Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sunday

The afternoon sunlight reflects in my eyes, warming my face as I head north toward my aunt's farm. Off in the distance, past the cornfields to my west, I can see a storm forming -- the anticipation ignites the adrenaline within me. Severe weather season is in full force, but it is also Memorial Day weekend, and my sister, Ellie, is in town with her husband and their two kids, so I made it a point to sneak away from the team and tonight's chase, to go see them before they fly back to Montana in the morning. I haven't seen Avery and Myles since the Christmas before last, so this trip is a must -- but I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little upset about missing tonight's setup. A level 5 is as high as it gets, but if I play my cards right and the storms cooperate, maybe I can get a little family time in and still catch up with the team for a late-night chase, since it's moving this way anyway.

As I pull in the driveway of the little white farmhouse, surrounded by worn fencing, and enveloped in memories, I can't help of think of Cathy's place. Immediately I'm pulled back to Sapulpa, the barn, the team, and Kate -- making mental note to call her in a bit to see how her symposium went. My Aunt Jo lives on the west side of Joplin. Her and Uncle Bill are who got me into storm chasing and my love of weather. Meanwhile, my parents, my dad especially, since he was an ex bull rider, was the driving force behind rodeo and bull riding. We had a ranch down in Arkansas. We lost my mom and dad when I was eight and lost Bill while I was in college -- Bill due to cancer, mom and dad in a car wreck due to dad's drinking. So here I am, a cowboy turned scientist and weather researcher, with YouTube celebrity as part of the title and a ranch I run in the off season. Personally, I hate the YouTube side of things -- it's all showy, but it's also what got the Wranglers off the ground, so I continue to do it, for the team, for the people, for the outreach. 

I'm startled out of my thoughts to loud thumps against my driver door. I roll down the window and peer out to two dark headed children with big green eyes yelling "Uncle Ty!".

I grin, and my heart flutters seeing the excitement exude from these two tiny humans. They are the perfect mix of my sister, Ellie, and her husband, Jake. I open my door, wrapping them both in bear hugs and then putting my hat onto Myles' head and picking him up on to my shoulders, then slinging Avery onto my right hip, avoiding the lingering pain from El Reno on my left. They giggle as I shut my door and walk them back towards the house.

"Uncle Ty, can we play cowboys?" Myles squeals, at the same time his sister is telling me about their new golden retriever puppy, who is apparently in the house.

"Sure buddy, I can't wait to meet the pup--" but I'm cut off from my conversation as my Aunt's voice rings out.

"Myles, Avery, stop climbing all over Tyler!"

"They're fine Jo" I smile back at her as she meets me at the bottom of the steps. She finds a way to hug me between the five-year-old on my shoulders and the four-year-old who is now sliding down my leg to intercept the puppy that just flopped out the screen door in front of my sister and her husband. A golden ball of fluff, all feet and ears and no coordination whatsoever, but extremely cute, nonetheless -- the puppy, not her husband. He's more like a dark grizzly with an expressionless face. Either way, Ellie swears he's a saint, so as long as he treats her good then I can tolerate him.

"Hey Jo", I hum to my aunt as I wrap her in a hug. She's older, frailer, but still steady. She squeezes me tight and the pulls away to watch the kids run to the propane tank, Myles already trying to climb on top and use it as a pretend horse. 

She smirks, "I swear those two act just like the both of you".

My sister approaches and chimes in "no, if they acted like Tyler did at that age, I don't think I could survive it -- not sure how you, Bill and mom did it."

I sarcastically return an annunciated 'Ha Ha' before throwing my arm around her shoulder and shaking Jake's hand with the other. "Missed you too, sis".

She's right though, Jo and Bill were saints. Raising us -- me, and giving me opportunity at a good future minus all the shit my dad caused. My sister always had the level head, but I was angry for a long time and did anything I could to get in trouble. Bull riding became my out, but then I got my head and chest stomped on and nearly died due to a skull fracture and a punctured lung, so logically putting myself in front of tornadoes seemed so much safer after that. So, at age 20 I enrolled in school and went on to get my doctorate in atmospheric sciences. 

The conversation continues on the front lawn as hot humid air settles on our skin and the afternoon glow continues to illuminate everything -- the porch, the kids playing on the tank, the fencing, the field grass, Jo's flower garden, my sister's golden hair, the cellar, even my truck, as dented and dinged as it is, seemed to glow. With the storms growing in the distance to our southwest, it is absolutely beautiful and reminds me again to call Kate. I step away from the conversation, check the weather, making another mental note at the severity and how quickly they're approaching, then dial her number. Four rings and then it goes to voicemail. I try again, and still no answer. She must still be finishing up her symposium, so I leave her a quick voicemail:

"Hey Sapulpa, I know you’re busy but wanted to let you know, looks like Dex was right, we’ve got a pretty rough storm system moving in—sure would be a fun one to chase with ya, but may not make it back until tomorrow. Hope everything went well, call me when you can."

I check the sky once more -- and for the first time since standing here, I get uneasy. Maybe it's intuition, maybe I'm a little gun shy after El Reno, but something just feels off. Jo interrupts my thoughts, coming to stand beside me,

"She looks pretty angry doesn't she?", nodding towards the approaching storm. I nod in silent agreement, honing in on the battle the black clouds are creating with the waning sun. 

"That cellar can fit 6 people, right?" I halfheartedly chuckle and grin at her, trying to keep it light.

She laughs back, "the littles can sit in laps, and you'd probably go off chasing it instead anyway -- dinner's almost ready. Want to help me get the table set while those two wrangle their offspring?" 

I smile, and nod back at her, watching the kids full on sprint to the barn, further and further away from their parents. She's right, I'm itching to chase tonight, but there are a few things that are more important. I watch as Myles climbs up into the bed of Uncle Bill's old red dodge -- it was his old chase truck, and the sole inspiration behind mine. Watching the kids escape their parents, I decide I might should help my sister instead of going inside. I stroll to the barn, and within the moments it took me to get here, they have turned it into a game of tag, and apparently, I'm it.  I chase after Avery, pretending I can't catch up to her, and she squeals in laughter as I "accidentally" miss a tag. I let the banter go on for a few minutes until I feel the ache creeping up into my left leg and I limp to a stop.

"You okay, old man?" my sister prods.

"You try getting your leg trapped under a trolley and let me know how you feel" I laugh back.

"Speaking of, where's Kate? Figured you'd have drug the whole team up here for the picnic"

"She had a symposium in Tulsa. The whole weather world is fascinated with her now, so she has all these speaking events—hell, she’s more famous than me." I pause at the half truth, knowing her and the team being at that symposium is my fault "Her and the Wranglers are going chasing afterwards, but I, being the best brother in the whole world, decided I would rather come see my sister." I grin and bat my eyelashes at her mocking my innocence. 

She huffs "you came for Jo's pie."

"I mean, she does have good pie" I grin again, but am interrupted by a vibration from my phone -- must be Kate, but as I go to pull it out, the emergency alert sound goes off on my device, as well as my sister's and Jake's.

I check the screen: Tornado warning for your area -- seek shelter immediately.

I click the notification to read more, skimming it quickly:

Tornado warning...

Newton County...

Joplin, MO ...

Seek shelter immediately...

Tornado confirmed...

10 miles west of Joplin...

Shit.

I walk around the barn to look west, the golden warm sky now filled by a very angry storm. My sister stands behind me. "Well, what do you think Tornado Wrangler? Think it's a false alarm?"

In the moment I realize those four are relying on me, and maybe Jo, to make a decision here. I side eye her. "I don't think this one is a false alarm, Ells, might want to get the rugrats to the cellar."

She looks at me lightheartedly, playfully nudging my shoulder, "you serious, Tornado Cowboy?"

I turn to her, hoping she can read the serious expression in my face, and nod.

She straightens "Okay -- will do. You gonna get Jo?"

I nod again, and we disburse. Back in the house I find Jo with the TV turned to the local news, it flickering as it fights the strain the storm is delivering to the power lines. She turns to me as I step into the living room, "They said it's already on the ground."

"Yeah, I heard, Jo I don't think we have time to sit here and watch what it's gonna do. Lets get to the cellar -- got the weather radio?"

"It's already down there."

I follow her out the screen door and we are met with strong wind and the first drops of rain. Jo and I both saw that radar, and know it's coming right for us, but we don't want to freak the kids out, so we keep it to ourselves staying calm as we open the cellar door and climb down the steps -- my leg aching with every step.  I tickle Avery, getting a giggle out of her, and making sure her and Myles are still in good spirits, but I sneak a glance at the panic in my sister's eyes as small debris begins to crash above us.  Avery looks up to me, and then I see a panicked thought register in her little mind. "Mavwick!" She screeches as she scrambles to the steps. I grab her and sit her on the bench beside me.

"No ma'am, I'll go get him. Where is he?" Somewhere in the midst of tag and conversation, I lost track of the golden furball.

"I think he's in the dining room" Jo half whispers. "Tyler--don't --"

I slide her a silent glare. "I'm fine, Jo, I do this for a living. Got plenty of time to get the dog." I climb back up the steps, wincing at the final one as I push the door open. Wind rips metal door from my grasp, scraping my hand. Damnit. I watch as small debris, leaves, shingles, and Myles’ mud pie bucket fly past me. I shield my face and walk towards the house. The screen door flying back as I enter. Inside, the noises are muffled but things hitting the metal roof echo throughout the space. I check the dining room, and sure enough there sits Mavrick with a newly chewed sock he’d apparently drug out of one of the shoes by the door — from the size of it and how it’s more brown that white, I’m certain the kids had a creek day before I arrived. “Hey buddy” I scoop the pup up, and he immediately goes for licks and nips, completely unaware of the danger happening outside. As I walk back towards the front door, I hear glass, windows shatter upstairs. I pause to take in the old family pictures of us in the front hall, a subtle twinge of sadness and nostalgia hit me as I come face to face with what’s threating to take away all of those memories. The door is rattling as I pull it open, and when it pulls back to reveal the world outside, I’m frozen with the kind of fear I felt in El Reno. A wall of swirling black winds eats up the entire sky, I can’t even tell if it is daylight anymore, and the small debris has turned into large chunks of unknown, roofs, signs… this thing is destructive, and it's on a beeline for Jo’s farm.

“Tyler!” I hear my name in a distant scream, snapping me out of what I was witnessing. I look right to see Jo at the top of the cellar steps, wind and rain whipping at her, signaling me to hurry. I step off the porch and shield Mavrick from the debris, keeping my head turned from the wind as I try to run across the yard. I hand the dog off to Jo and she turns back into the cellar. As I grab the rail to descend behind her, I’m blind sided by debris, knocking me to my knees, causing me to lose grip on the rail and sending pain straight to my left thigh. Jo turns to grab me, but I’m hit again, and this time I’m carried away from the cellar. Pain radiates through my head as my vision blacks. I feel sharp objects eating away at my skin, puncturing, splintering me, as I roll with whatever object that hit me. I think I hear Jo scream my name as I’m carried away, but I can’t tell over the roar, I can’t tell anything. Is she okay, are they okay? They have to be okay.

I’m trapped, my head is hit again, sending paint radiating through my skull. I taste blood, I smell it, I feel it seeping from my body -- sticky warmth against the cold, harsh rain.

The roar continues as the world around me comes apart, as it rips my body apart.

Kate…Kate I’m sorry.

My ears pop, pain echos through every inch of me as I’m moved again, rolling with the mangled debris, before my back is slammed into something solid.

The screeching, the howling, the splinters eating at my flesh…it’s too much.

It hurts, it fucking hurts.

The roar, the wind, the pain… my senses begin to go, I try to scream but I can’t catch air, mud and debris fill my nose and lungs, and consciousness falters as my chest screams for oxygen.

It hurts Kate, I’m sorry.

With the weight of the debris crushing my chest, my breath hitches, shortening with every passing second…flashbacks flood my mind, my childhood, the bull stepping on me, memories of chasing with the team, El Reno, Kate…

A cold chill fills my body, as my injuries turn me numb.

Kate…

The roar fades, replaced with the faint sounds of spewing gas, lingering rain, and creaking metal.

Kate…

I feel the faint repeating vibration of my phone in my pocket. I can't reach it.

Kate...

My panic dissipates, as the pain seeps in deep, allowing death to involuntarily win.

I promised Javi I would…

And then I feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing. Weightless peace invades.

It's over. 

I'm sorry, Kate...

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

3 days earlier - Thursday Morning

Sunlight slips through the lace curtains of Cathy’s guest room, splashing delicate patterns across the old hand-stitched quilt tangled at my waist. The May air is already thickening with summer’s promise, and even though the quilt's too warm, I stayed buried beneath it longer than I meant to.

I blindly reach for my phone on the old nightstand.

10:30 AM.

Shit.

I don’t remember falling asleep, don’t even remember making it to bed if I'm being honest. A straight 24 hours on the road, then another dozen or more playing every word Kate said on repeat is enough to exhaust anyone.

She saw through me. She always does. That's the thing about Kate—she cuts through the noise, she has since the moment I saw her in the parking lot. I didn’t mean to push her out, didn’t realize I was doing it until she called me out in front of everyone with those sharp eyes and steady voice. No venom. Just honesty. And somehow, that hurt more. She was right, but I know I was just trying to keep her safe.

I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. My leg aches, reminding again of just how close we were to not making it out of El Reno. When I catch my reflection in the mirror, I barely recognize the guy staring back. The circles under my eyes are deep enough to fall into.

Still, a smile slips through as last night’s banter replays in my head. She hadn’t shut me out. She’d let me back in, just a little. That tiny crack of forgiveness felt like air after drowning.

I brace my hands on the dresser, bowing my head and chuckling under my breath.

“I’m your asshole, Kate Carter.”

I tug my shirt over my head and step toward the window. Outside, Javi, Boone, and the rest of the crew are already moving—lugging gear, prepping for today’s chase. I power up my laptop, eyes locking onto the NWS bulletin that pops up.

DAY 4 RISK UPGRADE CONSIDERED
Long-track supercells. EF2+ Tornadoes. Four-State Area.
Confidence Increasing. Special Briefing - Read More.

Damn. A Day 4 Moderate Risk consideration? That’s no joke, and almost unheard of.

I glance at today’s Enhanced Risk centered over Oklahoma. Plenty to work with, especially with the dew points and dry line setup. Pulling on my jeans and shoving my phone in my pocket, I rush toward the hallway bathroom, half-awake, half-wired, jeans half-zipped.

Then I hit a wall. A warm, vanilla-scented wall with damp blonde hair and eyes like rich coffee.

Kate.

Wrapped in nothing but a towel, her skin still dewy from the shower. She’s smiling—of course she is, and I am staring.

“Need me to flex some more, Cowboy?” she teases, one brow raised.

I blink once. Twice—registering our banter from the night before. Then deadpan, “Funny, Sapulpa. But tornadoes still beat your biceps.”

“Glad to know I’m second to violent rotating air columns,” she says with mock offense, brushing past me—nearly.

I step in front of her, blocking the door with a smirk.

“You’re late, Ty. We already briefed today’s setup. Talked through the weekend plans too.”

I narrow my eyes. “Without me?”

She leans in, so close I can feel the heat rolling off her skin. On her toes, she whispers against my ear, “How’s it feel to get left out?”

Her giggle breaks the tension as she turns to escape, but I catch her wrist before she can. The towel shifts slightly, her breath hitching just enough for me to hear. I back her gently into the wood-paneled wall, one hand tucking a wet strand of hair behind her ear, and the other propped on the wall beside her head.

My voice dips low, teasingly. “Careful, Kate Carter. I’m an asshole, remember? One call and your calendar’s full ‘til Christmas.”

She gasps, scandalized and smiling. “Tyler Owens, you wouldn’t!”

I grin, pulling back with a wink. Of course I wouldn’t, not after last night. She knows it. But this—this is us. The teasing. The friction. The push. The pull. And yet, as the light from the guest room behind me spills across her face, lighting up the gold in her eyes, I stop. I just… look at her. Really look at her.

If angels walked the earth, I think they'd look a hell of a lot like Kate Carter.

She watches me, waiting for me to say something I can’t seem to find the words for. The air between us shifts. Electric. Tense. Unfinished. I clear my throat to speak, to say anything, but then she smirks and flexes one arm.

I bark out a laugh—loud and real. It’s been too long since I felt this—her and me, on the same wavelength again. Since El Reno, we’ve been circling each other, lost in static, in things left unsaid. But this? This feels good.

She steps off the wall and gives me a look. “We’ve got storms to chase, Ty. Time to move.”

I swipe my hand if front of us towards her bedroom. “After you, Sapulpa.” She saunters away.

"Oh, by the way" I call after her, "I canceled your events for tomorrow and Saturday. Told them I needed your big brain on the road with me, no exceptions."

She turns, looking at me with a silent 'thank you' blanketing her eyes. "You didn't have to do that, Ty."

I nod, "I did. I couldn't get you out of Sunday's though -- it's a pretty big deal, and our research sponsors really want you there. I'm sorry." Sincerity washes over me, as I feel my features soften, hoping she realizes that I really am sorry. 

She takes one step, facing me fully. "Thank you. I'll take any chases with you I can get."

Her words throw me, and I feel mischievous confusion etch my face.

Was that a subtle sign of affection from her?

She disappears in her doorway with a smile, and I make my way back into my room as my phone buzzes.

Ellie.

“Hey Ty!” she chirps when I answer.

I grab my bag and pace the room, retracing my steps when I realize I still haven’t brushed my teeth. “Hey Ells. What’s up?”

“We’re flying in this weekend. Jake got the time off, so we’re coming to see Aunt Jo. Hoping you can squeeze in a visit.”

A smile creeps in. “When do you head back?”

“Monday morning.”

“I’ll be chasing Oklahoma and Kansas through Saturday, but I can probably swing by Sunday.”

“You better. The rugrats miss you.”

“They taking after their uncle?”

“Worse. You've seen them three times and that's all it took to create little monsters.”

I laugh, “I’m a saint, Eleanor.”

“Sure you are. Be safe, Ty.”

“Always.”

I hang up, still smiling, when a familiar voice cuts in from the hallway.

“That better not have been another symposium.”

Kate’s leaning in the doorway now, arms crossed but eyes soft.

“Or what?” I grin.

She deadpans me, "Or I'll quit the Wranglers and move back to New York."

I side eye her, the smirk stretching wide on my face, "I thought you wanted your face on a t-shirt. Only Wranglers get that privilege, and if you leave, well.."

“Anyone ever told you you're insufferable?" She chimes back.

“It’s part of my charm.” I grin at her, with full intentions of riling her up.

She scoffs and steps back to let me pass, but I stop in front of her, heart still thudding from our earlier moment.

“If I tell you what that call was about, you can’t get mad.”

She tilts her head to meet my gaze. “I don’t get mad at you.”

Liar.

I raise a brow. “My sister and her kids are coming to visit. First time in over a year.”

She softens. “That’s great, Ty. Why would I be mad?”

“Because Sunday’s the only day I’ll be near enough to see them.”

“…And Sunday’s the panel in Tulsa,” she finishes.

Her expression falters, just a flicker, but I catch it.

“You really think I’d be mad about that?” she asks, voice lighter now. “Maybe you really are an idiot.”

“I mean, you were mad about me booking the panel in the first place.”

“The only thing I’ll be mad about is if you end up on a perfect tornado while I’m stuck inside a conference room with a microphone.”

“No chasing. Scout’s honor. But I am taking the truck.” I cross my heart.

She glares at me, her expression a dead giveaway that she knows, if given half a chance, I will hunt down a storm.

“For safety reasons,” I add with a smirk.

As I move past her and make my way down the stairs, I feel her gaze burning through me. I raise my arm and flex, then sneak a glance over my shoulder, catching her shaking her head and trying not to laugh behind me.

“It’s not polite to stare, Sapulpa,” I toss over my shoulder.

“Neither is ditching your team for a family reunion, guess that makes us even,” she shoots back.

At her remark, I turn at the base of the stairs to face off with her, propping my hands on each side of the banister to prevent her from passing. She stops abruptly on the bottom step—almost eye level, kissable level. As she halts, her vanilla scent fills the air around us. Airy, comforting, beautiful.

“I’m kidding,” she says softly. “That was rude. I crossed a line. I’m sorry.”

Oh, Sapulpa, you set yourself up for that one.

I lean in, brushing my nose against her cheek, lowering my voice, and rasp. “I’m all for crossing lines, Kate.”

Jesus Christ, Tyler, dial it down. You're going to freak her out.

My heart’s going a million beats a minute, but I lick my lips and keep the smirk on my face, a symbol of false confidence as the nervousness of being this close to her engulfs me. She thinks I’m cofident, cocky even, but I’m really just a guy trying not to fall apart every time she looks at me like she is right now.

Then the front door flies open.

“Hey T,” Boone calls, grinning. “Storms are firing early. You two gonna flirt all day or can we get going?”

Kate’s face flushes, but her lips stay parted as they were moments before. I shoot Boone a look and then glance back at her, pushing myself away from the rails, clearing the way for her to walk in front of me to the door.

Everyone on the team knows we walk this line but never cross it. What they don’t know is I’m really starting to hope we jump right over it—together.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

2 Days Earlier - Friday, before the sun comes up, early morning hours

My stomach is wedged in my throat as I raise my hand and rap on his door, each knock sounding louder in the quiet of the night. I’m trembling—not visibly, not yet—but inside, I’m unraveling. The man behind this door, the one who feels like home, like comfort wrapped in flannel and sunlight… also feels foreign. Unreachable. And I feel small.

In my mind I’ve already ruined whatever friendship…whatever...relationship we had…have. 

Kate, you’re the idiot.

The door creaks open. His green eyes are half-lidded and rimmed in exhaustion, his hair tousled from where he fell victim to the fountain of soda, unruly in a way that makes him look even more impossibly handsome. He’s shirtless—of course he’s shirtless—and the glow from the parking lot light wraps around his shoulders like something holy. I’m pretty sure my jaw drops.

And me? I look homeless in my oversized Whiskey Myers graphic tee, threadbare sweats clinging to me in all the wrong places, and house shoes that have clearly seen better days. My Dr. Pepper-soaked hair is shoved into a sad, lopsided bun that’s trying its best to pretend it’s a hairstyle. I look feral, rung out... I am rung out. Meanwhile, he looks like something off the cover of a southern romance novel. All rugged charm and golden skin.

He opens the door wider, stepping back and smirking as I reluctantly pull my eyes up to meet his.

“Like the view, Sapulpa?”

I roll my eyes.

Insufferable.

Yes.

But I don’t say it, I can't. My voice is stuck behind the barricade of my panic, behind the lingering shame and second-guessing of what happened at the end of that chase. Javi’s pep talk echoes in my ears, but standing here now, in front of Tyler, I feel adrift. I don’t know how to reach for him anymore—not after how I acted. He probably thinks I’m unstable. Crazy, even. And let’s be real—he doesn’t have time for crazy. Not when we’ve got work that requires precision and distance, not emotional entropy and panic attacks.

Maybe it’s better if I keep him at arm’s length. No more blurred lines. Just the job. Just the storms. 

As I spiral, he clears his throat gently, and it snaps me back.

“Kate... you okay?”

I nod, too quickly, like I can nod my way out of this mess.

“Yep, sorry. Let’s get you fixed up so maybe we can get some sleep. Sit on the counter in the bathroom. The lighting’s best in there.”

“Okay.”

I trail behind him as he moves, his muscles flexing as he hoists himself onto the counter. The bathroom feels even smaller with him in it; he fills the space in every way: physically, emotionally, spiritually. Tyler warms everything he touches. Even now, when I feel like a live wire sparking under my own skin, he radiates calm. Light. It’s infuriating, and grounding, and just so… him.

I catch the edge of my lip tugging up as I lay out the thread and supplies.

“Whatcha thinking about, Sapulpa?”

“What? Nothing.”

His gaze finds mine, and he doesn’t retreat. He never has. He never gives space where it isn’t needed, doesn’t shy from closeness, or awkward moments. He demands attention and focus.

“You’re either lost in really deep thought about how you’re going to save the world, about how utterly attractive you think I am, or how you find enjoyment in getting to cause me pain. Am I close?”

I bite back a grin, shaking my head and focusing on the task at hand. His skin is settling under my fingers, warm and impossibly soft, alive. The gash is jagged and angry, with no clean lines, just torn flesh and vulnerability. It won’t heal smooth. It’ll scar, permanent and telling. Like all things in our lives that matter, and the sight of it makes my heart ache.

“Or is it all three at the same time? Because if that's the case, that's a dangerous combination for that big brain.” He leans in to smile, coaxing me to react. But I stay focused, hands steady despite the tremor in my heart.

He’s being playful. Gentle. But I I can’t tell if it’s because he doesn’t know how to approach the wedge between us, so defaulting is easiest, or if he’s trying to make me forget that he ruined my late-night snack and my shirt. 

“Ouch, damn Kate. I’m going to go with the last one.” He hisses as I make the first stitch.

“You bleed a lot,” I mumble.

“You notice how deep that thing is?”

I nod silently, my mind flickering to darker a outcome. What if it had been worse? What if he hadn’t walked away from that storm? My breath catches in my throat and I stop, hand hovering mid-air.

“You okay?” he rasps, his voice soft and attuned.

“Yeah…” I say, but my voice is too small. Javi’s words echo again.

Don’t shut him out.

“I... I just imagined a worse situation. Where you weren’t okay. Where your injuries were way worse than this.” I motion toward his shoulder, trying not to tremble. “Not something I want to see.”

“Kate…” he nudges me with his knee, then smiles. “I’m the Tornado Wrangler. They’re not allowed to wrangle me… wouldn’t make much sense, would it?”

Of course he cracks a joke. He always does; forever the sunshine in a storm, even when he’s the one bleeding.

“Well since we're talking ‘sense’, ya know what else doesn’t make sense, Ty?”

He shifts slightly, visibly relaxing when I use his nickname, his lips pursing in amusement.

“What, Sapulpa?”

I pause with the thread poised above the last part of the cut. “Scaring the shit out of someone at two o’clock in the morning! What in the hell were you doing?”

He laughs, loud and full, unbothered by my sharp tone. His smile glows in the fluorescent light, those ridiculous dimples deepening. His eyes crinkle. He’s magnetic and maddening in equal measure, and it’s really hard to stay angry.

I'm not angry at him, I'm angry at myself.

“Stalking you.”

“What?!”

“Kidding. Couldn’t sleep, so I was taking a walk. Headed to the casino, but then I saw you fighting with that Dr. Pepper, so I figured I’d stay for the show.” His voice softens again, the humor curling in his expression.

“Tyler, you caused the show.”

“Did I? Hm. I don’t recall. Must be the concussion.” He fakes ignorance, winking at me.

“You have a concussion?” My concern spikes.

“Why were you up at 2 AM?” he volleys back, ignoring my question.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

He nods slowly, something serious flickering behind his eyes.

“Seems we have something in common. Anything you want to talk about?”

My eyes sting, tears gathering too fast, so I blink hard and look up, willing them away.

“Yeah, but what if I’m not ready to talk about it yet?”

He leans in, and his knee brushes my leg. I feel it everywhere. His voice is low, but steady. “Then we’ll talk about it when you’re ready. You just say the word and I’ll be right there to listen.”

My defenses crack. My voice, my heart, everything softens.

“Why are you so understanding?”

He shrugs, flashing that devastating smile. “Part of my charm.”

I shake my head with a breathy laugh.

“Why were you going to the casino? Doesn’t strike me as your atmosphere.”

“It’s not. But they’ve got a 24-hour bar. Figured a couple drinks might help me sleep.” He stares at me, maybe through me, like he's lost in a far-off memory, and for the first time, I feel like there is something hidden under Tyler Owens, that there’s grief tucked beneath that golden exterior.

“Think drinks are the best thing for a concussion?” I ask lightly, but I’m serious.

He blinks, focusing on me again. “Hasn’t killed me yet. I think this one is number five. And it’s mild.”

“Five?!”

“Used to ride bulls, remember? This is my second one from a tornado.”

“Tyler, believe it or not, your brain is really important. You should probably take care of it a little better. A lot of knowledge is stored in there.”

“So, you really don’t think I’m an idiot?” He bumps me playfully.

“Never thought you were.” My smile is softer now, honest, as I wrap the gauze gently around the cut. The stark white mesh contrasts with his sun-warmed skin. “I’m so sorry I let this happen to you, Ty. I don’t want you hurt.”

His voice is rough, but quiet and understanding. “I know, Kate. I know.”

I nod, blinking back the tears again as I start cleaning up the kit. The silence stretches, tender and weighted, until my eyes catch a deep scar on his ribcage, bruises from his most recent injuries blooming around it like angry shadows.

I swallow and gesture toward it. “That from a tornado or a bull?”

“Bull.”

I meet his eyes this time, facing him head on, silently urging him to tell me more.

"It was the last time I rode. I was retiring that night, but the bull was dead set on making sure I didn't change my mind. He stepped on my head, I had a helmet, but it still hurt, and then turned, put a hoof in my back and gorged my chest. Punctured a lung, an inch from my heart, a few broken ribs, bruised spleen, and a concussion. That stint in the hospital solidified bull riding was over for me."

My breath stalls. If he hadn’t survived that ride, I wouldn’t be standing here. Wouldn’t know him. Wouldn't be standing here with him in the middle of the night, sticky from soda syrup.

He huffs a small laugh. “I always wondered how I survived it. And how I’d find a thrill to match. But when the Wrangler thing happened… when we got off the ground, I found purpose again.” He leans in close and his eyes lock on mine, the edges tired but bright. “Kinda glad I switched professions.”

“Chasing storms that much safer?”

“Nope. But at least I’m more in control of where I’m at. I do have some degree of mortality.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

He casually nods and laughs, pushing off the counter, and I have to tilt my head back to see him properly. He’s tall, and close, and the air around him is thick with unspoken things.

After a beat, he rasps, “You should shower and get some sleep, Kate. Looks like you lost a fight with a Dr. Pepper. And we’ve got a busy day ahead. I’ll walk you back to your room.”

I shake my head in amusement, my lips twitching at the corners.

Insufferable.

And yet, somehow… I never want him to stop.

---

Friday morning, around 9 AM

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

2 Days Earlier - Friday Night

Settling back into the passenger seat, I feel exhaustion seeping deep into my body. The adrenaline from the chase is wearing, and the three of us are covered in mud and drowned in rain. We spent the last hour getting the truck unstuck and then pulling the trailer out, and now we’re finally on the road back to the motel. I check my mirror to account for the headlights from the team trailing behind us. Light drizzle pelts the windshield, while Tyler absently hums to the country music playing over the radio, and Boone shuffles through any useful videos from today. I’m wrapped in one of Ty’s flannels he had in the back and for the first time in more than 24 hours I feel settled, peaceful even, but that could just be the exhaustion talking. Between the rhythmic sway of the wipers, Ty’s low hum, his earthy scent enveloping this flannel, the road noise and the simple comfort of the moment, I feel sleep taking over. I fight it, but I’m not sure I’ll win.

“Go to sleep, Kate.” Tyler rasps, as if he could read my thoughts. He seems off, like he’s stuck in his own thoughts, and I want to ask him what he’s thinking, but I think there’s a few other things we need to talk about first.

“I’m good.” I reply softly.

He turns his gaze towards me, his dirt stricken face softly illuminated by the blue hew from the dash lights. He looks exhausted, he looks worn, but he also looks incredible, so simple and innocent in this moment. “You’re nodding off already, Kate.”

“I wanted to stay awake to keep you company.”

“I’m okay. If you want to sleep then do. No use in fighting it. I’ll be alright, I promise. Plus Boone is good company too.” He softly smiles.

“I got you, T.” Boone pipes up from the back.

“You sure?”

“Of course.”

At his approval, I scoot down and lean over against the door as sleep immediately settles over me.

As we slow and turn into the motel I begin registering the chatter between Tyler and Boone.

“Hey T, we should go to Cowboy tonight since we’re so close and Monday is your birthday.”

Tyler’s birthday? Noted.

“I’m sure everyone is exhausted B.”

“Cmon T, how many times are we this close to your old stomping grounds with a day off the day after? If I can get the team to agree we should go and let loose a bit.”

”We don’t have a day off tomorrow. We’re chasing in Arkansas.”

Arkansas, Ty’s home base, noted. But doubt we are based on the most recent forecasts.

“Doubt it. They’ve already lowered the risk and all this cloud cover is gonna hinder any decent setup.”

I can practically feel Tyler roll his eyes, he already knew that. He’s just trying to discourage Boone.

“Boone it’s late.”

“It’s only 9.”

I hear Tyler sigh, but it sounds a lot like his ‘this is actually a good idea but I don’t want to admit it’ sighs. “Okay, fine, Boone. But we’re not getting trashed.”

Boone lets out a yip and I stir as he and Tyler confirm the details with the team just outside the truck.

“Hey sleepy head.” I’m met with Tyler opening my door and smiling at me, his features softly illuminated by the parking lot lights. “Did you hear what Boone and I decided?”

I groggily nod as I peer into his green eyes. 

“You good with going?”

I nod again as my body awakens.

“Good. We’ve got some pizza being delivered. Plan to head over there about 10:30 or so. Give everyone a chance to clean up. Sound good?”

I nod again as I sit up and turn to him to get out. He doesn’t budge. With my knees now placed between his thighs, he absently places his left hand atop my right thigh, while holding out his other to help me down. I feel the heat creeping through me, the roughness of his his hands placed gently against me in such innocence feels like electricity skittering through me, like when lighting strikes close and you can feel the indicators course through you, like it did the other night in my room when he apologized and wrapped himself around my waist.

“Kate.” I hear his whispered voice break my train of thought.

“Sorry. Got lost in thought for a sec.” I take his hand and shimmy down out of the cab, realizing I’m still completely covered in mud. He grins at me as he takes me all in. His eyes wander, not in his typical mischievous fashion, but more so in appreciation or admiration. I can’t tell, but it’s unnerving, in the best way.

—-

An hour later, I step out of my room, ready for the night, when I notice a white tshirt hanging on my door handle. I smile to myself, as I notice a little sticky note attached to it.

“Tyler: 2, Kate’s shirts: 0. Here’s another one for me to ruin. ;)”

A huffed laugh escapes me as his innuendo doesn’t escape me, and then I turn and make eye contact with green eyes leaned against the door of his truck, holding a beer. His megawatt smile sends my heart into overdrive, and if that doesn’t do it, the way he looks right now does. He’s covered in nothing short of cowboy swagger and sex appeal. His hat, his belt, his white washed wranglers… all topped off with a maroon tshirt that accentuates every corded muscle in his chest and arms and a gold chain necklace. His brown boots look new and shiny, or nicer than the ones he usually wears, maybe they’re specific for dancing.

Can Tyler dance?

Holy shit he is so damn attractive.

Holy shit we get a night out together.

Holy shit don’t ruin this, Kate.

I turn back inside to replace my tank top with his shirt, give myself a once over, and step back out into the night.

—-

I’m sitting in the middle of the back seat with Boone to my right and Tyler to my left. They’re both already more than a few beers in and having a great time chatting and giggling like kids. Dani is driving and Lilly is in the passenger seat, while Javi and Dex follow behind us. I feel young again, like all those nights back in college where we’d spend the weekends at the local dive bars. Immediately I’m hit with the wave of nostalgia from the memories of Addy, Praveen, Javi… and Jeb, and my mind spirals down memory lane.

