Chapter Seven #2
“You should.” I glance up at his amused expression, warmth that has nothing to do with the day’s heat flooding into my cheeks. “But give me some anyway.”
His lips curve, eyes doing that intense thing again. “All right,” Wes drawls, his attention still focused a little too much on me. “I’ll give you some, but only when you ask.”
Are we still talking about junk food? I swear we are.
I ask for a handful of Doritos an hour later. The salty goodness and satisfying crunch is absolutely worth the smug look on Wes’s face and the orange cheese dust on my leggings.
By the time we get into range, storms are popping up on the radar left and right. We stop to decide which way to go, both silently evaluating the data as we stare at our devices. I know my vote pretty quickly but brace myself for an argument. Wes is nothing if not opinionated.
“The northern cell here”—I point on the iPad to the map—“is probably going to cut off the energy, and this one to the south is going to die.” I zoom out slightly and tap on the cells popping up farther to the east. “These look like they’re just going to line out, and by the time they really get going, they’re going to be in the canyon. I don’t think we should mess with it.”
“Agree. Too hard to get a good shot.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, and also the canyon. You know. Almost no roads. Easy to get trapped.”
“Sure, that too.” Wes flashes me a grin. “Want me to drive for a bit? I don’t expect you to chauffeur me around.”
I hesitate, half expecting more of an argument.
I’m also not sure I want to give up control behind the wheel during a chase, but we haven’t heard from my brother.
We could be together for longer than either of us thought, especially since it looks like everything is shifting farther east over the coming week.
There’s really no point in exhausting myself by insisting on driving the entire time.
As long as Wes behaves.
“No stupid risks,” I finally say, my hand on the door. “I can’t afford to replace all my windows as easily as you can.”
The sound he makes is a little too short to be a laugh. “Sure, Sloane. Whatever you say.”
It’s what I want to hear, but for some reason my stomach twists as we quickly swap seats.
Wes fiddles with the seat and mirrors, adjusting everything for his longer legs with finicky precision.
I’m just starting to relax about him taking this seriously when he grins, throws the car into gear, and peels off the shoulder fast enough to send gravel flying.
All my glare gets me is a laugh.
“You good to navigate?” he asks. “If you want to grab a nap—”
“I am not going to sleep while you’re driving my car.”
“Oh, c’mon, nothing happened yesterday.”
“Yesterday we were road-tripping. Today we’re chasing. It’s different.”
“I haven’t died yet,” Wes says a little too cheerfully.
“Not for lack of trying.”
“Don’t worry, darlin’.” He reaches over to pat my thigh, his long fingers settling on my bare skin a little too easily. I stare down at his hand, watching his fingers flex as he squeezes. “Nothing is going to happen to you under my watch.”
The flicker of interest I thought I buried back at the coffee shop roars to life, a steady pulse throbbing between my legs. This is bad. Wes isn’t relationship material, and I don’t do casual. No matter how well he kisses.
“Hands on the wheel, please.” My attempt at stern lands somewhere around uncertain.
It’s a full thirty seconds before he removes his hand, his lips curving up in a faint smile.
The rest of his expression is shadowed by his sunglasses, but his fingers flex before they slowly lower to the steering wheel.
Neither of us says anything at first, the silence thick with all the things we’re not saying.
And then Wes grabs his phone and opens a playlist labeled “Shhh We’re Hunting Tornadoes.” Seconds later, AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” pours out of my speakers. When he starts singing along and I discover there’s something he’s definitely not good at, my irritation melts away.
Just to come roaring back a couple of hours later.
“I don’t like the look of this, Wes. Turn around.”
He doesn’t take his focus off the road, or at least the amount of road visible through the downpour.
The cell we’re on now is crawling along, which should be a good thing for a bunch of photographers, but it’s dumping inches of rain on areas that can’t absorb that kind of water.
We’ve already gone down two roads only to find them flooded out, forcing us to turn back.
Anything dirt is completely out of the question, putting a dangerous limit on our escape routes.
“The storm isn’t moving fast. Plenty of room to maneuver.”
I refresh the radar and stare down at my iPad in frustration. “There’s rotation in the middle of the rain. We could drive straight into a tornado.”
“But if we drop south, we’re going to lose it entirely,” Wes points out. “The sun is low enough we’ll probably catch a rainbow on the backside and salvage something out of this one.”
I grimace, just as irritated by how the day has gone.
We’ve watched several storms collapse before they ever got going.
Thicker cloud cover has made for a cooler day than forecasted.
Less heat means less instability. And while I need all the mental stability I can get, storms fall apart without atmospheric chaos to fuel them.
“You see any paved roads heading west?” Wes asks.
With my phone in one hand and the iPad in the other, I bounce between radar scans and the map. “About a mile up, but I can’t tell if it’s paved. We’re going to get into the hail if we keep going. Turn around. It’s not worth it.”
“We can make it.” Wes accelerates, despite the fact that we’re already hurtling along far too fast for the amount of water on the road. “You watch the radar. I’ll watch the road.”
No sooner do the words escape his mouth than hail starts to ping against the roof in metallic thunks.
I jump at an especially loud crack. Thankfully the windshield doesn’t break.
“Neither one of us is invincible!” I shout over the rain and hail.
“The roads are flooded! No stupid risks, remember? This is the definition of stupid!”
With his Wild Wes grin in place, he lets out a loud whoop when a bigger chunk of hail slams into the roof. “That one sounds like it left a dent!”
I grab hold of the doorframe and dig my nails into the trim.
I can’t decide who I hate more in this moment—myself for letting a madman drive or Wes for being so reckless.
I don’t care about the hail dents—there are plenty of them already pockmarking the paint as something of a storm chaser badge of honor—but the flooded roads are something else.
We bounce over a teeth-rattling pothole, and before I know it, we’re turning left, the back tires fishtailing wildly.