6. Annie
Chapter 6
Annie
5 Years Ago
October 18 th
C hase season runs from early April to mid-June, but Chris calls me up in October, a few days before a high-risk setup along the Oklahoma-Texas border. Justin is out of town for a few job interviews, and I’m visiting my aunt and uncle while I think about what kind of work I want to do, so I jump at the chance to hit the road.
This chase feels different, not just because I’ve been promoted to Senior Chase Partner in Justin’s absence. Everything is brown. No bright green fields of fresh or flourishing crops, no randomly placed leafy trees obscuring our view. It’s warm ahead of the storms but feels different than in the spring. Like snow won’t be far away.
Chris is his usual quiet self, so there’s that, I guess.
We get a big old dirty wedge thirty minutes outside of Lubbock and follow it for nearly an hour as it chews up fallow fields.
“Wow,” I say as I collapse into the passenger’s seat and close my door.
“This one isn’t done yet,” Chris says, checking the mirrors and his blind spot before pulling back onto the highway. “Let’s follow it a while.”
“We make a pretty good team, the two of us,” I say, reaching for my water bottle.
He glances at me as I take a drink but says nothing.
Maybe he’s not his usual self. He’s unfortunately grumpy for someone who just saw such an impressive tornado. I wonder what’s bugging him. Is it me? Was I his last resort? Does he regret asking me to come?
I don’t like conflict, but if I want to come back next season—and I do—I need to know. So I suck it up, and instead of letting it drop, I cap my water bottle and ask, “You disagree?”
I poke him in the arm when he doesn’t answer right away.
“I don’t disagree,” he says, rubbing his arm like my poke hurt.
That works for me.
We chase into Oklahoma well after the sun goes down, following a cyclical supercell that drops long-track tornadoes.
And then we make a mistake.
We get too close.
We drop south to take the next road east, only to be greeted by an orange and white sign reflecting our headlights at us, telling us the road is closed.
We’re in the dark, lightning intermittently illuminating the wedge barreling toward us.
Twenty nail-biting seconds pass as Chris studies the storm, trying to determine its course. His calm demeanor is keeping me from freaking out—if he’s not panicking, we must be okay.
“We’ll clear the path fastest if we continue south,” he says.
“Okay,” I say, nodding. The south option turns into a dirt road, which isn’t ideal. It looks in good condition as far as I can see, which is only as far as our headlights go, and brief flashes a little farther, thanks to the lightning. But I’d prefer to take it than try to outrun the storm by turning around and heading back into it.
All this assumes Chris is right about the direction the tornado is moving.
Our dry dirt road quickly turns to mud.
Chris grips the steering wheel and tries to keep us moving because it’s dark and impossible to tell if we’ve cleared the path yet. It’ll be close. I grip my camera and brace for the monster tornado to come out of the dark and sideswipe us.
“Almost clear,” he says as we slip and slide down the road.
And then the SUV comes to a stop.
He swears and pulls hard one way on the steering wheel, then the other way, the engine revving as he hits the accelerator. It bogs us down deep in the mud, and he stops.
Panic is slipping over me, but Chris blows out a breath and stares out the windows into the night. I do the same. For a while, the only sound is the wind, the rumble of thunder, and the churning growl of the tornado somewhere in the dark. We watch, holding our breaths, for brief glimpses of the wedge.
A couple of closely timed flashes of lightning reveal the monster already to our north.
“We’re clear,” he says, sighing in relief.
We wait a few minutes as the last of the rear flank wind follows the storm, and the rain turns to a drizzle.
Chris opens his door, cold air rushing in as he climbs out. “You drive, I’ll push.”
What follows is not fun. Chris shouts instructions at me. The wheels spin, but we can’t get traction, even when he pushes and rocks the SUV. Putting his floor mats under the tires doesn’t help, either. I turn the steering wheel back and forth, but any mud that manages to clear oozes right back.
“Do you have a signal?” he asks at one point. I check, but no. I do not. “One more try.”
I’m sick of getting yelled at. Chris isn’t yelling at me, just instructions, but it’s getting on my nerves. “I’ll push,” I say. Maybe he’s as sick of his yelling as I am because he opens the driver’s side door.
“Be my guest,” he says in a tight voice. Mud speckles his face in the dim light of the cab. Water drips over the brim of his hat, and his raincoat is slick and spattered in mud.
I move to get out, but he raises his hand. “Actually, no. There’s no point in you getting wet and muddy, too.”
“Let me try?” I’m already sliding out, even though he’s barely left me enough room to squeeze past him. My foot slips in the mud, and Chris grabs me by the elbows to keep me upright. And now we’re squished together, trapped in the little triangle of space between the open door and the SUV.