“Kate.” My thoughts shake as Tyler’s voice fills the cab. He’s getting really good at pulling me back to the present. I look to see him leaned slightly into me, smiling softly, forcing me to make eye contact with him. I feel the heat from him as he stares, his scent filling the space around me, his breath echoing the life that fills his lungs. Then I register that no one else is in the truck, we’re alone and he’s really fucking close. “You did it again.”

“Did what again?” I question, barely above a whisper.

“Went to that place that scares you.”

“What?” I ask, confused at his implication.

“That place in your mind that scares you. The same place you went the other day. Are you okay?”

I feel the sting of unwanted tears hit me, but I blink them away quickly and nod. He’s so observant, so considerate and not afraid of making someone feel uncomfortable if it means getting them out of a tough spot. It’s honestly annoying at how good he is at reading situations.

“I’m good Ty, just some memories. Let’s have a good time tonight.”

“A good time is not usually a problem for me, Kate.” He grins and steps down out of the truck, holding out a hand to help me down.

Insufferable.

“I’ll show you a good time.” I stop myself in my tracks as the words escape me. Embarrassment floods my face and without looking I know my cheeks are flushed.

What. The. Fuck. Kate.

I’m not even drunk, not even tipsy, I’ve had one beer and I’m out here in the middle of the bar parking lot letting my thoughts convey to words without an ounce of filter.

What. The. Fuck. Kate.

Tyler turns on his heel to look at me, his eyebrow quirked in contemplation of my words. His signature smirk painted crookedly across his face. Amusement fills all of his features. He huffs a sigh, the crease between his brows accentuated, but without saying a word, he winks and walks away towards the doors, his toned ass framed in those perfectly fitted jeans, broad shoulders stretching his shirt taught. For a second I don’t think he’s going to address what I  said, but just before he steps up to the bouncer to show his ID, he throws over his shoulder, “I’ll hold you to that, Sapulpa.”

Chapter Text

1 Day Earlier - Saturday, early morning hours

Tyler:

I check my phone for two reasons: the time and the SPC outlook for Sunday. They’d been discussing moderate risk for the area for a few days now, and when I pull up the newest outlook they’ve pulled the trigger. A level 4 of 5 stares back at me, with a meso discussion focused heavily on long track violent tornadoes. In regards to the time, it’s midnight and the alcohol is buzzing my brain and my whole body. I’ve lost count of the amount of shots and beer Boone, Javi, and I have put away. Dex is designating himself to drive us back, so he sits quietly to my left while we all let loose. Across from our table, the girls, Kate included, are in a heated game of pool. She’s actually pretty good at the game, and really, really good at distracting me. Every inch of her is stunning, intriguing, and I catch my mind derailing on what it would be like to be alone with her, to let our walls fall and explore every broken and beautiful thing about each other. To what it would be like to hold her close knowing she felt the same way.

“Earth to Owens.” Javi’s voice clouds my mental picture.

Prick.

“Storm Par.”

“Why don’t you just ask her?”

I slide my eyes to him as I throwback another pull of beer.

“Ask who what?” In my head I said those words clearly, but from how my entire body feels I know they slurred.

“Kate, on a date, you idiot.” Javi states it matter of factly, and Dex hums his agreement.

I blow as raspberry and roll my eyes as I take another sip, as if they’re being ridiculous, as if such an asinine thought had never crossed my mind.

It had, probably every day since I laid eyes on her.

Like I said, intriguing.

“Oh yeah, because that big stupid smirk and those glassy eyes mean anything other than you’re gone for her.” He leans over and whispers for only me to hear, “I also know that implication about ruining her shirt is a bunch of bullshit too. You’re not like that.”

I glare at him, ignoring that last part, “Yeah those are telltale signs I’m drunk. Right Boone?”

“Sure thing T, but I’ve seen you drunk a lot and I’ve never seen you lo…”

“Alright Boone.”

“Just ask her, Owens.”

“I’m terrified of what she’ll say. That it’ll change everything, and I don’t want to mess this up for her.” I feel the insurmountable amount of effort it takes to get those words out.

“Aren’t you terrified of what’ll happen if you don’t?”

I square my attention to him now, “wha-s that s’posed to mean?”

I think I’m might fall over if I stand up.

“That if you don’t give her a reason to stay, then when our field work is over in a few months, she’ll likely go back to New York.” Rivera must be throwing his shots under the table because he’s making perfect sense and speaking way too clearly to be drunk.

The thought of that happening sobers me, my mind spinning out with the idea of Kate leaving for good.

“How about we make it through this weekend and I promise I’ll ask her on a date?” I smile back at Javi, trying to ignore the seed he planted in my mind.

Kate will never go back to New York, not without a ‘me sized’ carry on, and a round trip ticket back to Oklahoma.

“Deal.” Javi nods and reaches out a hand to shake.

I take his hand, “And if she says no I get to punch you in the face for getting my hopes up.” I grin at him in the most asshole way I can muster.

“You always get violent when you’re drunk?” Javi laughs me off.

I wink and focus back on Kate, “only for you Storm Par, only for you.”

“Who’s up?” Kate’s sugary and drunk voice pulls all of our attention her way.

“Let’s play teams this time!” Lilly chimes in from behind her, “me and Kate versus Tyler and Boone!”

“Cmon T, let’s kick their ass!” Boone hollers as he slides out of his chair, dragging me with him.

I’m right behind him, feeling my body sway with libation. My eyes focused on the brown ones at the far end of the pool table as she sips her beer.

I want to be that beer.

I saunter towards her, feeling my smile growing wide. The country music reverberates in my ears as I reach her, “ready to get your assed kicked, Kate?”

She shoves the triangle into my chest confidently, and peers up to me with big brown eyes that I could get lost in.

That I am lost in.

“I don’t lose. My mom was on a pool league in Tulsa. I grew up in the pool halls. Now rack ‘em, Cowboy.” She lands a soft double tap over my heart as I take hold of the triangle, and she steps to the side, never breaking eye contact. I track her with squinted eyes at this new revelation as I turn up another sip.

You’re on Kate Carter.

I intricately place the balls in the rack the make my way around to break, when I feel Boone lean in next to me, his breath uncomfortably close to my neck.

“T.”

“Boone…want to give me some space, bud?”

“No l-listen, this is i-important.” He stammers as he looks for the answers in the brown amber bottle he’s holding.

I peer up at him from where I’m leaned on the table, holding my pool stick, waiting for whatever off the wall thing he’s about to say, so I can start this ass kicking.

“Why are you worried about a date with Kate when you’ve already fucked? Like, you can’t get any closer.”

He says it loud enough all of us can hear, and I glance up to see her beautiful face coated in shock. I drop my forehead to the felt top, rolling it back and forth and groan, as my hat flops off my head. I’m embarrassed, for me and for her; leave it to Boone to get me flustered.

“Boone. I love you man, but for the love of God, shut the fuck up.” I say, my forehead still in the table top, but a closed smile scattered on my face.

“Oh shit, forgot that date part was a secret, sorry T.”

“Boone.”

“Yeah T?”

“What if I told you we haven’t fucked and the story I told you earlier was made up?”

“I wouldn’t believe you.”

I roll my eyes and finally stand up to face my best friend, wrapping two hands around the top of the stick, and shrugging at Kate as he finally walks away to give me space…or to get more shots. She shrugs back and laughs.

Jesus Christ this night is going to hurt tomorrow.

—

Kate:

The crack of the balls bouncing off one another sounds more like fireworks in my brain. The alcohol is seeping deep and I feel the drunkenness taking over every inch of me. Tyler stands slowly from his place at the end of the table, propping his hat back in his head as he reaches for another sip of beer. His adam’s apple bobs at the motion and his jaw clenches on the swallow. He lazily throws his hands atop the pool stick and leans into it just a bit, as if he needs the support. Dex and Javi have come to stand beside him and he grins at their leisure conversation. He’s so casual, so relaxed, so striking. He’s paralyzing. Behind me Dani and Boone appear with more shots and I nearly groan at the thought of tomorrow’s hangover.

The tequila burns as it fills my throat and it’s all I can do to take it like a champ and not screw up my face in disgust. I eye Tyler as he throws his back, and in one smooth motion he sits it back on the tray, unfazed by the burn and sting of the liquid. He makes eye contact with me and I hold his gaze, refusing to back down, not wanting to look away.

I wonder how drunk he’s feeling?

As Lilly steps away from the table after her shot, I hear a screeching voice over the music and bar noise.

“Oh my gosh! Tyler! Is that you?!”

My task of gawking at Tyler dies in its tracks when the dark headed woman who is model perfect throws her arms his neck. Suddenly, I want more shots. Suddenly, I feel doubt creep in.

Who am I to think he doesn’t have someone, a life with someone else. Or maybe he has a lot of someones, I mean look at him. He doesn’t seem like that type of person but he could be really good at covering it up. She is stunning and seems way too comfortable with her hands on him.

Suddenly I feel jealous.

Suddenly I realize I don’t know Tyler at all.

I casually dismiss myself to the bar, Lilly and Dani follow me, and we order up another round of shots for just us three.

“Uh oh.” Lilly chides.

“What?” I ask as I slam the glass down a little too hard.

“You’re jealous.”

“Of?”

“Angie.”

“Who’s Angie?”

“The woman hanging all over Ty.”

I shrug, attempting my best neutral face, “No I’m not. Tyler’s a grown man with a whole life I know nothing about, how can I be jealous?” As I finish lying to them, I catch his eyes across the bar. He’s annoyed, I can tell, and he’s not looking at her. He’s looking at me, and damn, it feels really good. In the next moment he winces as she slaps the cuts on his left shoulder at something she found way too funny. I immediately feel the urge to jump to his defense, but he’s a big boy, and watching him squirm is kind of fun. In his frustration, he pulls the pack of Marlboro Reds from his pocket, taking a cigarette directly from the pack with his teeth, and striking it with his lighter, taking a long pull and exhaling it through his nose. I don’t know if he’s doing it because I’m watching, or doing it to give him a distraction from the woman in front of him, but I think I could melt at the how sensual and dangerous he seems.

Mr. Golden Retriever all wrapped up in unnerving sex appeal and the night’s vices.

Captivating.

To my right Dani chimes in “Angie and Tyler went to college together for awhile. She’s always laid this claim to him, especially since he got famous. Something kind of like ‘oh yeah me and Tyler Owens? We’re really close’ vibes. But he can’t stand her, for obvious reasons. She’s annoying and acts all crazy if anyone looks his way. He’s never had a thing for her, never had a thing with her.”

“Why won’t he tell her so?”

“Well, have you met him? He sees the good in everyone and everything. Plus her home life was pretty fucked up and he sympathizes with that since he’s been there too. That’s no excuse for her being a total head case now, but if he keeps the peace and gives her a bit of attention, she’ll usually wander off and our night can carry on. I’m a girls girl, trust me, but she’s insane.”

Lilly laughs to my left, “yeah, but things are different now.”

“What do you mean?” I volley.

“You’re in the equation, Kate. He’s not going to let her drama get in the way of that, and he’s not going to let her interfere with his night with you, trust me.”

“It’s not like we’re together. Tyler can do whatever he wants.”

“You mean that? You’d be okay if that happened?” Dani pipes back in.

I shake my head before I register what I’m doing.

“Didn’t think so. And he won’t. He’s too far gone for you it’s pathetic. He was so mopey when you went back to New York.” She nudged my shoulder and I smile softly her way as I turn my drink up. Him being down bad for me makes me feel things, good things, things I haven’t felt in a long time, maybe ever, but the issue with that is I think I’m just as gone for him.

And I have no fucking clue how to tell him.

“What did you mean about him sympathizing with her home life?”

Lilly answers, “that’s Ty’s story to tell, not ours. But that ray of sunshine has seen some really stormy days.” And with that I realize I was right about there being another layer to Ty that he keeps locked up and hidden well out of view from everyone.

I want to know.

As if he could hear us, as if he could see my wheels turning and concern etched on my face, as if he could see I had questions for him, he steps around Angie and strides to the bar, leaning himself in between me and Lilly, propping his elbow up on the wooden bar top for support. The music is loud, so he has to lean into my space, raising his voice an octave or two. “S’cuse me Lils. Your big brain is working overtime in there, Kate, I can tell. Whatcha thinking about?” His perfect teeth and drunken gleaming eyes reflect the blues, and purples and pinks of the strobe lights from the dance floor as he awaits my response.

You.

But I’m just not quite drunk enough to say that, that feels too direct for us, so I revert back to our usual.

I grab him softly at the nape of his neck, feeling his soft hair at my finger tips, pulling him closer so he can hear, his right hand splaying across my bare upper thigh for support. My mouth twitches in amusement as I sigh, dragging out the moment.

“I’ll tell you later.” I whispered against the shell of his ear, and I feel the goosebumps radiating through him where my palm rests on his forearm.

He pulls back just slightly, his nose brushing my cheek and his lips mere inches from mine, both amusement and frustration filling his features.

I think my hearts going to explode.

“Tyler, excuse me, who the hell is this?” Angie’s voice interrupts our moment, again.

Tyler steps back, obviously annoyed.

“Angie, this isn’t going to end well for you if you start your shit.” His voice is stern, direct, and definitely aggravated.

“Then don’t give me a reason to start shit. I’ve given you all of my attention for years and you act like I’m never good enough. Now you bring some rando into my bar.” She whines. Internally I’m cringing for her.

“Angie, how many times have I told you that I’m not interested?”

“But you don’t mean that.”

He turns on her, facing up to her. “I do mean it. I’ve meant it for 8 years now and you can’t take the hint. Please just go back to your friend group and let me enjoy my night. I don’t want to start shit, but you will not ruin this night for me. It’s too important. Understand?”

Her mouth gapes and I swear I see tears as she backs down from him. I really do feel bad for the girl, but selfishly, she’s not going to ruin my night either, because if I get a few more drinks in me, I think I’ll be just about ready to cross all lines with Tyler Owens.

She finally saunters off with a stern “Fine. But don’t come looking for me when you and blondie here don’t work out.”

I roll my eyes at her childish antics and Tyler swoops just low enough to put the final nail in, “trust me, I won’t.”

He turns back to me, softening his expression, “I’m sorry for the interruption, Kate. Now, where were we?” His low rasped voice is back in my ear, and it’s my turn to get the chills.

“We filled her in on Angie.” Dani chimes back, giving Ty a pat on the shoulder, “we’ll leave you two alone to hash out everything else.” And with that her and Lilly traipse back towards their crew…our crew.

He takes Lilly’s stool next to mine and orders up some more drinks, two beers, two tequila shots. Once served, he hands a beer and a shot off to me and holds it up to cheers me.

I hold my glass to his, “What’re we cheers-ing to, Ty?”

He ponders and then grins wickedly at me, and I know he has some typical Tyler thing to say.

With a twitch of his lips and a clink of the glasses, he says “tell you later.”

I shake my head in amusement then throw back the shot in time with him. This time he grimaces and shakes his head at the taste. I can’t help but screw my face up either. Tequila is disgusting, no matter if it’s being shared with Tyler Owens or not.

“So tell me, Kate, what all did Lilly and Dani disclose about me?”

I turn to him, amused, “Why Ty? Afraid there’s something I won’t like? Got some deep dark secrets?”

He side eyes me with his signature smirk, “just making sure it’s all good things.”

“Are there any bad things?” I quip back at him.

There’s probably not a thing in the world that could convince me Tyler’s a bad person.

He softly smiles back, with a sobering look “Just my demons, but I won’t ruin a good night with those.”

His words repeated in my mind and so I offer them back to him, “tell me when you’re ready. I’ll be there to listen.” I nudge his shoulder and his head drops between his shoulders, with an accepting smile, his fingers twirling the empty shot glass.

We down a few more drinks and get lost in small talk, and then the song changes to “Dance her Home” by Cody Johnson. Before I can protest he’s pulling me to the floor, his striking smile lighting up his face. We stumble and fumble, before catching our stride with those around us who are much more sober.

I yell up at him over the noise, “what if can’t dance!?”

He bends to my ear, “You’re going to learn, but something tells me you already can, Sapulpa.”

“What if I’m too drunk to dance?”

He throws his head back in a laugh, “that makes two of us, Kate!”

In seconds we’re two stepping to the upbeat music, his warm body, fluid with the motion, pressed against me. Of course Tyler can dance. We spin, and we dip, and we glide, and between the lights, and the shots, and his intoxicating presence, I feel drunk. I am drunk, really drunk. But I also feel light, and reckless and daring. And happy. I also feel my next decisions being influenced by liquid courage.

I pull his head down to line his ear up to my lips, “I’m ready to go, Cowboy.” The music changing to a slow song as I talk, allowing us to fall into a rhythmic sway pressed against one another.

He pulls back to look at me, a questioned expression across his face. I nod at him to show I meant what I just said. As a half smile begins to stretch across his face, he bends down to say “I’m all for leaving, but I can’t fucking drive, and neither can you.”

I slump, pondering how I’m going to him alone without everyone else being involved. 

“Uber?”

“We could.” He agrees, “or Dex.”

I nod, not really caring how we get there.

We nearly sprint from the dance floor, as well as two drunk people can, to find our crew.

Boone slurs a “welcome back T.” While the others pull us into conversation. Without having to mention it, Javi chimes in, “I think we need to get going,” pointing at Boone swaying in his chair.

The group nods in agreement, and I hear Tyler mumble, “so help me God, Boone if you throw up in my truck..” as we push our way out the door. Tyler’s hand lands on lower back as he guides me to the door and helps me in. It takes him Dani and me pushing and pulling on Boone to get him up into the seat. Once he’s situated we’re back in our original positions and on the short drive back to the motel.

Tyler’s hand splays across my thigh and he absently runs circles on my scar. He’s facing out the window, his stubbled chin propped on his knuckles. Though it’s dark and things are fuzzy, the road side lights intermittently cast a glow across him.

He’s so damn enthralling, and tonight I’m giving into it.

—-

Tyler:

My heart is pounding. My fingers tracing lightly over her scar, a reminder that she’s alive. I want to kiss her, and hold her, and feel her. Every inch of me is on fire with the idea of Kate wanting something more with me. She didn’t say it necessarily, but tonight was indicative of how her sober words aren’t always conveying what she’s thinking.

Kate is closed off, her walls are sky high, and I want to be the one to bring them crashing down.

I want to bring them crashing down tonight.

Pulling into the motel parking lot I feel the nervousness, eagerness and anticipation rising inside me. I don’t know where this nights going to go, but I know I don’t have to dance around the idea of Kate being afraid me. I also know someone better babysit Boone so I don’t have to.

We drag him out and Lilly and Javi grab him, Lilly letting me know she’s got him for the night.

Good.

The rest of us say our good nights until it’s just me and Kate standing in the parking lot. She’s swaying a bit, as I throw my arm around her and take off towards my door, lightning flashing and thunder rolling off in the distance to our west.

“I had a great time tonight, Kate. I’m glad we got to go out and let loose. I am sorry abou…”

But before I can finish my sentence I’m interrupted by a “shut the fuck up, Ty” and her pulling me toward her by the front of my shirt, crashing her lips into mine. It’s frantic and messy, like we’ve been starving for this moment. We have been. I kiss her back with the same intensity, hands immediately intertwining with her hair. Our breaths are labored, her lips are pillow soft as we deepen the kiss. Our moans and teeth clash as I push her against my door, my hat tipping off my head as I bend into her. I don’t give a single fuck about it, about who’s watching, or about anything other than her right in front of me. I fumble for the key card in my pocket, and without breaking our kiss I shove door open behind her, keeping her pulled close to me with my other arm. I kick my hat inside and grab at her face with both hands, then at her head, then at her back. Our hands roam each other, reverently, our breath hitching as we consume one another. “Fuck, Kate.” I hiss out, lost in her and this moment. It’s intense, it’s chaotic, it’s perfect. She is perfect.

We push our bodies into one another, the want and desire and heat of this moment overpowering everything else. She tugs at the hemline of my shirt, and with one swift tug over my head I yank it off. I can’t help by smirk, when she gasps “damn Tyler” between kissing me. She’s seen me shirtless before, just 24 hours prior, but not in a moment where we were no longer skating around one another. Her hands roam across my chest and stomach and hook on the waistline of my jeans, the soft skin of her palms sending chills through my body. I’m keyed up and every inch of me is hyper aware of Kate’s hands on me.

I fucking love it. I fucking love her.

I lightly push her away from me, desire burning hot in my core, “Your turn. Lose my fucking shirt, Kate.” She grins at my command and that feels good. She drunkenly grabs at the bottom of the shirt, and while she’s pulling it over her head, she stumbles back, tripping over the wheels of the desk chair behind her.

Fuck.

I reach for her and that motion pulls her forward hard into me. We both topple, her knees hit the carpeted floor hard, and I roll back to catch the rest of her fall. It’s drunk and clumsy. It’s us.

“Kate! Are you okay?” I exhaled through my shortened and labored breaths. She answers with a fit of giggles and I can’t help but to laugh too. This moment is sensual, chaotic, and now so very funny. I feel her body shake on top of me as her laughter fills the room, and before I know it we’re both struggling to breathe. “Kate, Kate maybe..” I huff another laugh, “maybe we’re a little too drunk.” I feel her forehead nod against my chest as her laughter continues.

“Agree, rooms spinnin’ Ty. You’re intoxicating.”

“That’s the shots, Sapulpa.”

“Nope. ‘Is you.” She pops the ‘p’ and pokes me in the chest as her words slur.

I laugh again and squeeze her in a hug, feeling my own head spinning, feeling her warm skin against my bare chest. The lamps give a soft warm glow to the moment and it’s another one of those I’ll file away into the keep forever category. “Let’s get you to bed, Kate. Put that shirt back on and I’ll walk you to your room.”

She huffs and I’m not sure she’s fully with me anymore.

I press my lips to her hair, “Take your time, Kate.”

I sit her on the foot of the bed and step into the bathroom to splash water on my face and cool down. I’m really drunk, and as much as I want everything with Kate, I’m really glad it didn’t happen like this.

I curse myself in the mirror for almost allowing it to happen, almost snapping my final fiber of control when it comes to her.

She is everything and I refuse to ruin this.

When I step back into the room to get Kate, I curse again, because what I find is her stripped naked, splayed across my bed, half covered in the blankets and fully passed out, peaks of her bare body illuminated by the soft warm lamp glow, her clothes strewn haphazardly across my room.

I sigh, swipe my hand over my face and look up to the ceiling.

Fuck. Me.

Chapter Text

1 Day Earlier - Saturday Morning

Kate:

The sounds of sirens are rolling through my mind. I’m dreaming, I think. In this dream rain is pelting the window of the motel room, the wind is howling outside, and tornado sirens are sounding, but the bed is too comfortable, too warm. I decide there is no danger, and roll myself into the warm golden, and very naked chest of Tyler Owens. His body radiates heat, his breath solid and comforting and proof of life, proof of safety. I feel the dream fading to something else as I nuzzle into him, I try so desperately to hold onto it, to the sense of comfort in the moment as the world falls apart around us, as Mother Nature rips at the seams of all the things that surround us. But it’s only a dream so I know I’m safe, we’re safe. I relax. 

And then my eyes shoot open. 

This is not a fucking dream.

Flashes of the night before flood my mind as I stare back at Tyler’s sleeping and naked form next to me. 

Is he naked?

I raise the blanket to check.

No he’s not, sweatpants, good.

Wait, why am I naked?

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. 

I feel my heartbeat accelerate and my breath quicken, as I scramble out of bed from next to his chest and observe I am, in fact, very naked. 

I cover my chest, as if he hasn’t already seen all of me, as if he’s awake to see me now, and scurry to the foot of the bed, cursing to myself about this shitshow of a situation.

What the fuck, Kate?

What happened last night? 

Amidst my panic I register the tornado sirens are really going off and the wind really is howling outside. Rain, and hail, are hitting the windows. 

Shit. What time is it?

Okay think Kate. 

I pan the room, registering my splitting headache and the pain the lamp light causes when I look at it.  I think I’m going to be sick.

You can be sick once you get to your room.

Wait. Why are my clothes everywhere? 

Jesus Christ. 

I realize I’m still drunk as I try to pull on my shorts as quietly and quickly as possible. Where’s my shirt?

Right, Tyler’s shirt, of course. 

I grab my purse, my boots, and my phone. It’s dead, so I can’t even check the radar. Fantastic. I’m panicking, spiraling, dying inside. 

Drunken and brave Kate mustered up the courage to throw herself at Tyler and she can’t even remember what happened. 

How can I not remember having sex with him? 

I give myself a once over in the mirror.

Oh my god. I look hideous.

What happened to my knees?

Oh…oh no. No, nope, no way. 

The sirens blare again and break me from my derailment. Before I’m out the door I peak over to Tyler one more time. He’s out cold…so peaceful, so calm, so inviting. 

My mind wins: Run away Kate. 

And I do, as much as my half-drunk legs can muster. 

—-

Tyler:

The door slams just as thunder rattles the room. My headache is splitting, thought numbing, and my body really fucking hurts. As I open my eyes, the world returns…sirens are sounding, rain and hail are hitting the windows, and Kate’s intoxicating vanilla scent fills the room.

Kate.

I sit upright and look to my left. She’s gone. I scan the room. Her things are gone. 

Fuck. 

Wait. The door shutting. That was her leaving, it had to be.

I scramble to the door, vertigo hitting me as I try to stay upright but fall into the wall. I could puke... I will puke, later.

“Kate?”, I poke my head out the door and am hit with a wall of rain.

Right, the tornado warning.

I pull my phone from my pocket and check the radar. The rotation is to our south, and it’s broad, but no sane person would be out here in this. 

I don’t care.

Never claimed to be sane anyway.

I turn right down the sidewalk and catch her fumbling with her room key. She’s crying, or really flustered, I can’t completely tell as the rain blows in on us.

“Kate!”

She ignores me as I draw closer, nearly sprinting to get to her.

“Kate!”

I reach for her and she turns on me. Her eyes are full of tears and the panic I saw a few nights ago. My heart cracks. 

“What Tyler?!” She screams, but her voice breaks. I’m not sure if it’s rain or tears that fall, but I’m going with the latter.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“What are you doing out here?” I holler over the wind, trying to catch my breath.

We are getting drenched, but I couldn’t care less about that minor detail in whatever this giant shitshow between me and her is. 

“Going to my room. What’s it look like?” She offers back.

“Why?”

“What do you mean 'why?'” I hear the break and panic in her question. 

“Why are you running from me?”

She squares up to face me but doesn’t say a thing as water droplets fall from her hair and down her neck. The water pelts us as the wind blows them crossways. The sirens finally die down as the chill in the damp air penetrates my bones, sobering me. Her..no, my white t-shirt soaking through. This situation is very uncomfortable and feels very much like anything established last night is going to come crumbling down. Like she’s going to retreat and close herself off again.

I refuse to let that happen.

“Kate, talk to me. You can talk to me. I’m here.” I pat my hand across my chest, “I’m right here.” 

She shakes her head absently, and I can tell her mind is reeling. She looks terrified. I step towards her, but to my surprise she doesn’t back away. I softly place my hands on either side of her face, cupping her jaw. “Kate?”

“Tyler…I…” she stammers, her words and thoughts failing her. “I can’t do this.”

My heart sinks, I feel my stomach bottom out and a weakness course through my knees. 

“What do you mean?”

“I-I don’t know Ty. I’m embarrassed and I’ve never done that.” She waves her hand in the air towards my room as she sobs. “I’m not like that, and this is not how I wanted this to go.”

I quirk my brow at her, confusion filtering through me.

She doesn’t remember last night.

She thinks we had sex. 

I let my hands fall down and clasps her upper arms. “Kate, why are you embarrassed?”

She huffs, “Don’t play stupid Tyler. You know why! I throw myself at you last night, we have drunk sex and I wake up naked in your bed. And the worst part of it all? I don’t remember it! That isn’t like me, I don’t do those things. And I’m embarrassed because you are more important than that and now, I’ve fucked it all up!”

An unconscious grin fills my face.

“Why are you smiling? This isn’t funny!”

I wipe a hand across my mouth to try to smooth my face, but I still feel my lips twitch in amusement.

“Kate..we didn’t...” a laugh escapes me before I can stop it. I straighten, “Sorry. It’s not funny. We didn’t have sex.”

“What?”, her eyes are blown wide in confusion. 

I hold her gaze, “We didn’t have sex.”

“Then why in the hell did I wake up naked in your bed?” She throws her arms up in frustration, “and why do my knees look like this?” She points down and I follow the motion.

Oh my God, the floor burn.

I can’t help it, laughter floods from me, before I recover and look at her earnestly.

I quirk my brow, “Why do you think your knees look like that, Kate?”

She deadpans me as she crosses her arms, and I continue my heckling, “Ohhh, wow, Kate. I’m honored. You’d do that for me?”

“Tyler.”

I grin and wink, she hates it.

I love it. 

“Can you please fill me in?”

“I tell you what. You get changed, grab all your things and meet me at the truck in 15 and I’ll fill you in. Deal?”

She ponders my suggestion, her body finally relaxing, “Where are we going?”

I pull her into a hug, smile, and rasp against her wet hair, “Tell you later.” 

She pulls away, her eyes still glassy as she looks up at me. “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

Your asshole.

“So you’ve told me, Kate.”

Chapter Text

1 Days Earlier - Saturday

I climb haphazardly into the passenger seat of Tyler’s truck. He watches me as I managed to get settled in my hungover state. His eyes are a bit sunken and red rimmed from our late night, his hair still wet from the rain, but now he’s cladded in his jeans and boots, minus his signature flannel and hat. He’s not Tyler Owens the Tornado Wrangler today, he’s just Tyler, the simplest version of him. 

“Going to fill me in now?” I question, still uneasy about the night before.

He shakes his head as he shifts into drive. “Not yet.”

“Going to tell me where we’re going?”

“Yep, gas station.” He offers, shortly, as he turns on to the road. 

“Why?”

“Gotta kill this hangover, Kate, before it ruins my day. And we need gas.” He throws a look my way with a forced smile.

He looks like hell.

Like beautiful, edible, annoying hell.

My head pounds, “I agree. What’s your cure?”

He perks up at the innocent question. “Really?”

“Yep, really. I want to know what Tyler Owens uses to nurse a bad one.”

He smiles at that, “You’re going to think it’s stupid, or gross, or both.”

“Try me.” I shrug.

“An orange juice, pickles, and a bag of potato chips…Lays specifically.” 

No way he’s serious.

I scrunch my eyebrows in disgust, “Like all at once?”

He shakes his head, “No, back-to-back. Then I top it off with some migraine medicine.”

“You’re serious?”

“Don’t dis it until you try it, Kate. It works wonders.”

We pull into the parking lot of the station, the tires crunching over loose gravel, light drizzle still falling around us. Tyler hops out, throwing his Ariat ball cap on backward and turns to me, leaning forward on his elbows, “Can I get you anything?”

I smile at his offer, feeling a bit queasy, “I think I’ll take a Tyler hangover special please.”

He laughs, “You got it Sapulpa. Coming right up.”

In a moment's notice, my lap is full of orange juice bottles, pickles, and potato chips, and somehow that combination does actually sound appetizing. 

We slowly consume our snacks as we cross into Arkansas. Noticing the welcome sign I turn to him in curiosity, “Gonna tell me where we’re going now?”

He smiles as he feels me catching on to our destination but shakes his head and ignores the question. 

“You feel any better?” He rasps as he pops another potato chips in his mouth.

“Actually yes. I don’t feel so sick.”

“Good. I told you it was the best cure.”

I roll my eyes. More often than not Tyler is usually right, I should really start believing him more. 

His phone ringing through the speakers breaks my train of thought. Boone’s name pops up and Tyler reaches to answer it.

“T!”

“Hey Boone, you alive?”

“Man, you won’t believe this. Someone stole the truck.”

I side eye Tyler, and we mirror each other as we roll our eyes in silent laughter.

“Oh yeah? Damn, that sucks. What makes you think that?”

“It’s not in the parking lot. Why aren’t you more upset?”

Tyler lets out a “huh” as if he’s pondering the situation. I have my hands pressed to my mouth to keep the laughter at bay. 

“Tyler, all of our equipment is in there, man.”

“Boone.”

“What?” 

“Why didn’t you come knock on my door?”

“I did. You didn’t answer.”

One too many beats of silence passes, before the lightbulb goes off in Boone’s brain.

“Ohhh.”

We both burst out laughing. 

“Wait! Is Kate with you?”

“Yes Boone.”

“Oooo. You guys have a good night? I need all the details.”

“Boone, there are no details to share and even if there were you wouldn’t be getting them. How are you even awake right now?”

“You know me, T, I bounce right back. That said though I’m gonna go puke. Don’t leave your kids waiting too long, we miss you.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Love you too mom and dad.”

“Better hitch a ride with the crew back to Sapulpa, Boone, it’s gonna be awhile.”

“What? Why?”

“Bye Boone.”

I look at Tyler with question, but he doesn’t budge. 

Where in the world is he taking me?

—-

After passing through winding roads and the hills of west Arkansas, the rain gives way to cloudy skies as we cross under a branded gate. I peer up at it through the windshield. It weathered and rusted, worn and evidence of decades of legacy. The only new part about it is the brand and letters itself. It seems newer, more recent. Etched in metal is an OH cattle brand with ‘Owens-Harding Ranch’ underneath. 

“I would ask if we are trespassing but I’m going to assume the Owens on the gate is indicative of your last name.” I offer to him, more as a statement than a question.

He smirks, “You’d be correct.”

I take in the rolling fields of grass and the pristine fencing. The driveway is lined with pine trees, its dark pavement disappearing behind the hills in front of us. Off in the distance to my right cattle graze, and to my left Tyler has rolled his window down, allowing the rain scented air to filter into the cab of the truck. His arm is slung casually out the door, while his right hand props lazily on the steering wheel. His hat is on backwards, his green tshirt lightly ruffling as the breeze blows in. The corners of his mouth turned up in a soft smile. 

Something about this moment seems serene, it feels important, and raw, and real, and I really want to remember it forever. He looks happy, calmed, settled, and this place is beautiful. 

This is Tyler’s home. 

Absentmindedly, I grab my phone to take his picture. He peers over at me, eyebrows raised, “what’re you doing Kate?”

“Taking your picture.”

“Why?”

“You have one of me, it’s only fair.”

“I do no-“

I don’t let him finish as I reach over and pull down his sun visor. There, tucked behind some old coordinates scratched on a piece of paper is the photo of me Ben gave him from last month. 

“How did you know I have that?”

“A girl knows things, Ty. Plus, Boone spilled the beans about it last week when y’all got back.”

“I’m going to kill him.” He grumbles to himself.

“So, like I said, only fair.” I gleam as I snap pictures of him next to me, one of him looking at me with his soft, pretending to be annoyed smile, and one of him with his attention turned back to the driveway.

“This is your home?”

“Yup.” He pops the ‘p’ but is oddly less talkative than he was before we pulled in.

“You okay?” I ask him softly.

He nods a silent yes, but I feel it. This feels like it has an awful lot to do with what Lilly and Dani told me last night. 

You can talk to me Ty, I want to know everything. 

