Gale
I didn’t want to be in the city, surrounded by people, their questions and judgment. I wanted to be at home, alone, photographing the rain clouds as they moved in, capturing the drops as they beaded on leaves or trickled down windowpanes. I wanted the ozone in my nose and the wind in my hair.
I wanted to peer into the heavens as the clouds unleashed their bounty.
But no. Olivia needed me, so I was stuck in an elevator with my sister and her crew, riding to the eleventh floor of a massive steel and concrete building in the heart of Oklahoma City to meet the CEO of CineVision Entertainment so he could introduce us to a hotshot producer, and we could learn about a show opportunity.
My lungs constricted. The panic attack I’d barely staved off in the bathroom was threatening to surface.
I wanted this for my sister, but I profoundly objected to being part of it.
It required a level of social relations that broke sweat across my forehead and turned my stomach upside down.
I wasn’t averse to people if they knew and understood me, but that number was so small I could count them on one hand and have fingers left over.
Strangers, particularly men in powerful positions, hubristic men, men who looked and judged and unapologetically spoke their minds, uncaring who got hurt in the process, made me uneasy.
The ride was silent. My stomach lurched when the car stopped to drop off two women on the sixth floor.
It surged again as we continued our climb.
Since sharing about my unfortunate run-in with Ozrik Devereaux in the bathroom, morale had plummeted.
When we caught sight of his entire crew outside the elevators, any hope of a positive outcome vanished.
Although I secretly hoped it might get me off the hook.
“You didn’t say we had competition.” Maggie, Olivia’s childhood best friend, wore a cloak of misery, arms crossed and nose wrinkled. She had a dainty silver hoop in one nostril.
“I didn’t know. Mr. Hawking mentioned the producer had a plan, but I assumed…” She sighed.
“You didn’t ask him to elaborate?” Jazz, too, had a nose ring, and a septum ring, and an eyebrow ring, and a lip ring, and one that looked like a teardrop, and another through the bridge between his eyes.
Much of his skin was also tattooed. Yet, he was the type of person who got mad if someone stared.
Jazz hated me and went out of his way to ensure everyone knew it.
“No. I didn’t ask.”
“If signing Twisted Fates was his plan, we’re wasting our time.” Roe craned his neck, watching the numbers above the doors tick by. “No one’s going to care about us.”
“I’m not giving up before we have details,” Olivia said, ever the optimist. “Ozrik Devereaux doesn’t own the rights to storm chasing. We’re popular too.”
They were, and no, Ozrik didn’t have any special claim over storm chasing, but the man certainly thought he did.
Not that I followed his adventures.
Not that I hadn’t seen his social media posts and stalked his Instagram.
Not that I hadn’t viewed a dozen or more of his chases on YouTube.
In the bathroom, it was clear he didn’t know who I was, but I knew him.
It had started as curiosity about one of Olivia’s competitors in the field and had morphed into a small, private obsession. He was one of the most gorgeous men I’d seen in my life, but entirely untouchable.
The elevator slowed and stopped. The doors glided open, delivering us onto the eleventh floor.
My sister waved for the others to go ahead, then hooked my arm and tugged me along, never leaving me behind.
We had always been attuned to one another.
Although I liked to think she was being caring because she sensed my anxiety, I figured it was more to ensure I didn’t run from the building.
We landed in a spacious lobby with soft burgundy carpeting, plush, black leather furniture, and various framed movie and TV posters lining the walls.
Potted plants occupied corners. Unusual light fixtures hung overhead and posed haughtily on low tables, looking as pretentious as the people working in the building.
Faint music whispered from hidden speakers.
The scent of lavender and wood polish tickled my nose.
The members of Twisted Fates gathered at a reception desk, where Ozrik chatted with a well-dressed man behind the counter. We had no choice but to wait for our turn.
We found seats along the wall, and my attention strayed to the man I’d encountered in the bathroom.
Ozrik Devereaux. Elk City’s outgoing bad boy, or so the rumor claimed.
He wore a graphic tee over tattered jeans that hung low on his hips, showing off the band of his Andrew Christian underwear.
Scuffed motorcycle boots topped off the ensemble.
His body language reeked of a confidence I would never know or understand.
His hair was a windstorm of loose curls that danced across his forehead, circled his ears, and tickled his neck.
