Chasing Storm (12 page)

It’s the last person Dan expects to see. “You.”

Storm makes towards me. He looks like he’s been through hell. “Alice, you okay?”

Dan steps between us. “She’s fine.”

The doors rattle again.

I’ve never encountered a more awkward moment, trapped underground with the two closest men in my life.

Dan extends his hand backwards, like he’s trying to hold me at bay. He looks to Storm. “Now, sunshine, why don’t you tell me exactly why you’re here?” His free hand moves down to his gun.

“Storm hangs by the stairs, hands up. “Look, I’m just here for Alice.”

“Alice doesn’t need you. She never has. Your kind’s not good for her.”

I take instant offence to anyone telling me what’s good for me. I’m not some Stepford wife or robot who can’t make up her own mind, a rag-tag woman who follows the whims of men blindly.

Storm takes a step closer. “My kind? And just what the fuck does that mean?”

“You know damn well. Your daddy was a crook, your mama was a crook and so are you.”

“I’m sorry about your friend, Dan, but that was my father, not me. My father sold him the drugs. I had nothing to do with it. All that’s in the past. And what, planting drugs in my house doesn’t make
you
a crook?”

I’m lost, but I remember Mom mentioning something about Dan’s best friend, Jackson, passing. She was scarce on details. It’s all starting to come together. An overdose, surely. Storm’s dad sold Jackson drugs and now Dan blames Jackson’s death on Storm. He is, after all, the only one left to point a finger at, to level Dan’s anger toward, anger for everything he’s kept bottled up since his father’s death, Afghanistan. It is all falling into place.

Dan takes a step closer to Storm, hand still on his weapon. “Careful there, my friend. We’ve been through this. I can’t be held responsible for the actions of my men. He confessed. It was the Nomads.”

“No? How could you not know? You’re the sheriff!”

“I could arrest you right now.”

“For what? You’re going to trump up another charge?”

Dan prods him right on the chest with his index finger. “I can do whatever the hell I want.”

Storm shoves him back and Dan’s grip tightens on his gun. “You just assaulted an officer.”

“Did I? Alice witnessed the whole thing, ain’t that right, Alice?”

I stay quiet. I don’t know what to do.

“Alice is with me now and you best believe it.”

I can’t comprehend Dan even just said that. I’m no one’s property.

“Yeah,” says Storm, stepping right up to Dan’s face until they’re practically nose to nose, “then why was she at my place last night instead of yours?”

“You piece of…”

And it’s on. Dan strikes first, landing a solid jab on Storm’s jaw. Storm swings up hard right into his chest and the two men go toppling to the dirt, kicking and punching.

I try to wedge myself between them, but it’s like trying to pull apart two semi-trailers. “Please,” I beg, “stop!”

They’re going to kill each other.

I put my hands together and press into the fray harder, but they’re locked tight. Both lash out together and suddenly it’s me on the floor.

My head’s dizzy. I reach up and my finger comes away from my forehead wet with blood.

Both of them have stopped, sitting apart in the dirt, mouths open in shock, kids who’ve just knocked over the Xmas tree or broken a window.

They both rush forward.

“Jesus,” says Dan, “get me a bandage or something.”

Storm tears away a strip of his shirt and hands it over.

I’m woozy, the room’s tilting around me as the wind howls outside and the clatter of debris builds into a climax.

“Don’t. Fight,” I stutter, but the words come out sloppy, not quite right.

“She might have a concussion.” Dan wraps the strip of cloth around my head and pulls tight, wiping blood out from my eye.

Storm’s hand is on my thigh. “Just relax, baby.”

I start to tear up. “I don’t want you to fight.”

The emotions I’ve been holding onto for years begin to pour out. I’m too full. I need to get it out. I bury my face in my hands and sob. “No. More. Fighting.”

“We’re sorry,” says Dan sitting beside me, “but it’s confusing. Who do you want to be with?”

“I don’t know!” I scream. “I don’t fucking know, okay?”

But I do, I do know, whether it’s the right choice or not.

“I think you do,” shouts Storm, standing to sit on the stairs as the doors rattle and quiver above him. I can barely hear him it’s so loud outside.

I let the tears flow hot and free. “I didn’t want any of us. I didn’t ask for it.”

Dan’s holding me. “What happened happened. What matters now is what you do going forward, and it can’t be the both of us. You have to choose. You have to make it right.”

“I can’t!”

Dan’s looking down at the dirt, pensive. “You have to, for the good of everyone.”

The bolt holding the doors in place snaps in two and the doors fly open, wind and debris swirling in and a great pressure building. I reach up and hold onto the shelf as it groans against the wall. Outside, I see the shimmering wall of the twister, the tempest spinning and swirling.

