Whirlwind

4. Finley

Chapter four

Finley

FALL SEMESTER—NINE MONTHS AGO

I smooth my hands over the front of my worn green sweatshirt, shifting nervously on my feet as I stare at the frosted glass window that reads: Ryker West, PhD.

Why did I wear this old sweatshirt today? My jeans aren’t much better. They have a rip in the thigh and are faded from years of wearing them. Couldn’t I have picked something nicer?

I internally scold myself as I hike my backpack up my shoulders. I shouldn’t be nervous nor should I care that I’m dressed like a normal college student to see my professor during his office hours. I am a normal college student.

But I can’t help it. He’s the Ryker West. Extreme meteorologist and one of the best storm chasers in the world. The Twister Tamer. He’s the reason I decided to do my master’s at Midland Springs University. I wanted to learn from him—from the best. And so far, every lecture and minute I’ve spent in his presence has shown me that I made the right choice. He’s smart, funny, the kind of professor that makes students enjoy learning. He also makes weather easy to understand. Basically, he’s all the things I love about a teacher.

I blow out a breath and lift my fist, hovering it inches away from the door before I knock. Just because you have a schoolgirl crush on your professor doesn’t mean you can’t act like a normal person. Be cool . Your outfit is fine.

After another few moments of calming myself, I rap on the door three times and hear a throat clear. “Come in! ”

I shiver at the warm resonance of Ryker’s voice and push open the door.

I expect him to be looking up from his desk when I walk in, but instead, he’s focused on his computer screen. There’s a window behind him, the late afternoon September sunlight backlighting his profile as he leans closer to look at whatever is on his screen. Butterflies multiply in my stomach as I stare at him, my fingers itching to run through his tapered rich brown hair with tiny flecks of gray in it.

No. No, Finley. You need to stop ogling your professor. You’re here to learn, remember?

Ryker mutters something under his breath, and I wonder what I should do. Should I say hi? Walk in and sit?

I take a step forward, and that breaks his concentration. He glances my way then puts his eyes back on his computer. My stomach falls, but then he sits straighter, green eyes snapping to mine and lips turning up at the corners.

“Finley.” He says my name with clear surprise. “Please, come in.” He waves at me with his hand, pointing to the chair in front of his desk.

The butterflies return, and I slip my backpack off my shoulder, setting it on the ground as I sit in the hard wooden chair. If I didn’t know any better, I would say he sounded excited to see me. But that would be silly.

Once I’m settled, I turn my eyes back to him and find there’s still a smile on his lips. His pale green eyes—which remind me of jades—are sparkling. I do everything in my power to keep from flushing, tucking a strand of loose hair behind my ear. His eyes track the movement as he leans back and rests his forearms on the arms of his chair. He’s got on a thin long-sleeved shirt, and it’s pushed up to his elbows so I can see his corded muscles.

Between his eyes watching me intently, his smile, and now his godforsaken forearms, I can’t stop my cheeks from turning red. I glance down at my lap quickly and will myself to stop being weird .

When I look up, Ryker smiles like he knows what I was thinking. But there’s no way he does, because I doubt he’d be smiling if he did. He’d probably tell me to get out.

“What can I do for you, Finley?”

His question along with my name does things to my insides, but before I can get out what I came here for, my eye catches the image of a tornado on his screen. It’s tilted away from me, but I can see enough of it to know what it is.

“Is that the Dead Man Walking tornado from last weekend?” The excitement in my voice is palpable as I scoot forward in my chair to try to see more of it.

“It is.”

I glance back at Ryker, and he’s grinning like a fool. “Wow. I can’t believe you saw it in person!”

Surprise lights his features. “You watched the chase?”

Busted. My body heats as my heart rate picks up, and I wish I could go bury my head in sand. “Yeah…” I manage to eke out. “Is that weird?”

He looks at me funny, eyes squinting in confusion. “Why would that be weird?”

Yeah, Finley, why would that be weird? I sure as hell made it weird now.

“I, um—I suppose it’s not.”

His cheek twitches in a lopsided smile, then he turns his computer monitor so I can see the tornado better.

“Holy cow,” I breathe, studying the freeze frame of the multi-vortex tornado. The two funnels look like a man walking through the sky, destroying anything in its path. That’s why it’s called “Dead Man Walking”—they are a truly terrifying but amazing phenomena of Mother Nature. “What was it like?”

My gaze moves back to Ryker, but his eyes are on me instead of the tornado. They have the same glazed over look that mine must get when I’m thinking about him. That can’t be, though—I must be reading it wrong.

