Chapter Text
It takes nearly an hour to leave the airport.
For Kate, the wait at the airline help desk is nearly as long as the time it takes Tyler to talk airport security out of towing his truck slash calling the cops for his stunt in the parking lot. In the end, it turns out the head of security is a fan of the channel, so with the promise of free merch plus the swipe of a credit card to pay for the damage, they’re finally on their way.
“I still can’t believe you did that.” Kate shakes her head with a laugh, staring in the left side view mirror at the chunks of black asphalt shrinking into the distance.
It’s sunny at the moment, a brief break in the summer storm that grounded her flight. She can’t say she minds the inconvenience as Tyler shrugs, glancing in the rearview at the same sight of torn up concrete, a smug smirk lifting the corner of his mouth as he slips a pair sunglasses over blue eyes. “Worth it.”
Even with his eyes hidden behind the dark lenses, she feels him shift his focus to her. A hot flush creeps up the length of her neck in response as her brain scrambles for something to say. Anything to say that doesn’t make her sound like a tongue tied school girl with a crush. At the last second, a ping from her phone saves the moment teetering from tension into awkwardness.
Looking away from him, she slides her thumb up the screen webbed with tiny cracks. In the three days since nearly shattering it during the storm, she hasn’t had time to get it fixed.
For a moment, she feels it again, the sickening lurch in her stomach as the truck spun and rolled in the rain and wind. Tapping her fingers to her belly, she presses against it, willing the sensation to abate as she reads the text.
”Flight confirmation?” he asks. She glances up to find him back to watching the road. Twin sensations of relief and regret roil in her unsettled stomach.
Balling her hand into a fist, she presses harder, the pinch of pain from her knuckles digging into her skin helping her find some sense of equilibrium. “Yeah,” she answers, balancing the phone on her bare knee, “scheduled for tomorrow at six.”
”In the morning?”
“Yeah.”
His knuckles turn white, his grip tightening on the wheel. “I can take you back to your mom’s if you want?”
It’s a generous offer considering the drive to the airport took nearly two and a half hours that morning. Scrolling through her music app, Kate clicks on a downloaded playlist. The reception is shit out here.
”Or?” She asks the question without looking up from her phone.
From her periphery she notices him glance over for a second. “Or?”
She shrugs, eyes still on the phone, the flush on her neck crawling its way to her ears. “You said it like there was another option.”
Almost thirty full seconds of silence pass before he says, ”I live closer to the airport by an hour.”
Her stomach twists itself back into nervous knots. Taking a breath, she reaches for the auxiliary cord dangling from his dash. “How do you have every gadget in the world in this thing and no bluetooth?”
If he’s disappointed by her change in topic, he doesn’t show it. “It was my dad’s. Gave it to me before he moved with Mom to Michigan to take care of my grandparents. I never had the heart to trade in for a newer model.”
Yet again, it feels like she’s peeled back another layer of Tyler Owens, this one just as sweet and wholesome as all the rest. And just like that, with a simple response to her joke about his lack of technology, he burrows his way just a little bit further into a heart that’s been closed off for five years, one that feels like it just started beating again less than a week ago in her mom’s barn, bent over old school projects and dusty spiral notebooks.
From the first day she met him, it had been clear to Kate that there was more to Tyler the tornado wrangler than met the eye, but that day she’d been too stubborn, too set in her mindset of us-versus-them to take a closer look.
She takes the time now though, trains her expert gaze on him like he’s a storm gathering in the atmosphere, threatening to morph into a gale force wind strong enough to knock her on her ass. Maybe he already has.
He watches the bumps in the winding country highway as she studies him, the strain of Shania’s guitar chords scratching through the speakers as he capably guides the truck around another pothole.
Eyes still on the road, he quirks his lips, breaking the comfortable silence between them. “What are you staring at, Sapulpa?”
The corner of her mouth twitches, her eyes still glued to him. “You.”
”That hardly seems fair when I can’t stare at you.”
The smile widens, working itself all the way to her heart. “Yes.”