Its warm cedar-brown color was touched by sunlight.
He sported sculpted cheekbones and a razor-sharp jaw.
I feared his shapely mouth, imagining how it slung abuse at anyone who didn’t fit a convention.
His heavy brows were dark and full, framing eyes full of caramel trouble.
For a brief time in the bathroom, I had been the focus of that gaze.
Ozrik had picked up on my instability, and I’d wanted nothing more than for the floor to open me up and swallow me whole.
His attention had done nothing to ease my panic.
Having wildly flapping butterflies share space with the toxic sludge in my belly was a bad combination.
Even after he left, the impression of him had remained. I could only imagine his thoughts.
Although we hadn’t gone to school together—he was younger than me by two years—nor did we live in the same neighborhood, Ozrik’s reputation preceded him. It had less to do with his risk-taking behavior or the bad boy popularity he garnered with Twisted Fates than with the infamy of his mother.
Even with a population over ten thousand, not a single person in Elk City hadn’t heard a tale or two about Stella Devereaux.
When my mother was alive, she worked in the hospital emergency care unit and often came in contact with Stella when she brought her young son weekly, sometimes daily, for one complaint or another.
Stella was a topic of many conversations around the dinner table.
Ones I vaguely remembered due to their serious nature.
Cancer took my mother sixteen years ago, three weeks after my tenth birthday. After her death, dinnertime conversations became a thing of the past.
Ozrik’s group finished at the reception desk and was directed to follow a corridor to a conference room.
His friends headed off. Ozrik moved to follow but glanced around the waiting area first, taking in Olivia and her crew.
Inevitably, his gaze landed on me. I stilled, unable to look away, wishing I were invisible.
He saw me dissolve in the bathroom as I skirted the edge of panic.
Was he about to point it out? Shame me in front of my sister and her friends?
He didn’t, but he didn’t move on either. The air tingled, as if before a storm. It rode the length of my arms and tickled the hairs on my nape.
The prolonged attention made me want to squirm. Why was he staring?
It lasted seconds but felt like hours, and I had the sense Ozrik was trespassing inside the private spaces in my mind where he had no right to stray. When it got to be too much, I broke eye contact, ducked my chin, and focused on my knotted fingers.
Ozrik’s buddy called for him to catch up. He didn’t move.
Olivia heedlessly knocked him out of the way as she approached the counter. “Your boys are calling, Devereaux. Get going.”
I glanced up in time to see Ozrik stumble out of her way. His attention shifted to my sister. “Oh, hello, Olivia. Fancy meeting you here.” I didn’t miss the way he took her in head to toe—with interest, fascination, and appreciation.
Like a man with lewd thoughts and a swollen ego.
Olivia didn’t notice, too engrossed in a conversation with the secretary.
One of Ozrik’s comrades reappeared and snagged his arm. “Dude, come on. What are you doing?”
As Ozrik was dragged off, he dashed one last glance over his shoulder. At me. With a grin and a sly wink, he and his friend vanished down the hall.
A wink. He winked at me. What was that about?
I checked if anyone else had noticed. Jazz was too busy staring at his phone, and Maggie was picking at her chipped nail polish.
Roe met my gaze, huffed, and rolled his eyes. “Ignore him. He’s an idiot.”
I agreed with a silent smile and focused on my knotted fingers, on my jittering knees, and on the cooling sweat in my armpits. In the dark recesses of my mind, where disavowed secrets lived, I pretended there was an alternate meaning to that wink.
But that was a joke. Guys like Ozrik Devereaux didn’t look twice at guys like me, unless it was to taunt and tease and bully them. Besides, even if he was remotely interested, I was in no way prepared to explore that part of myself.
Olivia finished at the counter and announced that we were to follow the other group to the same conference room. The rest of the team departed, but I remained seated.
“Are you coming, Gale?” Olivia asked at the mouth of the hallway.
“Can I say no?”
“Nope.”
Olivia advanced and drew me to my feet before hooking her arm with mine.
She steered us along a corridor and into a vast conference room with a long table and bright sunlight streaming through a massive floor-to-ceiling window.
The rain moving through Beckham County would miss Oklahoma City by a hair.
I was partial to rain. It was the music of my soul. I found serenity in the rain.