An icy tendril runs right through the center of my body.

We’re right in the middle of the monster.

My feet actually begin to pull off the ground. My fingers begin to slip. The twister wants me. I should let it take me. Everyone would be better off.

“No!” Storm cries, reaching out from the stairs to hold me in place.

Dan’s grunting with the effort of trying to get the doors closed. “We have to get these doors shut,” he shouts, “otherwise we’re going to be sucked clean out of here.”

“I’ll go,” says Storm. “They can be bolted from the outside. It’s the only way.”

“Are you insane?!” I scream, as my legs lift off the ground and the joints in my arms pull.

“It’s the only way!” he cries back, letting go and slamming against the stairs, holding onto the walls and staggering upwards into the open.

Warm tears fly off my face. “Storm! No!”

I expect him to turn around, to utter those three magical words, but he just goes.

He becomes a blur against the wind and dirt. I see him stand up in the open, crouched there and clawing at the ground for support as the twister builds behind him.

He’s going to die out there, die trying to save us.

Dan says nothing, watching on.

And then the doors close, the heavy hammer on the bolt sliding through from the outside as my feet hit the floor again and I dash up the stairs, ramming my fists against the doors. “Storm! Storm!”

The sound builds, climbing higher and higher, increasing into a volume so loud and final it’s like the apocalypse itself has arrived.

Something heavy pounds against the doors and buckles away. “No!” I scream, crying his name over and over but getting no response in return.

I sit sobbing on the stairs as the twister moves over us, a haunting howling of such magnitude and power it shakes the earth around us. Dan is curled against the shelf in the corner as I continue to scratch at the doors, hoping, praying against all odds he’s okay out there.

I close my hands over my ears, hugged tight, falling down the stairs and pressing my face against the cold dirt while the world seems to rip apart and distort around us. I let out a long, primal scream. It goes on, on and on until my throat is raw and I cannot see but for the tears that are streaming down my face.

Quiet.

It comes almost as suddenly as the storm arrived, a sudden peace falling over everything.

Dan stands and rushes towards me, a pole in his hands. He wedges it between the doors and uses it to lever the bolt outside open. It gives with a crack, the wood splintering. He pushes one of the doors open and we both emerge into an otherwise perfect day.

Out in the open, I spin around. The twister’s gone, dissipated into a dark ether across the way. Its destruction, however, remains.

“Storm!” I cry out, but I know it’s no use.

The house that stood beside the bunker is gone, a mountain of rubble. Trees, water tanks… It looks like a warzone, the ground littered with jagged twists of metal and shrapnel, wood and foliage strewn for miles across the fields.

There’s no way he could have survived out here. Nothing could have.

I collapse on my knees and curse at the sky, Dan holding me tight.

I cry until emergency services arrive and begin a sweep.

I cry as they load me into a car and send me home, and I cry as Mom places me under the covers, kissing my head like a child and telling me that “everything’s going to be alright, hon”.

But it’s not.

Just like Tim, he’s gone.

My Storm is gone.

I wake in a cold sweat. It seems I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.

It’s always a new bed, a strange room. Hell, I barely even remember what my own bed feels like. But this room’s scary. Everything in it seems out of proportion, massive.

“Help! Help!”

Mom holds me down. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

“Storm, where is he?”

She looks to the doorway. Dad stands there with arms crossed.

Mom smiles. “Why don’t you get some rest? Can I bring you anything?”

I’m frantic. “Why can’t you just tell me where he is?”

Dad steps forward crouching beside the bed. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry.”

Fresh tears flood my face.

I let them come. I let them come freely.

Jemma arrives, but even she can’t snap me out of my misery.

Every time I close my eyes he is there, sacrificing himself.

I picture them together, Storm and Tim, all the loves of my short life mixing and blurred together into a grand mess of tragedy and sadness.

“Is it me?” I ask Jemma.

“Am I cursed?”

She strokes my hair. “You’re not cursed, Al.”

“I am.”

I let her calm me, let her feed me soup while I wait. For what, I do not know.

*

Two days pass.

I’m up at least, moving about the house like a glacier, but eating again even though recent events have taken their toll on my body. I’ve lost almost 10 pounds.

We’re seated around the breakfast table as I try to stuff dry toast into my mouth. It could be cotton wool for all I know.

There’s a knock on the door.

Dad steps up to answer it.

“Alice,” he calls.

I stand up and move to the front of the house.

It’s Dan, hat in his hands as he stands solemnly in the door. My heart freezes.