He slows to a stop and hops out to check a couple of troughs along the fence line, and to check the fence itself. Once back in he turns the truck across another cattle guard that leads into the field. We drive through the recently hayed lot and slow atop one of the hills. From here you can see an old ranch style brick home in the distance and beyond that a body of water, assumably the Arkansas River. The land is beautiful, and expansive, and welcoming. Putting the truck in park he peers over at me.

“C’mon Kate.”

“Where are we going?”

“To sit on top of the truck, heard the view is better from up there.”

We climb up the bed and to the top of the cab. Taking in the open space around us is nearly breathtaking. The rain cooled air, the smell of hay and cattle, the trees rustling in the wind, Tyler sitting to my left, lost in thought, in old memories. It’s incredible. 

I don’t want to break the silence, but I need to. 

“Gonna fill me in now?”

He nods but answers me with another question. “What do you want to know?”

His response throws me, but I realize what he’s doing. He’s giving me an open invitation to learn about him, about his past. My heart cracks wide open for him as I realize how considerate and open he’s being.

“I want to know everything…but can we start with last night.”

He quietly laughs as he dives into the detailed, and admittedly funny, story of what happened post-bar.

His voice rasps and cracks with laughter as he recalls the night before, “…you landed on top of me and fell into a fit of giggles. We both couldn’t stop laughing. We mutually decided we were way too drunk…”

I throw my hands to my face when he gets to the embarrassing parts. “So, you’re saying I just ripped all my clothes off and plopped into your bed like I owned the place?”

He full on laughs, his smile illuminating against the gray clouds, “Yup Kate, came out of the bathroom and there you were.” 

I cringe and sign, “Hh my God, I’m so embarrassed.”

He throws his arm around me and pulls me into a side hug, squeezing me tight. “I loved it, and not because you were naked, though that is a very big plus, don’t get me wrong, but you just looked so calm, and happy, and safe. You were just you, with no walls up.”

I smile up at his comment, “It was probably the tequila.”

It was most definitely the tequila and nothing to do with being alone with him. 

“You think so?” He offers back, “From what I recall, you have a thing about getting naked and throwing yourself into the unknown.”

I glare at him, “What?!”

Amusement floods him, his eyes lighting in mischief. “Remember that story your mom told? Seems to be a trend, Kate.” He shrugs in mock innocence.

“Oh my gosh, Tyler. No.” He laughs as I tuck myself in embarrassment. 

We laugh for a moment, and then he whispers, “I’m sorry, Kate.”

I sober my laughter at his apology. 

“Why are you sorry?”

“I let it get too far last night. I was drunk and not thinking straight. I’m sorry.”

“Tyler, I threw myself at you. That’s embarrassing and also crossed a lot of lines.”

He laughs, “But you were drunk.”

“And so were you.” I volley. 

“Not as bad as you, and plus it’s my job to take care of you, to respect you. I almost let the heat of the moment win last night, and I’m sorry.”

He’s serious. He’s worried he took advantage of me. 

I’ve got to tell him.

“Tyler. I wanted it to happen. I want whatever this is that we’ve been dancing around to happen. You have no idea how important you are. I just want to be able to remember it, I want to be present, not drunk and half gone when it happens. It’s too important. You’re too important.”

He takes my words in, unblinking, not an ounce of humor or amusement decorating his features.

I have his full attention.  “So, I’m the one that’s sorry, for throwing myself at you and making a mess of last night. I don’t act like that, I don’t think I’ve ever acted like that. So, when I woke up this morning, I panicked. I freaked out and shut down because I had no idea what to do. But you don’t deserve that. I’ve shut down too many times on you and that’s not fair.”

He shakes his head, “it’s one of my favorite memories of you. The kiss, yes, but I’m talking about you in your fit of laughter laying on top of me. It felt so good, Kate.” He nudges me with his shoulder, “so don’t you ever apologize for it.”

I smile timidly at him, “Can I still be embarrassed?”

“Oh, hell yeah, Kate, can’t wait to tell the story when we’re old.” 

I don’t miss his implication of the future.

 He continues, “If the tables were turned and it was me, I think I would’ve crawled in a hole. Totally embarrassing.”

“Oh my god, Tyler, you asshole.” I playfully shove him as he laughs at his own antics. 

“I think it’s my sole purpose in life to rile you up, Kate. You get all flustered and I love it. Like if I ever fill out a resume, number one responsibility is going to be,” he swipes his hand in front of him, “annoy the hell out of Kate Carter.”

I roll my eyes but can’t stop the laughter from bubbling up.

“You’re an idiot.”

“Not what you told me before.” He leans into me with a sideways glance and a smirk. 

I chew on my lip as my laughter settles. “You’re turn, Cowboy, it’s time to talk about those demons.”

He shakes his head. “Not until you tell me how to make sure Thursday never happens again. I was terrified, Kate.”

I still, noticing just how serious he is. 

I take a moment to process what I’m going to tell him. “I…I panicked. A lot like I did this morning. But it was a specific trigger. We were standing by the trailer, laughing, getting hit with all of that debris and a very specific memory flooded my mind. Before I could stop it I was standing back along side the road with Jeb as we fixed the trailer. It was almost parallel. The wind, the rain, the debris. Us laughing. That was the last time I saw him laugh, because in the next moment they were all dead. A-and..” I inhale my sob, and Tyler pulls me into him, “and the next thing I knew I was imagining it being you. You weren’t going to survive it, you didn’t survive it. I froze, I shutdown. I hadn’t had a panic attack like that in two years, but in mind it was so real. So, as I was watching you scrambling to get into the truck, all I could rationalize was if I stayed away from you, you’d be okay. If I got to close, I’d get you killed.” I suck in another whimper and his grasp around me tightens. “And I know that sounds crazy, you probably think I’m crazy, but you have no idea what it was like.”

I see him flinch at that, but he recovers in beat.

Does he know what that's like? 

“Kate…” his voice is rough and warm against the top of my head. “Kate, what happened wasn’t your fault. They chose to be there, just as I choose to be here.”

I look up at him, the tears hot in my corners, “have you been talking with Javi?”

“No, why?”

“He told me the exact same thing.”

“Then you should believe it. I know it’s scary, but all I ask is don’t shut me out like that. I don’t care how dark it is, how far you have to fall, I’ll be right there, I just need you to talk to me. And don’t you dare feel bad for what happened to me. I’m okay, we’re okay.” He pulls at my chin forcing me to look at him. “you’re allowed to break down, you’re allowed to make mistakes, but you’re not allowed to give up on all of this, me included. You’ve fought so hard to get here. Don’t let a single thing stand in your way. Be strong for me, Kate. This whole thing is incredible, and it’s going to change the world.”

I nod at his words of affirmation as tears fall to my cheeks. His rough thumbs wipe them away gently, and I lean into the warmth of his palm. 

He is comfort. He is home.

I wipe at my nose and sniff back the emotion. “Sorry I’m such a wreck.”

“Stop apologizing for what you’re feeling. You’re not a wreck, you’re that strongest person I know.”

We sit there for awhile, him rubbing light circles on my shoulder, silently holding each other while the world around us calms. The breeze settles, the cattle graze lazily, the sun peaks between the broken cloud bank. It’s so beautiful, so relaxing. 

“Ty?” I rasp.

“Sapulpa.” He whispers, his head remaining laid against mine. 

“I want to hear your story. I want to know the 'why' behind those moments when you face falters for just a second. I want to know how you got here, how the wranglers came to be. Where your parents are, the details about your life, your sister, your family. I want to know everything.”

He clears his throat, “you notice that, huh?”

“Only sometimes. But someone as vibrant and sunny as you shouldn’t have to keep all the demons locked up inside. What was that you just told me? You should heed your own advice, Ty.”

I feel him nod against my head. 

“I don’t even know where to start.” He rasps.

“How about from the beginning?” I offer, softly, squeezing his arm in a hug and intertwining my fingers in his.

[Note to reader: major trigger warnings begin here]

He clears his throat before he speaks, “Early on I remember the good, like when you’re really little and your parents always look happy, no matter what, ya know?” I nod in silent agreement. “Dad was a bull rider, and from the time I could walk I was on the back of some animal. Sheep, calf, horse. If it could buck or run, he put me on it. By the time I was 6 I was riding in youth rodeos on the back of young steers. Mom hated it, but dad insisted, and you give some young wild kid the chance to do something crazy like that, he’s gonna run with it. But rodeo was the only time dad treated me, or any of us, like he loved us. He saw talent in me, so he pretended to be the perfect man in front of all the people he could brag to. Behind closed doors or as soon as we pulled out of the lot at an arena, it was a different story.” He sighs, taking a moment to collect his next thoughts. “He beat me, mom, and my sister more times than I can count. Mom took the brunt of it and always made sure we stayed hushed about it at school. On the cameras or in the news articles, we were this perfect bull riding legacy family. But my dad was evil. By the time I was 7 we traveled regionally for youth rodeo. I was good, really good, and he loved it. But he also loved the women, and the drugs, and the booze. At that time you don’t realize what’s happening, but as I grew up it all started making sense. Sometime that fall, I think October, he kicked me after I fell off the practice dummy.” I feel Ty move and I follow his gaze to an overgrown arena near the house at the bottoms of the hill. “He broke my ribs and told me if I told anyone I’d never see another rodeo. So, I kept quiet, rodeo was my only out, the only place I felt peace. We told the doctors I got kicked by a bull, and I rode the next few competitions through a lot of pain. When I showed up to my aunt's at Thanksgiving with a broken wrist, I think she started getting suspicious, because after that, my sister and I spent a lot of time at her house. The more I was the there, the less I rodeoed, and it made me hate my aunt and uncle. In my mind they were keeping me away from rodeo because that’s what mom wanted, not to keep me safe from my dad. Over the next few months, weekends were spent in Joplin at my aunt's farm, mom would pick us up, battered and bruised, but always smiling. I realize now she did everything she could to make sure we were taken care of.”

Silent tears fall down my cheeks as I listen to his heartbreaking past. 

“On my 8th birthday, dad came with mom to pick us up in Joplin. He stayed in the car and mom insisted to my aunt that it was okay for us to leave with them. In the car he was erratic, screaming, yelling, swerving, speeding. It was a miracle we made it far at all. We got off the exit for home and turned on the two-lane road east of here." He points off towards the east side of the farm. "Mom was crying begging him to calm down. He was hysterical, and I didn’t understand why really. Come to find out mom was pregnant again, it was his, but he didn’t want it, and he was losing his mind. Mix that with drugs use and his perpetual cheating, he went insane.” He huffs a laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “I remember finding his crack pipe in the console of his truck once. At the time I had no idea what it was. Pieced it together later on, but at that young age we just didn’t realize how bad things were." he pauses for a moment, and I can almost feel the emotional pain radiating through his body, "Anyway, we were almost home that night when he intentionally swerved into oncoming traffic.” 

I suck in a breath at the realization of what he’s about to tell me. 

I think I’m going to be sick.

“He hit an older woman head on going 70 miles per hour.” 

I hear Ty’s voice quiver, and I squeeze him tighter, closer. 

“He and the other person died instantly. Mom died a week later in the hospital. Ellie and I were hurt, her leg was broken, and I had a really bad concussion. That’s concussion number 1.”

I think back to a few nights ago when he told me three were from bulls. That wasn’t entirely true. 

“The weeks and months that followed were nothing but custody and land battles with the courts and my aunt and uncle. The ranch trust was in my name, but I was 8, so an adult beneficiary was needed, eventually my aunt and uncle signed on it. I shut down, I got angry, and for a long time, I reacted to everything a lot like my dad did…violence, recklessness, repulsive anger. No one could stand to be around me. That was exasperated by my aunt's reluctance to put me back in rodeo, but it was the only thing that gave me peace. Finally, she caved, and they did all they could to drive me to every youth rodeo in the state of Missouri. My sister took a liking to barrel racing and next thing you knew we were climbing to the top of the circuit. I've told you this part, but one evening, driving back from a local bull riding competition, a tornado touched down right in front of us, and it was mesmerizing, it was the first time that something other than bull riding made me feel purpose. Rodeo was still my main focus as I grew up, but my aunt and uncle fully supported me chasing meteorology, too. In fact, they preferred it. It took a while, but after I nearly got killed on that bull at 19 my aunt all but forced me to do something more productive. I obliged and went to college. And now here I am.”

I finally peer up at him, tears still sitting at the brims of my eyes, and I notice his eyes are glassy too. “Tyler…”

“I don’t need sympathy, Kate. Got my head on straight and figured out I wasn’t going to turn into my father at every inconvenience life threw my way. I’m just glad I figured it out before it killed me.” 

I nod as I stare at his profile, watching his jaw clench, “How about the Wranglers?”

“I met Boone on the circuit, he was the video guy, and probably the only other person that knew my story fully. He’d been with me growing up, and he was there when we lost my uncle and I turned to drinking. There’s about a six-month stint of my life where I don’t remember anything because I was blacking out at every party I could find. When I woke up with my truck in drive butted up against a tree at my aunt’s place without a clue how I got there, that woke me up and scared me senseless. I stayed away from drinking until I knew I could handle it again. She still doesn’t know that happened. She’d probably kill me on the spot if she did. But Boone was the one who kept me accountable. He wasn’t perfect, but he kept my ass out of trouble, and made sure I knew I had a purpose until I started believing it myself. Lilly grew up close to me too, but her family was poor, and she was always a little different, so most people stayed away from her. She was wicked smart though, super tech savvy, so I hunted her down when I needed a chase team during college. Dex and Dani were independent chasers, and we ran into them on some early chases. Next thing I know we’re devising all these plans to do this crazy shit like shoot off rockets into tornadoes and modifying my uncle’s truck with equipment. With that we started catching a following on social media, and next thing I know the wranglers were born.”

He’s smiling now, and I realize those are fond memories.

“How long ago was that?”

“Hmm, we first started seriously chasing about 5 years ago…”

I feel him trail off.

“We were on the same storm you were involved in, Kate. Just a town over in Moore. We were the first on sight at the elementary school.”

“Oh my god, Tyler. That’s horrible.”

“It was. I also remember the reports about storm chaser casualties on the highway nearby.”

He looks down at me now. “It was your team, Kate. I just didn’t realize it, not until Dex pieced it together. Hearing about it and seeing the carnage at those schools, it really freaked me out. I wanted to quit chasing for awhile, but my aunt sat me down and talked some sense into me. We found success over the past couple years and I’m really glad I didn’t give up on it. Would’ve never met the most incredible thing to ever happen to me.” He nudges me this time and softly smiles. 

“I’m really glad you didn’t give up either, Ty.” I lay my head back to his shoulder and squeeze his bicep, his thumb rubbing soft circles on my inner knee. “So, this is your ranch now?”

“Mhm. My aunt signed it over to me a few years ago, after my sister decided to move to Montana.”

“Harding is?”

“My aunt and uncle’s last name.”

I nod, “makes sense.”

“What’s your sister like?”

“You’d love her. She’s sweeter than me but knows how to heckle anyone. Her kids are great; I love them like my own. I really like to spoil them then send them home with her, so she has to deal with the aftermath.”

I softly giggle, “such a Tyler thing to do.”

He shrugs innocently and gives a squeeze to my knee, “C’mon. Gotta show you around.”

“I dunno Ty, view’s pretty good from up here.”

He’s standing on the roll cage on the driver's side of the truck when he looks back at me, drinking me in with his green eyes, and says “yeah, it is.” 

Chapter Text

1 Day Earlier - Saturday Afternoon:

Tyler:

I key into the front door of the house and watch Kate take it in. It’s nothing fancy, there’s still wood paneling on the walls, the cabinets might as well scream the 70s, the ceiling is popcorn, and the lighting has seen better days, but it’s mine. Surrounding the house is the shop where we usually work on my truck and a couple sheds, barns, and the old riding arena. Inside the decor is neutral, mostly things I picked up during my stint in college or was handed down to me from family. Few photos hang along the walls, mostly ones of me, my sister, and my mom. It’s homey in an odd sense, but it also feels so foreign. This is the house I spent my first 8 years in, and now I only walk in it to eat, shower and sleep, spending most of my time outside, busy on the ranch when I’m here. 

“It’s nothing fancy, Sapulpa, not much use in updating when I’m barely here.”

“It’s perfect, Ty. It smells like you.” She turns a circle in my living room and plops to the recliner, picking up the photo of mom, Ellie, and me that sits on the glass coffee table. 

“You, your mom, and Ellie?” She asks softly.

“Yep, that was Christmas at my grandparents when I was 5. Right before everything went to shit.”

She peers up at me, apologetically.

“How do you take care of all of this when you’re gone?” She changes the subject. 

I shrug and lean against the door frame in the living room, “it keeps me busy. Plus, I’m here about once a week.”

She nods quietly as she observes my space. I really want to know what she’s thinking now that I’ve dropped the bomb of my shitshow of a life on her. 

I’m scared to know, though.

But I need to know.

“Tell me what you’re thinking Kate.”

She zeros in on me with her gaze, “that it takes one incredible person to make all this work and change the world in the process.”

“I’m not changing the world, you are.”

“You’re the mastermind behind all of our equipment, we’d have data, we'd have the polymer, but we wouldn’t have the setup. Just take a damn compliment, Ty.”

I feel my lips smirk, “Yes ma’am.”

“Speaking of, I’ve got to see where all this tornado wrangling equipment came to life. I’m going to assume in the shop out back?”

I nod at her and she leaps up and grabs my handing, dragging me back to the door. 

In the shop she rummages through everything the way she did the first time she was in my truck. I roll my eyes at her antics, but I’m enthralled. She’s so curious, so smart, and absolutely in awe of our technology. 

“Tyler Owens, you’re holding back on us!”

“They’re all prototypes Kate, and not a single one of those have a successful field test.”

“Tyler this equipment is insane.”

“A lot of its Lilly, but yeah, it’s pretty sweet.”

“What’s this?” She points at the metal canisters in the corner. 

“It’s for your polymer. We worked on it while you were in New York, but haven’t been able to get back on it, and it wasn’t ready enough to bring to Sapulpa.”

Her eyes go wide as she takes in the mechanics. “What’s it do?”

I shift nervously, and cross my arms, leaning against one of the door frame. “After El Reno I wanted to make sure we had a mechanism that wasn’t impacted by the surrounding environment. The barrels won’t release easily if the wind is too strong, or if the rain is too heavy, and we can’t have that. We’re working on a base ejection, where the bottom of the barrels push the polymer up and out, lid included. Like a pressurized system. It’s stronger than the top triggers and shouldn’t be as hindered by rain and winds.”

She just stares at me and then smarts, “you actually are really smart.” 

I bark a laugh and motion for her to come towards me, “come here, Kate.” 

She wraps her arms around my waist and lays her head against my chest, squeezing me as she does. “Not terrified of me after I told you all my dark stories, are you?”

“I could never be scared of you Tyler, just afraid of losing you.”

If that’s the case, then there’s one more thing we need to talk about Sapulpa.”

She hums, “mmm what’s that?”

“El Reno.”

She peers up at me her chin on my chest. “What about it? Haven't we already talked about this.”

I glare down at her as serious as I possibly can, “if you ever fucking drive into an EF5 tornado again, especially to save me, you better hope I’m already dead, because if I’m not I’m kicking your ass.”

She turns her forehead to my chest and laughs, hard. “Oh, like how you kicked my ass at pool last night?”

I take her face between my hands, trying not to let my smile crack, “I’m serious, Kate. Consider your ass kicked. You about gave me a heart attack that day. I know I can't protect you, but damn.”

She straightens, just a bit, “Javi said you tried running after me.”

My face goes slack, “Yeah, I did. I was losing my mind.”

“I’m sorry.” I see the importance of the moment wash over her. “I just didn’t know what else to do. Panic hit me as soon as I saw you trapped under that debris. None of us were making it out of there unless a miracle happened. That miracle just so happened to be attached to your truck.”

“I know Kate, I know. But take me with you next time.”

She looks up again, her lips twitching in a smile, “Respectfully Tyler, never going to fucking happen. I will not be the reason you die.”

“Anyone ever told you you’re stubborn, Kate?”

“All the damn time.” 

---

Kate:

I barely get the words out before his lips are on mine.

There’s no pause, no hesitation—just him, leaning in like he’s been waiting for the perfect moment. The kiss is firm, not rough, but full of promise and appreciation. My breath catches in my throat, and I can feel the way my body leans into his like it’s second nature, like it remembers him, like it craves him, even if we’re both still figuring out what this is.

I do crave him.

This doesn’t feel like last night. There’s no buzz of alcohol dulling the edges, no blurred lines or stolen heat in the dark. This is different. Clearer. Like he meant to do this, like he thought about it and decided not to wait any longer. Like a lit match in the dark.

His calloused hand slides up my back, steady and sure, and I feel his fingers press against my spine like he’s trying to hold on. I breathe him in; he smells like earth, and rain, something warm and familiar. His thumb brushes along my jaw as he deepens our kiss, slower this time, more deliberate. Like he’s trying to memorize this moment. And maybe he is.

I don’t stop him. I don’t want to.

I want to remember it too.

My fingers knot in the front of his shirt, tugging him closer, grounding myself in the solid weight of him. His heartbeat is strong beneath my hands, steady and warm. He pulls back slightly, just enough to look at me. There’s something in his green pools, something softer, something longing. Something real. His brow relaxes just a little, like seeing me here, like this, confirms something for him.

“Kate,” he says, his rasped voice low. 

I don’t answer. I just lean forward and rest my forehead against his lips. He inhales deeply, then his breath fans across my skin, and I close my eyes, feeling the warmth of him, the quiet. The world around us is still, the kind of stillness that settles in after a summer storm. The scent of wet earth and metal lingers in the air, and somewhere in the distance a bird calls out, sharp against the silence and peace of the moment.

His hands stay where they are, one at the small of my back, the other just above my hip. He’s not pulling me in, not holding me too tightly. He’s just there. Solid. Present. 

He kisses me once more, softer than the first time. A brush of lips, careful, almost reverent, like he’s saying something he doesn’t trust himself to speak. I kiss him back, giving him what I can’t put into words—whatever this is between us, whatever it might be turning into.

Whatever I want this to be.

Whatever he wants this to be.

We don’t speak after that. There’s nothing to say, not right now. We just stand there, close and quiet, hugging one another, letting the world move around us while we stay still. I know we need to leave soon. We have to get back to Sapulpa, before real life rushes in again. But for now, I let myself believe we’ve got a little more time, like we can stand right here forever, like I can stand here with him to keep us safe and happy, like this place and this moment will protect us from the chaos.

Because somewhere deep down, I already know I’m holding onto him too tightly. And I’m not ready to let go.

I don't ever want to let go.

I want to hold on forever.

"We gotta go, Kate." he mumbles against my head, squeezing me in a hug, and I nod, listening to his heartbeat in steady rhythm in my ear.

"Okay, Ty."

Chapter Text

Day of - Sunday Morning:

We pull back into the driveway of mom’s farm, the light above barn casting a soft glow on the gravel and grass and the crews trucks. Its almost 1 AM, and I internally groan at the fact that I still have to build a presentation for tomorrow, luckily I have a few from weeks past I can piece together.

I roll my head against the headrest to look at Tyler. His hand is draped lazily on the steering wheel as he puts the truck in park, the high points of his face illuminated softly by the light outside. We’ve barely spoke since the kiss in his shop, but it wasn’t uncomfortable, it was peaceful, it was calm. However, I can tell by the way his jaw contracts and his brow furrows, he has something to say. His mind is reeling.

“What’s that big brain thinking, Ty? Looks like it’s working hard.” I whisper to him. His hushed laugh fills the cab, and I catch the glint of his teeth as he smiles. 

His voice rasps low as he speaks just above a whisper, “you really wanna know, Sapulpa?” He turns his attention towards me, a longing in his gaze. 

I bite at my lips, nervously. His question is loaded and I think I know the answer, but, “yeah Ty, I really wanna know.”

He’s out of the driver side door and opening mine before I can think, I giggle as happiness floods me when he pulls me from my seat. He laughs with me, picking me up and holding me by my waist with his right arm, my legs encircled around him, my arms around his neck. He slams my door with his left and then he’s cupping me, embracing me as he lands his lips back on mine, using the truck as support to hold us up. 

Holy shit. This is happening.

“I want you Kate Carter.” He whispers breathlessly against my lips. “I want you. I want all of you. I want everything with you.”

“Ty..” I gasp as his lips move along my jaw and neck. “Tyler..I want you.”

“Tell me to stop and I will.” He nearly growls the words against my sensitive flesh, his stubble sending pricks like lightning through my skin. My hands in twine with the hair at his nape, as I lean my head back to give him more access. 

“Don’t stop.” It’s breathless, “don’t ever stop,” I rasp.

I feel his cheeks raise in a smile against my neck and my body is on fire. The warmth of him pressed against me, his strong frame encompassing me, his calloused hands holding tight like I’m something worth holding on to, it’s incredible. He’s incredible. 

He pulls me away, carrying me towards the barn, and I send up a silent prayer that everyone is already in the house. His lips find mine again as he slides the door open.

Thank God it’s empty. 

The next thing I hear is the sound of metal crashing to the floor as he continues to kiss me. In one sweeping motion with his free arm he cleared the table of our spare equipment and parts. I gasp and laugh into his kiss, “Tyler, you just broke half of that!”

“Respectfully, Kate, I don’t give a single fuck about any of that right now.” He moans against my lips as he sits me down on the table. I grab for his shirt, and as he pulls it over his head, I slide my hands down his chest and abs, allowing my fingers to trace over his scar and bruising from a few days prior. My fingertips pause as they run along the jagged skin on his ribs, and without a second thought, I whisper, half to myself, “thank you for living.”

He pauses and cups my face, whispering against the top of my head, “I’m really glad I did.” 

This angle allows me to land kisses along his chest, so I do. His skin is tanned and warm and soft, the hard muscle rippling beneath the surface, softly illuminated but the outside light filtering in. Tyler is a force to be reckoned with, in more ways than one, and I’m so thankful I get to be the one the challenge him. He pulls off my top and then switches to my shoes, propping my foot on bend of his hip. 

His hand grips at the waistband of my shorts, “These fucking shorts are in the way, Kate. Lose them.”

I smirk, viciously at him, “Yes sir.”

“Sapulpa.” His voice is deep and threatening and promising.

I fucking love it.

I raise my brows in false innocence, as if I have no idea what he’s implying.

“Careful.” He growls as I pull my shorts off and drop them to our feet, but he doesn’t scare me, he's the safest thing I know. And I love to rile him up. 

“Or what, Cowboy?”

“We’re not very even, here Ty. You’re still half clothed.” 

He smirks, “that’s because you deserve all the attention, Kate.”

I deadpan him, “Lose your damn jeans, Tyler.”

He pulls at his buckle, button, and zipper then in one swift move he’s hovering over me fully naked. Every inch of him is trimmed in warmth and muscle and strength, he's breathtaking. But, as he stands, I notice his expression has changed, softened, like his mind has drifted.

Don’t you dare pull away from me, Tyler Owens.

Unconsciously, I let out a hum at the dimly lit sight of him, and I see a soft smile flicker on his face as he drops his eyes to my body.

“Need me to flex some, Sapulpa?”

My mouth betrays me as a smile wins, and I roll my eyes at him.

“You’re incredible, Ty.” I sigh, quietly, "breathtaking, honestly." Then my attention zeros in on the scar on his upper thigh, the remnants of El Reno, and just another proof of living.

I trace my finger tips along the raised skin and a muted rumble rattles through his chest as chills break his tanned skin and he splays his hand around my hip. 

“Kate...” He offers barely above a whisper. 

“What?” I whisper back, as if someone could hear us, “what’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong. Not a single thing is wrong. I just wanting to remember this moment. You're perfect.”

My heart flutters at his sentiment as he lightly trails his fingers over my body. Tyler’s heart is gold, he does everything he can to see the good, to create the good, to hold on to the good, no matter all the shit he’s seen and been through. This moment is no different for him.

“Never been more sure of something in my life. Are you sure?”

“Probably the only thing I’ve ever been sure about, Kate.” And in the next moment his mouth is on the apex of my thighs, stern and certain, but soft and languid, as he sends sparks through my body. He pulls down my panties as my hands intertwine with his hair and his mouth and tongue move across the most sensitive parts of me. I’m exposed, laid open and vulnerable, but with Tyler I feel safe, I feel protected, I feel cherished. And he does, he cherishes me, taking his time, focused on making me feel good, making us feel good. It’s one of those moments where nerves should win out, where your whole body is hyper aware of the situation and you become nervous, but not with him. Where he’s is fierce and steadfast in almost all other aspects of life, here he is patient and determined, ensuring there’s a place to land when I fall.

And fall I do.

My body shakes and trembles around him as my orgasm hits, and he hums his satisfaction. His stubble on my inner thigh, the tickle of his hair against my stomach, his left hand splayed across my chest, mindless my cupping my breast while his mouth and fingers finish their work...seeing him like this is mind numbingly beautiful, stunning, sexy. 

I want to see him like this forever.

He crawls up me, planting kisses from my core to between the valley of my chest to my collar bone and neck, and then finally back on my lips. Broad hands grip at my body caring and possessively. His breath is labored, sweat beginning to collect in a light layer across his broad back, across where his forehead touches mine as he bends to watch my hands explore him, brushing across every rigid muscle and crevice in his toned body. He’s so solid, so warm, so alive. I want to memorize him, every inch of him, like he’s something I might lose. 

He’s something I can’t lose. 

Something I won’t lose.

I cherish his demanding presence as I plant my lips to his shoulder, the heat from him radiating through me. 

“Hold on to me, Kate.” He growls as he scoops his arms behind my back and under my ass and picks me up. 

I wrap my embrace around his neck, kissing his temple, feeling his beating pulse point thunder under my lips. He carries me to the couch in the back, near where we process and run data. It’s old, it’s worn, it’s battered, but it’s a representation of everything we stand for, just as this entire barn is. It’s the space where our dreams come alive, and where a bed might be more comfortable, I don’t want this anywhere else. I want this with him, right here, right now.

Nowhere else, no one else. 

He sits and pulls me to straddle him, and I feel the length of him press against me. As if every facet of Ty isn’t already perfect enough, he is definitely well endowed, and I feel my body melt at our closeness. He pulls away from our kiss and rips the condom wrapper with his teeth. It’s sensual, it’s feral, it’s hot. I want to feel him inside me, but he deserves more. As he goes to pull the condom down his length I stop him, shaking my head. 

He looks up in confusion, panting, sweat coating his forehead, his green eyes sparkling with heat and desire in the low light of the space, but as he registers my expression, he relaxes.

“Your turn, Ty.” I smile at him and drop to the floor between his knees, rubbing my hand across the fresh scar on his left thigh from El Reno. It nearly matches mine, and it's just another piece of evidence that Tyler is one of the strongest and most resilient people I know. I take him in my mouth and watch as he throws his head back against the cushion in pleasure. There are many versions of Tyler that make me my heart skip, but the look on his face right now, it is sinful, etched in response to what he’s feeling physically. His strong chest heaves as he breathes life to his lungs, his mouth is parted, and his brow furrowed, framing his squinted lust-filled eyes. His corded hands grab at my hair as he restrains himself from thrusting into me. He lets me do the work, lets me pleasure him, and being the one that gets to is my favorite thing in the world. This isn't just sex, this appreciating one another, giving into one another, loving one another.

As I deepen, and his length hits the back of my throat, he lets out a hushed moan followed with a gritted “fuck Kate.” He’s holding back, restraining himself, allowing me to take charge. 

“Kate…” he nearly hums my name, “Kate if you don’t stop, we’re not going to be able finish what we've started.”

I smile around him. Making Tyler feel like this, and being the one getting to do it is enough to get me off. It’s so hot, he is stunning, sex with him is mind numbing. I pull my mouth from around him and stand to straddle him again. He rolls the condom on and in a smooth and languid movement, he is pushing into me, slowly, surely. I let out a low moan of satisfaction as he thrust in further, and he matches me with a growled “My God, Kate, you feel incredible.” 

At first, we’re slow, allowing space to process how well our bodies fit together, how it feels to finally be in this moment together. His hands splay across my back as he feels me, kissing at the top of my breast and along my collar bone. A chill radiates through me when he playfully nips at the sensitive bone. I feel him smile against my skin at my response. I never want to let this go, I want to feel this moment forever. 

“Ty… you feel so good.” I whisper against his forehead, before planting a soft kiss there. He begins to thrust into me harder, and I match his pace. We’re frantic, but certain and intentional, like we have all the time in the world.

I really hope we do. 

He drops his thumb to my clit as he picks up pace.

“Come for me again, Kate.” He pants into my ear and fuck me does that do something to my insides, to my heart, to my soul. Dirty talk from Tyler Owens could be the pinnacle of my existence. 

His rhythm is strong and fluid, full of intention and focus on giving my body what it needs. “Don’t stop, Ty.” and as I whisper the words I topple, my body convulses around him as it sensitizes to his touch. His moan reverberates through the room like he owns it, and as I come down, he follows, thrusting into me deliberately, with lust and love all in one. 

I throw my arms around his shoulders and nuzzle my nose into his neck. I feel his pulse racing against my skin, his chest heaving, his skin slick. His arms come up around me and squeeze me in a warm and determined hug, like he doesn’t want to let go of me either. We stay like this for a long time, and I feel my body try to give into sleep.

I think this would be the deepest sleep of my life if he’d just let me sit here. 

I know it would. It feels too good to not. 

His deep and relaxed voice finally breaks the silence. “You okay?”

“Never been better, Ty.” He squeezes me at my response. 

“You got all quiet on me.” He plants a soft kiss on my head.

“Just enjoying you.” 

I feel him smile at my response, as he rasps. “Sure you weren’t sleeping?”

I giggle softly, registering the quiet space around us as the night settles like a humid blanket outside. The sounds of summer filter in as frogs lazily croak and crickets play their tunes. The couch below us is soft and worn. I turn to see our spare instruments scattered haphazardly across the floor, our clothes strewn between here and the table. It’s chaos, it’s real, it’s me and Tyler. 

And just as I begin to doze off against his bare chest and strong embrace, his scent surrounding me, I hear him whisper, “I love you, Kate Carter.”

I love you too, Tyler Owens, so fucking much.

But I don't say it. 

Chapter Text

Day of - 8:00 AM 

Tyler:

“What the fuck?!”

I wake to Boone’s projected question filling the quiet space around me…around us. I look down to see Kate fast asleep, her blonde hair feathered across my bicep. We’re half clothed, an old quilt covering most of us. I silently laugh, knowing Boone hasn’t spotted us yet.

“What happened to our equipment?!” Lilly chimes in a panicked and angered tone. “Also, where the hell are Tyler and Kate? We have the symposium today.”

Shit. 

I round the corner and lean on a post until Boone spots me. I’m shirtless and my jeans are still undone at the waist. I look exactly like someone who spent the night having sex. 

Because I did.

And it was perfect.

And I can’t wait to do it again and again and again with her. 

I want all the things with her, the sex, the house, the love, the jokes, the laughs, the tears, the wedding, the cars, the babies. Every life adventure I have from here on out will be alongside Kate. 

There’s not a doubt in my mind.

“T, I’m guessing you being half naked has something to do with this mess?”

I grin at him sheepishly, and nod. 

“Care to explain?” Javi chimes in. 

I push off the post and walk towards them. 

