Elizabeth Lee - Storm Warning

His words must’ve finally gotten through because Coop’s shoulders dropped in defeat as he acquiesced. “Bring our girl home safe, okay?”

“I will,” Kyle hollered as he jumped into his truck. “And I promise to kick your ass later for taking so long to man up and tell me the truth.”

Kyle flashed his lights at Coop as he headed out of the driveway. His headlights barely made any difference in the pitch he was driving into as he pulled onto the back road that led to The Ridge.

Every muscle in his body was tense as he navigated the treacherous path through the worst storm he’d seen in all of his eighteen years. Throwing up a silent prayer that all of his girls were okay—his mama, his baby sister, and his gorgeous Belle—he gripped the steering wheel with all of his strength.

The automated storm warning played over and over on the radio as he drove as fast as the monsoon he was struggling against would allow. If anything, this was just the confirmation he needed that running off to college wasn’t what was best for his family.

What would’ve happened to EJ if he wasn’t here? It made him sick to even allow that thought into his mind. He’d already dropped the ball once and let City Boy break her heart. Though now he had full confidence that Coop would help mend it. Normally, he wouldn’t have let either of them within reaching distance of his little sister, but what he had with Cami had softened him a bit, made him believe that even people from two different worlds might have a chance.

One summer had changed everything.

His Belle would come around. She’d see that his staying home was what was best for all of them. As if she’d been conjured by his thoughts, his phone lit up in the dark cab of the truck.

Dammit. He’d have to lean way over to get to it, and that would mean taking a hand off the wheel.

By the time he was in a safe enough spot to make a grab for his phone, her call had gone to voicemail. Thank God she’d actually left one.

He smiled as her beautiful voice filled his head. Pulling up at The Ridge, he saw Ella Jane’s silhouette illuminated in his headlights. Crazy girl had gotten out and was trying to push her own truck out of the mud.

He was still listening to his voicemail from Cami when he put his truck in park and opened his door to get out and help his little sister. A vibration from his left startled him and he dropped his phone into the mud.

The train was coming right at him. Just like that linebacker he’d felt coming all summer. The one he wasn’t ready for. It was airborne, off the tracks, and being carried straight toward him and his little sister by a funnel cloud that looked to be as wide as Hope’s Grove.

If it didn’t change course, he’d have to go back on the one promise he never thought he’d break.

He couldn’t protect her. Not this time.

“THE National Weather Service has issued a Tornado Warning for Calumet County. At 9:55 p.m., trackers confirmed a tornado on the ground,” the radio informed her.

She couldn’t tell which was falling harder—the tears or the rain against the windshield. Even with her wipers on full blast, she couldn’t see to drive. How could I have been so stupid? Being at Hayden’s party, around all the people she used to think were worth impressing, made her realize just how trivial her old life was.

She should have never let her pride get in the way of telling Kyle how she felt, and she should have never worried about what everyone else thought. She was being punished for her past. The way she treated people. The lies. The constant need for approval. All of it.

Mother Nature was letting her know that she wasn’t going to get away with it. And apparently she was a bigger bitch than Cami had ever been.

The howling wind rocked her white Mercedes SUV as she stopped to check her phone. Just like the time before—no signal. She watched the travel time on the GPS increase minute by minute as she sat still in the middle of the road. It had been twenty-two minutes since she put Kyle’s address in back at the party.

She’d taken it as a sign, fate finally helping her out, that the stack of mail sitting on her passenger seat included an invoice from Mason Landscaping and Lawn Care. Seven minutes it had said.

Seven minutes to get to his house and tell him that she loved him and wanted to be with him no matter where he went to school or what he did. Seven minutes to ride the storm out with him holding her close and whispering in her ear that everything was going to be okay instead of out in the middle of nowhere alone.

Maybe fate wasn’t leading her to safety. Maybe it was leading her to exactly what she deserved.

