Chapter 7
Seven
SAM
There’s a new post from Tony waiting for me when I wake up.
Once again, I know I shouldn’t click the damn thing, but click it I do.
And instantly wish I hadn’t.
Brooks is sitting on the edge of a workbench in the warehouse, one sleeve pushed up. His forearm is wrapped in gauze. Luci stands between his knees, looking for all the world like she belongs right there. Her head is bent as she tapes the bandage down.
The worst part is that he’s smiling.
The caption reads, Boss man patched up and back at it already. Luci’s bedside manner gets five stars.
There might as well be a banner above the photo that says, “He isn’t missing you at all, Sam.”
I throw my phone facedown on Petra’s kitchen table.
Petra looks up from the coffeepot. “I don’t disagree with you chucking the thing into Nebraska, but do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
Because if I talk about it, I’m going to see that damned picture again. Her between his knees. Touching him.
I turn my hand, staring at the wedding ring that’s still on my finger. It’s been days and I still haven’t decided if it belongs there.
As if conjuring him by my thought alone, my phone lights up on the table. I don’t pick up, but that doesn’t stop me from reading the notification.
Brooks:
Sam, please. I need to hear your voice.
My breath catches.
Just five minutes ago, I saw a photo of this man with a woman tending his wounds like she was the one he wanted there with him.
And hadn’t he told me just that? That he wanted her in the truck with him instead of me?
Another text comes through.
Brooks:
I found something. I need to talk to you about it. I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry.
I lose track of how long I stare at the words.
“Sam?”
I look up at Petra. She cautiously looks down at the phone. Her eyebrow quirks.
“I don’t know what’s changed,” I say.
“Do you want to answer?”
This time, it’s not a text. The phone rings. Brooks’s photo fills my screen, full-on grinning. I’d taken the photo of him right after we’d come back from a chase. His hair was wet, plastered to his forehead, and I’d sworn he was the most handsome man I’d ever laid eyes on.
The phone continues to ring.
The image of Luci’s hands on him, standing between his legs, superimposes itself over the ringing phone.
“No,” I answer, then silence the call.
It rings again a minute later. Then again.
Finally, on the fourth call, I silence all notifications from him.
I don’t outright block him. I can’t do that yet.
I just make it so that I don’t have to hear that ring and see that photo pop into my head over and over.
Or him holding her while I stare from the doorway.
Or hear him telling me that he wanted her in the cab next to him, not me.
Whatever’s changed, I can’t do it. Not now. Maybe not ever.
It’s late afternoon when the air changes.
Back before things went sideways, Brooks used to say that I had a supernatural ability to track storms in a way that no radar could.
And right now, everything is pointing toward trouble.
The pressure around me feels different. The light looks wrong, like something out of a sci-fi movie, although no one can seem to sense it other than me.
The clouds look almost benign, but there’s something off about the way they’re stacking.
I set the tray on the bar and turn toward the plate-glass windows that frame oncoming chaos.
Petra stops, following my gaze. “I don’t like the way you’re looking at that sky.”
“Line’s shifted.”
Tom’s sitting at the bar with his tablet. “I’ve been watching it on the weather apps.”
Petra lets out a breath that says he was supposed to be working on homework but says nothing.
“It wasn’t supposed to come this far south,” he says.
Smart kid.
“No,” I confirm. “It wasn’t.”
Petra walks over and flips on the television, switching to the local station where the meteorologist has already broken into regular programming.
She’s speaking calmly, but I’ve watched local meteorologists in this corner of the world for too long.
She’s too calm. The kind of calm that says she’s working hard to pretend what’s showing on the radar isn’t giving her the willies.
“Weather radio?” I ask, turning to Petra.
“Office.”
“Get it and all your battery-powered lights. Flashlights. Lanterns. Whatever you have. Tell Joe to move his truck away from the windows. I don’t want whatever’s coming to have the chance to use your bar as a parking lot.”
Petra doesn’t even question me. She moves. There’s no argument. There’s no are you sure? She just moves.