“Kate and I worked some things out. I’ll clean it up.” I hold my gaze with Javi, trying to get a read on how he’ll respond to my insinuation. He doesn’t. Paint me impressed. 

I hear the whispered chants and hollers from my team, but then they’re drowned out by Kate. “Ty?” She rasps my name, and I think I could fucking melt. She stands where I just stood before, clad in my t-shirt. Her face groggy and her hair mussed. Her lips swollen from kisses and sleep. 

I’m gone for you, Kate, you have no idea.

In my daydreaming and gawking I don’t hear Kate’s mom walk in, but I do hear “I know you didn’t bring my daughter home in the middle of the night after being gone for three days and make a mess of my barn, using it as the place for you two to get frisky with each other.”

I think all the blood drains from my face, and I'm almost certain I'm going to pass out. I feel like a teenager getting caught for the first time. 

“Care to explain yourself?” She continues, propping her hand on my left shoulder, squeezing me where she knows it hurts. I try not to wince. She's stern, but I’m almost certain I see amusement in her stare. 

“I uh…” I stammer, “I’ll get this cleaned up. I’m sorry.. I..if it’s any consolation at all, I really do lov…”

Cathy smiles up and me and pats me on the arm just hard enough to make me wince again and then leans in to where only I can hear, “you better take care of her young man.”

I nod my silent promise to her. She doesn't realize how serious I take the task of taking care of Kate. 

“Mom, we gotta get busy. We have to be on the road by 10. I promise we’ll clean up.”

“Put some clothes on, Kate. I’ll start breakfast,” her mom chimes back as rolls her eyes at me and walks out.

Kate’s face flushes and I tuck my chin in embarrassment, before I walk over, throw my arm around her and shrug, “I think that went well.”

She playfully slaps me across the chest. “You’re an idiot.”

She side eyes me as she sits down and pulls up the presentations for the day. Meanwhile, me and crew pick up the strewn equipment with Boone mumbling on and on about how he doesn’t even want to know what happened on this table. I can’t help but grin. This feels good. This feels happy. This feels whole. 

As Kate wraps up piecing together her presentation, we all sit down and go over the logistics of the day while we eat breakfast. 

Dex chimes in, “oh, they just upgraded today to a 5/5 high risk. The bulletin says emphasis on extremely large hail and violent long track tornadoes EF2+. Rapidly changing weather conditions are expected beginning as early as 2 PM in the Four State region, with multiple supercells developing ahead of the dryline. All ingredients for severe rotating storms are maxed out, with minimal cap to inhibit development. Wide coverage of supercell storms is expected. Any storms that develop will become severe fast. It is recommended to have multiple ways to receive weather warnings and change travel plans if possible. A PDS tornado watch has been issued for the area.”

“It’d be more fun if we were chasing it.” Kate smarts, staring up at me over her screen. 

'Sorry', I mouth the word to her from across the table and her face slackens. 

—-

10 AM

Kate:

I drop my bag and laptop in Javi’s seat as I brush off my suit jacket. In the same moment, I feel Tyler’s presence behind me, leaning against the door. I turn, to see his gaze taking over my body. “Looking good Kate. So fancy.” 

I huff, “Thanks, Ty. I have this super important symposium thing that this egotistical and super protective tornado cowboy and my research sponsor think I should go to.” I shrug letting the sarcasm roll off me. 

I face him, “Sorry, just kind of nervous. And really want to be out in the field.”

“Looks like we’ll both be right in the thick of it if it pans out how they say. Maybe after the symposium and the picnic at my aunts we can meet up and catch us one?”

I nod at him as I feel a soft smile on my lips. 

He steps into me, sitting my other bag on the floorboard for me, “going to follow y’all out and just jump on 44 from Tulsa. Got a couple of stops to make and a few parts to pick up for the truck. Plan to get to the farm sometime this afternoon.” 

I nod and hesitate briefly before I throw my arms around him in a hug, “thank you for last night,” I whisper to him, “I know I fell asleep, and we didn’t get to talk about it, but it was incredible. You’re incredible. And thank you for yesterday, for opening up to me, for trusting in me.” I feel him squeeze me, “but if you think I’m still not mad at you about this publicity stunt you have me in today, think again. I can’t believe I’m missing a high-risk day for this.” 

He laughs into the crook of my neck. “I really am sorry, Kate. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

I squeeze him back, “You better, and you better not do anything stupid, like chase by yourself. Today is too dangerous.”

He pulls away, winks, and crosses his heart as he had days before. “Scout's honor, remember?”

I roll my eyes, knowing if given half a chance he’ll be right in the middle of one. That’s Tyler.

He pats the roof of the truck with a grin, “We better get moving.”

I smile back at him as Javi hops into the driver's side. “Ready Kate?”

I grab my seat belt, “Yep.” 

On the drive into the city, Javi and I discuss our topics of discussion and what we want to highlight regarding the data. I volley back and forth between checking the radar, where storms are already forming to our west, looking at my notes for the presentation, and checking the mirror to see Ty inline behind us. His green eyes are shielded by his sunglasses and shaded by his ball cap. He taps mindlessly on his steering wheel to whatever country music is playing, his hand lazily draped over the top of it. His near permanent soft smile, the one I've grown to love, etched on his face. It’s a moment I feel like I’m stealing, like no one is supposed to see this instance of Tyler, but I’m the lucky one who gets to. 

Chapter Text

The afternoon sunlight reflects in my eyes, warming my face as I head north toward my aunt's farm. Off in the distance, past the cornfields to my west, I can see a storm forming -- the anticipation ignites the adrenaline within me. Severe weather season is in full force, but it is also Memorial Day weekend, and my sister, Ellie, is in town with her husband and their two kids, so I made it a point to sneak away from the team and tonight's chase, to go see them before they fly back to Montana in the morning. I haven't seen Avery and Myles since the Christmas before last, so this trip is a must -- but I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little upset about missing tonight's setup. A level 5 is as high as it gets, but if I play my cards right and the storms cooperate, maybe I can get a little family time in and still catch up with the team for a late-night chase, since it's moving this way anyway.

As I pull in the driveway of the little white farmhouse, surrounded by worn fencing, and enveloped in memories, I can't help of think of Cathy's place. Immediately I'm pulled back to Sapulpa, the barn, the team, and Kate -- making mental note to call her in a bit to see how her symposium went. My Aunt Jo lives on the west side of Joplin. Her and Uncle Bill are who got me into storm chasing and my love of weather. Meanwhile, my parents, my dad especially, since he was an ex bull rider, was the driving force behind rodeo and bull riding. We had a ranch down in Arkansas. We lost my mom and dad when I was eight and lost Bill while I was in college -- Bill due to cancer, mom and dad in a car wreck due to dad's drinking. So here I am, a cowboy turned scientist and weather researcher, with YouTube celebrity as part of the title and a ranch I run in the off season. Personally, I hate the YouTube side of things -- it's all showy, but it's also what got the Wranglers off the ground, so I continue to do it, for the team, for the people, for the outreach. 

I'm startled out of my thoughts to loud thumps against my driver door. I roll down the window and peer out to two dark headed children with big green eyes yelling "Uncle Ty!".

I grin, and my heart flutters seeing the excitement exude from these two tiny humans. They are the perfect mix of my sister, Ellie, and her husband, Jake. I open my door, wrapping them both in bear hugs and then putting my hat onto Myles' head and picking him up on to my shoulders, then slinging Avery onto my right hip, avoiding the lingering pain from El Reno on my left. They giggle as I shut my door and walk them back towards the house.

"Uncle Ty, can we play cowboys?" Myles squeals, at the same time his sister is telling me about their new golden retriever puppy, who is apparently in the house.

"Sure buddy, I can't wait to meet the pup--" but I'm cut off from my conversation as my Aunt's voice rings out.

"Myles, Avery, stop climbing all over Tyler!"

"They're fine Jo" I smile back at her as she meets me at the bottom of the steps. She finds a way to hug me between the five-year-old on my shoulders and the four-year-old who is now sliding down my leg to intercept the puppy that just flopped out the screen door in front of my sister and her husband. A golden ball of fluff, all feet and ears and no coordination whatsoever, but extremely cute, nonetheless -- the puppy, not her husband. He's more like a dark grizzly with an expressionless face. Either way, Ellie swears he's a saint, so as long as he treats her good then I can tolerate him.

"Hey Jo", I hum to my aunt as I wrap her in a hug. She's older, frailer, but still steady. She squeezes me tight and the pulls away to watch the kids run to the propane tank, Myles already trying to climb on top and use it as a pretend horse. 

She smirks, "I swear those two act just like the both of you".

My sister approaches and chimes in "no, if they acted like Tyler did at that age, I don't think I could survive it -- not sure how you, Bill and mom did it."

I sarcastically return an annunciated 'Ha Ha' before throwing my arm around her shoulder and shaking Jake's hand with the other. "Missed you too, sis".

She's right though, Jo and Bill were saints. Raising us -- me, and giving me opportunity at a good future minus all the shit my dad caused. My sister always had the level head, but I was angry for a long time and did anything I could to get in trouble. Bull riding became my out, but then I got my head and chest stomped on and nearly died due to a skull fracture and a punctured lung, so logically putting myself in front of tornadoes seemed so much safer after that. So, at age 20 I enrolled in school and went on to get my doctorate in atmospheric sciences. 

The conversation continues on the front lawn as hot humid air settles on our skin and the afternoon glow continues to illuminate everything -- the porch, the kids playing on the tank, the fencing, the field grass, Jo's flower garden, my sister's golden hair, the cellar, even my truck, as dented and dinged as it is, seemed to glow. With the storms growing in the distance to our southwest, it is absolutely beautiful and reminds me again to call Kate. I step away from the conversation, check the weather, making another mental note at the severity and how quickly they're approaching, then dial her number. Four rings and then it goes to voicemail. I try again, and still no answer. She must still be finishing up her symposium, so I leave her a quick voicemail:

"Hey Sapulpa, I know you’re busy but wanted to let you know, looks like Dex was right, we’ve got a pretty rough storm system moving in—sure would be a fun one to chase with ya, but may not make it back until tomorrow. Hope everything went well, call me when you can."

I check the sky once more -- and for the first time since standing here, I get uneasy. Maybe it's intuition, maybe I'm a little gun shy after El Reno, but something just feels off. Jo interrupts my thoughts, coming to stand beside me,

"She looks pretty angry doesn't she?", nodding towards the approaching storm. I nod in silent agreement, honing in on the battle the black clouds are creating with the waning sun. 

"That cellar can fit 6 people, right?" I halfheartedly chuckle and grin at her, trying to keep it light.

She laughs back, "the littles can sit in laps, and you'd probably go off chasing it instead anyway -- dinner's almost ready. Want to help me get the table set while those two wrangle their offspring?" 

I smile, and nod back at her, watching the kids full on sprint to the barn, further and further away from their parents. She's right, I'm itching to chase tonight, but there are a few things that are more important. I watch as Myles climbs up into the bed of Uncle Bill's old red dodge -- it was his old chase truck, and the sole inspiration behind mine. Watching the kids escape their parents, I decide I might should help my sister instead of going inside. I stroll to the barn, and within the moments it took me to get here, they have turned it into a game of tag, and apparently, I'm it.  I chase after Avery, pretending I can't catch up to her, and she squeals in laughter as I "accidentally" miss a tag. I let the banter go on for a few minutes until I feel the ache creeping up into my left leg and I limp to a stop.

"You okay, old man?" my sister prods.

"You try getting your leg trapped under a trolley and let me know how you feel" I laugh back.

"Speaking of, where's Kate? Figured you'd have drug the whole team up here for the picnic"

"She had a symposium in Tulsa. The whole weather world is fascinated with her now, so she has all these speaking events—hell, she’s more famous than me." I pause at the half truth, knowing her and the team being at that symposium is my fault "Her and the Wranglers are going chasing afterwards, but I, being the best brother in the whole world, decided I would rather come see my sister." I grin and bat my eyelashes at her mocking my innocence. 

She huffs "you came for Jo's pie."

"I mean, she does have good pie" I grin again, but am interrupted by a vibration from my phone -- must be Kate, but as I go to pull it out, the emergency alert sound goes off on my device, as well as my sister's and Jake's.

I check the screen: Tornado warning for your area -- seek shelter immediately.

I click the notification to read more, skimming it quickly:

Tornado warning...

Newton County...

Joplin, MO  ...

Seek shelter immediately...

Tornado confirmed...

10 miles west of Joplin...

Shit.

I walk around the barn to look west, the golden warm sky now filled by a very angry storm. My sister stands behind me. "Well, what do you think Tornado Wrangler? Think it's a false alarm?"

In the moment I realize those four are relying on me, and maybe Jo, to make a decision here. I side eye her. "I don't think this one is a false alarm, Ells, might want to get the rugrats to the cellar."

She looks at me lightheartedly, playfully nudging my shoulder, "you serious, Tornado Cowboy?"

I turn to her, hoping she can read the serious expression in my face, and nod.

She straightens "Okay -- will do. You gonna get Jo?"

I nod again, and we disburse. Back in the house I find Jo with the TV turned to the local news, it flickering as it fights the strain the storm is delivering to the power lines. She turns to me as I step into the living room, "They said it's already on the ground."

"Yeah, I heard, Jo I don't think we have time to sit here and watch what it's gonna do. Lets get to the cellar -- got the weather radio?"

"It's already down there."

I follow her out the screen door and we are met with strong wind and the first drops of rain. Jo and I both saw that radar, and know it's coming right for us, but we don't want to freak the kids out, so we keep it to ourselves staying calm as we open the cellar door and climb down the steps -- my leg aching with every step.  I tickle Avery, getting a giggle out of her, and making sure her and Myles are still in good spirits, but I sneak a glance at the panic in my sister's eyes as small debris begins to crash above us.  Avery looks up to me, and then I see a panicked thought register in her little mind. "Mavwick!" She screeches as she scrambles to the steps. I grab her and sit her on the bench beside me.

"No ma'am, I'll go get him. Where is he?" Somewhere in the midst of tag and conversation, I lost track of the golden furball.

"I think he's in the dining room" Jo half whispers. "Tyler--don't --"

I slide her a silent glare. "I'm fine, Jo, I do this for a living. Got plenty of time to get the dog." I climb back up the steps, wincing at the final one as I push the door open. Wind rips metal door from my grasp, scraping my hand. Damnit. I watch as small debris, leaves, shingles, and Myles’ mud pie bucket fly past me. I shield my face and walk towards the house. The screen door flying back as I enter. Inside, the noises are muffled but things hitting the metal roof echo throughout the space. I check the dining room, and sure enough there sits Mavrick with a newly chewed sock he’d apparently drug out of one of the shoes by the door — from the size of it and how it’s more brown that white, I’m certain the kids had a creek day before I arrived. “Hey buddy” I scoop the pup up, and he immediately goes for licks and nips, completely unaware of the danger happening outside. As I walk back towards the front door, I hear glass, windows shatter upstairs. I pause to take in the old family pictures of us in the front hall, a subtle twinge of sadness and nostalgia hit me as I come face to face with what’s threating to take away all of those memories. The door is rattling as I pull it open, and when it pulls back to reveal the world outside, I’m frozen with the kind of fear I felt in El Reno. A wall of swirling black winds eats up the entire sky, I can’t even tell if it is daylight anymore, and the small debris has turned into large chunks of unknown, roofs, signs… this thing is destructive, and it's on a beeline for Jo’s farm.

“Tyler!” I hear my name in a distant scream, snapping me out of what I was witnessing. I look right to see Jo at the top of the cellar steps, wind and rain whipping at her, signaling me to hurry. I step off the porch and shield Mavrick from the debris, keeping my head turned from the wind as I try to run across the yard. I hand the dog off to Jo and she turns back into the cellar. As I grab the rail to descend behind her, I’m blind sided by debris, knocking me to my knees, causing me to lose grip on the rail and sending pain straight to my left thigh. Jo turns to grab me, but I’m hit again, and this time I’m carried away from the cellar. Pain radiates through my head as my vision blacks. I feel sharp objects eating away at my skin, puncturing, splintering me, as I roll with whatever object that hit me. I think I hear Jo scream my name as I’m carried away, but I can’t tell over the roar, I can’t tell anything. Is she okay, are they okay? They have to be okay.

I’m trapped, my head is hit again, sending paint radiating through my skull. I taste blood, I smell it, I feel it seeping from my body -- sticky warmth against the cold, harsh rain.

The roar continues as the world around me comes apart at the seams, as it rips my body apart.

Kate…Kate I’m sorry.

My ears pop, pain echos through every inch of me as I’m moved again, rolling with the mangled debris, before my back is slammed into something solid.

The screeching, the howling, the splinters eating at my flesh…it’s too much.

It hurts, it fucking hurts.

The roar, the wind, the pain… my senses begin to go, I try to scream but I can’t catch air, mud and debris fill my nose and lungs, and consciousness falters as my chest screams for oxygen.

It hurts Kate, I’m sorry.

With the weight of the debris crushing my chest, my breath hitches, shortening with every passing second…flashbacks flood my mind, my childhood, the bull stepping on me, memories of chasing with the team, El Reno, Kate…

A cold chill fills my body, as my injuries turn me numb.

Kate…

The roar fades, replaced with the faint sounds of spewing gas, lingering rain, and creaking metal.

Kate…

I feel the faint repeating vibration of my phone in my pocket. I can't reach it.

Kate...

My panic dissipates, as the pain seeps in deep, allowing death to involuntarily win.

I promised Javi I would…

And then I feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing. Weightless peace invades.

It's over. 

I'm sorry, Kate...

Chapter Text

Day of - Tulsa - Sunday Late Afternoon:

The room begins to fill with chatter as we wrap up our questions during the open session. To my right is Javi, and to my left are the Wranglers, sans Tyler. Looking down the line of our team, I feel the twinge of missing him. This is his thing, he may not love the showiness of it, truly, but he thrives on conversation and educating people, and as much as I hate to admit it, I’ve enjoyed this symposium. Tyler would’ve too. 

I’m shaken from my thoughts as a final f ollow up question is directed towards me. “Miss Carter, you said Tyler was in Joplin with family, we just got word there’s a confirmed tornado that’s moving through Joplin. Do you know if he’s chasing? Will there be footage?”

I side eye Javi, then Boone, trying to judge if they know anything more. But how would they? We’ve been up here on stage for the past hour. “Um, not sure, he does have his truck, but I think he’s pretty occupied with his niece and nephew.” I finish my statement lightheartedly with a smile, recalling his excitement about seeing them, but I feel the anxiety bubbling in my chest. Something feels off.

Ty’s a professional, he’s fine, Kate.

As the people begin to stand and exit the room we’re greeted on the side stage by a couple of meteorologists that work at NWS Tulsa. 

“Kate, Javi” the old man, named Tom, shakes our hands. “Great job up there. But we’re going to have to let y’all go. Your research sponsors requested you boots on the ground in Joplin ASAP.” 

“Why?” Boone asks nonchalantly. 

Tom glares back at him, at us, somberly. “I guess y’all wouldn’t have heard yet. It’s a war zone. A mass casualty. They’re calling it total destruction, went right through the heart of town, apparently the hospital was even destroyed. An emergency declaration for anyone with EMS training, search and rescue resources, or medical personnel with reliable vehicles within a drivable radius has been requested. That includes y’all.” 

I feel it as I stare back at him, that unmistakable ache of something is terribly wrong. I can’t say that here though, not in front of them, not in front of all these people. If anyone hears a rumor about the Tornado Wrangler himself being hurt, or missing…or worse, the media will have a hay day, even if it’s not true. Because it’s not true, Tyler is way too smart to get caught in such situations. 

Javi chimes in, after Dex does a quick brief on the reports and while Tom continues to fill us in on the situation, “alright team, let’s go. Kate you’re with me. Boone, Dex, follow behind. Lilly, can we get the drone out ahead of us for scouting?”

Lilly nods, and we all but run to the parking lot. Once away from the crowd, I stop Boone. “Where’s his Aunt’s place?”

Boone looks back at me, a horrified expression blanketing his usual happiness. “If the path indicators are accurate, then it went right through her farm.” He answers, just above a whisper. He’s staring off, through me almost, likely picturing the worst. 

“Boone.” I push to snap him out of it. “Where?”

He shakes his head, as to clear it, “uh, 26th and Country Club. On the west side. She has a cellar, so they should be in there. Depending on the debris we may have to dig them out.”

“How many people?”

“Counting T, six. Jo, his sister Ellie, her husband Jake, and their kids Avery and Myles”.

I nod, “alright, I’m on comms, Lilly if you see anything let me know. We’re headed straight there. Dani, can we get a hit on Tyler’s truck?”

“Sure thing.”

After El Reno, we added trackers in all the chase vehicles, so we could keep an eye on one another. This right here is the very reason why.

I settle into the seat beside Javi, trying everything in my power to stay calm. 

It’s Tyler, he’s fine. 

Clicking my seat belt I finally pull out my phone. 

2 missed calls - Tyler Owens (53 minutes ago)

1 voicemail - Tyler Owens (50 minutes ago)

My heart settles a bit, as I open the voicemail, playing it on speaker:

"Hey Sapulpa, I know you’re busy but wanted to let you know, looks like Dex was right, we’ve got a pretty rough storm system moving in—sure would be a fun one to chase with ya, but may not make it back until tomorrow. Hope everything went well, call me when you can."

I try to call him back, but after three attempts all I get is voicemail.

“Hey Ty, just got out of the panel. We’re being called in for an all hands on deck situation in Joplin, they briefed us on preliminary reports, call me when you can. Hope everything’s okay.”

Javi looks over at me as he white knuckles the steering wheel, turning east onto I-44. He’s scared. I’m scared. Something is wrong.

"Something's wrong," I whisper, repeating my thoughts out loud. 

“Nah Kate, they’re probably trapped in the cellar with no service, or they’re out but the lines are down. Either way, it’s Owens, he’s fine. Plus his aunt is Jo Harding. You put two weather geniuses like that together and you’re almost guaranteed safety.”

I deadpan him. 

“What?”

“Did you just say Tyler’s aunt is Jo Harding, like the Jo Harding?” I question, turning to him, completely baffled by this bit of information. 

Javi laughs, “yeah, did he not tell you? Her and Bill, his aunt and uncle, that’s who raised him.”

I flop back into my seat, crossing my arms and shaking my head. Of course, Tyler would be descended from the founders of modern weather research. 

My processing of that information is cut short when Dani’s voice crackles over the radio. “Got a hit on Tyler’s truck, sensor is picking it up…” she pauses.

“Picking it up where?” I radio back.

“Over a half mile east of Jo’s driveway. In a field..” She falters.

Javi looks over at me, and I feel a new fear course through me, “how accurate is the sensor?” But I know the answer, they’re precise, down to a foot or two.

“Down to the foot, Kate.” Dex radios back. “He could be helping clean up, or if it was thrown it’s highly doubtful he was in it.”

“Yeah man, T’s smart, he knows what to do.” Boone chimes with more encouragement.

I feel the fear rising in my chest, my heart rate quickening, but I hold on to their words. There’s no way Tyler didn’t know it was coming. I check my phone again, hoping for the confirmation that he’s okay, that they’re okay. Nothing. The silence wanes on, as time passes. 

I look to Javi, “how much longer?”. 

“We’re 30 minutes out.”

"Hey Lilly, can you get the drone in the air?” 

“Yep, pulling off now. We’ll catch up.”

Javi’s phone rings through the speakers and I startle. I check the caller ID hoping it’s Tyler. But it’s just our research sponsor administration. Great. He side eyes me, reluctantly hitting the answer button on the steering wheel.

“Hello.”

“Hey Javi, checking your arrival time, worst it’s towards Rangeline so we’ll need you over there. There’s triage setup at Walmart. Check in there and get to work.”

“Once we find Tyler.”

“What do you mean? He’s a grown man he can take care of himself. They need all the help they can get.”

“You think we’ll be at our best not knowing if our golden boy is okay? We’re finding him first, then we’ll help.”

“I’ll find Tyler, you all head in to help.”

“Respectfully, no” Javi snaps back.

“Excuse me?”

Well shit.

“You want us to be search and rescue? We’re going to be that for Tyler and his family. Then, and only then, we can be that for everyone else. Got it? Goodbye.”

He hangs up and tenses as we roll on. It’s not often Javi looks scared, but in this moment, he’s terrified. And I’m baffled, struck by the fact that he just told off our lead sponsor. I’m not mad though; we’ll worry about damage control later. Getting to Tyler is all that matters. 

Topping the hill on the interstate, my jaw drops, as subtle signs of damage give way to utter destruction. To our left a semi lays crumbled, looking like it’s been dropped there. In our lane traffic is at a crawl, to our right remnants of buildings litter the shoulder. We finally reach our exit to turn north, flashing our credentials to emergency personnel. Most know us, so getting around make shift road closures isn’t hard. Passing the welcome to Joplin sign, the irony isn’t lost on me that all of the letters of Joplin are missing. 

We turn, navigating the debris filled streets, the smell of wet wood, dirt, smoke, and gas filtering into the cab of the truck. Joplin is devastated, leveled, unrecognizable. I grab for the radio, “talk to me, Boone.”

“We should be coming up on it. Doubt we can turn on to Country Club, we’ll have to walk it.”

Lilly chimes in “I’ve got the drone hovering the farm.” She pauses, clearing the emotion lodged in her throat, “the house is gone, slabbed. I can’t see Tyler’s truck but there is so much debris. Looks like where the cellar is buried still. We’ll have to dig them out. Careful out there, watch for live wires, nails, sharp objects, and collapsing structures.”

My pace quickens at her words.

He’s okay, he’s fine, he’s Tyler Owens, the Tornado Wrangler. 

Javi stops when the road becomes impassable. Light rain still falling, but the late evening sun peaks through, casting golden light to this war zone. When I step out I’m hit with the nauseating smell of the disaster that spanned before us. A cool, calming breeze nips at my skin, but humidity still wins out. We saunter to the front of our motorcade and just stare. A top this hill you can the damage for miles, not a tree, a car, a building or a home untouched. It's absolutely sickening. 

Turning to Boone, I see him a few shades paler, staring off to our northwest. I follow his gaze, focusing on a slab of concrete and crumbled metal and barns that litter the land around it. Eerie silence comes from that direction, no emergency personnel on site, no movement, just quiet, while the world behind us shrieks with sirens, and wails, and screams. It’s like Jo’s farm had been forgotten.

I don’t think, I just begin walking, sprinting where I can, to get to that cellar. Javi calls behind me, but I barely register, “Kate, Kate be careful.”

I don’t miss the mangled pile of Tyler’s truck in the field to the east of the slabbed house, but I ignore it. If he was here, then that means he’s in this cellar safe. I let the optimism take over, though that gut feeling tugs harder and harder. Boone knocks on the debris lying strewn across the door. “Hey T, Jo, we’re here. Gonna dig you out, hold tight.” He yells. Muffled voices from inside filter out, but we can’t make out what they say.

The minutes feel like hours as we manhandle wood and metal to clear the door and a place for them to stand. We’re soaked from the constant drizzle, but sweating from the returning heat. Finally, when the door comes into view, we realize it’s missing.

What the fuck?

We all steal a glance at one another, and then Boone peers down the steps, which are littered with small debris and slicked in mud. “T, Jo?” He questions. 

“Boone?” I hear a small, quiet voice quiver. 

“Yeah, Jo, we’re here. Everyone okay?”

One by one they climb out. I’m face to face with a weather protege, and a young woman who might as well be Ty’s twin, then a dark headed man, and two dark headed kids with squinted green eyes that gleam just like Tyler’s, the little girl holding a muddy golden retriever puppy. Jo’s head is cut, muddied, bleeding down her cheek. His sister looks mortified. I look past them, registering Boone and Dex peering back into the cellar, turning back slowly at the realization that no one else is crawling out of the shelter, no one else is in the shelter.

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I stare through the hall window of his room as they compress on his chest and shock his body. Kate’s cries as Javi dragged her out of this place play over and over in my mind. The nurses and doctors work in tandem as they do everything they can to bring him back, not caring that I’m standing here watching it all unfold. My best friend is dying, and unlike all our close calls before, there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

Tyler’s body jolts with the defibrillator’s surge, then slumps lifeless again. The flatline unwavering as it scrolls across the screen. 

“Charging—clear!”

The sound punches through the glass like a bullet, and I flinch every time they say it. My fists are clenched so tight my nails dig into my palms. I should move. I should do something. But there’s nothing I can do so my feet stay cemented to this damn linoleum floor, forced to watch the smartest, strongest, most reckless son of a bitch I’ve ever known slip away right in front of me.

His chest rises and falls beneath the doctors’ hands, but it’s artificial. Mechanical. It isn’t him breathing. It’s just them fighting to keep him here.

Jesus, Tyler.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not like this.

I close my eyes and press my forehead against the glass and pray for memories to overtake the chaos happening in that room.

Fort Smith, Summer 2011

Tyler straps in on the back of a bull, coating his gloved hand in rosin. I hold the camera towards his shoot, running video for the rodeo as a whole, but also working for him on his content. The torn ligament in his shoulder and bruised ribs from a hard fall the week before in Stillwater mean nothing, and he still climbs on that bull like he had something to prove.

“I’m fine,” he tells me, cocky grin and all, “Don’t miss the shot this time, Boone. You missed my dismount last week.”

I didn’t miss it. I just deleted it because I didn’t want him seeing the fall that almost broke his damn neck. He thinks it looked bad ass, I know it looked like a baby deer falling on ice.

Not pretty. 

That’s Tyler though. Gravity doesn’t apply to him. Pain doesn’t either. He’s just all heart and fire and wild instinct—no brakes, no quit. I’d follow him anywhere, and I have. Into ditches, down backroads, right into the hearts of tornadoes, cameras rolling while he played chicken with God Himself.

Back then, I filmed because it made me feel like I was part of it. Like I could keep up with him. We made a good team, he knew my demons and I knew his, and we knew how to keep each other out of trouble…for the most part. Tyler had my back and did everything he could to give life to my dreams. Our friendship runs deep and I can’t think of a single moment that counts that doesn’t have him in it.

Now I’m just watching through a window, not able to save him from the very thing we’ve been chasing for years.

I press my palm flat against the glass, the cold grounding me. Inside, they call out vitals I can’t understand. Numbers. Codes. Someone yells, “Come on, Tyler, stay with us!” and I nearly collapse.

I know his body’s broken. They said something about internal bleeding, brain injury, collapsed lung—but I tuned it out. All I saw was the blood caked on his face, the bruises around his temple, the unnatural angle of his leg when we pulled him from the debris. He was so still, so lifeless. Tyler’s never still.

The worst part is the silence. No wittiness from T, no chatter from the team. We’re all just waiting for the inevitable. Kate’s gone quiet now too, but her screams when he coded for the fourth time moments ago still rings in my ears, tearing through my head like shrapnel, like the debris did his body. I can’t get the image out of my mind: her face crumpled in grief, begging him to stay. Screaming his name like it could bring him back as Javi pulled her down the hall past me.

I’ve never heard someone break like that, not even Tyler when he lost Bill, or when he lost the fight with the bottle time and time again. 

Because this—this is Tyler.

Her Tyler. My best friend. Our teammate.

And we are losing him.

Wichita, Summer 2012

The air is so thick with heat and dust it feels like I’m breathing through sandpaper. Tyler’s up next—bull number twenty-seven, and because the universe has a sick sense of humor, the damn thing’s named Tornado.

He struts out of the chute like he owns the arena, one gloved hand tipping his hat toward the crowd like some kind of rodeo rockstar. 

He is a rodeo rockstar, sitting at the top of the rankings and a national title waiting for him.

And I know that grin. That smug, reckless, this-will-make-a-hell-of-a-story grin. It’s the one that makes my stomach twist, because it means he’s not just trying to win, he’s trying to prove something.

The gate flies open and hell erupts beneath him.

Tornado bucks like he’s trying to tear the world in half. Tyler’s holding on—one hand in the rope, the other flying wild—but I see it. The second his weight shifts wrong, the instant he loses center. His boots slide just enough. One more jerk and he’s airborne.

He hits the dirt hard, his head bouncing and neck snapping at an angle that makes my knees go weak.

And he doesn’t move.

The world slows down. All the noise of the crowd—the music, the announcer, the drunk guy behind me yelling “get up!”—it all fades. All I hear is my heartbeat. My boots hit the rail and I’m over it in seconds, sprinting before the dust even settles.

“Tyler!” I shout, lungs burning, legs heavy.

I don’t even realize I’ve jumped the bullfighters, but I don’t care. I’m already picturing the worst. Neck. Spine. Skull.

But then…he moves.

Slow and shaky, he gets to his knees. The crowd lets out this collective sigh, and I could cry with relief. He pushes to his feet and throws up one arm in a lazy bow like he meant to fall that way. Then he limps off, swagger in every painful step, blood running down from his temple and dirt crusted into his grin.

“Jesus Christ, T,” I mutter, catching up to him behind the arena. “You okay?”

“Nothing I can’t walk off,” he mumbles, voice slurred just enough that I know it’s a lie.

He stumbles behind the trailer and hurls whatever’s in his stomach. I hover, unsure whether to hold him up or cuss him out. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and grins at me like he didn’t just nearly die.

Ten minutes later, he passes out cold in the passenger seat of the truck. That’s when I decide he needs a medic. That medic visit turned into a trip to the hospital and come to find out he had a severe concussion.

But he made it through.

He always makes it through.

That’s the problem. He always makes it through. So I forgot this day could ever come.

And now, I’m watching it happen.

One of the nurses moves aside just enough for me to see his face. Pale. Empty. Tubes everywhere. It doesn’t even look like him. This isn’t the guy who drives into tornadoes. This isn’t the guy who stood on the roof of his truck in a lightning storm for “dramatic effect”. This isn’t the guy who still jumps on the back of bulls in the off season for charity.

This is… nothing. And I can’t do shit about it.

I pound the glass once. Hard, dull pain radiating through my fist. No one looks. Maybe they’re used to grief out here, maybe my behavior is nothing new to them.

“T,” I whisper. “Come on, man. You’re not done. You don’t get to leave us like this.”

I look back down the hallway. Javi’s back inside, pacing, soaked through from the storm outside. Kate’s probably somewhere in the waiting room. Maybe praying. Maybe losing her mind.

Maybe both.

The first time I met him, we were just kids. He was in junior rodeo and I was trying to learn everything I could about videography. He called me “Hollywood” because of how serious I took filming and asked if I was scared of mud. I told him to go to hell.

He laughed.

We’ve been inseparable ever since.

They shock him again. I feel the jolt in my own chest.

I don’t even realize I’ve started crying until I taste salt.

Kansas City, Fall 2013

Tyler draws the top ranked bull, one unridden in almost two seasons. The chute flies open and the bull turns into his hand, allowing T to keep his balance. I keep the camera trained on his ride, shooting from ground level for dramatic effect. Eight seconds feels like eternity in this sport. When the buzzard finally sounds the crowd erupts as he defeats the top ranked bull in the world. 

“Hell yeah, T!” I holler, though I know he can’t hear me over the roar of the crowd. He lands on his feet, pumping his fist in victory, then trips as he falls off balance. The bull side steps the fighters and lands a back hoof on Tyler’s helmet. The gasps are audible. Then in the next moment the bull scores him in the chest, tossing him like a rag doll. His body falls limp, and unlike all the times before, he doesn’t get up. 