Sheer panic began to take over as the thunder cracked again and a bolt of lightning lit up the sky. She was lost with no cell service. The robotic voice calling out over the radio wasn’t helping matters. Telling her over and over that she was lost in an area that was directly in the path of an oncoming twister.

She wasn’t usually afraid of storms, thanks to the fact that her house had a fully furnished basement she usually sheltered away in when warnings were issued, but out here she had no place to go. She thought about the last big storm that had hit central Oklahoma and the people who had lost their lives by staying in their cars.

“Shit!” She pounded her hand against the steering wheel and tried to remind herself to stay calm. Her palms started to sweat as she held up her phone again, moving it around the car, trying to get a signal.

As she reached into the back seat, staring at a glowing screen, she saw it. Somehow through the wind and rain, she saw it. A light. A small, amber, glowing light fixed to the top of a pole that was rocking back and forth with each gust of wind.

She might not have been country smart, but she was smart enough to know that if there was electricity running to that pole, there was probably somewhere to hide up there.

Cami flipped the switch from two-to four-wheel drive on her SUV and threw it in reverse, driving backward until she saw the lane. Her intuition was right. As she drove up the muddy path, a two-story farmhouse came into view. The windows were dark, and from what she could make out, a few were broken. It was abandoned.

A small barn sat on the corner of the property. The door that once closed off the building was hanging to the side, appearing to have been broken years before the storm had hit. She pulled her vehicle into the barn and let out a sigh as the old roof blocked the heavy fall of rain. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

Exiting her vehicle, she looked down at her phone. A signal. One bar. She didn’t know if it would go through, but she tried to call Kyle’s number anyway. Maybe he knew where this place was and he would come to rescue her. She figured he was pissed at her for blowing him off, but there was no way he’d leave her out there alone in the middle of a tornado.

“This is Kyle. Leave a message.” She heard his voice and her heart raced as she started to leave him a message.

“Kyle, it’s me. I’m so sorry I haven’t returned your calls.” The rain started to let out as she paced the dirt floor of the barn. “I was coming to see you and I got lost trying to find your house. GPS says I’m at 640 East Road.” The winds calmed. She stepped out into the open air and looked around. Maybe the storm was over?

“I think the storm’s letting up. When you get this message, please call me back. I’ll wait here until I hear from you.”

That’s when she heard it. A sound she’d heard so many people talk about, but never actually experienced. Like a freight train running at full speed.

It was too dark in the distance to see where it was coming from, but she knew it was getting closer. With her phone still to her ear, she said something she’d never said to anyone—something she feared she’d never get to say again. “I love you.”

Kyle

FUNERALS are depressing as shit. Seriously. Why people even have them is beyond me. Standing around in uncomfortable clothes while people drone on about how unfortunate it is.

I mean no disrespect to the dead, but a funeral is so ass backwards. Crowd around and watch as they put the person in the ground then go have coffee and cake? Who the hell thought of that?

In my opinion, there should be music, dancing, cake, and we can skip the morbid gravesite stuff. People should be celebrating the fact that they’re still alive and not the ones in the ground. But no. We all stand around, hurting, grieving. Each of us replaying the last time we saw or talked to that person in our heads. Wondering if we’d have done something different, changed one little thing, if our loved one would still be alive.

Like we have that kind of power. I mean, I’m a confident guy, but even my balls aren’t that big. I believe in God. Or I believe in…something. There’s definitely a higher power that controls this type of thing. There has to be. Otherwise there’d be some kind of order to it. Or no one would ever die. Or we’d all just hit the designated age and drop dead. But that’s not how it works. It’s just the luck of the draw.

One minute you’re here and then you’re off to who knows where. Summer is officially over and it’s time to move on to whatever’s next. College for some. Work for others. Both, maybe. Or neither.

But there are those who don’t get a choice, a few who don’t make it out alive. A knife slices through their lives, cutting it short at sunrise. Before they’ve even really lived. A future that once seemed so bright can be extinguished in a single second.