Mom and Dad pull behind me, their presence a solid wall of comfort and support.

“It’s Storm,” says Dan, and no one moves a muscle. “They’ve found him.”

“God damn miracle he’s alive. Found him pinned under half of a house a quarter mile down the road. He’s a bit battered and bruised, but otherwise fine.”

I can’t find the strength to reply. The last two days have been emotionally draining. I thought he was dead, that I’d lost Tim all over again. I made it certain in my head. Hope never factored into it.

“Has he asked for me?”

“Yes.” Dan looks ahead and I can’t tell what he’s thinking about this news. Maybe he wishes Storm was never found. It would only make him human, fallible.

“Where is he?”

“Memorial Hospital. I’ll take you there now and then I’ll be on my way.”

“Thank you, Dan.”

“For what?”

“Just… thank you.”

“Well, you can thank Storm for me. He’s probably the only reason we’re sitting here. That twister was coming in one way or another whether we wanted it to or not. A brave thing he did, an upstanding thing.”

We pull into the hospital and Dan speaks with a girl at the front desk who directs us to the recovery wing.

Dan stops. “Hospital’s full up from the twister, but I managed to get him a private room. The least I could do.”

He points down the hall. “Number 52.”

“You’re not going to come?”

“Afraid not.”

“Too much to ask?”

“You could say that. Like I said, I owe the guy, but if I’m in the same room with him again I have to be honest and tell you I’ll probably just try and knock his block off.”

I nod, smiling. “It’s okay. I get it. You’d fight him, for me?”

“Any time, any place, but it’s not me you want, is it?”

A single florescent bulb illuminates Dan in the hospital hallway. We meet in the center at the hum overhead. He smiles and nods slowly.

“You know,” he starts, trying not to make eye contact. “We’d be great together you and me.”

“Dan, I’ve told you…”

He waves me off with his giant paw of a hand. “I know, I know, and look. I think I get it. Perhaps I’m wrong about your boy in there. Perhaps I’m not, but I know he cares for you, that you have something together I can’t understand. I’ve made my peace with that. I just want you to know.”

I don’t know what to say. Instead, I reach up and touch his cheek.

He’s right. He’s the safe choice, the man who could probably make me happy, but I have to know what a life with Storm can be like. I have to try, even if it breaks me.

“You should know I put in for a transfer,” he continues. “Just got the call saying it’s been accepted. I leave next week.”

“To go where?”

He laughs. “New York, funnily enough. How’s that? You escaped the Big Apple and I’m heading into it.”

“Is it what you want?”

He runs his hand through his hair. “Honestly, I don’t know what I want any more. Maybe this is the kick in the ass I need, a new start.”

“You’re going to make some hot little New Yorker very happy,” I chide, but I know it does nothing to take away the sting of my rejection.

He nods. “Perhaps.”

“Got any good places to eat?”

“Eat?” I motion down at my meagre frame. “Does it look like I do a lot of eating?”

“No, No… I just.”

“Double ShackBurger at Shake Shack. Can’t go wrong.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I’m going to miss you, Alice.”

“I’m going to miss you too, Dan.”

We embrace and there are more than words there. I nestle into his shoulder and kiss his cheek, the woody undertones of his aftershave all that is safe and comforting in the world. Doubt flickers, but I let it pass.

He holds me at arm’s length. “Goodbye.”

“Bye,” and he’s gone, turning one last time to look my way before the doors breathe open and with hat on he is no more, another love lost to the greater world.

With heavy feet I make my way down the hallway, pausing outside Storm’s room as a soft sweep of rain begins to fall outside.

Pathetic fallacy. How perfect.

I stop, leaning against the doorway, chest moving up and down, anticipation, fear, everything knotted together in my stomach.

I walk and he’s there, propped up in bed and watching the rain slide down the windowpane to his right in wet sheets.

I close the door behind me.

The only light is the cool blue from outside carving out his features as he turns towards me and smiles. He’s pretty cut up, but he is in one piece. “Didn’t think you’d come.”

I sit at the edge of his bed. “Why not?

My hands are folded nervously in my lap.

“Dan and you, I thought…”

“No, it’s only ever been you. You know that.”

He doesn’t reply but instead looks again at the window. The rain is gentle, a whisper against it.

“What do you see in me?” he asks.

“You’re asking me honestly?”

“Yes.”

“I just have to be around you. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t stop thinking about you. You’re everywhere I go, always in my head. Everything I do is done thinking about you. You. You. You.” I say it over and over again like a mantra, trying to concrete this as the right decision. “What do you see in me?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Beauty, more than I have ever known, and strength.”