“You don’t have to,” he says, and I’m not sure through my waterproof jacket, but I think his thumbs sweep over my arms.
My heart does a little tripping stutter, and I laugh, though the adrenaline still in my system makes it sound like a wild, high-pitched giggle. But then I remember the triangle trapping us together is open on one whole side, and I carefully side-step away from him, holding onto the side of the SUV so I don’t fall. “I’ve got this,” I call over my shoulder, but to myself, I quietly singsong, “I don’t got shit.”
Chris is still watching me when I get to the back of the SUV. I brace my hands on the cold vehicle. “I’m ready,” I call out.
He climbs in, the tail lights going red as he puts one foot on the brake, takes off the emergency brake, puts the SUV in drive, and slowly puts down the accelerator. Mud shoots up from the tires. I push, and the vehicle moves, but not in any way that signals progress.
“Again,” I shout when he stops applying pressure to the gas.
We aren’t going anywhere. Even before the tires start spinning, I know it. I turn to lean my back against the SUV, closing my eyes against reality. We’re miles from anything or anyone on a back country road with no cell signal. Cold and wet and coated in mud.
Chris’s boots squelch as he approaches.
“I need to get some traction mats or mud chains,” he says, his voice trailing off.
Nothing short of a tractor or a tank will get us out of this muck. With a tired sigh, I open my eyes. In the glow of the taillights, Chris is staring at me. Really staring.
“You dry off and warm up,” he says. “I’ll walk back to the highway to see if I can pick up a signal.”
I shake my head. “No. No way are you leaving me alone in the middle of nowhere in the dark.” And I sure as hell won’t be wading through ankle-deep mud in the dark to pick up a signal or flag down some help.
“Just an hour,” he insists.
“Chris.” My voice is crisp, cracking. “We’re stuck.”
“I can fix this.”
He can fix this. Except he can’t. Something in me snaps. I bend down and grab a handful of mud, and before I can second guess myself, I slap it against his chest.
He glances at the mud oozing between my fingers and glopping down his raincoat.
Suddenly, the night around us is too big and too quiet. I feel this irrational urge to laugh.
Screw it.
My hand is covered in mud when I pull it off his chest, so when he looks up at me, still stunned, I smear it across his jaw. Stubble prickles under my palm. He doesn’t flinch away from my touch, even when I drag my hand over his annoyingly perfect chin and across the other side of his face.
He stares at me. I don’t know what he’s going to do. Pretty sure he doesn’t, either. Then his eyes narrow. When he moves, it’s faster than I could have anticipated. He has a handful of mud before my brain tells me to run.
I run anyway.
He lunges, catching me by the shoulder. I lose my balance in the slippery mud, and suddenly, we’re both sprawled on our stomachs on the ground, heads inches apart. I push up on my elbows. He does the same, and we stare at each other again.
His eyes never look away from mine. My sense of self-preservation disappears. I don’t flinch or duck out of the way as he reaches for my face and drags a muddy finger down my nose, booping the tip.
Five long seconds pass. A glob of mud drips off my nose. Chris’s lips twitch.
And he laughs.
All the tension drains from my body and I laugh too. It feels so good I can’t stop.
“Come on,” Chris says, struggling to his feet and holding his hand out to me.
I take it, mud slick between our palms as he hauls me back to my feet. The smile on his mud-coated face distracts me, and I lose my balance with a shriek.
Chris laughs again as I nearly take us both out, which sets me off too. He pulls me back to my feet, and before I can fall again, he snakes an arm around me and yanks me hard against him.
The breath rushes out of my lungs. Neither of us is laughing now. We stare at each other in the vermillion glow of the taillights. Everything slows until all I’m aware of is the heavy way we’re breathing and the wild look in his eyes, dark in the night.
Chris abruptly clears his throat but slowly steps back, his hands reluctant to drop away. “You good?”
My face heats, and I look away, staring off into the dark as I try to control my heartbeat. “Yeah. Good.”
“It’s going to get cold tonight,” he says, like nothing out of the ordinary passed between us. “Do you have some dry clothes?”
“Yeah,” I say, taking my lead from him. We’re both a little wound up from our close call. That’s all.
I always pack extra clothes. Sometimes, a one-day chase turns into two, or a two-day chase turns into waiting for a mechanic to repair something important. Temperatures drop, or we get caught in a downpour.
