Storm Season

1. Chris

Chapter 1

Chris

Now

July 10 th

M y skin itches under my shirt. The same feeling usually tells me to take my escape route away from a dangerous storm, but there’s no escaping today. I loosen my tie, and it doesn’t help.

Annie’s tiny house has never felt this claustrophobic before. She doesn’t live here anymore, so it isn’t the daily clutter of her life spread over every available surface. No stray socks are sticking out from under the loveseat, no half-eaten cartons of yogurt lie in the sink, and no forgotten cups of coffee perch on the stairs. The house feels empty despite the furnishings she left behind for guests like me. And yet, the walls are closing in. I can’t draw a full breath.

I tug on my tie again. It’s too early to be dressed. I should change back out of my suit and take a quick walk. Although the air is soupy, it's not stifling hot yet. It’s going to be miserable later.

Her scent lingers in the air, orange blossoms and ginger. It feels like she’ll walk out of her office any minute, flash me that million-watt smile, and tell me she’s ready to go chasing.

Those days are over. I haven’t seen Annie since April. She didn’t return my calls or texts. Didn’t send an email.

I grab the wedding invitation—the only communication I’ve had from her—and trace a finger over the embossed frills around the edges. My hand shakes as I finally do what I’ve wanted since it turned up in the mail: I close my fist around it, crumple it into a ball, and drop it to the floor.

Why am I here? She ran away; I closed the door. We’re no longer chase partners, and it’s too late to talk about what happened. Not that her wedding would be the place for that conversation.

But Annie invited me. So here I am.

If I could hold onto my anger at her ghosting me, I would, but overwhelming sadness snuffs it out the moment it flares up. I can’t stay mad at her when I did this to us. The crater in my chest is of my own making.

I pick up the wedding invitation and flatten it against the table, trying to press out the creases but knowing it’s too late. It’s beyond repair. Annie will be busy today. I might not get to talk to her beyond wishing her a lifetime of happiness with Marc. I just…I need her to know I’m…

I’m here for her.

All I need to do is get through the next minute, the next hour, the next day.

It’s too early to go to the big house where Annie’s aunt and uncle live. Guests will arrive soon, and I don’t want to be in the way. It’ll be easier for me to slip in the back unnoticed closer to the start of the ceremony. So I grab my laptop and escape into her office. The one room I couldn’t bring myself to enter last night.

Her cameras line the shelves on one wall. It seems they survived in their cushioned case. I inspect them without touching them, and yeah, they’re the same ones, not replacements. All Nikons, each with a story. The first one her uncle gave her. The one she bought with earnings from her first job at an ice cream parlor. The one she bought after selling some of her storm footage to a major movie studio.

Her favorite, the one in her lap on our last chase, is in its place, too. I force myself to swallow. I couldn’t find it, but someone must have. The body is scuffed, the still-attached lens shattered.

None of my cameras survived. Two were mounted, one to the dash, one out the rear window, filming our chase. They were intact but took too much of a beating. The footage cut out a second and a half after the SUV rolled. The third was in an unzipped case. I’d found it in the field fifty feet away. I couldn’t find the case.

I have a new SUV. New cameras, new equipment. I’ve been out chasing solo several times since April, but my heart wasn’t in it because Annie wasn’t with me.

I tear myself away, sit behind the massive antique mahogany desk—the desk Annie fell in love with at an estate sale and bought this tiny house for—and flick my laptop on.

When I’m ready, I force myself to look at the Wall.

It’s the best part of the room. The entire wall, from top to bottom and left to right, is covered in a photo of a tornado. The white cone dips gracefully to verdant green fields, a rainbow to one side, dark and heavy clouds behind.

It’s so vivid, so perfect, that I’m instantly standing next to her on the side of an Oklahoma highway seven years ago, pointing out the needle-like funnel forming so she won’t miss a second of her first tornado on her first chase.

She was with my former chase partner Justin then. Today, she marries Marc. In a way, nothing has changed. But everything is different since that last chase.

I need a distraction, so I turn back to my laptop, bringing up the latest high-resolution models.

There’s a nice triple point setting up north of Wichita. The HRRR consistently shows some nice-looking discrete supercells popping up ahead of the dry line. From there, it would be an easy drive to another promising set-up the next day in central South Dakota.

Out of habit, boredom, or maybe sanity-saving instinct, I pore over the low-level lapse rates, storm relative helicity, and MCAPE until I have enough of a forecast to plan the chase I’d do if I didn’t have to be here.

The screen door opens and closes with a bang I feel in my chest. I have two heart-pounding seconds to slam my laptop shut before Annie appears in the doorway.

I’m not ready, but she storms into my life anyway, and I’ll have to deal with it.

And oh fuck.

Annie wearing her wedding dress is a blow to the chest.