The truck slows, bumping over a pothole he didn’t steer fully around. “What?”
Reaching out her left hand, she gently pulls the sunglasses off his face and drops them on the console, wanting to see the expression hiding underneath. “Yes, I’ll stay with you.”
Without warning, he slams on the brakes, veering the car off the road and into the patchy grass that runs alongside it.
“What are you — ?”
He throws the gearshift in park, unsnapping his seatbelt with an urgency that causes it to sling back against the leather seat, the metal tab crashing into the harness at his back with a loud click. “I meant to do this at the airport.” Despite the urgency in his expression, his words are soft, gentle. His eyes warming with an emotion that makes her feel as if the truck’s spinning underneath her again, all sense of equilibrium lost as he reaches toward her, his warm palms cupping the sides of her face as he drags her mouth closer to his. “Got interrupted the first time.”
He stops a scant millimeter from her lips, eyes still drinking her in, roving over every inch of her face like he wants to memorize it, remember this moment forever.
With a smile, she tilts her head, lessening the distance between them without closing it. “What are you waiting for then?”
”I’ve been thinking about this since I saw you scattering dandelion seeds in the wind to figure out which way to chase a tornado.”
Her stomach flips again. “Well, I say, ‘If you feel it —‘”
His mouth cuts off the rest that sentence.
She doesn’t mind.
With a soft moan, she tangles her fingers in his hair as she sinks into the kiss with him, pulling against the seatbelt still snug around her hips, straining to get closer as he deepens it. When his tongue slides past her lips, she tries to catch the flavor of him, the taste of cheap beer and sweet tea clinging to her tongue.
”I thought about it too,” she whispers between kisses, the confession uttered softly into the wet heat of his mouth.
He tilts his head, running more kisses past her mouth and down the slant of her jaw. “Could have fooled me, Sapulpa,” he says into the hollow behind her ear, nipping against the soft lobe and startling another moan out of her.
Her fingers tighten in his hair as his mouth shifts further, stringing kisses along the flushed line of her neck. “I was scared.”
Pausing, he presses a soft kiss to the hollow of her throat before returning to her mouth, giving her back the addictive taste of him. “You think I’m not?” He shakes his head, dropping heated kisses against her swollen lips with each pass. “You scare me more than any tornado I’ve ever wrangled, Kate Carter.”
She smiles, remembering what he told her at the rodeo before everything went to hell. “I remember this guy told me one time that you shouldn’t face your fears. Instead you should ride — ”
He kisses her again, harder this time, the pressure of his lips cutting off the rest of her dirty joke. “You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?”
She smiles, licking the seam of his lips, tongue tangling with his again as he parts them for her, allowing her a tentative exploration of her own. “Why would I do that before we get to the fun part?” She pants the question into his mouth, taking another moment to savor the taste of him before he’s taking over again, nearly lunging over the console as he presses against her, kissing her like his life depends on it.
By the time he finally rips himself away, throwing himself back into his seat, a flush covers her whole body from head to toe, and they’re both panting like they’ve run a marathon without ever leaving the front seat of his truck. Her heart is racing so fast, it feels like maybe they did.
”So my place?” He asks after sucking in a lungful of air, hand back on the gearshift as he moves it into drive.
The track on the stereo switches from Chris Stapleton to Taylor Swift as she nods. “Yeah.”
He smiles briefly, the expression wavering when the strains of girly pop replace the rasp of country chords in the speakers. “Kate, what the hell is this?”
She leans back, smiling out the window at his disgruntled tone. “Culture.”
She catches the sound of a muttered, ”City girls,” under his breath as the truck clambers back onto the nearly deserted road, heading toward their destination.
While Taylor sings about blanks spaces and writing names, Kate bites her lip, catching another taste of him that still lingers from their kiss. She licks the spot with a hum of satisfaction. “Don’t pretend like you don’t love it.”
She keeps looking out the window but hears the smile in his voice when he answers. “It’s like you can see right through me.”