I’m prepared for anything—or I think I am—but Chris is genuinely prepared. We take turns rinsing the mud off with an extra bottle of water, and he opens a large storage tub and hands me a towel and a heavy-duty garbage bag. He takes a towel and another garbage bag and disappears around the driver’s side. I slip and slide my way to the passenger’s side. We both open a back door simultaneously, glance at each other, and look away.
Goosebumps break over my body, but at least the drizzle has stopped. I’m too cold for modesty, so I flick open the garbage bag and start stripping off muddy layers, dropping them inside until I’m standing in my bra and underwear.
The night air is so cold against my bare skin. I towel off as quickly as I can before reaching for my bag. Chris, I notice, has his back turned.
With icy, clumsy fingers, I unzip my bag and pull out a handful of clothes. Layering will be the way to go. I’m about to pull a t-shirt over my head when my eye catches on Chris. He hasn’t been as quick at stripping out of his clothes as I’ve been. He reaches back, grabs a hold of his T-shirt, and pulls it over his head.
I must be tired because I stare. I knew Chris had muscles and spent time in the gym, but I didn’t know it like I do now. The warm but dim light of the SUV’s cab throws shadows in the grooves between muscles as he slides his arms free of the shirt. I could photograph him like this, the darkness beyond making everything more intimate. My fingers itch for my camera, but that’s a line he won’t let me cross. Taking his photo while he’s chasing is documenting the chase. It’s data-adjacent enough that he allows it. This…is not that.
He freezes. Maybe I made a sound, or it’s the absence of sound, or perhaps he feels my attention on his smooth skin. His shoulders don’t hitch up, but he turns ever so slightly until I can see a sliver of his profile, his left hand reaching back for the folded shirt sitting on the seat. He moves, slow and deliberate, like a prey animal fearing an ambush, but when his gaze lifts off the shirt to me, he looks every bit the hunter.
It only lasts a second before he turns away, but the night’s suddenly not so cold.
It snaps me out of my daze. I pull my shirt over my head and follow with another, long-sleeved this time, and finally a hoodie. All I’ve got for pants is a pair of leggings. I climb into the backseat to add my muddy shoes to my garbage bag, towel off my legs below the knees, and shimmy into my leggings, all while keeping my back turned to Chris. I don’t feel his gaze on me at any time, which gives me some mixed feelings I should examine.
Or bury. Bury is good.
When we’re both dry and dressed, I climb back into the front seat—longer legs make it more comfortable—and Chris is back in the towel-covered driver’s seat with a sleeping bag he’s pulled out of god knows where.
The SUV is still running, and I hold my hands in front of the vent as he turns the heater up. “We’ll run the engine for a few minutes to warm up,” he says quietly, “then we’ll have to turn it off. Is your window cracked?”
I nod.
He hands me a Tupperware, and I open it.
Half a dozen protein bars, beef jerky, and dried fruit are inside. A small thing of hand sanitizer, too. And a bag of strawberry Twizzlers.
“Emergency rations,” he says, grabbing the hand sanitizer and squeezing some onto his hands.
I hold up the bag, my heart tripping over itself again. I buy Strawberry Twizzlers almost every chase. Chris doesn't eat them. “These are for me.”
He scowls but doesn’t say anything as he hands me the hand sanitizer and grabs a random protein bar from the container. Then he looks at me—really looks at me—for the first time since we got back in the SUV. Sighing, he tosses his protein bar onto the dashboard and reaches across me to the glove box. I angle my knees out of the way and rub the hand sanitizer onto my hands as he takes out the wet wipes.
I’m trying to open the Twizzlers with damp hands and failing when he says, “Annie.”
I turn and freeze. There’s a wet wipe inches from my face. Chris stares at my nose as he gently wipes some drying mud off. There must be some by my left temple because he dabs there next. I don’t move as he drags the cool, damp square across my right cheekbone. I couldn’t move if I wanted to, not when I remember how he looked at me over his bare shoulder.
He tosses the dirty wet wipe into the back seat and applies himself to his protein bar.
Maybe it’s a natural extension of his urge to fix things. It feels like caretaking, though. Like acceptance as someone who matters in his life. On the team, I mean. Like Justin. Except I can’t see Chris wiping mud off Justin’s face.
It isn’t the first time my thoughts have gone to my boyfriend today, but it feels wrong this time. My stomach is uneasy, and I really, really need to get this stupid bag open—
Chris pulls it out of my hands without a word, opens the bag, and hands it back.
“Thanks,” I mumble.
A soft rain begins to fall, but I’m finally warming up, and this isn’t so bad. We eat silently, and it feels comfortable despite whatever weird tension I felt before. Maybe I’m imagining things. It’s been a long day, and my adrenaline was high from getting stuck in the dark, not knowing if we were about to get steamrolled by a strong tornado.
