sensible. They’d take their time, get to know each other, enjoy each other’s company, and then they’d make a decision from there.

Her resolve lasted a week. And 5 months later, she was absolutely certain that Jim had already purchased a ring. By then, he had started his new job with NWS in Maryland, working closely as a liaison with NSSL in Oklahoma. Louisa had started a private practice after renewing a bunch of her certifications. They lived together in a quaint townhouse, and they were thriving. 

Anne’s laboratory was up and running and she had already published a bunch of well-respected scholarly articles about their data. Anne’s dreams were finally coming true. She was making a difference in the world of tornado research and early warning systems—and she was finally getting married to the man she loved.

Jim and Louisa celebrated with them among friends and family (including Aunt Meg, who gave Anne away at the wedding, and Moose, who was the ringbearer). No one made a comment on how Freddy had discarded one woman for the woman he dated 7 years ago. Nor did anyone find it odd that Louisa was now on the arm of Freddy’s best man. It was painfully obvious to anyone who saw Anne and Freddy that they were meant for each other. Jim and Louisa seemed perfectly in unison as well.

Both couples’ beginnings had been unconventional, to say the least, but it didn’t diminish their happiness in the slightest.