I laugh. “Ha!”

He sits up further and winces. “I’m serious. You’re the strongest person I know.”

“You mustn’t know many people.”

“You’re right, but what I do know is what I feel for you, and that’s more than enough. It doesn’t have to be complicated, you and me. It’s simple. We’re meant to be together.”

“You really think so?”

“I do.”

He swallows, turning his eyes towards me the same cool color as the windowpane by his side. “I love you, Alice, more than anything.”

“More than Texas Pete’s rib sandwiches.”

“You bet your ass.”

My body responds and I climb onto the bed, letting his hands fall upon and my face and our mouths mash together as the heat overtakes us both and finally, finally, I have him in my arms again.

I move on top of him and he kicks the sheets off, the papery hospital gown he’s wearing only emphasizing the hard surfaces that lie below.

We kiss heavily, breathing deep, twisting and pulling at each other in need as the rain ramps up outside.

I don’t care if someone finds us. I don’t care who sees. I just want this man, now, with urgency.

My core pulls, begging for release, but it’s Storm who strikes first.

He holds my ass and pulls me forward on top of him, holding me under the thighs and lifting me over his face. My skirt falls around his head and I hold the top of the bed, panting, struggling for support as he pulls the damp crotch of my panties aside.

I let myself sink over his lips. My head drops back as his tongue parts my folds and presses into the hot confines of my pussy.

His hunger is insatiable, his need desperate as he holds my buttocks, clawing at them as I grind on his face.

The bed creaks. I jam my hips down upon him, his face stained with my juices and my pussy wide open and willing.

I moan, mew into the nothingness as he directs his attention to my clit, wrapping his tongue around the tight bundle before using the underside to lick down my folds in long strips, teasing at the tight ring of muscle that waits for his cock.

I reach behind myself and lift his gown, fumbling with desperation for his member. I find it, hard as a pipe, fingers curling around it and jerking him off as he continues to fuck me with his tongue and lips, pulling, sucking, twisting, teeth grazing my sensitive vulva as my orgasm begins to well up.

I stroke him harder, letting his balls roll between my fingers. I use his pre-cum to lubricate his shaft. It twitches in my grip and I need it inside me with every molecule of my being, to feel him take me as he did that first night in the barn.

I lift myself from his face and scoot back, holding his cock upright and then lowering myself upon it until it slides to the hilt inside me.

I lift and lower my body, allowing him to press towards my g-spot. I lower myself forward and take his mouth, fingers clawing at the nape of his neck as I kiss him deeply. My desire is upon his lips, the earthy scent of my cunt between us as I fuck him, his cock gliding inside my body and our pelvises pressed together in union as the bed shifts on the floor and he breathes in soft sighs around my mouth.

“Come,” I whisper into his ear. “It’s okay.”

He grabs my hips and flips me over onto my back, pulling the hospital gown clean from his body and sinking himself deep inside me with powerful thrusts.

“Yes, yes,” I mutter as my clit stirs and his mouth stifles my cries, his hot, mewling fingers all over me, a clothed nipple pulling to attention in his mouth as he pummels me.

The rain dissipates and the room is instead filled with the wet slapping of our bodies as they meet. Finally, we’re one again and I know this is right, that this is exactly where I’m meant to be whether it destroys me or not.

“Come,” I request again, as he breathes at my ear, and he does, thrusting fully inside me and releasing, balls emptying against my ass. My own orgasm rushes over me and my cunt clamps around him, draining him dry until we’re both left stunned and star struck, breathing like wasted animals on the rough-hewn texture of the hospital sheets, cum leaking out from my body as his cock comes free. I take it in my hand, squeezing the last drops into the sheets as he gasps for air and repeats my name over and over.

“Sorry.”

“For what?” he says. “That was amazing.”

“You should be resting.” He quivers as I roll my fingers over the sensitive head of his cock.

“There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing than making love to you.”

“You wouldn’t rather one of those hot nurses outside?”

“You mean Bertha with her cankles and three scoops of Deb?”

We both laugh, sweat turning cold on my face as I roll and lie on his stomach.

“I’m going to treat you right, Alice. Wait and see.”

I smile. “I know.”

###

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About Teagan Kade:

Teagan Kade thinks talking about yourself in the third person is silly, just like her collection of snow globes and rare manga. When she’s not being silly, she’s hanging out with her own Storm and two children in the south of Australia, dreaming of new characters and torturous ways they can get themselves into trouble. Teagan loves hearing from her readers, all of whom are as dear to her heart as salted caramel cookies. Shoot her an email at:
[email protected]
. She doesn’t bite.