“Eat this,” Chris says, handing me one of his disgusting protein bars. “I don’t want to wake up at two a.m. with you gnawing on my arm because you’re starving.”
“No promises,” I say, opening the wrapper. “Bet you taste better than this old carob-flavored cardboard.”
His head tips back against the headrest, and his eyes close. I can practically hear the full-body sigh.
I smile, but then I take a bite of the protein bar. I’d rather gnaw on his biceps.
When we finish, he unzips his sleeping bag and turns it, tossing half onto my lap.
“It’s the only one I have,” he says apologetically. “But it’s good, rated to temperatures colder than it’ll get tonight. The only problem is we won’t both fit.”
“Not unless I sleep on your lap,” I say absently as I turn to sit sideways so I can draw my legs up under the sleeping bag. At least it’s one of those rectangular ones, not a mummy bag.
“I don’t think it’s going to get that cold,” he says hesitantly.
My brain catches up, and my face goes lava-hot. “I’m sure it won’t,” I say quickly.
He cuts the engine. Without the vents blowing hot air on us, the cold night air creeps in. I shiver, but not from the cold.
“Lights out?” he asks, reaching for the dome light. I’d rather keep them on, but we don’t need a flat battery in addition to being stuck in the mud, so I nod, and he plunges us into darkness.
“If you get too cold,” he says, his voice serious now, “wake me up. I’ll run the engine for a few minutes. Okay?”
I snuggle deeper into my end of the sleeping bag, tucking it around me as best I can. “Okay.”
There’s a beat of silence, then “I’m sorry I got us stuck in this mess. I shouldn’t have—”
I grab his arm under the sleeping bag, and he stops. “You can’t fix everything. It’s not all on you. So don’t.”
“But—”
“Chris.” I tighten my hand on his arm in warning. He stops again.
I’m enjoying my newfound power to shut someone up with a touch, imagining all the conversations I don’t want to have stopped before they reach the point of no return. But my powers have their limits. They wear off after thirty seconds.
“I could have—”
“Okay, Mr. Fix-it. Will it make you feel better to dissect every decision made today?”
He doesn’t answer. Maybe it would help, but if I have to listen to it, I’ll start thinking about those little moments where I could have done something differently. It’ll spiral from this chase into my life, and with the dark, drizzly night surrounding us, there’s nowhere to run.
“Why are you such a compulsive fix-it guy?” I ask.
He huffs, sounding defensive. Which is better than being full of self-pity, I guess. “I’m good at fixing things.”
He is. From broken instruments to Justin’s occasional shitty moods. I’ve found it fascinating to watch, so long as he’s not focused on me. Or, in this case, on his failure. “You’re the one who fixes everything in your family?” I’m not a psychologist, but most things boil down to family.
Chris doesn’t say anything for a long moment. I fidget with the ties on my hoodie, guilt slipping in. There are a million ways I could distract him, and dragging up potentially painful shit is not it. I’m about to open my mouth to change the subject when he speaks.
“My mom passed away when I was fourteen, and my dad just…fell apart. So, I held it together for my younger sisters. They were ten and eight, so we all pitched in with housework and stuff, but I was the one they came to with their problems. Homework, navigating friendships. The stuff Dad couldn’t do, too, like fixing the lawnmower and making sure the bills got paid.” He goes quiet again, and I wait for him. It’s too dark to see his expression. He’s a darker shadow in a world of shadows, but when he shakes himself, the sleeping bag rustles, and his exhale sounds louder than it is. “He’s better now. It was only the first few years. He met my stepmom ten years ago. He doesn’t rely on me like he did, but my sisters still call me first when they have a problem.”
I can hear the smile in his voice. “You like to be helpful.”
“I like to be needed. I’ve been to therapy, Annie. If I didn’t enjoy the challenge of trying to recreate my mother’s lemon cake recipe with Harper or talking Bree through her academic plan, I wouldn’t do it. I like figuring out why something isn’t working and trying to make it work again. It’s why I enjoy looking over chase data, reading old chase logs—”
That catches my attention. I’ve seen Chris taking notes, but I assumed it was all numbers. Chase logs sound interesting. “You keep logs?”
“Yes.”
“Can I read them?”
“No.”
The firm tone in his voice tells me he’s not going to budge, but I’m not ready to let this go yet. “Okay, but if, say, my notes are…”
“Non-existent?” he supplies.
“Lacking.” I correct him.
Chris snorts.
I ignore that because he’s right. I don’t take notes. “…and I needed to know where we were on a particular tornado…”
“Email me.”
