Chapter 6
Cami
A thick blanket of fog hangs over the town as we walk to our truck the following morning. Kane opens my door as I stifle a yawn.
“Podcast, audiobook, or chat?” he asks as he pulls the truck out of the hotel's parking space.
“Chat,” I say. “I’m afraid I’ll fall asleep if you don’t keep me awake.”
“Not a morning person?” he teases.
“Not even a little,” I admit.
“What do you want to chat about?”
“Let’s start with something easy,” I suggest. “Where’d you go to college?”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t go to college.”
My brows shoot up in surprise. “Oh, sorry. Since you’re considered one of the best storm chasers in the world, I just assumed you had some sort of degree in weather science.”
He smiles. “I love to read and learn new things, and I’ve always been obsessed with severe storms. So, I taught myself meteorology. After a while, I began meeting up with other storm chasers and learned a lot from them, too.” He glances at me over his shoulder. “Besides that, I couldn’t afford tuition. My sister was smart enough to get a full ride to Vanderbilt, but I was only ever good at the classes I enjoyed. As for the rest, I scraped by. No one was lining up to give me a scholarship.”
Unsure of what to say, I mutter, “I’m sorry.”
He shrugs. “I’m not. As it turns out, a degree really isn’t necessary in this line of work. So, how about you? Where did you go to school?”
“I went to film school at NYU. While there, I got my first assignments to shoot documentaries for National Geographic. I love the work.”
He nods in the rearview mirror. “I guess you’d have to if you’re risking your life to film sharks and hippos.”
A small smile dances on my lips. “And tornadoes.”
“Is it the thrill that does it for you, or something else?”
I think about his question. “My friend, Jae, would say I’m a thrill seeker, but I don’t think it’s true. I just like sharing the world with others. Not many people will be chased by a hippo in their lifetime—”
“Thank goodness!” he exclaims.
“Indeed,” I say, laughing. “But anyone can watch the documentary and experience it in a safe way.”
He nods. “That makes sense. That’s part of the reason I film tornadoes. They’re beautiful and awesome, but they’re too dangerous and potentially deadly to load kids onto a school bus and take them to see one on a field trip.”
I surreptitiously hit the record button on my camera, suspecting that Kane’s about to give me some great info for the show. “Plus, tornadoes are kind of unpredictable, right? You never know where exactly one will hit?”
“That’s true,” he says. “Exact locations can’t be pinpointed, but the science is getting better and better. Storm predictions are more accurate than ever before. And the warnings are issued quicker, too, alerting folks to the need to seek shelter. That’s important, especially for people who can’t stay in their houses. People who live in mobile homes, for example.”
“Where should those people seek shelter?”
“Any nearby sturdy building is better than staying in their own home. A lot of churches and fire departments open their doors for temporary shelters. The trailer park I grew up in had a school bus buried into the side of the hill. It had been fortified to prevent leakage and structural collapse.”
“That’s a clever idea!”
He nods. “The trailer park was shitty, but the owner wasn’t completely heartless. One of my pet projects is building storm shelters near trailer parks and apartment buildings. My sister is an engineer, so she helps me provide the strongest shelter possible. Better than sunken school buses,” he says, flashing me another grin in the rearview mirror.
“How come I haven’t heard that before?” I ponder.
“Hmm?”
“About your storm shelters?”
He shrugs. “We do it anonymously.”
I wince, realizing that he’d shared that information with me while the camera was rolling. I quickly turn the camera off. “That’s very kind of you.”
He shifts in his seat, looking uncomfortable. “I think it’s just human decency. It’d be wrong to just leave people to die.”
Shit. Not only is Kane Charming just as charming as I’d feared he’d be, but he’s not the selfish, millionaire playboy that I’d thought he was.
I doubt he will ever see me as anything more than his cameraperson, but I know now that my hunch about him was right: I’m in serious danger of falling for this guy.