Please, God, just give him back. Let him open his eyes and say something smartass and stupid. Let him hold her hand. Let him yell at me for not filming any of this. I don’t care. Just give him back to us, to me, to her.

Then suddenly…one of the machines beeps differently, and my eyes shoot open to focus on the monitor.

One of the doctors says, “We’ve got something.”

Everyone freezes for a long, tense second. Then a new rhythm flashes across the monitor. The nurse closest to the door sighs in relief and calls for more meds.

He’s back. 

For now.

My knees give out and I turn and slide down the cold, barren wall. I press my forehead to my fists and let out a sob that tastes like every terrified minute I’ve stood here watching him die.

Moore, 2019

“Boone, there’s kids in that school, we have to get them out!” Tyler shouts at me as rain blinds us. 

“T, we can’t get in there. That building is going to collapse. T, stop!” I climb the debris, following behind him as he pushes on.

“Tyler, it’s dangerous.” Lilly chimes behind us. “Wait for back up.”

He turns on us, “there is no back up. Do you see the destruction? We are the back up. We have to save those kids.”

Digging our way through the rubble, we carry small children out for what feels like eternity, but when we get to those who didn’t make it, Tyler loses his mind. It’s gut wrenching, sickening, and simply painful to witness.

After hours of searching and subsided grief, we reconvene at our hodge podge chase truck. Tyler slams his fist to the hood and cusses at the loss we’ve just witnessed. I spend the next half hour convincing him to get in the truck so we can rest up and help again tomorrow. Finally, he agrees, allowing me to drive and turning on the radio as he settles into the passenger seat.

He turns up the volume, as if to torture himself, as reports of the devastation rolls in.

“…Reports of children and others dead after Moore took direct hit from violent tornado. The storm also took the lives of three Muskogee State storm chasers…search and rescue…”

T cuts the volume, “that could’ve been us.”

“But it wasn’t,” Lilly whispers.

“One day it will be.”

“That’s the risk we take, T.” I offer him.

“I don’t know if I can do this.” He whispers, half to himself, and I don’t miss the tear fall down his cheek. “They were just kids, children, it’s not fucking fair.”

“I know, T. It’s not fair at all.” I feel the emotion thick in my throat as I say it, “but we’ve got to make a difference in as many people’s lives as we can. You have a gift with this whole weather thing, don’t give up. Be strong for me, T.”

He nods his agreement as he wipes away the emotion.

Tyler is strong, but so are his feelings, his passion. That’s what makes him so damn likable. But when he’s not in control or can’t create a positive outcome, he shatters. He feels too much for others, and never wants them to suffer.

They’re rushing in and out to stabilize him now. There’s still a thousand hurdles ahead, and a million things that could still go wrong, but for now his heart is beating.

Tyler’s a live.

So, I sigh the slightest relief.

And I swear to God, if he makes it out of this, I’m never letting him go near a storm, a bull, or even the damn grocery store without bubble wrap.

“Hang on,” I whisper into my fists. “You’re not done, man. Don’t give up. Be strong for me, T.”

”Boone? What’s happening?” Kate’s quiet and broken voice interrupts my continued flashbacks to our early chase days and I divert my attention up to her. She must’ve seen the commotion in and out of his room. She looks so fragile, soaked from the rain, and drowned in pain. I stand and reach for her, pulling her cold body into a hug. 

“They got him back, Kate. They got him back.”

I feel her frame physically relax against me as she processes my words. She squeezes her arms around me, as if to support me as much as I’m trying to support her. 

“He’s not done. Keep fighting for him, Kate. We’ve gotta keep fighting for him.” I don’t know if I say it more for her, or more for me, but neither of us move as the minutes pass and we stand there holding one another, our attention zeroed in on the man on the other side of that window. 

Chapter Text

The buzz of the florescence in the waiting room is maddening, especially mixed with the trauma of the past twenty-four hours. I toss my head back against the chair, closing my eyes to blink back the continuous tears, when the flash of some wild-eyed boy pops in my mind.

When I was little, Tyler was the only kid who ever looked me in the eye like I mattered. The only one who didn’t flinch when he sat next to me in class or dared to share his swing on the playground. We had nothing at home. I mean nothing. Sometimes not even running water. My mom and dad split before I even knew what a family was supposed to feel like, and Mom… she never could get clean long enough to offer us anything close to stable. There were nights she disappeared for days and weeks where all we had in the fridge was expired milk and measly leftovers from days ago. I started spending more and more time at friends’ houses just to get a meal—though let’s be honest, it was mostly Tyler’s. His mom treated me like her own when I was there. I also got real good at sneaking leftover cafeteria food into my bag and pretending I wasn’t starving.

But the truth is, his home wasn’t much better, but at least they had food. About a year or so after we started school, he just… stopped inviting me over. At the time, I didn’t understand why, and thought maybe I did something wrong. But later, once I heard the stories and I finally figured it out. I pieced together what had been happening in that house back then.

Before everything fell apart—for both of us—Tyler and I would tinker with anything we could get our hands on in his dad’s shop. Wires. Radio parts. Broken computers. It was like magic to me. I was obsessed with the school computers, with anything that had to do with science or data or electricity. Tyler was the same. He was wicked smart, even way back then. While other kids played hopscotch or chased each other around, we were pretending to be scientists or cowboys. It was dorky, but it was ours.

Then one day, he just… wasn’t at school. We’d grown apart a little by then, but he was still kind to me. He always smiled when we crossed paths, still teamed up with me for any project that needed brains instead of popularity points. So at first I didn’t think much of it. But then two days passed. Then a week. Then a month. He never came back.

After that, it was like the world forgot I existed. I became the weird, quiet girl with greasy hair and hand-me-downs that smelled like mildew. The older I got, the worse things got at home. The more people laughed at me and bullied me for things that weren’t my fault. By the end of high school I was practically living out of my beat-up sedan, working three waitress jobs just to pay for gas and keep from starving. College? That was a fantasy. A cruel one. My love for science and tech and learning was dead in the water, drowned in bills and cold nights and pity I didn’t want.

I remember waking up one morning—my back aching from the cramped seat, breath fogging the windshield. The diner I worked at was just outside the window. My fingers were numb. It was so damn cold. I was still wrapped in the ratty quilt I kept in the trunk when my phone started ringing nonstop. Over and over. At first, I thought it might be one of my managers, ready to tell me I was late.

“Hello?” I croak, my voice hoarse from the cold.

“Is this Lilly?”

The voice—warm, bright, too familiar to be a stranger, but too new to place it—my stomach drops.

“Yeah? Who is this?”

“Oh c’mon Lils, I’m hurt.”

I freeze. My heart stops. That name. Only one person ever called me that. My breath catches in my throat, and I sit up stock still.

“Tyler?”

“Oh you do remember, hell yeah.”

“H-how did you get my number?”

“Called enough people, found out where you worked, called them, begged them for your number. What’re you up to these days?”

I glance around my pathetic little car, embarrassed even though he can’t see me.

“Um…I, well…”

“Live in your car and work at shit diners to try to make ends meet, and no one will give you the benefit of the doubt because of your last name and your family, but they have no idea how wicked smart you are?”

“What…how do you know that?”

“Look behind you.”

I turn slowly, my breath fogging the cold glass. In my rearview mirror, I see him.

Sitting in an old, battered red Dodge from the ‘90s—plastered with weather gadgets and wind dials—is a man. Not the lanky boy I remember, but a man with sun-darkened skin and that same damn crooked grin that could talk you into anything. His eyes still hold that same fire. He lifts his phone and wags three fingers at me through the windshield.

“Hi Lils.”

“Hi Tyler.” My voice breaks. “What in the hell are you doing? How the hell did you find me?”

He hops out of the truck and walks toward my passenger side like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Cowboy boots. Jeans. Faded rodeo jacket. His hair cropped short now, neater, older—but still so him. I’d seen his name in some headlines a year or so ago, a rising star on the rodeo circuit. I’d hoped he’d gotten out of that hell we both crawled out of. I hoped the stories about his dad were behind him.

I never stopped hoping.

He opens my passenger door and climbs in like he still belongs next to me.

“Love the dreads. How’ve you been? And don’t lie.” He squares his attention on me.

“Oh ya know, Ty, just living the dream,” I deadpan him. “You going to tell me why you’re here?”

“You still like tech and science stuff?”

“Yeah… just obviously never got to put it to use.” I gestur around me—my car, my life. “Restaurant and homelessness needed me too bad.”

Something shifts in his face. A flicker of pain and remorse. I catch it and immediately bristle. “Don’t pity me, Tyler.”

“I’m not, but I have a proposition.”

“I’ll bite.”

“Join my storm chasing team. I need a drone tech, we’re getting pretty serious. Right now it’s just me and Boone and we—”

“I’m sorry, what? I thought you were some rodeo star?”

“Well I almost got killed, so promised my aunt I’d hang it up.”

“You almost got killed?”

“Oh yeah. Horn to the lungs, concussion, I was in the hospital for a long time. My video guy, Boone, is probably the only reason I’m still kicking honestly.”

I shake my head slowly. That sounds like Tyler—reckless and brave and still somehow alive. Even at 6 years old he wasn’t scared of anything.

“Yeah so anyway,” he continues, “I changed career paths, went to college, getting my degree in meteorology. Now Boone and I are professional storm chasers. He runs our YouTube channel and we’re starting to get a decent following. I really want a drone in the air for some different angles and data collection and quite honestly need some help with some of our equipment. You’re the first person I thought of.”

I blink. “Tyler… we haven’t seen each other in years, and I’m who you think of?”

“Yep. You’re the smartest person I know. I mean Boone’s pretty smart too, but he’s more marketing, I need the behind-the-scenes stuff. You in?”

“Tyler I can’t afford to do that.”

“We make enough. It’s tight but we always have some motel to stay at, food, and the more viewers we get the better the income. Then we can stay at the ranch and work odd jobs in the off season.”

“How are you going to afford a drone?”

He just grins. That shit-eating, I-already-figured-it-out grin. “Is that a yes?”

I stare at him. I want to say yes. God, I want to. Anything would be better than freezing in this car for the hundredth time.

He clears his throat, his voice gravelly, older. “Tell you what, I’ll let you pick the drone and any accessories you need. I just need you.”

“There’s like a bazillion drone techs in the world.”

“Only one who knows my story though. Not one for walking on eggshells. Too much shit to get done. Plus this one”—he nods toward me—“sure as hell looks like she could use a break.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Quit your jobs and meet me at the ranch tomorrow morning. We leave for Georgia on Monday. That’ll kick off chase season. We’ll get your drone and equipment shipped to wherever we are.”

“Tyler…”

“Listen Lilly, I know I was distant before things went south, and I know we haven’t seen each other since then, but time doesn’t determine someone’s heart and work ethic. I know you and I trust you. And I know you’re in a bad spot. You never have to thank me, you’ll never have to owe me a thing. I want you on the team because if anyone deserves this it’s you. This is serious, things are getting real. I wouldn’t have came to you if I wasn’t certain this would work. I wouldn’t put you in that situation. You were the only friend I had when I was little, Lils, I haven’t forgot that. I’m now in a position I can help you and give some life to your talents and dreams. Let me.”

I don’t say anything. I just nod. And I’m an instance his face lights up with that same damn grin that could part a storm.

“Okay Ty, I’m in.”

He whoops, “Hell yeah, Lilly. Hell yeah!”

And just like that, something cracks wide open inside me. A smile breaks free, and with it, tears—hot and bitter and thankful and so long overdue they sting on the way down.

The walk down memory lane is ripped out from under me when Javi stops pacing as Boone and Kate walk back into the waiting room, arms slung around each other like they’re the only thing keeping one another from falling apart. Their faces are hollowed out with exhaustion and fear and pain. I sit up straighter, my heart crawling into my throat.

Kate’s screams from earlier still echo in my skull. I’ll never forget them. That was the sound of a woman losing her person. Her Tyler — her version of him. And now we’re all standing on that same edge, wondering if our version of him is gone too. Tyler gave me everything, and I can’t come to terms with the fact that the man whose always been invincible is dying.

Boone’s voice cracks. Every second that passes is a blade pressed deeper into my ribs. He exhales a shuttered and pained breath.

“They got him back.”

I collapse into the chair like someone’s cut my strings. The air I’d been holding comes rushing out in a sob.

”but it’s bad…worse than they thought.”

No. No. No. 

Damnit no. 

I flash my eyes to him and Kate, and feel the others stare up at them. 

I feel my chin and lips quiver, “what do you mean?”

Kates the one that speaks. “Th-they don’t know yet, but there’s something else wrong. They’re running blood work. We should know in a few hours.” She sobs as she finishes her words. 

This isn’t fair. 

God damnit, Tyler.

I’m so damn sorry. 

Chapter Text

“An infection has set in, in his lungs. Likely pneumonia based on the preliminary cultures. We’re doing scans now. With the injuries to his chest and lungs, this is not good. His body is using all its strength to try to heal itself already, an infection like this is detrimental. We’re upping his antibiotics and IV drips for everything. If we can’t fight this off for him, he won’t have a chance at all, and the chances of that happening are slim, but we’ll do everything we can. I suggest each of you get as much time with him as you can this evening. I’m sorry, but his outlook is not good. I know I sound harsh and straightforward, but I feel like Tyler is a straightforward guy and that is how he’d want it. Love him, tell him, sit with him, because it’s between him and God now.”

Chapter Text

I don’t register where I am until I pull up to the arched gateway of Owens - Harding farm. I had no direction or plan, but somewhere along the way I decided going to his farm was what I wanted, what I needed to do. The early morning sunlight glistens pristinely on the worn metal of the gate and fencing, and illuminates the microscopic dew drops that envelope the swaying hay fields. The sky is that pinky, purple hew that comes with dawn, a symbol of something new, a fresh start to a beautiful day. But this day is anything but. It’s quiet, it’s calm, it’s peaceful, it’s serene, but it’s not beautiful, it’s not promising, it’s not hopeful. It’s empty and painful, a contrast to the immaculate landscape that lay before me. If emotions were no factor, this moment looks an awful lot like Tyler. Warm, welcoming, inviting, an open land of trees and rolling hills that are full of adventure and stories to tell. 

Chapter Text

It’s been thirteen days. Thirteen days since our world tilted on its axis as we lost our version of Tyler. Thirteen days since I heard his gravely and cheerful voice anywhere but in my dreams. Thirteen days since I felt his warm, calloused hands on me, since his soft lips pressed to mine. Thirteen days since he grinned at me in all knowing confidence, since his green eyes gleamed in the excitement of the moment, of his next challenge. I know how long it’s been because I’ve counted them, right down to the second. 

Thirteen damn days.

Each one impossibly long. Each one heavy. Each one miserable and empty.

I never left after the day I showed up at his ranch last week. That evening I muddled through his shop, the equipment, his dream, his research, and then fell asleep wrapped in an old quilt that smelled just like him in the rocker on his back porch, my exhaustion finally winning out. I dreamed of him again that night. At first it was fond and good, he was smiling, laughing next to me as we drove down a lost dirt road, but it turned dark and painful as I lost him all over again, unable to find him after we recked, after we flipped over and over in his truck. I think this one represented El Reno, but I can’t be sure. I woke with shorten breath to a car pulling up next to the house, blinking in confusion before realizing it was Jo and Ellie. 

So, I haven’t left, because Jo insisted I stay. I’m not sure if it was for my comfort, or for her company after Ellie had to fly back home, but I didn’t argue. There’s something about being here—wrapped in his things, swallowed up by the familiar smell of his woodsy scent and small details of his life—that keeps me anchored to him. I can’t explain it, not even to myself. But I need it.

Because he’s still not okay, he’s still not here, and I don’t know if he ever will be again.

Tyler’s still in the ICU. A ventilator is still breathing for him. Chest tubes are still draining fluid from his lungs, from the continued infection he can’t kick. Round-the-clock monitoring, central line medication, and sedation are what’s keeping him here, that and a miracle. They keep using words like “stable but critical” and “day-by-day,” those are supposed to be reassuring I can tell, but they feel like holding your breath underwater for hours on end. They did find more internal bleeding and got it stopped, but his lungs are riddled with infection now, fighting against damage that hasn’t had a chance to heal. His vitals dip and rise and level out, but he hasn’t flatlined since that night. He hasn’t left since. I haven’t gone to see him, but Jo fills me in, just after she begs me to go with her the next time. According to her, he’s wiggled his fingers some, at random, not as a response to any stimulant. She said the monitors that are tracking his brain activity keep ticking up too. I see the hope paint her aged, but still beautiful face, as she speaks every detail about her days spent with him. She looks like him, like an older version of him. Her eyes are bright, her smile warm and inviting, just like his. 

I try not to think about it. How he looked when we found him, watching his body crash in the hours after, the look of his team and the feeling of the pain I felt when the doctors gave us his diagnosis.

I try.

But it creeps in anyway. When I’m at his house alone, when the sun goes down too early and the hallway light flickers just a bit, like it’s grieving too. There’s a gnawing and continued dread that fills ever crevice of my body.

I wake up in his bed, wrapped in his old flannel quilt and worn gray sheets. I know it’s his because it smells just like him, his cologne, his shampoo, his detergent…but I don’t remember deciding to sleep here. Not really. At some point over the past few days, I just stopped using the guest room or the couch or the chair outside. I roll toward the night stand and reach for my phone, his scent clinging to the pillowcases. One of his flannel shirts still on the chair in the corner, and it’s stupid how many times I’ve curled up with it like it could keep me safe. Like it could bring him back. Like it was him right there with me.

I do his laundry because it needs to be done, and because I can’t sit still anymore. His hamper’s half full of t-shirts and jeans and socks with little holes in the heels, remnants of his fast-paced life, of chases and days tending to the ranch just before he died.

That’s the raw truth. He died. Multiple times. His golden heart stopped beating, stopped filling his body with life. His lungs and body and mind gave up on him. But by some miracle the funeral we planned hasn’t happened yet. 

He’s still here.

I wash them in silence as tears randomly escape my eyes. I fold them neatly, like they matter, like they might get worn again someday. Like he might come back to them again. The waft of his detergent as I pour it into the washer is enough to send me spiraling, inhaling deep the smell of nostalgia and better days chasing alongside him. My hands falter and my body quivers in weakness.

Damnit Ty.

There are framed photos in the hall just outside the laundry room. I finally pause to take them in. One is of him with Ellie—she’s may be ten in the picture, missing her front teeth, hugging him around the middle while he laughs like he’s been tackled. Another of him, Bill and Jo, covered in grease, smiling from ear to ear in front of the old chase truck he rebuilt with his uncle. The third is blurry—sunset behind him, his arms thrown around a golden horse. He’s smiling in it, I can tell, but his focus is on the task in front of him and not the camera. Ellie is standing next to him, peering up at the horse. He looks serene and comfortably lost in the spec of time.

The photo hits me harder than I expect. Something about the light in his eyes. The easy way he looks as if he belonged to that land, that life, like nothing in the world could touch him in that moment.

I want that back. I want the chases back. I want his laughter back. I want  him back.

“He was seventeen in that photo.”

Jo’s soft voice lands on me in surprise, making me jump. 

I smile back at her, “what was he like at seventeen?”

Jo barks a laugh before stepping up next to me to look at the moment on the wall, “he was wild, Kate. You couldn’t tell him anything. He thought he was invincible, but my goodness was he caring. He did anything he could for everyone around him. He never wanted others to hurt or be inconvenienced because of him, so he made damn sure it never happened. He loved trouble though, and him and Boone didn’t know how to stay out of it. It’s a wonder he didn’t give me a heart attack. Sometimes I miss that version of him, that version that hadn’t fully figured out what a terrible hand life could deal, that still had a chance to make his dreams come true.”

I turn my attention to her, quirking my brow, “what do you mean?”

She nods towards the photo, “that was before his bull riding accident. He was so good at riding and had all these plans to ride in the pro circuit once he graduated high school. It made me a nervous wreck, but even I can’t deny how talented he was. He wanted to rodeo so bad, that’s all he’d ever known. After his accident, he changed. Not a lot, but something was missing, just a little off in his demeanor, like his light was just a little dimmer, ya know?”

I nod as I take in the words of the older spitting image of Tyler standing next to me.

“I only saw the old version of him come back a few months ago.” She smiles up at me, “when you entered his orbit, Kate, I saw a version of Ty I hadn’t seen in years, maybe ever. He was so damn happy, so sure of himself, so confident. You’ve only known that version of him, but there were times he couldn’t even get out of bed, or wouldn’t come home because he was out drinking. He had me so scared for a really long time. I was afraid the demons of his past would win.”

I recall him telling me about waking up with his truck in drive against the tree at his aunt’s place. I softly smile at her story, but decide it’s best she stays in the dark about that bit of info.

—- 

As more hours and days pass, I continue to walk through his house like a ghost, taking in old photos and evidence of a life lived here. A few new bills have piled on his table, awaiting a response from a man who is barely breathing. The old brown recliner is sunken from years of someone sitting there. He’s got a junk drawer that’s a whole disaster—screws, receipts, broken zip ties, gadgets, pocket knives. As I dig, I find a set of Polaroids shoved behind an old matchbook—one of a storm system, beautiful and terrifying in the way only he could capture, and another of Jo standing in a rainy mud soaked field, holding up a broken camera, likely destroyed in some storm they were chasing. 

For the first time in days, I laugh out loud at the irony of the pictures, the situation, everything around me. 

It sounds wrong in the silence.

And I sound manic. I am manic.

I make myself eat.

I water the cows.

I fix the loose board on his porch because I can’t handle the way it squeaks. 

I tend to the landscaping. 

I stare at pictures of him, of his family.

And I pace. I pace the living room like a woman unraveling.

I am unraveling.

I clean the dishes in his sink, most from me and Jo, but one still left over from him…a half-finished cup of coffee from the day we drove out here after the night at the bar.  I wash the old ceramic mug gently. Like it matters. Like it plays a significant role in this living hell.

Outside, the afternoon sunlight slices through the shop windows in long golden slants, as I unlock the side door and step in. I don’t know what I expected—chaos, maybe, though I’ve been in here before. But it’s the opposite. Everything’s in its place. Wrenches in size order, drawers labeled with masking tape, a wall covered in old photos, magazine clippings, equipment designs and receipts for parts.

As I trace my hands across all his chase equipment and stacks of research books, I come across a pile of sketchbooks in the corner.

I didn’t know he drew.

What other talents are you hiding Mr. Owens? 

I flip the pages slowly. Some are old—edges yellowed, pages curling, while others are more recent. The sketches range from systems, storm structures, and landscapes to people he deems important: Jo. Ellie. His niece and nephew. His team. An older man I assume is Bill. Me.

I have to sit down when I see it, my hand reaching back to find a steady place on the worn barstool behind me.

Me. Sitting on the bed of his truck, smiling at the camera clad in my sunglasses and old tank top.

It’s like looking in a black and white mirror.

He saw me like that.

I cry until I can’t breathe, tears falling onto the page. 

I don’t know how long I sit there, but eventually the pain of sitting in the chair creeps up my back and urges me to move. I place the sketchbook back on the table, wiping at my nose to clear my emotion, and make my way back towards the house. Back outside, the sun is setting, ricocheting off the crumpled red ram sitting next to his carport. I’ve ignored it since the day the tow truck driver dropped it off, but in this moment I feel like it’s drawing me in. It’s warped and bent, the passenger side a mess of twisted metal. The glass shattered and windows blown out. The custom wrangler grill detached at three of the four corners, hanging awkwardly off the front. The roll cage juts out in awkward angles, and the driver door refuses to close. All the equipment inside scattered and broken. I climb up on the crumpled hood to reach the roof, and freeze when catch a glimpse of his passenger seat. As if it was placed there, unscathed and untouched, like he sat it on the seat as he exited the truck and the truck never moved, is his cowboy hat. The piece of his signature wrangler persona. A piece of him, a little stained, a little dirty, but still an imperfectly perfect piece of him. Maybe by chance it landed there when the truck stopped rolling, maybe the tow driver sat it there when he loaded up the truck. I don’t know, but my eyes well again as I climb back down and reach in through the shattered passenger window to grab it. Back on the roof of the truck, I sit there, knees tucked to my chest, staring out over the ranch, soaked in the dim light of the setting sun, his hat sitting next to me while I hug myself in his flannel.

The guilt and sorrow crawl up my throat like a tide as I finally replay that night in my mind, fully. We had left the symposium early, yes, but not near early enough. I should’ve known. I should’ve felt something. I should’ve found him sooner. I knew he was back against the fence, but would it have mattered? Or was this destined to happen no matter what?

He’s the one who never stopped showing up for me, for us, for everyone. And I—

A buzz from my pocket pulls me back. Checking the ID I see Jo’s name.

My stomach drops.

Her voice is quiet. “Kate. Hey. Um…his fever’s down.”

I blink and swallow away the nausea that was creeping up. “W-what?” I ask, barely above a whisper.

“It broke, it finally broke. He’s still intubated. But stable. They said… they said it’s a good sign…a really good sign.” Her words fall off in a sob. 

My knees go weak. Even sitting, I feel it. The wind is knocked out of me at the first bit of good news in over two weeks. “Okay,” I crack. “Okay. That’s good, Jo, that’s good.”

She doesn’t hang up as she continues to cry on her end of the line. It’s like we were all waiting to breathe and this bit of news finally allowed us to. I feel the air escape me in small, panicked…no, excited, increments.

Come on, Ty, keep fighting.

We sit with it for a long time, and I just let her cry. I cry along with her. 

That night, I sleep on the couch with the TV on. Not because I’m watching it, but because the static hum keeps the silence at bay. I dream about him—vivid, wild, and all too real. He’s whole again, tinkering in the shop, covered in dust, grinning like a fool and telling me to come help him work on the launching mechanism for our study.

When I wake, it’s raining, the gray, dark skies snuffing out the joy of my make-believe world. I stare at the ceiling for a long time, arms crossed across my abdomen, as I let memories, both good and bad, flood my conscience.

—-

The next few days pass slow, but I can’t help but feel a flicker of hope, growing by the hour. Something’s shifting, and somewhere deep down it tells me it’s a good shift. For the first time, I feel a spec of positivity, that he’s stubborn enough and strong enough to beat this. That he will win.

Jo hasn’t come home since his fever broke, but she calls me with every update. The nurses say the swelling in his chest has gone down some, that his lungs are clearing. His brain activity is up too, and his fingers are moving more and more. She also told me his eyelids moved…not a blink, but more like his eyes were darting back and forth. The neurologist said that is tell tale signs of brain activity, as if his neurons are firing and waking back up. So, with that information, I let the little glimmer of hope inside me fester, growing with every update from Jo.

At his ranch, I keep discovering pieces of him. He has a jar of ticket stubs from rodeos he never told me about. A drawer full of maps—paper maps from early chase days, marked with Sharpie and coordinates and notes in the margins. I find a Christmas ornament shaped like a tornado made out of coiled barbed wire and laugh so hard I nearly choke. I just know he made it, probably as he was tinkering in his shop one random night, or maybe while he was perched up on his tailgate waiting for a storm. Underneath the maps, and old college notes, I find a journal with only one page written in it, the words scrawled and crossed out and tried again.

'Maybe I deserve this.'

My heart lurches at the cryptic note. Though I don’t know what it means, it feels degrading, painful, accepting of something bad. 

I hate that I don’t know. I want to know.

But I’m going to ask him when he wakes up.

Because he is going to wake up.

He has to.

Chapter Text

It’s a Tuesday when the call comes, twenty-three days after he was ripped from us, the call I never thought I'd receive comes in.

I’m standing at his kitchen sink, looking out the window at the sprawling fields glowing in warm evening sun, sipping coffee from the same mug he used a few weeks ago when Boone’s name flashes on my screen.

My heart stutters. The mug clinks softly against my teeth and my hand trembles before I even press accept, already bracing for the worst. There’s been so much waiting. So much silence. So much fucking pain.

“He’s breathing on his own.” I don’t get to greet him before he rushes out the words in a fit of tears and excitement. “They extubated him an hour ago. He’s still sedated but he’s breathing on his own. They said he may wake up on his own, time will tell that part, but Kate…Kate the doctors can’t even believe it.”

I drop the mug, the fragile ceramic shattering across the worn tile floor like a gunshot. Coffee splashes up my shins. I don’t care. I don’t even stop to clean it up. I just grab my keys and run. My breath’s stuck somewhere between a sob and a scream.

At the hospital, he looks like hell, beautiful, breathing, living hell. Pale. Bruised. His scruff grown out. Tubes still in places I don’t want to think about. But his skin is clean, no longer dirty from mud and debris and blood, and his chest rises and falls with his own pure effort. His face and mouth are no longer laden with giant tubes that breathe for him, and they’ve removed his head wrap and stitches, leaving behind deep red scars at his temple and along his skull above his left ear. His hair is growing back though, and all of that combined allows for him to look even more like Tyler, though his lips and face are still a bit swollen, confined to the brace still around his neck.

My knees go weak the second I see him—there, in front of me, real and breathing. I stagger, one hand clutching the railing of his bed like it’s the only thing keeping me from sinking into the floor. Seeing him for the first time in three weeks, I fall apart. Right there beside his bed, I let go of everything I’ve been holding in for twenty plus days. I cry and sob and grip his hand as I send up silent thank yous for this milestone. I know he’s not out of the woods, I know there’s a million things that can, and will, go wrong, but I also know this means he’s still in here, still fighting, to make it back to us.

“Hey Ty. Keep fighting, we’re all here waiting for you. I’m sorry I’ve been gone, I’m sorry I ran like a coward. But I’ve been waiting, been staying at your place so I’m wrapped up in reminders of you.” I lightly stroke the rough hairs that line his jaw, his face is relaxed, warm and alive under my palm, “you’re so damn strong, look at you. Look at you breathing on your own and doing all the things the doctors said you never would. I knew you were stubborn. You look good too…don’t let that go to your head.” I sniff back the tears as I lay my head on the mattress and focus in on the tips of his fingers wrapped in my hand, “I love you, Tyler. I love you. Keep fighting. Stay strong. Stay stubborn. Win Ty, win.”

I press my forehead to the edge of the bed. His hand is still limp in mine, but it’s warm now, not cold and foreign like it was before. His skin has life in it. I squeeze gently. Just in case.

At the commencement of my words, I feel his fingers twitch, tapping in my palm, and I sit up straight, staring at them, my eyes wide and unblinking, feeling the anxiety rise in my chest and my breath quicken as he does it again. Intentional motion, nothing about it involuntary or coincidental.

One.

Two.

Three.

I.

Love.

You.

I jerk back like I’ve been struck. My whole body locks up as the realization crashes into me, then keeps crashing, wave after wave. He heard me. He can hear me.

He can fucking hear me.

“T-ty?” My body shudders as I stammer over the words, my thoughts, the fleeting moment I just witnessed and try to make sense of it. “Tyler, c-can you hear me? Can you really hear me?” Tears flow freely as I keep hold of his hand, cupping it now with both of mine and pulling it to my lips.

I brush kisses on his knuckles, one after the other, like he’s made of glass. My heart is thundering so loud I can barely hear the machines around us. His fingers twitch again at my question, only once, but solid and purposeful. In the same moment his heart monitor ticks up, the steady beep increasing just slightly. I let my eyes trail to it, focusing on the rise and fall of the lines. I feel myself shaking, worry and joy both fighting their way through my body. I want to scream, to laugh, to collapse. When I finally pull my attention from the monitor and focus back on his face, I think my own heart stops beating. Staring back at me are two swollen, but very opened, bloodshot green eyes, and if my mind’s not playing tricks on me, if I’m not in some alternate reality or dream, something mirroring his signature, cocky smirk is drawn up lazily on the right side of his mouth.

My mouth falls open and I sit frozen staring at him as my tears coat my cheeks. He blinks once, twice, three times. Slow and unsure, but awake, registering the world around him…or at least me in front of him. His brows crease in confusion and he tries to trail his tongue over his lips to wet them but weakness wins out. He’s confused, his eyes full of question and pain and fear. I can’t move, I just stare, and I think that confuses him more.

His fingers twitch in my hand, breaking me from my spiral, “Tyler…Tyler…holy shit you’re awake!” A smile stretches my face, and I feel like I could explode.

Holy shit.

Oh my God.

Every emotion floods the entirety of my mind, body, and soul. The eyes I never thought I’d see again are staring back at me.

“C-can you hear me? Do you know me? I’ve got to get the doctor.” I fumble over my words and thoughts, and he attempts to squeeze my hand as I try to stand. I still and keep my focus on his face as his gaze finds mine. “Tyler, blink, can you hear me? Do you understand me?”

His lids close slowly, and then shakily open, his green irises accentuated by the florescent lights and the swollen red skin bordering them.

I fall back into my chair, “fuck Ty, I was so scared.” The tears continue to fall as I fight to catch my breath, “I’ve b-been so scared, I’m still s-so scared. L-look at you...” I cup my palm against his face, and his eyes fall closed at my touch, his features visibly relaxing.

Then it happens.

After a paused moment of peace and appreciation, the other shoe fucking drops.

A bomb to obliterate and destroy this brief moment of joy.

Just like I knew it would.

Chapter Text

All the alarms and monitors in his room go off in sync, alerting me, and the entire floor of doctors and nurses of the situation unfolding before me. The piercing shriek of machinery fractures the silence like a gunshot, echoing off the sterile walls, stabbing into my ears, filling the serene quiet of the space. I stand and jerk my hand back from his jaw, peering down as his eyes roll back and the muscles in his temples, jaw, arms, hands and all other visible parts of him strain and writhe. He’s seizing. The visual before me punches through my chest, the center of me cracking wide open all over again. His body shakes against the restraints of his neck brace, his back brace, and his casts. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I watch, helpless, as the person I love is swallowed whole, once again, by something unpredictable, violent and unseen.

Unlike last time, no one drags me out. I stand stock still as the doctors and nurses flood in around me. I can feel their bodies moving past me, brushing my arms, bumping my shoulders, but I don’t register it. I am stone. I am ice. Finally, a firm hand finds my shoulder, gripping me in comfort, but this time it’s not Javi, it’s Dr. Stiles, and his solemn eyes look at me with so much dread and question. It’s the look people give before they break news they don’t want to say out loud.

He knows what I don’t want to say out loud. 

Th doctor slides his hand between my shoulder blades to coax me out of the room, but I don’t notice. I don’t move. I don’t peel my eyes away from the nurses administering a syringe full of drugs into his PIC line, from the neurologist on call as he rushes into the room and begins reading his scans, from the onslaught of people that run in to stabilize him as his body convulses beneath them. My stomach turns, and I think I might vomit. In stark contrast to mere weeks ago, his heart rate isn’t weak, it’s elevated, beating too fast, working too hard, sending the monitor into a rapid succession of beeps and alarms. The sound is manic—frantic—like it’s trying to warn me of something already too late. I feel my eyes blown wide, my body frozen in fear as I witness the tragedy before me unfold. For the fifth time in less than a month I watch a man bigger than life, stronger than the storms he chased, more stubborn than any bull he ever rode, lose the battle with his own body.

He was just here.

He was just right here.

He could hear me. He could see me.

“Kate…Kate.” This time it is Javi’s voice. “Kate, breathe. Please breathe.”