If I wasn’t worried that her bar might be flattened within the next couple of hours, I’d be intoxicated by the trust there.
Instead, I’m just focused.
There are only a few patrons hanging out in the bar since the sun’s still hiding behind the wall of clouds bearing down on us.
A deputy, Carl, stands at the plate-glass window looking out at the sky.
Tom’s sitting at a table with his tablet and a notebook, making a list of the most vulnerable areas in town so we can call and get people mobilized.
“Carl, what have we got as far as shelters?” I call out as I look over the list.
“Basement at the Methodist church is open,” he says as he looks down at his phone.
“Is there any way to get the people in that trailer park on the east side of town there or here before this thing hits?” I ask, thinking of how absolutely devastated that park will be if this thing hits it.
He nods. “On it.”
On it. Just like that.
The first warning blares through the weather radio before the hour’s over.
The storm tightens faster than I could have ever anticipated, even with my sixth sense for storms. Every phone in the bar shrieks in warning. Petra’s face goes pale, but she helps direct people to the back of the bar and, where possible, the bathrooms.
For one stupid second, I think about calling Brooks.
Even with everything that happened, everything he said, I want him here with me right now. I actually reach for my phone, like I’m going to do the one ridiculous thing I promised I wouldn’t do.
Then the television, still blaring the meteorologist from the largest town over, says that there’s been rotation spotted just five miles out from us. I look over at Petra, who only swallows and pulls Tom to her. He may be fourteen, but he’s still her baby.
It’s only a few minutes later when the wind begins to howl so loudly that everything from the siren outside to the television is blotted out. A loud boom sounds off in the distance, a transformer no doubt, and then the lights are gone.
I’m shoulder to shoulder with a lineman who I vaguely remember telling me earlier that he preferred Pabst to Bud Light before 2000s hipsters ever made it a thing.
He huffs out a humorless laugh. “You called it.”
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
The Funnel Cloud is still standing when the real funnel cloud decides to turn east just before it can slam into us.
Petra’s house is also still upright. A block over, the feed store has lost its roof.
Joe’s truck luckily didn’t get tossed, but the windshield is gone, debris littered around it.
Power lines sag across the road like thick black snakes.
The air smells different, just like it always does after a storm, where everything has been moved around and age-old dirt has been thrown asunder.
The quiet that descended over everyone in the bar quickly grows into a frantic burr, with everyone trying to figure out what, if anything, is left of what they own.
I don’t think. I just take action. People forget the basics when they’re frantic for news or reassurance.
Several people have to be reminded not to go near any of the downed power lines.
More have to be convinced to wait for deputies and emergency responders to arrive before they venture out into whatever the storm did to the town.
Before long, people are coming to me for directions. They’re not questioning my ability. Not asking if I should be the one in charge. They’re just trusting me.
Petra’s place draws in those who want or need to connect.
Deputies shuffle in and out. A farmer, who looks familiar but not familiar enough to know by name, comes in and tells me that cattle are loose a few miles down the highway.
When I tell him I’ll relay the information to one of the deputies and not to be a hero, he agrees as a downed power line sparks near a puddle.
For the next few hours, the town fixes itself in my head as I take in new information and help with the recovery. Street names. Damage reports. Where shelters are full and where others have space. Who lost what and who got lucky.
And through it all, I think of Brooks. I wonder what he’s doing.
I wonder if he’s looking at the reports, knowing that I’m here.
Part of me wonders if he cares. The other part of me knows that somehow, he must. Even if for no other reason than we’re something to each other, even if I’m no longer sure what.
I imagine him standing here beside me, smiling like he used to when he’d be proud of a call I made. “That’s my Sammy Girl. She always knows.”
I hate that I want so badly to hear those words.
It’s not that I need Brooks to tell me who I am. I’ve always known; that’s what hurts.
It’s just that, no matter what was said, no matter what was done, I still want him here beside me.
And I still love him just as much as I ever did.