She already has the kind of beauty that hurts, whether she’s rumpled from ten hours in a car or perfectly put together in a simple, glamorous wedding dress that could grace a magazine cover. Her cheeks are rosy pink, her chocolate brown hair has caramel highlights, and her chest rises and falls like she ran all the way from the big house. Whatever she tries to say is lost in her struggle to breathe as she clings to the door frame.

“You’re beautiful,” I say because I can tell her that on her wedding day.

Her eyes narrow on my laptop, and she points an accusing finger.

I raise my hands like I wasn’t considering skipping her wedding to go chasing. “I was looking at porn, I swear.”

She chokes out a laugh and shakes her head, her softly curled hair dancing over her bare shoulders.

I grip the edge of the desk, waiting for the need to run my fingers through her hair to pass. Memories of the last time—the only time—wash over me.

“If you’re…about to…flip desk,” Annie manages to gasp out, “put my monitor…somewhere safe.” Her breathing is almost under control. Some of the pink is fading from her skin.

“I’m not going to flip your desk.” It’s an antique and looks heavy as hell. I’d put my back out.

We need to have a conversation, but Annie runs from those, not to those. That’s not why she’s here when she’s supposed to be getting ready. “What’s wrong?”

She doesn’t answer. Her eyes lock onto my laptop as she walks around the desk to stand next to me. A gentle nudge from her hip and I take a big step away.

“When were you going to hit the road?” she asks, lifting the lid of my laptop.

“After the ceremony.” It’s not until I say it that I know it’s the truth. I won’t be able to stay for the reception. Watching her promise to be with him in sickness and health is already too much. Knowing she’s happy, she loves him, and he’s a good man who loves her will have to be enough. I’ll distract myself with a few days of chasing. I’ll go back to work after. I’ll survive this.

Annie says nothing as she drops into the chair and clicks through the models. I want to ask her what she’s doing. Instead, I say, “You’ll wrinkle your dress.”

She shushes me without glancing away from the screen.

It takes a special kind of magic to be in the right spot on the right storm at the right time. Annie’s instincts are solid, and with my grasp of the data, we were a strong team. Even when we didn’t get a tornado—the usual outcome of most chases for most chasers most years—we always saw something spectacular. Sculpted mesocyclones, dazzling anvil crawlers, towering storms lit to gold by the setting sun. Some of my favorite moments have been after the chase is over, sitting in the SUV to watch the light show. All of it is worth the thousands of miles. At least it is with Annie.

“You’ll hit the triple point up by Wichita,” she says, leaning back in the chair. She’s not looking at me. She’s staring at The Wall, her gaze thoughtful. “South Dakota the next day.”

“Yeah.” I loosen my tie again, uncomfortable because of how familiar this is, poring over data in silence, comparing plans, arguing where we differ. But she’s in her wedding dress.

Silence hangs between us for a long moment. Annie seems to have forgotten me, and I have no idea what’s happening in her head.

My head, on the other hand, has fixed on the image of Annie, her face pale and smudged with dirt, a trickle of blood running down her forehead, her eyes wide with shock. I stuff my hands in my pockets and clench my fists because I need to touch her to reassure myself she’s alive and okay.

I fucked up. Made a mess of everything. The morning of Annie’s wedding is not the time for this conversation, but my mouth opens anyway. “Annie, I’m—”

She springs to her feet and strides over to her camera equipment. My jaw drops as she yanks her modified suitcase out, drops to her knees in her beautiful dress, and pops the case open.

“What are you doing?”

She grabs a camera, tucking it into place. “Packing.”

No.

My heart goes into panicked overdrive. This is not happening today. Annie can’t run out on her wedding. But I know her, and this is all my fault.

She frowns at my hand when I kneel beside her suitcase, gently closing the lid.

“Annie. Stop.”

Finally, she looks up at me, and the fear in her big brown eyes breaks me in half.

I swallow all the words I want to say and reach for the ones I need to say. “You’re getting married today. Cold feet are normal.” Don’t do this , I try to tell her with my eyes. I don’t know if I mean don’t marry him or don’t run from him .

Her gaze drops back to my hand. When her attempt at brushing it away proves ineffective, she grabs my wrist and tugs. That doesn’t work, either. “Chris, move.”

I don’t. Annie slaps the back of my hand, but not hard enough.

“You aren’t—” Before I can say coming with me , she grabs the handle and yanks her suitcase free, whipping it around to place herself in the middle.

I’ve never seen her this rough with her cameras. My surprise gives her time to finish packing. She turns to me, determination in her eyes.

De-escalate . I raise my hands. “I’ll make us some coffee. We can talk about this.”

She’s already shaking her head. I shouldn’t expect more. She’d rather run from a problem than face it head-on.

But it’s not too late. We can fix this and get her back to the big house in time to get ready to walk down the aisle. “Your wedding—”

“Is off,” Annie says, brushing a strand of hair back and getting to her feet. She ignores the creases in the satin, the dust that’s turned the lace grubby. “Get your ass in the car, Chris." Her smile is wild and free and terrifying. “Let’s go chasing.”