But I can’t. It’s like I’m underwater, lungs collapsing with pressure, and the entire world around me comes crashing into view like the worst of storms, like the storm that took him. The room is spinning, like a tornado, moving faster and faster, and the ringing in my ears gets louder and louder. “Kate, fucking breathe.” He shakes me, but I can’t catch up. I can’t calm down. I can’t breathe. It feels like my skin is being peeled back, like every nerve is on fire, and I’m being hollowed out in real time.

My knees buckle under me. I don’t even realize I’m falling until Boone’s arms are around me, his chest against my back, lowering me to the floor as my vision tunnels and my lungs burn. My body caves, folding into itself like it’s trying to disappear.

It wants to.

I want to. 

“Come on Kate. You gotta calm down.” Boone. It’s his voice that finally registers, splitting the spiral of panic coursing through me. My knees cave, and I feel arms around me. Boone and Javi are wrapped around me, supporting me, keeping my body from toppling. Somehow they got me into the a private room and have sat me down in a chair. Somehow all of them, including the doctor and neurologist are standing around me, watching as I come undone. I don’t even remember walking. It’s like I blacked out and now I’m on display, raw and unraveling.

“Kate!” It’s Javi again, his voice stern and elevated. “Calm the fuck down and breathe.”

His tone scares me, but it does the trick, what he knew it would. I snap out of my panic and settle into the chair, peering up at Tyler’s entire team, his aunt, his doctors, my mom.

When did she get here?

They’re all waiting on me, waiting for me. I’m still trembling, shaking so violently it feels like I might crack apart at the seams.

My heart is still pounding, my hands trembling in my lap, clutching at each other to try and find an anchor. My fingers are ice. I try to speak, but my throat is raw, scorched from sobbing.

“Miss Carter,” Dr. Stiles interjects my derailed thoughts, his voice quiet but urgent, “Miss Carter, can you tell us what happened in there? Did something happen?”

I stare at him—no, through him—at a memory of glossy, hazy, but very alive green eyes. God, please let it have been real. “H-he woke up.” I whisper.

“Excuse me?”

I focus in on him now, forcing my eyes to lock onto his face, needing him to believe me. “I said he woke up.”

His neurologist, Dr. Williams, chimes in now, voice clinical, detached. “Kate, based on his scans that’s not possible.”

I glare at him, my body still shaking. My jaw hurts from the tension, my ribs ache from sharp inhales of panic and anxiety. “I know what I saw. He tapped my hand three times, deliberately, and when I asked if he could hear me, he did it again. His heart monitor increased, just slightly, so I looked up at it, and when I turned my attention back to him, his eyes were open.”

His aunt interrupts my recollection with a gasped sob, hand flying to her mouth as she crumples into the nearest chair, eyes wide with hope and terror. I want to go to her, to fall apart with her. But I can’t move.

“He blinked at me,” I continue, my voice shaking but resolute, “he blinked at me when I asked him questions, and when I moved to come tell you, he gripped my finger to make me stay. I was just about to stand up and come find you when…” my breath hitches on the flashes of him seizing before me, “w-when he started seizing.”

A hush falls over the group, heavy and devastating. It’s like someone has vacuumed all the air from the room. I feel the weight of every eye on me, some doubting, some stunned, others—like Jo, Boone, and Javi—full of that same hollow panic I can’t quite shake off. My limbs are still buzzing with the static of adrenaline, like the fear hasn’t finished moving through me.

It hasn’t. For twenty-three days it hasn’t. 

Dr. Williams glances at a nurse I don’t know, who is holding Tyler’s most recent vitals, murmuring something under his breath before stepping out with a promise to “review everything again.” But I can see it in his face. He doesn’t believe me. He doesn’t have faith, and whatever’s in that folder the nurse is holding probably proves that to be true.

Dr. Stiles moves in and crouches beside me, placing his large hand on my knee, his tone gentler now, but ensuring he addresses everyone in the room. “Kate… if he did come to, if there was any window of awareness—it’s… it’s not unheard of. It happens. But it also doesn’t always last.”

I look at him, jaw clenched so tight I can feel it in my ears. “Wha-what are you saying?” 

“It could’ve been reflex. A moment of lucidity,” he says quietly, like saying it any louder might break something. “But seizures after traumatic brain injury… they can erase progress, especially in his state. Sometimes it’s temporary. Sometimes it’s not.”

I feel myself fold inward.

Everything inside me collapses into that single word: not.

I rest my head in my hands and bite my tongue until I taste copper, forcing back the scream that rises in my chest. I want to cry, to sob, to scream, to throw something across the room, but I do none of it. I sit there and shake and break and bleed inside, silently.

He was just here.

Tyler was just here.

He heard me. He looked at me.

I saw him.

He fucking looked me.

And now he’s somewhere else again—trapped or gone or lost—I don’t know. None of us know.

And that’s what terrifies me most.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

A focal bilateral tonic-clonic seizure, formally known as a Grand Mal seizure — after hours of scans and testing, that’s what his doctors confirmed. The words felt foreign and clinical, cold in my mind as the repeated it and what it meant over and over…and over. With zero history of epilepsy prior to this, it is likely that a combination of prior concussions and his most recent injury triggered it.

It sounds bad, and it is.

It is very bad.

But the doctors also said it’s good…not good in the way any sane person would define it, but good because it means his brain is firing. The seizure was violent and uncontrollable, but at its core, it was his brain trying to wake itself back up. Unfortunately for him though, it fired too fast, too sudden, and now there could be even more damage than before. Every time they explain it, I nod like I understand, but inside I feel like I’m drowning in a tragedy I’ll never fully comprehend.

How could this happen to him?

How could it happen to anyone, but especially to him of all people? 

In the near month since our lives changed he’s only had one setback after another. Not a single minute of time has indicated it’s on his side, not really, because every time it seems to have become his ally, it jumps right back across enemy lines.

Only time will tell.

Time is the enemy and I’m so sick of it.

I’m so sick of hearing them say that.

It’s their favorite phrase. Like a life raft they toss out to pacify me, pacify us.

Like I won’t notice that I’m still sinking.

It has been three days since I watched him succumb to the seizure — since I saw his pained and confused green eyes flicker with something close to awareness before they slipped away again, since his fingers clutched mine like he was holding on for dear life, before his body…and time betrayed him all over again. They’ve kept him sedated and on epilepsy medication since then, so that his brain and body can heal. They had to, they said, because like I knew, he is fighting to wake up.

Of course he is. It’s all he’s ever done.

Fight. Win. Overcome.

He’s back on round-the-clock monitoring now because every scan shows something new—new brain activity, new involuntary movement and twitches, increased heart rate. His body is waking up in pieces, inch by inch. The hope should feel exhilarating, should have me sobbing with joy, but instead it has me sitting in this too-cold room, hollowed out by fear, by dreaded anticipation of what bad thing is going to happen next.

Still, I’m trying.

Trying to stay optimistic. Trying not to fall apart. Trying to be strong, like he told me to do.

They keep saying it’s good, that everything happening means he’s still here, still fighting, and now, maybe even winning.

But if this is winning, I’d hate to see what losing looks like. He’s been through pure and utter hell, and the reality is, if he makes it through this part, he has a whole other form of it waiting for him in the form of a new life, physical therapy, and learning to utilize this new and very broken version of his body.

I try not to think about that, because the truth is, I don’t care what version of him I get back…as long as I get him back.

I haven’t left the hospital since it happened. None of us have. Boone, Jo, and even Javi and my mom have dropped by. We take turns sitting with him, talking to him like he’ll respond, like we’re just waiting for him to roll his eyes and cut us off with one of his sarcastic remarks.

But he doesn’t. Not yet.

And God, I miss that infuriating smile.

He’s back on the machine that assists him with breathing as a precaution. They say he’s still able to do it on his own, but they’re trying to redirect every ounce of energy toward healing. Efficiency, they call it.

I call it hell. Pure and utter hell.

Because the sight of those tubes again — the ones running down his throat, tangled across his chest, humming with quiet cruelty — makes it feel like ten giant steps back. And I know that’s not fair, I know it’s not rational, but I can’t help it. From the seizure, he popped blood vessels around his eyes, and where they were raw and red before, they’re now darkened by bruising and sickening discoloration. He looks like he’s been in a fight he never asked for.

He has been.

His skin is warmer now, though. His body, while battered and scarred, has started to look more alive. There’s a flush beneath his skin that wasn’t there before, and new scars, pink and angry, crisscross soft and rugged skin.

But his face…his face still looks too much like it did on day one.

Pale. Still. Haunted. Pained.

Sad.

I stay in his room. I refuse to take my eyes off him. There’s a part of me — a big, broken part — that’s terrified I’ll miss something again. That I’ll blink and he’ll be gone. But after feeling him move, after seeing his eyes find mine, even just for a second…

Something inside me shifted.

Something hopeful joined the heartbreak.

Just as something went terribly wrong a few days ago, it can happen again. I know that. But I also know he’s still here. Still trying.

He’s there. He’s in there. And he’s fighting.

So call it hope, call it peace, call it delusion if you want — I don’t care. For the first time in nearly a month, I feel it.

He’s coming back.

Maybe broken. Maybe different.

But he is. 

My mind slips backward, grasping at all the memories I can find of the version of him that was whole.

The drives through humid mornings and roaring storms, Tyler beside me, one hand lazily thrown over the wheel, grinning like the cocky shit he is, throwing out sarcastic quips just to see me roll my eyes. He’d look over, grin wider, and crank up the music until the windows vibrated.

I think of the night, just days before the tornado, when he switched the data. Just so I’d talk to him. He laughed when he told me, that low, boyish chuckle that vibrated through his chest. So damn pleased with himself. So damn amused at his own antics.

Shithead.

Then the vending machine night.

How he snuck up on me, scared the Dr. Pepper straight out of my hand, laughed like a maniac… and tore every makeshift stitch in his shoulder helping clean up the mess. I was terrified to be near him that night. I remember keeping my distance, my hands shaking as I repaired his warm, torn skin.

Why did I let that happen? How could I have been so scared of a man I love so much?

I know how.

Because death clings to me like a shadow.

Everywhere I go, it follows.

Point proven, the evidence laying in front of me in this bed, still and silent and flirting way to close with the wall of death.

“Fuck, Ty. I’m a mess.” I whisper as I intertwine my fingers with his.

I reach with my other hand for his arm, lightly tugging the hospital gown sleeve up just enough to see the remnants of that wound — the one I hadn’t looked at since before Joplin. It’s healed now, angry and jagged, just like I knew it would be. But it’s firm and closed, a story etched into his skin.

A story I’m part of.

Both the good and the bad.

And one I hope he lives to tell.

My mind wanders to the next morning after that, when snacks and his favorite T-shirt magically appeared at my door. No note, no explanation. Just him, in gesture. Selfless. Sweet. Caring.

But still… ornery as hell.

I see him in the barn, that night we lost control like teenagers sneaking out past curfew.

His hands on me.

His body pressed to mine.

The heat of him, the weight of him, the need between us. It wasn’t just lust. It was longing. Desperation. It was alive and love and promise.

I shiver at the memory, at how badly I want to feel his hands again, to hear his ragged breath, to listen to his breathless voice as he speaks, to know that we haven’t lost it all.

I miss you, Tyler. Every loving, ornery, insufferable, selfless, sexy thing about you.

“I fucking miss you.”

A knock at the door yanks me from the memory, cutting it off like a knife.

“Kate, how’s our boy?” Dr. Stiles says as he strolls in, clipboard in hand, a familiar rhythm to his steps. He begins his checks like he always does, fingers working with methodical precision, eyes scanning every number like it might whisper a secret to him.

“Oh, talkative as ever.” I deadpan, my voice light, a practiced sarcasm to keep the weight of everything from crushing me. I glance at Tyler, imagining him groaning at all the beeping and fussing around him. “When he wakes up, you’re going to wish he was sedated. Boone told me how much he hates hospitals.”

Dr. Stiles chuckles. “So I’ve heard. Dr. Williams actually worked one of his concussion protocols back when he was a bull rider.”

I blink, surprised. “Wait, really?”

He nods. “Yep. That’s why he’s been so involved. He knows the trauma Tyler’s head has been through. And from what I’ve been told, our guy here will be… quite the joy when he wakes up.”

I smirk despite myself. “That’s one word for it.”

“Speaking of waking up…” he starts, tone shifting slightly to something more lighthearted, “we’re going to begin weaning him off sedation when Dr. Williams gets in tomorrow. Our whole team will be on standby. We don’t know if he’ll wake up, or when, but there’s too much activity to ignore. It’s time to see how his body does without the meds.”

My heart stutters.

It’s happening. It’s really happening.

Even if we’re still days or weeks away from full consciousness, this is a step. This is a move toward him being okay, being better.

Please don’t let it falter.

“I already told the others,” he adds. “But I’m feeling optimistic, Kate. If you’d asked me a week ago, I’d have told you there was no chance. But now? He’s trying. I think… seeing you… might’ve had something to do with that.”

I shift in my seat. “What do you mean?”

He shrugs as he closes his tablet. “Something triggered that episode. Maybe it was you. With injuries like this, half the battle is sheer mental willpower.”

“You believe me?” I ask, quietly. “You believe he was awake?”

He nods, short and deliberate. “There’s no hard evidence, but something happened. So yes, I believe he was here. At least in some form. Now we wait.”

My stomach turns. “What if he doesn’t wake up?”

He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t sugarcoat. He just drops his tone and nails me with his stare.

“There’s always that chance. Brain injuries are unpredictable. But physically, he’s responding. And he’s got people who love him waiting. That’s powerful.”

I stare at Tyler. At the lines of his face, the deep breaths he doesn’t even know he’s taking, the healing scars and wounds that pepper him.

“I left him,” I whisper. “For almost three weeks. He’d be mad.”

“I doubt that. I think he’d understand,” Dr. Stiles says gently. “And you came back. That’s what matters.”

I nod, lips pressed tight, a single tear slipping free.

“He’s stubborn,” I whisper.

“So I’ve noticed. That might save him.”

“Yeah,” I breathe. “But he has demons too.”

He pauses, watching me as I brush my buckles against the hairs that cover Ty’s jaw. “You think he can fight them?”

My voice cracks. “He’s been fighting them his whole life.”

“Then let’s hope he’s got a bit more fight in him then.” He clears his throat thendouble-taps the bed rail. “Big day tomorrow, Kate. You should rest.” And then he’s gone, door clicking softly behind him.

I fold my arms on the mattress, resting my head against them, my cheek close to his hand. I thread my fingers through his again, rough and warm and scarred, and press a kiss to the knuckles I’ve kissed too many times to count.

“I love you,” I whisper.

The darkness of the night settles in the room like a blanket, the machines humming like lullabies. I let myself drift, wrapped in the only prayer I have left.

“Come back to us, please..,” I give his hand a squeeze. “Good night, Ty.”

Chapter Text

“Kate! Kate!”

I dispense the M&Ms into my hand, startled by the urgency in Boone’s voice. Before I can even process what’s happening, he is all but sprinting towards me, gripping my shoulders with a force that sends a jolt through my chest. His whole body is trembling as he shakes me, wide-eyed and breathless…and hopeful.

“Wha—” I start, confusion catching in my throat, but the knowing of his enthusiasm beginning to course through me.

“He’s awake! He’s awake! His eyes are open. Fuck, he’s awake!”

The words hit me like a punch to the gut, sharp, disorienting, impossible to believe, but full of the hopefulness Boone is exuding before me. My legs wobble beneath me as Boone whoops, wild with elation, grabbing my hand and dragging me with him. Inside, my mind is already spiraling in a storm of excitement and panic, my heart hammering so violently I feel it in my ears.

Tyler is awake. Holy shit.

Seven hours. It’s been seven hours since they weaned Ty off all sedatives and medications, and I’ve been living on edge ever since, caught between hope and dread. His O2 levels have stayed strong and steady, his heart rate consistent. The doctors said his other vitals were good, or at least good enough, that it’s all up to him at this point on when he wants to wake up. They placed the nasal cannula as a precaution, giving him extra oxygen in case lucidity brings on stress or panic. They’ve restrained him, too, strapping his arms to the rails so he can’t convulse, panic, or tear the wires and tubes from his body, though he’s still extremely weak.

He’s gonna hate being strapped down.

I can already see it…his frustration, his sarcasm, his stubbornness railing against the indignity of it. If prior stories of Tyler and hospitals are as true as they say, this half of the battle may be the worst part by far.

Stubborn ass.

Boone keeps dragging me down the sterile, too-bright hallway, words tumbling from him in an endless stream of excitement. I can’t make out a single one. My focus is elsewhere, already imagining those green eyes blinking open, tired, red-rimmed and confused, maybe searching for something, or someone.

Hopefully me.

my mind continues to wander to the way his brow furrows when he doesn’t understand. The smirk I’ve missed more than air. The voice that once filled the silence like sunlight breaking through clouds.

I don’t hear Boone. I don’t hear the squeak of our shoes on linoleum or the hum of the fluorescent lights above us or the chatter from nurses and doctors around us. All I hear is the echo of my own heartbeat and the whisper of a desperate, fragile hope, that flicker of hope that’s been settled deep in my soul for awhile now. 

We stop short of his door, met with a crowd gathering around it. Dr. Stiles, Dr. Williams, a nurse, Aunt Jo, Javi, and the whole Wranglers team stand clustered together. The weight of their collective anticipation hangs thick in the air, pressing down on me like summer heat. Every face reflects the same mixture of hope, fear, and exhaustion. My throat tightens as I realize my own face must mirror theirs, as the trauma from the past month settles in bone deep. This should be an exciting moment, and it is, one I’m so thankful we get to witness, but the unknown that lies ahead is terrifying. 

Dr. Stiles steps forward, his calm but firm voice slicing through the tension. “Okay everyone, I know this is exciting, and a huge milestone we weren’t sure we’d get to. He’s groggy, but lucid and awake. You have to be quiet and calm though. We have no idea what he remembers or what state he’s in inside his mind. Boone, Kate, I want you closest to the bed, Jo, you on the other side. All the rest of us will stand back, giving him space to breathe and take it all in. Dr. Williams will eventually go through a series of questions with him. If his responses are off, don’t be alarmed. Remember he’s suffered a TBI and major bodily injury. He’s been unconscious for nearly a month. Things aren’t going to be immediate or clear for him. Understood?”

We all nod, quick and silent, our voices low in a scattered chorus of agreement.

My stomach knots at the thought of him not remembering me…remembering us. 

My knees feel weak, my entire body trembling as if I’m the one about to be tested. My palms are clammy where Boone’s grip burns against them, but I don’t let go…I can’t. I don’t think I’m physically strong enough to walk alone. Surrounded by his team…no, our team, our family, is the only possible way I find the willpower to move. 

“Alright,” Dr. Stiles says softly, “let’s go see your boy.”

The words lodge in my chest, and I follow Boone and Jo inside, each step heavier than the last, the air thick and prickly, like lighting cutting through the sky. His machines hum in rhythm, monitors beeping their steady reassurance. My gaze finds him instantly, and the air leaves my lungs as an exhausted and bruised gaze meets mine.

Tyler.

Alive, breathing, and, by some miracle, awake.

The bed is angled just slightly, propping him up so he can see. My heart stutters at the sight of him. His green eyes, though heavy-lidded and ringed with bruises, shine so bright they could outmatch the machines lighting up around him. Confusion and fear carve deep lines into his features, but he’s here. He is here.

And that is all that matters.

His head is stiff, locked solid in the brace still encircling his neck. His golden brown hair falls messily across his forehead, sans where they had to shave his head for his surgery. The scar along his temple blends with the one that precisely shows where they repaired his brain bleed, reminding me of just how close we came to losing him. Monitors still tracking his brain activity. His feeding tube still proving him nutrients. His arms, one still casted, are cuffed in straps attached to the bed rails. His upper body now braced in a newer back brace, one that seems just a bit easier to move in. From this angle, the edge of his chest hair peaks out from his gown, accentuated by the adhesive patches monitoring his heart rate. His monitors and machines beat in methodical, consistent rhythm, but they no longer have to prove he’s alive because his blinks, his changing expressions, his deep chosen breaths all indicate life.

I faintly hear Jo sob as we fill the room, but my ears are pounding so loud it feels miles away. It’s not until Boone speaks up that I feel fully present in the room again.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, T! How ya feeling?” His voice is high-pitched, too loud, filled with joy that barrels straight into Tyler like a freight train.

Ty flinches, startled—no, scared.

I immediately elbow Boone, hissing under my breath, “Quiet!” The reprimand works as Boone’s grin falters for half a beat.

But Tyler…Tyler smirks.

It’s faint, barely there, but unmistakable. A flicker of the Tyler I know and love. His lips drawn just enough to show off his right dimple.

He thinks that’s funny.

My chest squeezes painfully, relief flooding through me so fast I nearly choke on it.

I love that smirk.

I manage one back at him, tentatively, but his face shifts almost immediately, confusion overtaking amusement. His brows knit, his lips press together, his eyes scan me like he’s searching for something he can’t find.

I straighten quickly, swallowing down my grin, not wanting to upset him. I step around Boone, giving Tyler a clear view of me. His gaze rakes me up and down, hesitant, uncertain, and confused. No recognition. Just fear. Just worry.

My stomach drops.

His terrified and worried expression deepens as he takes in everything and all of us. Finally, his eyes land on Jo, and I see his features soften. He recognizes her, he relates her to comfort, to solace, to home. Or maybe he’s just grateful she’s okay. If he remembers anything from the tornado, he may think they’re hurt, or worse. Seeing her could be the confirmation he needs. I hope that’s what he’s feeling.

Please let that be it.

Boone pulls up the chair closest to his bed as Dr. Williams approaches with gentle authority. “Tyler, been a long time, man. Hated to see your name on my list of patients again, but I’m glad to see you awake and alert. Can you hear me okay?”

Tyler blinks once. Slow but sure.

“Good. That’s good. You may remember this from the last time you and I got to hang out, but I have to ask you a series of questions to judge your baseline status. I need you to answer honestly. Blink once for yes, twice for no. Or do you want to try to speak?”

Tyler blinks twice, hard.

“Didn’t think so, I’m sure your throat is on fire. Would you like something to drink before we start?”

One blink.

The nurse steps forward, tipping a styrofoam cup toward him. The straw brushes his cracked lips, and he sips. It looks like the hardest task in the world, droplets slipping down his chin as his tongue moves too slowly to catch them. My chest aches at the sight.

It’s pathetic.

It’s strong.

Look at you, Ty. Hell yeah.

“Good, you ready to start these questions?”

Two blinks.

Dr. Williams chuckles softly. “Well Tyler, you know we have to do them. The quicker I can ask them, the quicker I can shut up and you don’t have to hear me.”

The faintest smirk curves Tyler’s lips. Then the most pathetic eye roll I’ve ever seen.

Welcome back, sassy Tyler.

“You ready?”

One blink.

“Good. Here we go: do you know your full name?”

One blink.

“Do you know where you are?”

Two blinks.

I cut my eyes to the doctor as he nods at Ty’s answer.

“Do you know what happened?”

Two blinks.

“Can you see me clearly?”

One blink.

“Are you in pain right now?”

One blink.

“Is your pain severe?”

Two blinks.

“Can you wiggle your fingers and toes?”

Tyler’s eyes cut from the doctor to his extremities. One finger on each hand slightly moves, followed my the briefest of curls from the toes on his right foot, and no movement in his left.

The panic in Tyler’s expression is horrid when he tosses his gaze back to the doctor.

Damn it.

“Three out of four, not bad, especially with your left leg injuries. We’ll get you there.” The doctor peers down at his screen as he takes notes on Tyler’s answers.

I watch Tyler’s chest rise and fall too quickly as he internally rationalizes not being able to move his left leg.

“We’re gonna go around the room. Do you recognize the guy sitting next to you?”

One blink.

“Do you recognize the woman to your right?”

Tyler looks at Jo. One blink.

“How about me, do you remember me?”

One blink.

Dr. Williams huffs a laugh. “Thank you, Mr. Owens, I’m flattered.”

Another slight smirk.

Half the battle is mental.

Half the battle is emotional.

Come on, Ty.

“Do you know her?” I feel the doctor point to me and my skin runs cold, waiting for his response. Ty glares at me, his brows knit in confusion once more, his lips press into a fine line of thought, as if he’s trying hard to recall something or make sense of it. This is not at all how he looked at me before his seizure.

The air leaves my lungs as I slowly realize.

Two…slow…blinks.

Fuck.

I feel my tears well as Boone and team sneak glances my way. Dr. Stiles clears his throat at Ty’s response as Dr. Williams continues. “That’s alight. Like I said, somethings take time. How about these guys? You know them?”

He blinks once as he scans the wranglers. Then his exhausted gaze lands on Javi. If I didn’t know any better he offers Javi a look of disgust before blinking twice.

“Okay, so you know your aunt, you know Boone, you know the wranglers, but you don’t know Kate,” he points to me again, “or Javi”, he redirects his direction to him, “correct?”

One blink.

But I almost miss it as the tears blur my vision.

He knew me. Four days ago he knew me and now he doesn’t. How is this possible?

“Alright Tyler. Do you know what you do for a living?”

Tyler’s gaze nervously follows the room, scanning it, seemingly looking for an answer.

He obviously knows he’s a storm chaser since he knows them, right?

One blink.

“Are you a storm chaser?”

Two blinks.

What?

“No? Are you sure?”

One blink.

The doctor notes his response. “Are you bull rider?”

One blink.

It’s our turn to share gazes of confusion.

How does he know the team if he still thinks he’s a bull rider?

“You sure?”

Tyler blinks once as he huffs a sigh and his heart rate ticks up. His chest begins to rise and fall in rapid succession. He’s agitated and annoyed.

He’s scared.

Dr. Williams softens his tone. “Alright. That’s all the questions I have right now, Tyler. Would you like some company or do you want us to leave?”

Tyler’s bloodshot eyes lock onto Boone, desperate, pleading.

Only Boone.

Boone and no one else.

Fuck.

Chapter Text

The first thing I’m aware of is the weight. Heaviness everywhere, pulling down on my chest, pressing deep into my ribs, holding me under, suffocating me in the depths of this endless void. My body feels like it’s been welded to the bed. My eyelids weigh heavy and burn with dryness. Breathing feels like the hardest of tasks, as if I'm trying to pull air through a straw.

I know, for a fact, I'm not dead. Though for a long time, I thought I was.
There’s no sense of time here, no real way to knowing how long has passed. The darkness has been so thick, so endless, it felt alive. I've drifted in it, sometimes hearing sounds, sometimes nothing. Sometimes a voice...a soft, faint voice, steady as a tether. I recall hands brushing over mine. I tried to reach it, clawing my way toward that sound, that touch, only to sink back under again.

But now...light.

Too much damn light.

And noise. A hum, a beep, a steady rhythm, mixed with shuffling feet and hushed voices that seem to fill the space around the conscious version of me. My chest burns, my throat’s raw like I swallowed glass...hell, maybe I did. I try to move, but it's futile, and what little motion I can muster is stopped by something tugging at my arms. I’m strapped down. 

Fucking hospitals.

Panic spikes, jagged and violent, until I force my eyes open. The world slams into focus in fragments as I blink through burning and blurred vision. White walls. Machines beeping. A ceiling that isn’t familiar.

And faces.

Too many faces.

Fear rips its way up my throat before I even register who they are. My pulse kicks hard against my ribs, every beat sharp and painful in my skull. My vision blurs, then clears again, as I try to take in the many eyes staring at me. To my right I hear a sob, but it's who's to my left that steals my focus.

As my gaze settles on Boone, he shouts, “Welcome back to the land of the living, T! How ya feeling?”

His voice crashes into me, screeching and violent. I flinch, the sound slicing through the fragile tether holding me steady. My body jolts before I can stop it, neck caught by the brace clamping me still. For a second, I think I might pass out again as the pain radiates through every inch of me like a wave.

Damn you Boone.

Then I see her elbow him, telling him to be quiet.

Her.

Who is she?

My lips twitch into something I barely recognize as a smirk, because she looks so pissed at Boone’s volume, like she’s been keeping him in line this whole time. That’s funny. She seems like a spitfire for sure.

Wait, did Boone get a girlfriend? 

Her worried lips curve back at me, and for a second, my chest loosens. For a second, I think—yeah. I know her. But the recognition slips away like water through my fingers. I blink again, harder this time, trying to force the picture into place. Her face is clear, but the connection isn’t. Something deep is telling me she's not a stranger, but my brain won’t give me the memory.

God, why can’t I remember?

I give up on the recollection as my eyes drift to Jo, and something inside me steadies. Jo. That’s safe. That’s home. The panic softens for the briefest moment.

Then the doctor starts talking.

“Tyler, been a long time, man…”

I know the routine before he explains it. I remember this part clear as day...the questions, the blinking, the humiliating test of being trapped in your own body. My throat screams when he offers the option to talk, so I give him two certain blinks.

Hell no.

Would I like water? 

Hell yes.

One blink.

The nurse lifts a straw to my lips, and I drink, if you can even call it that. My tongue doesn’t work right, droplets sliding down my chin like I’m some helpless invalid. It kills me inside, but I suck down every bit I can manage. It feels like heaven against my raw throat.

I want to curse just to feel my voice again.

The doctor keeps talking, and as I knew, the questions start.

Have I mentioned I hate hospitals?

“Do you know your full name?”

One blink. Yeah. Tyler James Owens. Still me.

“Do you know where you are?”

Two blinks. Really, doc? How would I know that?

“Do you know what happened?”

Two blinks again, and based on my physical state, I'm pretty glad I don't.

“Can you see me clearly?”

One blink. Unfortunately. Looking old buddy.

“Are you in pain?”

One blink.

“Is it severe?”

Two blinks. Not severe. Just…constant. Deep. Like every nerve in my body’s been twisted...or lit on fire, maybe both.

“Can you wiggle your fingers and toes?”

I fight for it as I drift my gaze from my right to left hand. My right index finger twitches in the cast...a pathetic and miniscule movement, as does my left. My left toes refuse, stubborn and dead, but the right gives me the briefest curl.

Why won't my left move?

No no no no no. This can't happen.

I internally spiral as I realize my effort is not enough. It’s never enough.

I cut my eyes back to the doctor, panic burning hot and acid in my veins. Don’t you dare tell me this is it. Don’t you dare.

“Three out of four, not bad…”

Not bad. Really, doc? Bullshit. 

The room blurs again, my skin crawling with too many eyes watching.

“Do you recognize the guy sitting next to you?”

Boone. One blink. That’s easy. 

“The woman to your right?”

Jo. Another blink. Home.

“How about me?”

One blink. Yeah, unfortunately...asshole.

Then he points to the blonde standing next to Boone.

“Do you know her?”

The world goes still.

Her again. Her image makes welcomed emotions fire within me, but I also feel anger. Is it anger towards her? Maybe...or maybe it's towards the situation I'm in and the fact that I can't remember.

Who in the hell is she and why is she standing here looking so damned concerned?

I glare and squint, trying to force my memory to cooperate. My brows pull so tight they ache. She looks back at me, hopeful and scared, her large brown eyes shining like she already knows the answer.

Come on, Owens. Say yes. You know her. You have to.

But nothing comes. No name. No memory. Just a gut-deep certainty that I should know her, and the crushing shame that I don’t.

Two slow blinks.

I hear her breath catch and my chest cracks with the sound of disappointment.

There you go, Ty, disappointing someone else. You're a professional at this point.

Fuck.

The doctor keeps moving, but I barely hear him.

Wranglers. One blink. Yeah, I know them, though I can't really place the how.

Then some guy named Javi. My gaze catches on him, and something ugly flashes—resentment? Anger? I don’t know why, but it’s there. 

Two blinks. Yeah, screw that guy. 

The doc switches gears to questions about my career.

“Do you know what you do you do for a living?”

Professional bull rider, duh. One blink.

My attention adverts from the doctor to her. She’s crying. I can see the tears clearly, but I also feel them. Like I failed her. Like I’m breaking something I didn’t even know I had. I close my lids as my chest tightens. Images flicker. Rodeo dust. Arena lights. A bull’s shadowy flank. My body remembers before my mind does, the adrenaline, the eight seconds stretched into forever. I let the recollection settle deep as I open my eyes again.

“Are you a storm chaser?”

Two blinks. No. Hell no. 

“You sure?”

One blink. Certain.

The air shifts. Uneasy. Wrong.

Am I a storm chaser?

“Are you a bull rider?”

One blink. Relief floods me. Yes. That’s me. That’s what I know.

“You sure?”

Another solid blink, stubborn and insistent this time. Yes, I’m sure.

My chest heaves, breaths falling too shallow, my heart racing too fast, anger seeping it's way into every crevice of my body. I’m trapped in this bed, strapped down, with everyone watching me with pure pity. I can't stand it.

The doctor finally stops as he registers my angst.

“Would you like some company, or do you want us to leave?”

My eyes cut to Boone. My lifeline. My brother. My anchor when the world doesn’t make sense. He's been here through everything.

Only Boone.

Please, God, only Boone.

One by one, they shuffle out of the room, her included, leaving me and Boone alone in silence. When I finally meet his gaze as he settles into the chair next to me, I'm met with his haunted and exhausted expression. And that tells me all I need to know. Whatever happened, and for whatever reason I'm here, I'm in deep, deep shit.

As I advert my stare from him back towards my feet, the one that works, and the one that doesn't, my lids fall heavy, pulling me into a restless and haunting night of sleep and nightmares. I dream of my dad and his abuse and of the day he killed my mom, successfully tearing our family apart. The memory unconsciously ignites a version of me that I'm certain I tried to bury a long, long time ago, but this time I think I'll let him and the pinned-up anger win.

Chapter Text

It’s the weight and light that pull me from my unconscious world again. Before I open my eyes to this god forsaken room, I let my recent nightmares bounce around in my mind, the remnants of them seem to cause a physical pain in my head..or maybe it’s the head injury itself. As I recall them in my lucid state I feel my skin prick and the temperature within me rise with anger. Anxiety and hatred flood me as I open my eyes to take in the sterile prison I’m locked in.

I must’ve slept through the night, because early morning hues of blue and purple are filtering through the window. It’s still. It’s peaceful…or it would be if it weren’t for the obnoxious machines surrounding me.

I wonder what day it is? How long have I been here? what actually happened to me?

I get the answer to one of those questions when I stare at the patient chart board on the wall at the foot of my bed.

June 28, 2024.

What the hell?

Something is not adding up.

I try to read the rest of the scratch, but it’s almost ineligible. My name…

My age…

Thirty-one?! No fucking way. Not a chance.

A list of injuries, some I can make out some I can’t.

As I try to rationalize that it was a bull riding accident, I realize such an incident probably wouldn’t lead to my apparent long list of injuries, though, I guess, not impossible. With my neck immobile I try to sum up the injuries I can see. My right arm is casted, broken. My neck is obviously severely injured, as is my spine since I’m braced from my shoulders to my waist. I feel a dull stabbing pain in my right shoulder, very similar that time the bull gored me in the chest…

Wait…I was severely injured that time too.

This isn’t the same.

Didn’t I quit bull riding after that?

No, no. That doesn’t make sense. I still ride. That’s why Boone is here.

Boone.