I gasp in mock outrage. “Did you write unflattering things about me in your chase logs?”
“Yes.” He deadpans. “My chase logs are full of entries like ‘Annie ate a hot dog from a gas station carousel and didn’t die’ and ‘Annie photographed a grasshopper for twenty-nine minutes, but at least she didn’t eat it’ and—”
I laugh. “I ate it when you weren’t looking.”
“I’ll have to add a footnote.”
I know he’s smiling now, and it makes me smile. “Do you have it here? Does it have a little lock like a diary?”
“It’s password-protected on my computer. You’re not reading it.”
I stretch my foot out under the sleeping bag to poke him in the thigh. “No fun.”
There’s a full beat of silence before he says somberly, “I’m not like you or Justin, but I can have fun.”
Justin is usually the life of the party wherever he is. That’s what attracted me to him in the first place, but things haven’t been fun for a while. It’s normal for relationships to ebb and flow. Probably.
“I know you can have fun.” I tease. “I’ve seen you do the hard Sudoku.”
He shifts in his seat, and for a foolish moment, I expect him to stretch his foot over and poke me the way I poked his thigh with my foot earlier. It’s silly because he’s sitting normally in his seat, not sideways like me, and also, this is Chris.
He clears his throat. “So what’s up with Justin?”
Dammit. “He’s having a hard time finding a new job.”
“Everything’s good between you?” There’s hesitation in his voice.
“Yeah.” I think so, anyway. The job situation is true, and hopefully, Chris will direct any attempts at fixing it to Justin and not me.
Silence fills the cab again. After a beat or two, Chris yawns loudly. “We should get some sleep. Wake me if you get cold.”
I don’t get cold. The sleeping bag is warm, and even though I’m uncomfortable, I have no problem falling asleep. I wake up to frost around the windshield's edges and the early morning's pale blue sky. My feet are in Chris’s lap, his forearm draped over my shins, his hand wrapped around the top of one foot, like he’s warming my feet or holding me in place.
Or is he doing a lousy job protecting himself from getting a heel to the groin? I don’t know, but he stirs when I slip my feet back to my side.
We’re rescued ten minutes later when a farmer in a tractor comes down the road. The mud hasn’t hardened, and we have to be towed most of the way down the road before we can make it out, but we do get out, and our first order of business is a hot breakfast.
The severe risk has moved further east, but the environment isn’t looking favorable for tornadoes. We call it and head back to our base at my aunt and uncle’s house. I’d told Chris I was already here on a visit, but as we get closer, I direct him to take a smaller road through a group of trees instead of having him drive to the big house.
He stops in front of the tiny house with distressed blue siding and a massive window and turns a questioning look my way.
I twist my fingers together. “I bought a house,” I say.
“You’re moving to Texas?”
“Not exactly. Not now, anyway. I wanted a place of my own, something I could take with me.” I’d have to pay a transport company to put it on a flatbed and have a semi drive it to its new home. It’s not cheap, so this is where it stays in the foreseeable future. “Want to go in?”
Of course, he does, so I unlock the door and follow him inside.
“Tell me you have a tornado shelter nearby,” Chris says, his hand coasting along the back of the loveseat. The furnishings are still bare. Since Justin is away, I’d decided to come down and set the place up. It could be a good substitute for using my aunt and uncle’s place as our Texas base next tornado season.
“I’ll have one put in,” I say. It was one of my uncle’s conditions.
Chris wanders into the kitchen and says nothing about the quietly running fridge or the coffee cup on the counter. Most of the kitchen things are in boxes on the table, all of them, table included, picked up cheaply from a second-hand shop.
Having my own place is strange, even if I’m not living here. I’ve never had a place of my own. “What do you think?”
“It’s nice,” he says, rounding the table and sticking his head into my office. He freezes. “Wow.”
He’s taking up most of the doorway, so I squeeze past him and smile. “That’s my first tornado, remember?”
He glances at me. “I remember.”
The photo of that beautiful white cone tornado with brilliant green fields and a bright rainbow takes up an entire wall. The heavy mahogany desk is one I found at an antique shop, and I bought this house so I’d have somewhere to put it. Shelves already line one wall. All that’s missing are my cameras and a comfy chair. I can imagine editing my photos at the desk, getting emails about the next chase, and studying the forecasts.
The office is my favorite room.
We can’t stay here tonight—even if I had purchased a bed, I’d only have the one, and neither of us would fit on the love seat—so once my tour is complete, we head up to the big house for hot showers and a hearty meal.
Chris drives back to Oklahoma the next day with a “See you next season.”