After a moment, he blinks and sits up in his chair. “Beautiful, shit-inducing scary, but a thing to behold.” He presses the spacebar on his keyboard, and the video starts up. The twisters are rotating, walking across the video like thick legs. His team was so close I can hear the whistling roar of the funnels as they tear across the Texas plains.

Eventually, Ryker comes on-screen, and my heart beats even faster. I remember this moment from when I watched the livestream. He has a hand on his head to stop the red backward cap he’s wearing from flying off, and he’s smiling so wide I can see his teeth and his eyes crinkling at the corners.

He yells “Can you fucking believe this, man?” to a teammate off-screen before he cheers and hollers in his excitement. Then he turns to the camera. “Are you seeing this, everyone? There’s no taming this twister. You can only stand back and hope it doesn’t eat you alive!”

Ryker pauses the video again after another few seconds, and I smile at him. “I can’t believe you were that close.”

“I’ll never forget it, that’s for sure.” He points to a few scratches on his cheek. “Maybe they’ll scar, and I’ll really never forget it.”

I laugh softly and sit forward in my chair so I can see him better. They’re shallow cuts so they won’t scar, but I can’t deny they’d probably be sexy if they did. Not that Ryker needs to be more sexy…

I wet my lips. “I wish I could’ve seen it in person. I wanted to take photos, but I couldn’t get to Texas with all my schoolwork.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “You take storm photos?”

I play with the thin silver ring I have on my middle finger, one in the shape of a lightning bolt. “Yeah, um—it’s a hobby of mine.”

“Do you have some on you?” His eyes are shimmering with a giddiness that has the Twister Tamer fangirl in me jumping up and down. My weather idol wants to see my photography !

“Yeah, I do.”

“Do you mind showing me some?”

I shake my head, not caring that I came here to discuss dew points, probabilities, and other data that normally I’d find interesting but right now sounds terribly boring. Ryker West is asking to see my storm photos.

I reach down to grab my bag and pull out a folder. “I just developed these in the school’s dark room—I was trying a little experiment with film instead of digital.”

More surprise colors his features. “You take photography classes as well?”

I nod. “Figure if I’m paying all this money to be here, might as well, right?”

He chuckles as I hold out the folder to him. “Very true.” He places the folder on his desk, and nerves kick up inside me as I realize Ryker is going to be looking at my photos. I wanted him to, but now, he’s actually doing it.

I bite my lower lip as he opens the folder with a care so deliberate it feels out of place on a man who looks like him. Tall, muscular, a little rough around the edges.

His mouth parts as he stares at the image on top. It’s of a wall cloud in western Kansas I snapped two weeks ago. It hangs low in the sky, dark gray and ominous like the ceiling of a collapsing cathedral. What I love most about it is that its edges are ragged and trailing thin wisps of vapor that twist like ghostly fingers. It’s creepy and beautiful.

Ryker leans closer to study the image, his fingers hovering over the cloud like he can feel its movement. “ Finley …this is incredible.”

The moisture in my mouth disappears, and warmth blooms all the way from my toes to the top of my head from his praise—from the way he almost whispered my name. “Thank you.”

He gently shuffles to the next image of a lightning strike in Oklahoma then to another image of a funnel cloud from that same storm.

When he’s done, he hands the folder back to me. He was mostly quiet as he studied each one, only muttering words of praise or sounds of awe. My insides have turned into a puddle of goo.

His eyes meet mine. “You’re very talented.”

I flush for what feels like the millionth time. “Thanks, I love doing it.” The words feel funny on my tongue, but his smile settles me a little.

“I can tell. You’ve captured how much you love it in those photos.”

I smile back at him, and for a few moments, we stare at each other. I lick my now dry lips, and Ryker’s gaze drops to my mouth. He mirrors my action, but when his tongue connects with his lips, he bristles, and his jaw tenses beneath his well-trimmed scruff.

“Did you have a question or something I could help you with?” he asks.

For a moment, I’m confused, but then I remember I came here during office hours. “Oh.” I laugh awkwardly. “Yes, I did. Sorry, the tornado distracted me.”

His shoulders ease a bit, and he leans back in his chair, transforming into the Professor West I’ve come to know from class. Professional yet relaxed. “Tornadoes can be distracting.”

So can professors , I think to myself. I reach down to my backpack, take out some data from our class the other day, and lay it on his desk.

“I’d love your opinion on something I noticed within the March Glen EF4 data that I couldn’t see in your team’s findings.”

He cocks his head to the side and smirks. “Are you saying we missed something, Ms. Buckley? ”

My belly does a flip-flop at my formal name, and before I can analyze if that was flirting or friendly teasing, I smirk back. “That’s what I’m here to find out.”

He steeples his fingers in front of him. “Then lay it on me.”