I turn my attention from counting injuries to where he was sitting last night. He’s still there slumped in the chair, fast asleep, his breaths even and deep. I want to wake him so he can explain to me what exactly is going on, but I’ve never seen him look so exhausted as he did last night, so I stay quiet, not that I have a voice to wake him with anyway.

I let my gaze drift back to my legs, where I try once more to wiggle my left toes. Nothing. I register then that though I can’t move them, I can feel the cast surrounding my entire left leg, so that means something, I guess. I take in the scrapes and fresh scars surrounding the IV on my left arm.

What in the hell happened?

My eyes flutter shut and I feel myself drift before a noise jolts me awake. A nurse walks in to check my machines and I offer a futile attempt at clearing my throat to get her attention. It works.

“Oh Mr. Owens, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to wake you. Just had to check a few things. Do you need anything?”

I blink once.

“Water?”

Another blink.

“I got it.” Boone’s groggy voice cuts her off as he stirs and grabs the cup on the tray, holding the straw to my mouth. It’s clumsy and down right embarrassing, but I welcome cool liquid against the metaphorical razor blades in my esophagus. My pride shrivels as the water drops down my chin, but throat is begging for it.

When he pulls the cup away, I muster the energy to try for words. Scraping out of me like gravel, I ask “how bad?”, in a volume no more than a whisper.

Boone’s expression turns horrid and serious, a look I’ve rarely, if ever, seen on him. He cuts his eyes to the nurse to my right as he opens his mouth to speak.

She cuts him off, “I’ll leave you two to talk, just give me a couple of minutes to check everything. “Since you’re awake, Tyler, how’s your pain? Are you comfortable?”

“It hurts…but,” I swallow the shards, “I’m, I’m comforta—“ a wheezed cough escapes me, cutting off my words and immediately replacing the “comfort” I was feeling. Pain radiates my lungs and my chest and my bones. She places a hand on my collar bone, obviously avoiding whatever injury is affecting my right shoulder.

“Ow, fuck” I grimace, growling mostly to myself.

“It’s okay, Tyler, you don’t have to speak. You’ve been through a lot. Breathe deep.”

I catch my breath and focus back on her as she adjusts my pillow and pulls down the collar of my gown to check the adhesive on my wires. She also pulls it past my right shoulder to check what I’m assuming is gauze or something.

“That’s looking good. Almost healed after all the repairs. You sure you’re good after that cough?”

I blink once.

“Okay then. Everything looks as good as it can. I’m glad to see that shoulder looking better after the infection. Take it easy. Well round back through in an hour to administer meds, okay?”

What infection?

She lightly taps my casted arm then leaves me and Boone to talk.

I focus back on him and rasp slowly “how bad, Boone?”

He straightens, “bad T. Real bad.”

I deadpan him, silently willing him to elaborate.

“They told me not to stress you out.”

I swallow hard, wincing at the rawness, “not knowing…” I catch my breath, “is..stressing me..”

He nods, “okay T, okay, I get it. Fine. You died, man. Technically four times. That’s why your chest is so fucked, from all the compressions, on top of the injuries. You..” his voice falters, “y-you have a TBI, broken neck, obliterated left leg, internal bleeding..they fixed that, don’t worry, your shoulder was impaled by rebar…that was the infection she’s talking about..”

I feel my eyes growing wide as he continues the list of things that definitely should’ve killed me.

“… you weren’t supposed to wake up, T. They had you at a near zero chance of living, especially when you got pneumonia. Then you had a major seizure and that made it worse, or so they thought. But since then you kept showing signs of brain and physical activity. That was five days ago… yesterday was when they decided to wake you up…and now we’re here.”

I clear my throat, “how?”

“They want you to recall that in due time, T.”

“Boone.”

“Tornado…an EF5 hit Joplin…hit your aunt’s place, swept you away Ty.”

What. The. Fuck.

The word tornado sparks something jagged in my head. Noise. Wind. Dirt pelting my skin. Then it’s gone again. My fists clench weakly against the restraints, frustration rising hot and fast.

“Don’t,” Boone says quickly, his voice steady. “Don’t push it, T. Docs said it’ll come back on its own. Just give it time.”

Time.

That’s all anyone ever says when they don’t know if shit’s gonna work out.

Fuck this.

Before I can interrogate him about more details the door opens and she steps in with a to-go box and a coffee.

Nausea hits me in a wave as I think about solid food, and confusion and anger follow immediately after as the sight of her makes me bristle.

She’s still here. Why?

She looks at Boone first. Softening her exhausted expression with a subtle smile, she speaks and I absorb her sugary voice in my mind.

“Figured you’d want some breakfast better than what the hospital has to offer.” She holds out the items to where Boone sits.

“You figured right, Kate. The stuff they’ve been feeding my us tastes like cardboard.”

Kate…

Kate…

No recollection.

“Hope you like it, Lilly and I found it early this morning on the hunt for coffee.”

Boone digs into the wrapped up burrito and takes a bite as I mentally try to figure out why Kate is buddies with Lilly.

Her eyes cut from Boone to me then, and she offers another welcoming and soft smile, one that says I pity you, I feel sorry for you.

I don’t need pity, Kate.

“Hey Ty,” she addresses me in a soft and caring tone, “how you feeling?”

The way she shortens my name makes my blood boil. Not because it’s wrong, but because it feels too right, too familiar. Like I should know her. Like we have history I can’t remember. And that empty space inside me burns with the reminder that I don’t.

I hate it.

“Fine.” The word comes out rasped, sharp, clipped, and louder than anything I’ve said thus far to Boone.

She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look away. She just nods like she expected it, offering a whispered “that’s good.”

Boone’s halfway through his burrito when he interrupts mine and Kate’s stare off. “Ya know, she’s been here the whole damn time, man. Month straight. Barely left your side, what time she wasn’t here she was back at your ranch, taking care of it for you.”

“Boone!” She scolds him at his admittance.

I freeze as my eyes cut back to her, disbelief crashing into me.

A fucking month?!

She meets my stare, steady, and even.

“Why?” The word scrapes out, low and rough, and definitely angry.

Her lips part. For a second, she looks like she might break. But she says it anyway. “Because I wanted to be.”

Wanted to be.

The words twist the knife.

At her confession, something ugly rips up inside me, anger, fear, shame, all tangled into one.

“You don’t even know me.” The words tear out before I can stop them, sharp and cruel.

Boone freezes mid-bite at my words, glancing between us. “T…”

“Don’t,” I snap, my voice raw. My heart races, the monitor beeping faster. I glare at her, the fury burning hotter the longer she looks at me like I matter. “Don’t stand there acting like this makes sense. You’re lookin’ at me like I’m supposed to remember you. But I don’t. I don’t know you.”

Her eyes shine, but she doesn’t back down.

That only makes it worse.

“Stop pretending,” I rasp, venom thick in my throat. “Stop acting like you mean something to me. Because you don’t. You’re nothing. You’re a stranger, and I don’t know why you’re here.”

Her lips tremble, and for a second I see the tears she’s fighting back. It should stop me. It should shut me up. But it doesn’t.

“Leave.” My voice is sharp as broken glass. “Don’t come back.”

The silence that follows is brutal.

Boone’s staring at me like I just ruined my life. Kate swallows, blinks fast, and nods once. Then she folds in on herself, and turns and walks out, defeated and broken.

The door clicks shut, and something in me collapses.

But instead of regret, all I feel is the fire. The anger. The same anger I lived in after Dad killed Mom and ruined our family. That black, choking rage that’s safer than pain.

Boone’s voice cuts through the silence, low and dangerous. “What the fuck, Tyler?”

He never uses my full name.

I snap my eyes to him, fury spilling over. “Don’t start.”

“No, you don’t get to pull that shit.” He sets his coffee down hard. “She’s been here every damn day. She fought for you, prayed for you, sat through your seizure, every scare, watched you fucking die, multiple times. And you just—” He shakes his head, disgusted. “You just tore her apart.”

“She has no business being here,” I bite out, chest heaving.

“The hell she doesn’t!” Boone’s voice rises, sharp enough to sting. “You think I don’t know you? You think I can’t see what you’re doin’? You’re scared, so you’re lashin’ out.” He leans into me, locking his eyes to mine, and I know glare I give him fully tells the anger I feel inside. “There he is. The mean son of a bitch I remember from back then. Thought maybe you’d outgrown him.”

I swallow hard, but I don’t break the stare. The words hit like a fist. I bare my teeth, anger snapping. “Maybe he’s all that’s left, but it’s better than lettin’ some stranger sit here, actin’ like she knows me. Better than lyin’ to myself about something that ain’t there!”

Boone stares at me, eyes hard. “She ain’t a stranger. But if that’s how you feel you don’t deserve her anyway.”

“She is to me, and I’m glad we agree” I growl.

He leans back in his chair, voice steady, almost deadly. “She’s the reason you’re alive right now. She is the one who found you. And you just told her to walk out.”

I dart my eyes away, jaw clenched so tight it aches down into my neck. My chest feels like it’s going to split open, but I can’t let it show.

“I don’t want her here,” I rasp, the words low, final. “I don’t want her comin’ back.”

The silence after is thick and suffocating.

Boone exhales, long and heavy. “You’re a damn fool.”

Maybe I am. But right now, the anger feels safer than the hollow ache she leaves behind. Safer than admitting I want to know her. Safer than admitting I think already do, somewhere deep down.

So I hold on to the fire and anger.

Because if I let it go, I’ll drown.

Chapter Text

I don’t remember leaving the room. One second I’m staring at him in utter disbelief and betrayal, fighting every ounce of my being not to fall apart, and the next I’m in the hallway with the sterile scent of disinfectant crawling into my nose, making my chest and eyes burn worse than his words already did. The door clicks shut behind me and it’s like the sound splinters through my bones, as if it’s the final nail in the metaphorical coffin, leaving me brittle, like glass on the edge of shattering. I force one foot in front of the other, the hall stretching endlessly before me, and I swear if anyone looks at me too long, I’ll come undone right here in the middle of the ICU.

The world outside his door feels both too quiet and too loud. Machines beep from other rooms, nurses shuffle past with clipboards and IV bags, and I can’t seem to breathe through the thick hollow weight pressing against my lungs. Everyone bustling past me is completely unaware of the things the man I love just said to me. He doesn’t remember me. Not my voice, not my face, not a single thing we’ve shared. But it’s not that that hurts. It’s the anger. The way his green eyes shadowed with darkness and fear as he looked at me—like I’d trespassed on something sacred. Like I was the intruder in a life I thought I was a part of. That person in there isn’t Tyler…at least not the Tyler I know.

Memories of him telling me about his past flood me, and for the first time since I met him, I’m scared to know him.

What if this is the old him? And what if the version I know of him never comes back?

Fuck.

My legs carry me blindly, and before I know it, I’ve stumbled into a waiting lounge tucked away from the main hallway. The fluorescent light buzzes overhead, casting everything in a pale, merciless glow. I collapse into one of the stiff chairs, the kind that digs into your back no matter how you sit, and press my trembling hands against my face. My skin is cold and clammy, but my chest is on fire, every breath a painful pull.

He told me to leave. He told me I’m nothing.

I’ve sat at his side for days, whispering prayers into the dark, holding his hand when the machines screamed, watching him fight for life, and he…he doesn’t want me here.

This isn’t him. It can’t be.

One of many tears slide hot down my cheek, and then another, and then it’s impossible to stop them. I bow my head, shoulders curling in, and let the pain engulf me because I can’t hold it back anymore. I thought I was ready for this, ready for the possibility that he wouldn’t remember, ready for the heartbreak. But the reality of it cuts so much deeper. I thought love, or whatever fragile, breaking thing it is between us, would be strong enough to bridge the gap. But it feels like I’m standing on one side of a canyon, screaming his name, and he’s on the other side, turning his back. I just never expected such cruelty and isolation from a man I only know to be selfless and warm.

And still, God help me, I can’t hate him.

That would be unfair. I don’t hate him. I hate the situation and what it’s done to him.

Done to us.

His words repeat over and over, ripping through me like shrapnel. His cold, foreign glare made me feel like a stranger in the very place I fought to belong, but I could see it. The sorrow in his eyes. The confusion. The fear he’s too proud to admit. He’s drowning in it. I’ve never seen Tyler scared, not like that, but El Reno was really close. And part of me wants to run back in there, grab his hand, and tell him I’ll never leave, no matter how many times he pushes me away because I see him, I see his fear, and he doesn’t have to do it alone. But I can’t. Not right now. Because if I go back in, and he says it again, this time the words won’t just cut but they’ll sever what’s left, and I don’t think I’ll survive it.

I know I won’t.

I think about the nights in his hospital room, when I’d sit in that uncomfortable chair, and I’d trace the lines of his face with my eyes, memorizing every angle and scar like I could will him back to me. I think about the sound of his heart monitor, steady and stubborn, proof that he was still fighting even when everyone else told us to prepare for the worst. I think about the way his hand twitched when I held it, and how I know it meant he knew I was there. When he looked at me before his seizure, he knew me. And now, after everything, after all the nights I begged God not to take him from me, he looks me in the eyes and says I’m nothing. Penetrates me with his cold green gaze like I’m a stranger inconveniencing his life.

Maybe I am, especially if he thinks he’s the old Tyler.

My throat aches, and I press my fist against my mouth to stifle the sob that threatens to echo in the quiet lounge. A couple of nurses walk by the open doorway, their voices hushed but full of a life I feel completely cut off from. It’s cruel, the way the world keeps turning while mine feels like it’s unraveling piece by piece. This has been one big, never ending nightmare, one that repeats over and over that I can’t escape from.

Damnit Ty..

I don’t know how long I sit there, curled into myself, chest tight and vision blurred. Time is meaningless at this point. Minutes, hours, it all blends together in the same crushing stillness. Eventually, my tears slow, leaving behind the hollow ache of exhaustion, swollen red eyes, and a throat gasping for air. I drag my palms across my face, not caring that my skin is blotchy and raw, throwing my head back to stare at the ceiling.

I could stay in this room forever and pretending nothing exists, outside of me and my own damn thoughts.

I could go back to him to convince him he does know me.

Or I could run, taking care of myself and protecting my battered heart.

I want to believe he’ll remember. I want to believe the man I love is still buried somewhere inside the broken body in that bed. But right now, I’m terrified. Because what if he doesn’t? What if the Tyler who held me through storms, who teased me until I laughed even when I swore I wouldn’t, who kissed me like the world could end any second, what if that Tyler is gone for good? And all that’s left is the man who told me to leave? The angry, broken, tired man that I’ve never known?

I’d love him through it, if he’d let me.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and it jolts me from my thoughts, the sound too sharp in the silence of this void. Lilly. I almost don’t answer, but I’m not strong enough to be completely alone with this.

My voice is broken when I whisper, “Hey.”

Her concern pours through the line instantly. “Kate? Where are you?”

“In the waiting lounge in ICU,” I manage, swallowing hard.

“What happened?”

My chest caves a little more as I force the words out. “He…he told me to leave.”

Silence stretches on the other end, then her soft, steady voice “I’m coming.”

I don’t know what I’ll do when she gets here. I don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow, or the day after, or when I have to face him again. But I know one thing for certain, I love him, but I’m so damn tired of fighting.

Selfish. He’s had to fight to even live.

As I wait for Lilly, I let the weight of his words settle into me like a storm. I’ll let it hurt tonight. And tomorrow, I’ll figure out my next steps, a way to care for myself with that glimmer of hope still ignited.  Because no matter what he says, I can’t leave him behind. Not when he’s still breathing. Not when my heart refuses to stop knowing him, even if his doesn’t know me. Even if his doesn’t want to.

The door creaks open softly about ten minutes later, and Lilly steps in like she’s entering a room made of glass. She sees me hunched forward in the chair, arms wrapped around my stomach, and for the first time since all of this started, she breaks. She doesn’t wear the steady, cheerful mask she’s kept glued on through every doctor’s meeting and sleepless night. No brave face. Just heartbreak…for me.

She crosses the room in two quick strides and drops to her knees in front of me. “Oh, Kate,” she whispers, wrapping her arms around me before I can even speak. And I fold.

I bury my face in her shoulder, letting out a strangled sound that doesn’t even resemble words. Her arms tighten as I finally sob for real—ugly, shaking sobs that tear from my chest like I’ve been holding them in for years, not just hours. My whole body trembles with the weight of it, like everything I’ve carried has finally split me down the center. It feels like the morning he flatlined for the fourth time all over again.

I can’t fucking do this.

“He looked me in the eye,” I whisper hoarsely, “and told me I was nothing.”

Lilly’s hands rub slow circles on my back, grounding me as I fall apart. “I’m so sorry,” she murmurs. “I know that wasn’t him. He doesn’t mean it.”

“But it is him, Lilly.” I pull back slightly, staring past her shoulder at the cold, empty wall. “It’s him in that bed. It’s his voice, his face, his eyes, and none of it knows me. None of it remembers me. He looked at me like I was invading his life. And I can’t…I don’t know how to stand in that room and be nothing to him. It may not be the Tyler I know, but it is him, the old him, the version who hasn’t buried his demons.”

She sits back on her heels, brushing my hair out of my face. “He told you?”

I nod fiercely, “I know about his dad, and the wreck, and who he turned into after..”

She cups my shoulders, “You’re not nothing. You hear me?” Her voice is firm, sharp in the way only someone who loves you can get. “You are the reason he’s still here, Kate. When Tyler’s not in control, when he’s scared, he shuts down, he lashes out. It’s not fair and it’s not right, but he’s spent the past decade building a life he can control, one that excites him, one that takes up so much space that his demons can’t fit. It’s why he can’t sit still, but now, now all he has is time to do is stew and think and grow angry. He can probably tell you’re something important, and if he thinks he’s that old version of himself, then he’s pushing you away to protect you, no matter if he knows you or not. That version of himself never let anyone in, because he was at least considerate enough to know what a piece of shit he was. That version of himself didn’t know feelings, and if he did he suppressed them, offering up nothing but some hotheaded, selfish, soulless version of himself.”

I nod because I know she’s right, and I see what he’s doing, and even the why behind it. But I also know that love isn’t enough if it’s only flowing in one direction. I know what it feels like to pour yourself into someone and get emptiness back.

“I just—” I wipe at my cheeks with the heel of my hand, “I need to breathe again. Just for a little while. I thought I was strong enough to stay through whatever this was going to be, but I didn’t expect him to look me in the face and hate me for being here.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Lilly says quietly. “He’s just scared.”

“I know.” My voice cracks on it. “I saw it in his eyes, just for a second. He’s drowning and trying to claw at anything that might keep him from going under. But I can’t be the punching bag while he finds his way. Not while I’m still bleeding too. Plus if he doesn’t know me, then I may never be his solace again”

Lilly reaches for the box of tissues on the table. I take one gratefully and blow my nose, mortified at how broken I feel. She sits next to me then, shoulder to shoulder, her presence grounding even though we don’t speak for a while. Just silence. The kind that doesn’t demand anything.

After a long stretch of stillness, I whisper, “I think I need to leave.”

Her head turns. “What do you mean?”

I shake my head slowly. “I need to leave…maybe go back to New York for awhile. We are out sponsors and I never got to submit the data from our last few chases. It’s give me time to breathe and him space to heal…”I stare down at my hands. “I think I need to go back, at least for a while. I still have a life there…”

She doesn’t say anything right away. Doesn’t try to talk me out of it. She just nods once, solemn and understanding.

“Do you want me to come with you? At least to pack or something?” she asks.

I smile, barely. “No. I think I need to do this part alone.”

She laces her fingers with mine and squeezes. “Okay. But, Kate, you’ve gotta come back at some point. We need you. We want you here..even Tyler, though he doesn’t know it yet.”

I don’t respond right away because I don’t know if I believe that. I want to. I want to believe that some day he’ll see me and something inside him will just click. That his eyes will soften and he’ll whisper my name like it means something again. That the memories we made, all the storms, the banter, the close calls, the vulnerability, will rush back to him like floodwaters, that he will heal and overcome this broken version of himself.

But right now, all I have is the echo of his rasped voice saying, you’re nothing.

And it’s going to take me time to unhear it.

“I’ll pack tonight,” I say, voice flat. “Get a flight out tomorrow or something.”

Lilly nods again. “Do you want to say goodbye?”

My chest twists. I don’t know. I really don’t, but I really need to.

“Yeah” I finally whisper. “If he doesn’t remember me, then maybe goodbye wouldn’t mean anything anyway, but it will to me.”

She nods, even though her throat works like she’s trying not to cry. “Okay.” Then she throws her arms around me in a hug.

—-

I stare at his door, now regretting this decision in its entirety, but the reality is, we do have unfinished work, and if I can’t be of use here then I can at least get caught up on all the things we’re behind on. Chase season is over for us, but the data, and the review board, and the sponsors are still waiting. Not to mention, back in New York I’m far away from small town southern news and the possibility of having to release statements. I can just put my head down and work, so that’s what I’ll do.

I push the door open quietly hoping to find Boone. I’m not here to tell Ty directly, but Boone, being the only company he wants, needs to know, in case he does remember or start questioning more. My stomach lurches when I’m met with an empty chair and a cold green gaze.

Shit.

“I’m sorry Ty..ler. I was looking for Boone, I’ll go.”

He doesn’t move, he just stares, with a look of pure confusion and anger. I hold his gaze, willing this stare off to be the moment it all comes back to him.

But it isn’t.

“I thought I told you to leave?” His voice is gravelly, and still not quite his to own.

The tears prick once more at his harshness, “y-you did…I am…that’s why I’m here. I was coming to tell Boone I’m leaving.”

It’s his next words that catch me off guard, as his face softens a fraction, “where you going?”

If I’m nothing to you then why does it matter?

I sniff back my emotions, “um..New York.”

He huffs an unnerving laugh as he rolls his eyes.

“What’s funny, Tyler?” I bite back.

Two can play this game.

“New York…proof you and I have no relation at all.”

“Excuse me?” I nearly gasp at whatever shallow angle he’s using to approach this topic.

“People like you and people like me don’t co-mingle. It doesn’t work out, big city life versus small town nobody, with a dickhead personality.”

My heart cracks at his words, both hopeful and pained, as I realize he’s trying to rationalize who I am but also note defense and self degrading tone.

Lilly’s right, this is fear.

At least he’s self aware enough to know he’s being an insufferable ass.

He continues, “what’s in New York?”

“Work…our work , Tyler. Our team’s work, and the future of it.”

The snuffed anger ignites in his gaze again, “what in the hell are you talking about?”

“Tyler…I..”

“Hey Kate!” Boone’s voice cuts in from behind me as he steps in, “you and T made up yet?” I let him step through the door back to his seat. “Sorry, what’d I miss? Had to get something more caffeine to get me through the day.”

Tyler’s the first to speak, his tone shrouded in fresh disdain, “City Girl here was just leaving. Going to New York she said.”

My chest lurches.

He doesn’t even realize how important that nickname is, doesn’t even realize what he’s saying.

Boone stops mid-drink of his soda and turns his shocked gaze towards me, as he sits it down. “What? Why?”

“You know why Boone, plus I’m of no use here.”

I flit my gaze to Tyler to get a read on his expression.

Nothing.

I’m certain I see tears in Boone’s eyes when I focus back on him, “Kate that’s not true.”

“You know it is Boone, you know how this was supposed to go. I just stopped in to say goodbye. I’m of better use up there.”

He stands abruptly and hovers over Tyler, shaking his head, anger now fueling his words, “a fucking fool.”

“Boone,” I plead with him, and he turns to follow me out of the room. I let him pass in his angry stooper, and turn back to Tyler before shutting the door, “goodbye Ty.” I whisper, meeting his gaze once more. In response he says nothing, his expression neutral, but he doesn’t slightly wave his fingers on his left hand.

The same ones that told me ‘I love you’ days prior.

Fuck. This is going to hurt.

As the door latches, I turn and am met with Boone’s pleading eyes. “You can’t go, Kate. You just can’t.”

“I have to Boone. I’m of no use here, especially when he doesn’t want me. The least I can do is get our research back in order and start hunting down new head sponsors since Javi dumped ours.”

“He did what?”

“A story for another time but it was for the sake of saving Ty so you can’t be mad.”

“Fine. Will you come back?”

“Eventually, maybe next season or something. I don’t know. I just really need to give him space and clear my head and think and all of the above and I can’t do that here.”

Boone throws himself in a hug around me, “he’s gonna regret this, Kate. But I understand. Be safe?”

I embrace him and nod against his shoulder, “I will Boone, I promise. Take care of him, and take care of yourself. I’ll be sure to check in and give some updates. Don’t hold this against him, he doesn’t realize what he’s doing.”

“He’s still a fucking idiot.” Boone growls, and I bark a laugh at the irony of it all.

Chapter Text

“Come on Tyler, take another step.”

For six weeks, this place has put me through a worse hell than the one I was in when I couldn’t wake up.

It’s a different kind of torture, awake now, feeling everything, remembering nothing that matters. Every second stretches like an open wound. The smell of antiseptic, the fluorescent hum, the pitying glances, they all grate against my nerves until my skin feels too tight for my body.

“I can’t fucking walk, doc. Sorry not gonna happen.”

The words come out sharp, venom-coated, because they have to. Because if I don’t keep the anger burning, I’ll crumble under the weight of how broken I am.

At least that still works. Anger. Sarcasm. Those are the only things that still feel like me.

A group of nurses surround me, manually moving my legs as I use the parallel bars and harness to balance. Literally everything except my own volition is doing the work for me — the nurses, the harness, the physical therapist, my neurologist…oh, and Boone signed me up for a psych therapist at the recommendation of Dr. Williams because my mood swings are out of line.

I’m sure the brain injury and physical trauma have absolutely nothing to do with it.

So sorry I almost died and now my entire life and body is fucked.

The bitterness in my mind startles me sometimes. I don’t mean to lash out, but I can’t stop. It’s the only thing keeping the panic from swallowing me whole, but sometimes this asshole I’ve become since I woke up feels so foreign…so wrong. Like there’s a better version of me than this and I just can’t figure out how to find him.

I continue to strain against the bars, mentally willing my left leg to move, but it won’t. Nothing but pain and pin pricks radiate from my ankle to my spine. Couple that with the pain in the rest of my body and this godforsaken neck brace, and I’m just about ready to give up.

Boone insists I can’t, but he won’t tell me the why.

My fingers dig into the cold metal of the bars so hard they ache. I’d rather die than admit how terrified I am in these moments… more often than not I wish I hadn’t woke up. Every jolt of pain feels like lightning under my skin, cruel, relentless, mocking me for surviving.

Dr. Stiles stands at the end of the bars, next to some ortho specialist who is convinced it’s not paralysis. “Tyler, what does your leg feel like? You have feeling in it, describe it.”

“The same as yesterday, doc, and the day before and the day before and the day before.”

My voice cracks somewhere in the middle, but I disguise it with a scoff.

“Describe it.” His voice echos, stern and annoyed; a dead giveaway that he is beyond tired of putting up with me.

Feeling’s mutual bud.

My face contorts with a scowl as I huff resistance before giving in, “like needles, like pin pricks, and a never ending pain. It runs from my toes all the way to my hip and spine, and I have little control. I feel it trying, but the pain makes me unable to move it.”

My breath shakes as I say it. The words alone make my chest tighten, because the pain isn’t just physical—it’s humiliation. My body, this thing that used to be strong, capable, fast, certain… now it’s a stranger I can’t command. My twisted memories and internal thoughts stay trapped inside this vessel.

“We think there’s nerve damage. This is a tell tale sign of it. It is very likely that during the dislocation of your hip and ankle, coupled with the break, something got pinched off when reset.” The ortho chimes in.

She’s lovely in the most boring kind of way. Nice to look at, beautiful big blue eyes, and this emotionless expression that drives me insane. It’s like she cares about nothing…nothing but bones anyway.

I smirk at her…just to get a reaction or to piss her off. Nothing.

Impressive.

“We want to call in a nerve specialist and will need to do at least one more surgery, but probably more, to make sure everything is aligned correctly.”

“Excuse me?” The anger filters out of me, “I’m getting really fucking tired of surgeries.” I pan my gaze to bones girl.

My stomach drops at the word. Surgery. Another invasion. Another round of cutting and stitching and waking up at ground zero of therapy and psycho evals. Somewhere around twenty I lost count of surgeries and operations and setbacks I’ve had since I woke up.

Next thing I know she’s standing square in front of me on the platform, arms crossed across her navy scrubs, dark hairs falling loosely from her bun to frame her face. If I didn’t hate her so much I might actually like her. “You want to fucking,” she accentuates the word, mocking me, “walk Mr. Owens? Or not? Because if not be my guest. I’ll stop setting aside hours in my day to waste on hearing you complain about being alive. Save a whole bunch of mine and everyone’s time if we just amputate. You want that?”

I peer down at her, hoping my utter disgust is prevalent enough on my face to mask my astonishment of her words. “No one asked you to be here.”

“Your patient chart did.” She turns to Dr. Stiles, “he always this big of a childish ass? Or just when he doesn’t get his way?”

Excuse me? Unbelievable.

The heat crawls up my neck so fast I swear I can feel my pulse hammering against the brace.

Mine and the doctor’s mouth drops at her comments. She turns back to me, without missing a beat, “that’s what I figured. A spoiled baby who’s always got what he’s wanted and no one to tell him no.”

“You don’t know a single thing about me.” I grit out, my clinching jaw sending pain radiating through my neck.

“Your emotions are a pretty good indication. No where in my contract does it say I can’t give you a hard time and push you, Tyler. You have an uphill battle, and last I checked,” she darts her icy blues to my leg, “you’re in no shape to climb it, especially alone. But if you think you can without help, then good luck.”

She steps away from me, stopping to tell Dr. Stiles, “let me know what dickhead here decides about surgery. Don’t call me about him again unless he’s agreeing to it.”

I am utterly fucking astonished at her lack of professionalism and at how much her words keep bouncing around my head.

Her voice follows me, cutting deep, hitting nerves that have nothing to do with my leg.

She is better than my psychotherapist because she’s has me feeling all kinds of emotion, mostly annoyance and disbelief, but still.

Not at all boring like I thought though.

She’s fiery. 

I like her.

She leaves the room and I stare back at Dr. Stiles, “is she allowed to talk to me like that?”

My voice comes out more defeated than angry. I hate that. I hate sounding weak.

He shrugs, “no, but there’s no one else in this hospital that can make your leg work except her and her team, so, I guess you’re going to have to allow it.”

The nurses that had been helping me giggle, assumably at my expression.

I glare at them, but even that takes effort now.

“Plus a taste of your own medicine might do you some good. She’s a force to be reckoned with.”

That she is.

A flash of lighting and rain pelting the windshield of a truck I’m driving, while wind rocks the cab skitters through my mind. I’m pretty sure it’s a memory and his words triggered it, but it makes no sense. For about two weeks, this has been happening, tiny fragments of instances, moments that could be entirely my imagination or some version of my reality before all of this.

Every flash burns behind my eyelids like static. And every time, I wonder what all I lost that night. 

“What was that?” The doctor’s voice cuts my thoughts.

“What was what?” I growl at him.

“That. What just happened? Did you remember something?” He presses.

I furrow my brows at him in annoyance.

“Tyler, you have to tell us these things. I know it’s terrifying and you hate hospitals and everything that’s happened to you, but the reality of it is, it has happened and you are living through it. You can’t change that. You have to give us an inch though so you can get better.”

I roll my eyes as he talks. I’ve shut down, I know I have. I know I’m pushing everyone away, hell, even Jo and Boone are tired of me. I’m well aware of what I’m doing,  but I’m also well aware I don’t care.

Because caring means feeling. And feeling means remembering. And remembering means reliving that goddamn storm.

“Tyler.”

“What?!”

“What did you see?” His tone is level but impatient.

“I guess what you said triggered something, I don’t know if it was a memory, or imagination…”

“Tell me.”

“I was driving, I don’t really know where, it was raining, hard, and the wind was blowing. It was dark and gray, stormy.”

My voice lowers, cracking around edges as I try to put into words what my brain keeps trying to show me.

He nods, “that’s good.”

“Good? How so doc? Enlighten me.”

My throat tightens as I force the sarcasm out. If he calls my trauma progress one more time, I might actually lose it.

“Pretty sure it’s a memory.” He smiles at me, “a fragment of one at least. Could you hear anything?”

I look at him like he’s crazy, but that triggers it again.

“…music, and…laughter. Maybe I’m laughing. And someone else.”

The sound of it echoes faintly, so faint I can’t tell if it’s real or just my brain mocking me.

“Do you know the laugh? Male or female?”

“…female..” confusion riddles me once again, “but I can’t place it.”

My chest aches at that, like I should know. Like losing that voice is worse than losing my ability to walk.

He’s nodding as if my answers satisfy him.

“Very good.” He confirms.

“Can I get out of this fucking harness now?”

He writes in his tablet as he responds, shaking his head, “no, ten more reps. I’m going to see your neurologist.”

I mumble curses under my breath.

Fuck this place.

Fuck the walls. The lights. The constant noise.

Mostly, fuck this body that won’t do a single thing I tell it to.

The nurses gather back around me when he calls them back over, grabbing at my feet and knees and forcing me to step, not a single bit of it at my own accord.

Their hands feel clinical, detached. I’m just a broken machine they’re trying to fix.

A waste of fucking time.

But I keep my eyes open anyway, because closing them brings the wind, the sirens, the rain…a living, breathing nightmare that never ends.

Chapter Text

Back in my room, they’ve left me sitting up right in my chair, strapped in and supported of course, because a month of unconsciousness and a broken neck and spine issues really takes a toll on muscle mass apparently. I literally cannot sit myself up, or stay sitting without support. They call it core strengthening; I call it miserable and painful, though better than physical therapy, because Boone is here. Someone I actually enjoy keeping me company, though I know he’s annoyed with me.

I can’t say the same for my mouth. 

“Hey T.”

Boone’s voice draws my attention from my wrist, to where he walks in with some vending machine snacks. I give him a soft smile, a hollow one that doesn't meet my eyes. 

“How was therapy?”

“As enjoyable as ever, Boone. Icing on the cake was getting told off by the ortho.”

“So I heard.”

I deadpan him, “what?”

“Dr. Stiles told me. Also told me you’re into her and that can’t happen T.”

I scoff and roll my eyes, “what happened to patient confidentiality? And I’m not into her, but for arguments sake, what if I was? Why can’t I be into her?”

I can’t quite place his expression, but it’s definitely some mix of anger and annoyance and pity. “Because.”

“Elaborate.” I grit.

“You already have someone one.”

“For fuck’s sake not this again.” I sigh my annoyance and roll my eyes at his absurdity. “It has been a whole month of you insisting I have something with this Kate girl, a whole month and then some of her running off to New York, and a whole month of me ensuring you I don’t know her, that I don't want to know her. Whose side are you on, Boone?”

“T… I just…”

“Drop it.” I redirect my attention to the TV on the wall across from me, noting the headlines that scroll at the bottom. 

Two-month update: Joplin Relief 

Government funding approved for tornado relief efforts in Joplin 

Summer heat impacting clean-up efforts 

It’s the anchor’s next story that catches both of our attention. 

“Breaking news this evening, following the Joplin tornado that occurred on May 26th, speculations around the whereabouts of famed Tornado Wrangler and YouTube Celebrity Tyler Owens grew as his infamous truck was found destroyed in a field along the tornado’s path..”

