Chapter Twenty
Tracy’s text comes a full week after we leave my house, confirming they’re ready whenever the weather wants to cooperate. Her parents refuse to attend on the grounds the wedding won’t be in a church, but Matt’s parents love the idea. His dad even got ordained to serve as justice of the peace.
Ten days before my chase season comes to a close, fifteen of us gather at the edge of a field halfway down a dirt road.
Getting everyone here was a feat of coordination, and we need to keep an eye on the storm spinning to our northwest, but we’re intentionally farther away than any of us would usually be.
Neither Matt nor Tracy opts for formal wear.
He’s in a pair of dark-wash jeans with a tailored vest over a deep green button-down rolled to his elbows.
Tracy’s sundress is blush pink, the full skirt whipping around her legs in the wind.
She’s curled her hair, leaving it wild and free, with only the barest amount of makeup on her face.
Not wanting to upstage her, I leave my dress in my bag, much to Wes’s disappointment. His eyes light up with interest when I promise to put it on for him some other time when we’re alone.
Joy and excitement swirl on the wind currents. Despite the absolute mayhem it took to pull this off, now that everyone is here, the only tension is anticipatory—with the exception of Matt’s parents, who keep eyeing the dark clouds and frequent lightning erupting behind the group with concern.
“Ready?” I murmur to Wes when he moves beside me, his arm resting easily around my hips.
He holds up his camera with his free hand. “Been looking forward to you bossing me around.” Leaning closer, his lips brush my ear as he adds, “You can boss me around anytime you like.” His hand slides down to squeeze my ass, not even the slightest bit repentant when I elbow him in the ribs.
“Stop that,” I chide, though it’s not very effective when I’m grinning like a fool. I’ve grown to crave the affectionate way he touches me every chance he gets, even when we have an audience. “I’m working. You wait your turn.”
“I remember when you said that at Cora and Shawn’s wedding.” Wes straightens with a chuckle. “Highlight of my night.”
I roll my eyes and bump my hip into his. “Please. The ten minutes you spent with me was hardly the highlight of that night.”
“Darlin’, the only reason I showed up to that wedding was you.”
“What?” My whole body whips toward his. “How did you even know I’d be there? You asked me what I was doing there!”
“No, I said you were far from home. Which was true.” Wes laughs at my glare.
“I grew up with Shawn. Cora knows I’m a photographer and sent me a message asking if you were as good as her friend claimed.
I said she wouldn’t find better.” He shrugs, his eyes straying to the storm and darkening.
“My dad told me I had better be at the wedding. I was planning to skip it just to spite him, but you were going to be there. It was worth giving up the chase days to have you play with me for those ten minutes.”
“I scowled at you the entire time.”
“Mostly,” Wes says, good-natured humor returning to his voice and his shoulders relaxing. “But, for the record, the only one I wanted to spend any time in a corner with that night was you.”
I tip my head back and stroke my fingertip down the line of his jaw. “You do an awfully good job of hiding how sweet you are.”
“Our secret.” Wes gives me a quick, hard kiss and then holds up the camera. “Where do you want me?”
With one final check of the various radar scans and someone assigned to keep an eye on the storm, the wedding gets underway.
It’s the least-formal and lowest-budget wedding that I’ve shot since I got my start doing backyard weddings for some friends from high school—but infinitely more fun.
Matt’s dad conducts the ceremony like he’s at an open-mic night, keeping everyone laughing while Wes and I dart around taking photos.
Tracy’s pink dress pops against the green of the grass and the deep blackish-gray of the sky, and the way that Matt beams at her is as perfect as a wedding that took two years to plan.
And when they kiss after reciting their vows, I decide not to tell them that there’s a lucky lightning bolt in the background. That can be a happy surprise when I give them the final edits.
Tracy gives us all a big grin, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling. “So…we’re chasing this thing, right?”
When Tracy says she plans to chase in her dress—“Best reception idea ever!”—Wes and I offer to stick with her and Matt for the rest of the afternoon and grab a few more shots of them with the storm. It’s easy enough to take my own shots in between, but more than that, an idea is starting to form.
I thought florals in the foreground would work to juxtapose beauty versus the destructive nature of a storm, but despite producing some pretty images, something remains missing from every frame I’ve taken so far.
Tracy silhouetted in her wedding dress against the dark sky is a light bulb moment.
I’m not getting the emotion I want from the flowers, but the deep, vibrant pink silk of my dress ruffling in the wind might just do it.
But not today. Today I’m here for Tracy and Matt.
Almost as if Mother Nature wants to give the couple a wedding gift, the storm decides to show off.
From a distance, the structure is almost textbook, striations in the clouds clearly visible.
As it gains power, everyone watches the velocity radar scans with building excitement as a strong couplet emerges and a funnel cloud starts to form high above us.
But the real gift is when the storm does finally drop a tornado—miles and miles from any town—the angle of the sun is low enough to generate a stunning rainbow behind it. I snap a handful of frames of Tracy and Matt, only to have them wave me off and point at the scene in front of us.
“Get your shots too, Sloane!” Tracy yells over the wind. She pauses long enough to sling an arm around my shoulder in a quick hug. “I love you, and I’m so buying all your drinks tonight whenever we find a bar, but go do your thing!”
It’s sheer impulse that has me grabbing my tripod.