“What..the..fuck?” I whispered the words as astonishment blankets me, quiet enough I’m certain Boone doesn’t hear it.

I feel my heart rate rise even more as an image of that destroyed truck flashes across my scrambled mind. My heart monitor beeps louder, betraying my body as I try to keep my panic to myself.

“Tyler?” Boone's tone is cautious, one of careful approach, like I’m some caged wild animal. “Say something, T.”

I must be zoned out for multiple minutes because he clears his throat, and tries again to get me to respond. “Come on Ty, say something. Did you just remember something? We’re supposed to tell the doctors if you do.”

I cut my eyes to him but don’t move any other part of my body. I feel my eyes blown wide in confusion and angler. “Boone, what was that?”

“Tell me what you saw first, T, and I’ll fill you in.”

He stares at me, and his silence confirms that this was, most definitely, a recollection of life before the accident. 

“That really happened didn’t it? All of that really happened? That question about me being a storm chaser, my answer is supposed to be yes isn’t it? The Tyler Owens that anchor was referencing is, in fact, me and not some coincidence, right?…. Boone?”

He nods slowly, in apparent shock at my recollection, “Yeah T. Yeah, that really happened and yeah, y-yeah, that’s you. That’s who you are now…or were…before the accident.”

Disbelief and utter shock fill every crevice of my sore body, striking deep in my joints, “how…how in the fuck did I become a storm chaser? A famous one? What the fuck, Boone, I need some answers damnit.” I feel my clenched jaw send pain coursing through my head. 

It’s hazy and fragmented, but “yeah, I think I do. I remember fragments at least. I remember thinking about it when they did my baseline questions last month…and when I finally saw my list of injuries.”

“It was career ending, T. You had told Jo you were going to quit after that last ride, but the injuries ended it for you anyway. You were severely concussed and your chest was gored by the bull's horn. That’s why you have that scar on your left rib.”

I stare off blankly, overwhelmed at the information being off loaded on to me, “haven’t really got to look at my body recently, B, kind of essentially paralyzed between the braces and the lack of mobility.”

“Well, it’s there, and it isn’t from this time around.”

“So what? How’d I become a storm chaser? Makes no sense really.”

“I dunno man, you were into it, influenced by Bill and Jo, the adrenaline rush, and you’re good at it...like really good. Even went to school for it and everything. The only person I know that’s better than you is Ka...”

“I went to college? No fucking way.”

“T, I swear, ask Lilly, she was there. Couldn’t believe it either, once you recovered and stop being a total ass, quite like you’re being now by the way, you devised this plan and went after it.”

I throw him my best look of annoyance at his snide remark, “then what?”

“T, you know I’m not supposed to fill you in. I’ve already said too much. You already see that within the past few weeks it’s coming back.”

I bark an offended laugh, “yeah Boone, in fragmented broken pieces that make no damn sense.”

“I know patience isn’t your virtue man, but in this instance it’s gonna have to be. Let it come to you.”   

Dr. Stiles interrupts our conversation as he knocks and steps in the room, “how you doing, Tyler?”

I deadpan him, “didn’t I just see you like an hour ago?”

He laughs and nods, annoying me more, as he flips through my chart, “yep, you did, I have Dr. Williams with me now though. It’s time for your neuro evaluation." 

“Great, more fucking questions.” I growl.

“Before we start, you should know Tyler just saw the news report, and is now at least accepting of his career change from being bull rider to storm chaser.” Boone chimes in. 

Dr. Williams and Dr. Stiles both turn their gaze towards me, seemingly cautious of my reaction. Dr. Williams is the one to break the silence, “and how’d you take it?”

Like a fucking champ doc, what do you want me to say?

“Mostly just confused, and I wouldn’t say accepting is the right word because I’m not sure I believe it. No way I went to college.”

Boone tosses his phone in my lap and I pick it up to see a photo of me, him and Lilly, me holding my diploma, standing in front of uncle bill’s old chase truck. We look excited, we look happy. Like a bunch of kids with their first taste of freedom, ready to take on the world. 

Another memory hits full force, this time every detail is recognizable, laid out in front of me without question. 

“Hey Jo! You wouldn’t believe what a weekend we’ve had! The storms..”

“Tyler.” Her voice is fragile and broken, and panic of her next words settles deep in my core.

“What’s wrong?”

“Bill’s gone.”

My vision tunnels as I whisper “what?” In disbelief back to her. I knew the cancer was bad, but we just found out, he didn’t even get a chance to fight, and I wasn’t there to say goodbye. My heart cracks wide open as silent tears fall down my dirt stricken face.

How does this keep happening to me? 

“Ty…Tyler.” A soft and terrified voice pulls my attention downward. Her warm, rain soaked palm grasps at the back of my hand as I hover over her, the rusted pipe I’m gripping cutting deep into my palms. The rain, wind and lighting blind me from the visual details as the storm whips at my face and clouds my vision, threatening to drag me out of where I’m kneeling. The sound of the violence reverberates in my ears, the pressure almost too much to bare as the world around us is ripped to shreds. Though I can't see her, I can tell whoever the woman hunkered underneath me is, is terrified, and we are fighting for our lives…and it’s my job to protect her.

“Tyler!”

Boone’s voice snaps me out of my haunted memories, the room and the doctors and him coming back into view. I feel my chin quiver, the tears threatening to win out. 

How fucking humiliating.

“T, hey man, hey, we’re here. You're safe.” I feel Boone splay his hand across the back of my hand and I close my eyes to try to silence the metaphorical noise.

“Tyler..” that soft, terrified voice settles around me again as the storm passes, her grip encircled around my wrist. We’re rain soaked, but alive. I look down to meet her eyes only to see a child’s lifeless body lying in front of me, in the midst of a destroyed building, rain pouring down around me as I stand over the destruction.

What the fuck?

“Tyler. Snap out of it, man.” Boone shakes me slightly and that’s when I register other hands on me. A nurse is wrapping a blood pressure cuff around my bicep, and the doctor is standing above me, holding my shoulders to the chair so I don’t fall over. 

I’m somewhere between passing out and fighting them. That’s when I focus in on my “combative” bracelet again.

My breath shortens as I feel the blood pumping through my head, it hurts the fresh scars along my temple. Panic and anger boil inside me. I spiral. I see red. I feel the pain and confusion. 

Fuck.

This is not going to end well. 

I swing a weak left hook on the doctor, knocking him off balance, and then push the nurse towards my bed. As she catches herself on the railing I rip the cuff from my arm and feebly throw it across the room. Boone is on me in a second, trying to get control of my arms.

“T…Tyler, man you gotta calm down. Come on, T.” 

It really fucking hurts.

Boone finally gains control of my wrist, slamming them to the armrest of my chair. I’m left breathless, my racing heart trying to climb its way through my chest. I feel my eyes blown wide from the pain and confusion, and terrible visions…memories I just witnessed. 

“Catch your breath, T. I know it’s scary, breathe.” Boone’s voice is not the one I want to hear. I know that, deep down I know that. I may not know the other voice, but I know the one I want to hear doesn’t belong to him.

I inhale sharply a few more times, trying to catch my breath, “Alright..alright. Alright! You can let me go, I’m good, Boone. Let go of my wrists!” I wiggle my arms loose from his grip and grab at my right one that just came out of a cast a few days ago. Though healed, it still radiates dull pain. 

“Fuck T, I’m sorry.”

It’s not until then as I inhale, that I realize I’m crying. “N-no, I’m sorry.” I manage just above whisper. My confession is raw, and I know the people in this room don’t deserve this kind of behavior. I just don’t know how to stop it…how to control it. A warm tear falls down my cheek to my hospital gown, I can feel it soak through the thin fabric.

“Tyler”, it’s Dr. Stiles' voice who interrupts this time. I shoot my gaze towards him. “Tyler, you’re okay. You’re safe here, but you have to tell us what that was all about.” His voice is soft and cautious, like he’s afraid I’ll detonate again.

It’s not lost on me that they’re scared of me, that the only reason they think I’m manageable is because how physically weak I am. They know I’m a bomb ready to explode, that I’m unstable in every way possible…physically, mentally, emotionally. They know I’m repulsive and irrational. They accept it, but I notice how they walk on eggshells, especially when I’m like this.

There’s no other way for them to be.

“Tyler.” Dr. Stiles presses.

“Can’t you give him a damn minute?” It’s Boone’s voice who reverberates off the walls encompassing this room. 

I cut my attention to him, astonished at his fire. 

Damn Boone. 

“Boone…B, I’m good. I just kind of freaked out. I’m sorry.” 

Dr. Williams picks up the pressure cuff and steps towards me, bringing the nurse I pushed back next to him, “can we check your blood pressure, Tyler? We cannot have any cardiac setbacks whatsoever. Your body is not strong enough yet to come back from something like that.”

“Yeah…yeah doc go ahead. I’m sorry.” 

Dr. Williams offers me a soft smile as he and the nurse invade my space. Panic claws at my chest again a I feel suffocated, but I do everything in my power to keep it controlled as they carefully wrap the cuff around my arm. 

He finally steps away from me, leaving me space to breathe, “We gotta keep your heart rate under control, Tyler. Your pressure’s high and that’s a dangerous combination with your injuries.”

“What do you mean? Like meds? Go ahead and add them to the concoction you’re shooting straight into my veins.” I snide.

“No, Mr. Owens. More like sedation.”

I stare at him…through him, gritting my teeth, “What?!” 

“Any more episodes like that and we’ll have to sedate you. Your heart is so fragile right now. If I have to put you back in medically induced coma I will.”

“You’re joking right?”

“No, I’m not. So, keep your wits about you and calm down.” He quirks his brows at me to solidify he’s definitely serious. 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I growl under my breath. 

“No, I’m not, it's for your own good, now do you think you can tell us what just happened without losing your mind?”

Losing my mind every damn day I’m in here, doc.

The doctor nods, silently encouraging me to proceed.

Dr. Stiles clears his throat, “you think the picture Boone showed you triggered it?

“I know it did. As soon as I saw that picture it all came back.”

Him and Doctor Williams exchange a knowing look.

“What?” I plead in desperation for an answer.

They both turn their gaze back to me. “Was there anything else?”

I nod silently, staring off into the confused space that is my mind.

“You need to tell us, Tyler.”

I inhale another ragged breath, aches coursing through me as it vibrates my chest. “I-I really have no idea what this one was.”

“Quit trying to rationalize it, just tell us what you saw.”

“I first heard a voice…female, say my name. I felt a hand touch mine. I was holding on to these rusted pipes…and this other person was below me. It was storming...a tornado I guess, and we were outside in it. All I felt was this overwhelming feeling to protect her, but when I looked down at her my…memory, it changed. I-I never got to see who it was..but…”

I inhale again as I feel emotion continue to prick at my eyes. “When I looked down there was a kid, dead, laying on…on the ground in front of me in the midst of a destroyed building…everything around us was destroyed.”

Both doctors pull their stares from me and direct them to Boone. He nods silently.

“What was that?” I question.

Boone is the one to answer me, “they wanted to know if what you’re seeing in the memories is real or if your brain is playing tricks. I was just confirming that everything you just said really did happen at some point.”

“Wait…all of what I just saw is real? Who was the person with me?” I hear the desperation in my voice.

“You know I can’t tell you that, T. But you already know…you just have to piece I together.”

I roll my eyes and my jaw ticks at his insinuation. 

Okay, so what me and Miss high class City Girl ended up in a one-off dangerous situation? It doesn’t mean anything though. 

“Mr. Owens, we’re going to hold your eval for a couple more days.” Dr. Williams interrupts my derailing thoughts, “you need to rest, relax. Make some decisions on your surgery and whatnot.”

“I want to keep doing therapy.” I whisper. “I need something to distract me.”

Dr. Williams' face is coated in sympathy, “some time to sit with your own thoughts will be better than therapy. We’re ordering you two days off.”

“Come on T, we can hash out all the shit you’re remembering and then you can start fresh next week!” Boone’s excited voice does nothing but piss me off. 

“Sounds like a great fucking time.” Anger seeps from my words as I bite into him.

“I’m just trying to help.”

I let my eyes close as I blow out a deep breath to settle my nerves. “I know, B.”

Chapter Text

The doctors and my nurse leave, but in a moment, she returns with a handful of other nurses trailing behind her.

Great, I know what this means.

My head nurse, Nancy, the one I pushed, is an older lady with deep brown eyes, round glasses, and salt and pepper curls. She can’t be over five feet tall, but her small frame is mighty. I immediately feel the shame from when I pushed her earlier.

As her and the other nurses assemble around me, I feel my simmering anger get overtaken with humiliation. They’re here to move me back to my bed, and that feat has to be the most embarrassing and excruciating thing I’ve had to endure thus far. In this chair, in this harness, I can form a delusion that I’m holding myself up at my own volition, but as soon as they unstrap me, I’m fully reliant on them, and there’s no fragment of imagination that can change that.

It’s pitiful.

Utterly fucking pitiful. 

As they unhook the straps, I fall forward into their palms pressed against my shoulders. Each of them look at me apologetically, with pity and sorrow, as if their stares offer some sort of comfort. All of them but Nancy. If I didn’t know better, she’s mad at me for the stunt I pulled earlier.

I can't blame her. 

I manage to catch her focused gaze as she loosens the straps at my chest and prepares me to be moved, her dark somber eyes igniting something nagging in my chest, something like familiarity. I shake the feeling with an apology, “I’m sorry...I’m sorry I pushed you, Ms. Nancy.”

She offers one of those soft, grandma-like smiles, and in her low, soothing voice, replies with “I know, Tyler, I know. You ready?”

No.

“Yeah,” I whisper, the exhaustion of it all settling deep in my core.

Nancy nods once, “Good, Boone you mind helping us?”

He glares at me from a few feet behind her, annoyed by my earlier antics, but he obliges, stepping right in front of my chair, fully prepared to catch me if I fall…when I fall. I’m down over twenty-five pounds according to the doctors, leaving me weak and frail, but that’s doesn’t mean a little extra help in moving me isn’t warranted, especially if I fall as dead weight. 

I shiver at the recollection of the few times they've had to pick me up off this cold, baren floor.

The rest of the chair straps come loose with quiet snaps, the sound slicing through the silence. My neck brace digs into my jaw when they reach for me, one hand under my shoulder, another gripping the belt around my waist, ready to pull me into a makeshift standing position. I want to tell them all to get the hell away from me. But my body doesn’t cooperate with anything I want anymore.

They count — “One, two, three” — and the motion rips through me like a raging fire. My body is leaden and foreign, my left leg a dead weight that drags against the side of the chair as they lift. The pain in my spine radiates to the base of my skull, my muscles scream, and I can’t stop the broken sound that escapes my throat.

“Easy, T,” Boone says, tightening his hold around my ribs. “We've got you.”

In a normal day, he’s way too close for comfort, but nothing about my days are normal anymore. I want to shove him away, but with the exhaustion of “standing” I can barely lift my damn arms. I feel the tremor in my right hand as it tries to grab at his arm for balance and comes up empty. My head spins. My stomach lurches with nausea. 

My right leg shakes violently trying to stabilize the weight of my whole body bearing down on it, but my left just drags uselessly across the floor. I bite down hard on the inside of cheek, bringing blood, swallowing a noise that sounds too much like a whimper. I note the sting in my eyes as they balance me in my upright position. 

Boone murmurs something, encouragement, warning, I don’t know and I don’t care. I just focus on the next step, the one that might kill me or break me in half. Another step. My arms strain against theirs, gripping anything to stay upright. My neck brace digs into the base of my spine, pulling at my grown-out hair, with every tiny movement, every slight twist, and I can’t even turn my head to see them, to plead or curse with them to stop. To let me fall. I can’t look at anyone. I can’t even look at myself.

This is so humiliating.

And I hate it.

I make it halfway across the approximate ten foot of space, gasping, sweat prickling my skin despite the cooled hospital air. My thigh continues to tremble until I collapse against Boone, letting him bear most of my weight. The shame burns hotter than any searing pain in my body.

He whispers as I lean into him, “I’ve got you, T. If there’s ever a time to be stubborn it’s the next few steps. Good job man.”

Good job my ass, this is pathetic. 

I’m fucking pathetic.

Another agonizing step. I stumble, catch myself, and the nurses steady me. My right leg quivers like a live wire. I hate every bit of this. Hate that I need them. Hate that I can’t do it on my own. Hate that my mind screams at me to be strong while my body refuses to obey.

Finally in bed, I lie there, chest heaving, the burn of effort radiating through my body. The brace around my neck digs even more into my jaw, the edges biting at skin gone raw from weeks of wearing it. Every muscle trembles with exhaustion, the kind that seeps bone-deep, that mocks you for thinking you were strong once. The kind that mocks you for living.

There isn’t a doubt in my mind death would’ve been easier than all of this.

They should’ve left me out there to die. 

Boone’s hand stays on my shoulder. I can’t even lift my own to move it. I want him to stop touching me, to stop looking at me with pity and sorrow. But I don’t have it in me to tell him to let go. I don’t have anything in me. Just pain. Just weakness. Just the sound of my pulse in my ears and the faint hiss of the oxygen beside me as it feeds into my nasal canula. They insist I wear it at night, to keep my body from having to work too hard while I sleep, but that's funny in multiple ways because sleep is nothing but broken nightmares, and these damn plastic tubes are just another small reminder of how frail and broken I am.

Humiliation in every form.

And somewhere between the static and the ache, and the insurmountable amount of self-loathing, the words echo again—storm chaser.

That’s who I’m supposed to be. That’s who they all say I am.

But that's not me.

It can't be.

Not when I’m here. Broken. Confused. Angry. And lying in this bed, realizing just how far I am from the Tyler Owens in the news report, from the supposed storm chaser I am supposed to be, from the man I might have been if none of this had happened.

Maybe I did deserve this. Maybe this is what happens when you tempt fate too many times.

The idea of that life—of chasing something wild and violent, of running toward danger—makes me sick. It makes me hate whoever that man was. Because what kind of person runs straight into something that could tear him apart and calls it living?

An idiot, that's who.

The thought echoes, and before I can stop it, something inside me shifts.

The sterile light above fades to something softer, warmer, and suddenly there’s a notebook in my hands. The paper is worn, edges curled from handling, the faint scent of dust and wet earth drifting up as I thumb through the pages. Neat handwriting fills every inch, dense and looping, lines of formulas and theories twisting across the paper in ways that almost make sense. The shapes feel familiar, comforting in their pattern, and for a moment, something in me relaxes, something that hasn’t in a long time, but my broken mind can’t fully decipher what they mean.

A sound cuts through the quiet, sharp and alive, yet gentle. It's m voice, teasing, as it slides through the space. "You really think I’m an idiot, don’t you?" Laughter follows it, light and warm, and I can feel it rising in my chest. My laughter. My joy. It’s easy and unguarded, the kind that lingers long after the sound fades, like a thread of something I used to be.

Then another voice, firm and deliberate, interrupts the ease, sliding into the space beside mine. "No, I don’t… Tyler, will you give me that?"

There’s a softness to it, an edge of patience, but tinged with irritation, a gentle reprimand layered over something deeper, something alive in her presence. She’s used to me, used to my stubbornness, used to my fumbling hands and distracted mind, and the faint bite in her tone makes my chest tighten even as the memory fills me with warmth. The sound vibrates through the air, familiar yet distant, blurred by the fragile lines between what is memory and what is void, what is the reality of now and the old version of me.

I want to see her, to put a face to the voice, but my eyes stay glued to the notebook, to my hands holding it just out of reach, drawn to the feel of the paper beneath my fingers, the small weight of it grounding me.

The air shifts as a hand reaches toward me, small, quick, and steady. I can almost feel the warmth of it, the insistence, but before I can lift my head, before I can glimpse who she is, the memory fractures. The sound cuts first, dissolving into the edges of nothing. Then the light fades, and the notebook slips from my fingers. The warmth evaporates, leaving only the cold, sterile quiet of the present, and I am left reaching for something I can’t name, haunted by the echo of a voice that should feel familiar, but doesn’t.

I open my eyes and I’m staring at the hospital ceiling again, heart pounding, my breath labored, my palms clammy and empty. The memory slips away before I can hold onto it, leaving nothing behind but the faint echo of her voice and even more questions about who I really am.

Boone says I’ll remember eventually. The doctors say it’s temporary. But what if it’s not? What if this…the trembling, the shame, the blank spaces where a life used to be, the fragmented recollection of death and destruction is all that’s left of me?

What if that Tyler Owens really did die out there in that storm, and I’m just what’s left behind?

"Did you remember something else, T?" Boone's voice cuts through the noise in my mind. 

"I don't know," I whisper, staring through the ceiling. "I don't know what's real anymore, Boone, I don't know."

"You gotta tell me Ty, come on, was it bad?"

Another round of unwelcomed tears fall silently down my temples. "No...this one wasn't bad. I don't think, it didn't feel like it anyway. It felt good, it felt comforting."

"Good, good. What happened in it?"

"I-I don't entirely know. I was standing in a shed or a barn I think, it was warm and humid. I was holding this notebook with all these formulas and theories in it. Some girl was trying to take it away from me, but I couldn't see her. I could only hear her. I asked her if she thought I was an idiot." Involuntarily, I huff something that mirrors a laugh before I can continue my recollection.

I catch Boone's jaw dropping out of the corner of my eye, "Wait T...did you, did you just laugh?"

I direct my gaze towards him and for the first time in weeks, I feel the corners of my mouth tug up slightly, mostly in amusement of his astonishment, "maybe."

Maybe I am a broken, shattered man, and right now maybe I really wish they would’ve never found me. Maybe Boone’s wrong. Maybe they’re all wrong. Maybe I’m not coming back. Maybe that Tyler Owens…the one everyone keeps talking about, the one they keep trying to convince me to be…is gone for good.

But for the first time in ten weeks, maybe, just maybe I've found an ounce of hope.

I think this feels like hope.

And maybe there's a better version of me waiting at the end of this.

Chapter Text

Six weeks ago I turned my back on the one person I’ve let myself feel for since I got Addy, Praveen, and Jeb killed. And that’s the reality of it. I did that. I caused that nightmare. I was the reason they died.

The memory of that day never leaves me. It’s in the tightness behind my eyes when I wake in the middle of the night, in the hollow pit of my stomach when I try to eat, in the relentless pressure on my chest that doesn’t let me take a full breath. I can still feel the heat of the sun on my back that afternoon, the way the wind had picked up, carrying dust and broken leaves across the fields. I can remember the shrill scream that tore through my eardrums as everything went wrong, every single second replaying like a wound that refuses to close. And then, the silence, the kind that crushes you, that presses into your bones and refuses to let go.

But this one...this one more feels like a sick, twisted joke, something created just to punish me. Like the universe did it just to remind me that I don’t deserve true happiness again, that I don’t deserve someone to love me fully. That’s what I’ve rationalized anyway.

Some nights, I stare at the ceiling until my eyes burn, trying to convince myself it’s not real, that this is just another one of those nightmares that will dissolve when I open my eyes. But it doesn’t. The ache doesn’t go away. It sits there, lodged in my chest, and I feel it in every corner of my apartment, in every shadowed nook, in the empty space next to me on this threadbare couch I’ve come to call home.

My New York apartment is more cold and barren than that godforsaken hospital they have Tyler at, if that’s even possible. The walls are gray, stormy and unforgiving, and the air is a mix of recycled city heat and a faint metallic tang that reminds me of old pipes and distant, unwashed streets. Night after sleepless night I’ve settled in on my tiny secondhand couch. It’s a rough plaid style, coated in lines of tan, and burgundy, and brown. The fabric is thin in spots, coarse and itchy where it rubs against my skin, and the stuffing is lumpy, uneven, refusing to conform to my shape. Yet I cling to it, week after week, because it’s mine and because it reminds me of him.

It’s torture really, the multiple ways it reminds me of Tyler…it reminds me of the night we finally gave into one another in the barn, when the world outside had dissolved and all that existed was the warmth of him pressed against me and the intoxicating scent of warm, humid air mixed with his earthy presence. It reminds me of his signature flannel shirts and the way he smelled after a long chase day, the subtle hints of motor oil and sweat and the wild, untamed summer air that always seemed to follow him wherever he went. It reminds me of chase days and the thrill of riding along roads with nothing but the horizon ahead of us, the sky stretching infinitely, the clouds boiling above like they were alive. And above all that, it’s a bitter reminder that all of that is gone, ripped away from me with no warning, with no chance to save him...to save us.

So far, I have spent the majority of my days settling back in at NOAA, analyzing our data, and building pitch after pitch to replace our sponsors or to find new grant money. I bury myself in spreadsheets, weather models, funding reports, and grant proposals—not because I want to, but because I can’t face the quiet for more than a few minutes at a time. Every graph, every table, every line of data is a distraction from the screaming silence in my head, from the ache that sits heavy in my chest.

With the continued rumor that Tyler Owens the Tornado Wrangler is dead, and us as a team…if you can call it that, refusing to comment anything different…or anything at all, sponsors aren’t real keen on funding some unproven science project. Apparently, it pays to be affiliated with a YouTube celebrity, and it stops paying when said celebrity is supposedly dead.

That’s just it—Tyler is the force to be reckoned with. He’s the one who kept us all glued together. I told him that, time and time again, but he was convinced it was me…or he used to think that anyway. Obviously though, I can barely keep my own self together, let alone provide solid ground for the team…our team…Tyler’s team.

Not only is our funding diminished, but so is our team, and over the six weeks I’ve been back in New York I haven’t found a single damn way to figure out how to make next season come to fruition. I try to plan. I try to make spreadsheets that promise possibility, that whisper hope. But every time I write a line, my eyes wander to the empty corners of the apartment, to Oklahoma and the space our team should occupy, and the words die in my throat.

The newscast drones on and on, the TV casting pale blue light across my dimly lit living space. The glow flickers across the chipped paint, across the bottles on the counter, across papers strewn like leaves in a storm. I’ve stopped caring about order. The apartment is a reflection of me—worn, frayed, and hollowed out by grief and the relentless monotony of weeks, months now, in which nothing has gone right.

The breaking news segment is what catches my attention, diverting me from the data that serves as a distraction to how I feel.

Breaking news tonight out of Joplin, Missouri. Clean up efforts are still underway as the community surpasses two months since the EF5 tornado that killed 158 people and injured hundreds. Amongst those reported killed were YouTube celebrity and famed Tornado Wrangler Tyler Owens. Owens’ death was reported after search and rescue found his infamous chase truck destroyed in a field near what we now know was his Aunt’s farm. However, recent reports have been received that Owens, though severely injured, is alive and receiving treatment at Tulsa Regional Trauma Center. We have tried to contact his research partners Kate Carter and Javi Rivera for further comments. We have not been able to reach them. Stay tuned for details on this developing story.

The sound of his name is a punch to the stomach, a blast of heat that twists my intestines. Tyler Owens. Alive. I know he's alive...but now the world does too...or at least speculates it.

I close my eyes as the report transitions to more local news about crime and business. The anchor’s voice becomes a blurred hum, like the ocean under a fog. They’re not wrong—my phone is full of calls, texts, emails, and even Facebook messages from news outlets trying to get an update on Tyler.

What I don’t know is who leaked he was alive, or why they would want to stir up shit for him, for his family, for us. The thought churns in my stomach, heavy and acidic. He deserves peace. He deserves to heal without the world watching. And here he is, dragged into the maelstrom once more.

At least if the sponsors get wind of this maybe they’ll be more likely to oblige to funding.

Doubtful.

I slam my laptop shut, the noise reverberating through the apartment, and pick up my phone to check for an update from Boone or Jo. It’s just after 10 PM Tulsa time and I’ve usually received something by now. My last update from Boone was they were starting therapy on his legs and allowing him to sit upright with full support. That was a week ago on our last weekly update.

I’m fully aware of mine and Boone’s conversations becoming shorter and shorter, as if we’re just checking a box. I’m also fully aware that Tyler still has no memory of me. I’m fully aware that his Aunt Jo is trying to mend the connection and keep me in the loop, but at this point it almost hurts worse holding on than it does to let go.

I have to let him go.

But God, I don’t want to.

I love him. I will love him forever. And it’s not fair what has happened to him.

I just want him back…the Tyler I know…I just want him back.

I want us back.

The repetitive vibration of my phone pulls me from the memory and from the barstool I'm slumped at. I stumble back to the coffee table where it lays in front of my godforsaken couch, and catch my balance as I bend over to pick it up. 

It’s Boone.

My pulse stumbles. I stare hard to focus on his name flashing across the screen, my heart thudding like it knows something I don’t.

Fuck, I’m too drunk for this conversation.

“H-hey..Boone.” I fail miserably at sobering my voice.

There’s a pause, heavy and suffocating, like he’s bracing himself to tell me something I don't want to hear.

“Hey City Girl.”

Chapter Text

His name forces its way through my lips as a whimper, a plea, a sob just before everything tilts, my world turning black… and then, in that same moment, I’m jolted awake by my broken voice, the hum of my refrigerator, rain hitting my window…

Of course it’s raining…

…and some other noise.

My body physically shutters as I try to orient myself through my drunken state, letting my eyes fall shut a moment longer to try to mitigate the lonely, spinning room that surrounds me. I first register the cold laminate of my counter top as it seeps deep into my right cheek, only contrasted by the warm tears as they fall down my temple. Then my TV as it now drones on about an infomercial. I inhale deeply, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, as I breathe in the stench of spilled tequila. I finally will my eyes to open, glancing in front of me at the tipped over shot glass, tequila splattered across the cabinet, and the bottle I was working on nearly empty. The sight of it, coupled with the smell and the movement of the room is enough to make me sick…but I’m glued to this chair…unable…unwilling to move. The TV is the only light source, but still it’s too bright, adding a depressing blue-gray hue to the living hell I just woke up in. 

For a moment, I can’t tell what’s real. Boone’s number. Tyler’s voice. The call. My heart’s still racing, like I’m caught between the dream and waking. 

Maybe I’m hallucinating. 

Maybe I’ve finally lost my mind.

Then I hear it again, the other noise, the noise I dreamed—repeated buzzing, steady and real this time.

My phone.

It’s coming from the living room…from the coffee table, just as it did in my dream moments before, but this time I know I won’t hear Ty’s voice on the other end.

I push off the counter, wobbling as I do. My foot catches on the edge of the stool, sending it clattering backward, the sound of metal hitting the tile floor reverberating through my skull. “Shit,” I hiss, rubbing at my temple.

Everything aches…the relentless dull throb behind my eyes, the sour burn in my throat, my back from the way I was sitting. My limbs feel like thousand pound weights as I all but crawl toward the living room.

I want to die.

Dying has to be better than this.

As quickly as the buzzing ends it begins again, the screen glowing faintly in the dark. I blink until the name comes into focus.

Javi.

Not Boone. Not Tyler.

Of course, not Tyler.

It will never be Tyler.

The dream slips through my fingers, leaving only the echo of his voice behind, along with an insurmountable amount of pain and longing.

I guess even the alcohol can’t numb it tonight.

I drop onto the couch and swipe to answer, my voice barely working, as it fights against the dryness and taste of too much tequila. “Hello?”

“Kate?” Javi’s voice cuts through, sharp with worry. “Finally. I’ve been calling for two hours. Are you okay?”

I rub my eyes, the world still fuzzy around the edges. “Yeah,” I rasp. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just—fell asleep, I think.”

Passed out, you mean.

There’s a pause. He exhales, a sound that’s splits half in relief, half in frustration. “You sound awful.”

“T-thanks,” I mutter, squinting at the bottle still sitting on the counter, the smell of the alcohol as it filters through my breaths sickening my stomach.

“Kate, are you drunk?”

“W-what time is it?” I grimace at his all to valid insinuation.

“Almost three.” 

“Yeah” I huff an unamused laugh, “guess I’m still drunk then.”

“Kate…Kate, I need you to be okay.”

“I am Javi. I promise.”

He doesn’t have to know it’s an empty promise. 

His voice softens. “You sure you’re alright? I’ll book the next flight out if you need me to.”

I lean back into the couch, closing my eyes, splaying my free hand across my forehead, rubbing my temples, with hopes that it will lessen my splitting headache. 

It doesn’t.

“Yeah. I’m okay..I..just… bad dream.”

He hesitates, but I know his question. “About Tyler?”

My throat tightens. I stare at the glow of the TV in front of me, not registering a single thing it’s saying as I let reality settle back into my mind.

They're always about Tyler. 

He now occupies the old ones of Jeb, Praveen, and Addy.

“Yeah,” I whisper. 

He sighs quietly. “Kate I’m sorry. I’m sorry all of this has happened. If I could take it all away I would.”

“N-not your fault, Javi.”

“Not yours either, Kate.” His voice now just an octave above a whisper. “But you've got to stay strong, it's still early in his recovery. Try to get some water in you, okay? And some sleep. Real sleep this time.”

“Yeah,” I murmur. “Okay.”

“Love you, Kate. You’re not alone, you know that right?”

“Thanks Javi...love you too.” 

“I’ll call you tomorrow, and you better pick up.” 

I blink away another round of silent tears, “okay.”

We hang up, and I let the phone fall to my lap as I let myself cry. The silence rushes back in, thick and heavy, interrupted by only the nonsense noise that barges in to fill that quietness.

I glance toward the counter, toward the empty glass and the half-dead bottle, then back at the screen gone black as it lays in my lap. The dream still lingers…his voice, that impossible softness and rasp…warm and whole and healthy. 

Hey, City Girl.

I press a hand to my chest, half-expecting to still feel the echo there. “T-Tyler,” I choke, but there’s only the hum of the fridge, the infomercial, and the faint rain against the window that answers.

At some point I doze again, but this time only minutes pass, as my eyes stutter open again at the low rumble of thunder shaking my window panes. Wanting nothing more but to fall into my bed, I go to move. However, the motion is too fast, and the room spins violently around me. The movement flips my stomach completely and this time I can’t choke down the nausea.

“Oh, God.”

I haphazardly sprint, making it to the bathroom just in time. My knees hit the tile hard and unforgiving. The cold floor sends a shiver through me as I clutch the edge of the toilet and retch until there’s nothing left but acid and air.

When it’s over, I slump sideways against the wall, cheek pressed to the cool tile. My body feels hollowed out, trembling and feverish. My head throbs, splitting between pain and nausea. My mouth tastes like metal and alcohol, my nose congested with the combination of crying and throwing up.

I close my eyes, dragging in shaky breaths that don’t seem to fill my lungs. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the dream loops…Tyler’s voice over and over and over, the impossible tenderness in it, and my heart and soul ache as if it’s still happening.

I pull my knees up, resting my arms on them. The tile floor is mercilessly cold, but it anchors me, keeps me from floating away with whatever’s left of the liquor in my veins and the ghosts in my head.

Tyler’s ghost…

The ghost of then versus the reality of now…

The ghosts of them…

I don’t even remember lying down, but the next thing I know my cheek is on the floor, my body curled against the wall. The world blurs at the edges, and the vibration of the bathroom fan becomes all too loud inside my pounding head. I’m cold, I have the shakes, and my head splits with pain.

But somewhere between the ache in my stomach and the weight of his name echoing through my mind, sleep drags me under again.

And this time, there are no dreams.

No dreams.

Just raw, untethered pain that reminds me every bit of the past two months is real…a real-life living hell…one that loops over and over.

One that I will never escape.