I position it low to the ground and quickly set up intervals.
It’s worth the extra seconds of setup time.
The steadiness of the tripod allows for a slightly longer exposure to pop the colors of the rainbow, and if I’m very lucky, ensure any lightning bolts are crisp.
Wes decides to stay freehand, though he takes up a position a few feet away from me after double checking he’s not in my shot and points his camera at the sky. “You going for that unicorn?”
“I’m feeling far too superstitious to answer that question.” The storm is still kicking out a decent amount of lightning, though with how much daylight remains, it’s going to be tough to get it to show up on camera. “Ask me once we’re back in the car.”
The tornado doesn’t last long. I get just over five minutes before it ropes out, which means there are close to a thousand frames for me to choose from—and hopefully one of them has a lightning bolt.
There was one in particular that came down in an almost perfect position I’m praying my shutter was open for.
Giddy at the possibility that I may have grabbed a contest-worthy shot, I start scrolling through the frames once we’re in the car.
I still want to try the dress idea forming in my mind, but if I just got the shot I think I may have, there’s no question that I’m going with the unicorn. It’s too rare not to.
I pointedly ignore the fact that there are at least twenty other photographers out here who could have gotten the same shot. Not all of them were invited to participate in the contest—but Wes was. And he was standing right next to me.
“You want to keep with it or head for town?” he asks as we pull back on to the road. “I’m good either way.”
“You sure? I’d love to be able to get Tracy and Matt a few photos tonight if you don’t mind heading back now.
” The decision was already made that we’d all stay in Amarillo.
It’s only two hours from where we currently are, and the storms tomorrow are forecast to initiate along the border with New Mexico.
“You’re telling me you want to go back to town, check into our room, and ignore me to edit photos?” Wes flashes a teasing grin. “That’s true romance right there.”
“Holy shit, I got it!” I tip my laptop toward Wes where he’s propped up next to me against the headboard working on his own photos. “I can’t believe it.”
“I can.” He takes my laptop after pushing his own out of the way to study the image.
The tornado is in the foreground, the angle of the sun turning it mostly white with a brown swirl of dust at the base.
The rainbow arcs behind it with a tack-sharp lightning bolt in the distance just to the left of the tornado.
“This is incredible. The slightly longer exposure caught the light just right, and that low angle comp was such a smart choice. Are you going to submit it?”
“I think so.” I hesitate, and then ask, “Did you get it too?”
“Nope. Maybe if I’d been smart like you and grabbed the tripod I would have.” Wes leans closer to brush a kiss against my cheek. “Proud of you.”
Warmth floods my veins. “Stop it,” I grumble. “You keep looking at me like that and we’re not making it out of this room tonight.”
Wes dances his fingers up my thigh, stopping short before he gets to anything fun. “And that would be a bad thing?”
“No.” I sigh, grabbing his hand and pressing a kiss to his open palm. “Yes. We did tell Tracy and Matt we’d join them at the bar tonight.”
“Right. That.” Wes opens his laptop and spins it to show me the image he’s been working on.
I asked him to focus on Matt during the ceremony so I could stick with Tracy.
While wedding photography might not be Wes’s preference, his talent with a camera isn’t limited to landscapes.
He’s captured Matt’s dreamy expression perfectly.
“You want to help me shoot weddings more often? That’s great.”
“Not the weddings you usually do, but…” A thoughtful crease forms between his brows. “This could be your thing. The nontraditional weddings, I mean.”
I can’t help a laugh, shaking my head. “There are not enough people who want to get married in the middle of a thunderstorm to pay my mortgage.”
“No, but there are a lot of couples who don’t want to deal with a big elaborate ceremony. I have some friends in Moab that shoot weddings out in the backcountry. Super small. You’d be great at something like that.”
It sounds too good to be true. The magic of weddings but without all the pomp and circumstance that’s starting to burn me out. “You really think that’s a viable way to make a living?”
“I think there are far fewer photographers willing to get up at two in the morning to hike to the top of a mountain for sunrise with a forty-pound bag of gear than there are couples who want that kind of wedding. Especially in our generation. Most of us can’t afford to drop thirty grand on a party.
” His lips twist into a rueful smile. “Hell, I can afford it, but the idea of being stuffed into a suit and under a microscope for an entire night sounds awful.”
“Something to think about, I guess,” I say slowly.
The idea has merit, but with only an hour and a half until we’re due to meet Tracy and Matt at the bar she dropped in the group chat, there isn’t time to dig into it.
“Thank you for the suggestion. I’ll look into it,” I tell Wes, stretching to press a kiss to his cheek.
“After I get these done. Stop distracting me,” I add with a playful shove.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I shiver at the memory of the last time those words left his lips and point sharply at his laptop. “Focus!”
Wes holds up his palms in a show of innocence that is immediately overruled by the wicked curve of his mouth.
“It will be faster if we shower together,” he says when I finally declare I’m done editing.
“Lies.” I shake my head and pull off my shirt, tossing it into his face. He catches it one-handed and doesn’t try to hide how he presses the fabric to his nose, inhaling my scent. I make it all the way to the bathroom door before I twist back to ask, “You coming?”
His face lights up like he’s won the lottery. With four long strides, he lifts me by my thighs and carries me the two steps into the bathroom. “Not before you do.”