Loving the Chase (Heart of the Storm #1) (22 page)

Keep your head in the game, boy.

Yeah, he was doing a bang-up job of that.

“What’s the nail about?” she whispered as it brushed against her cheek. She pulled it between her teeth playfully, and yet it yanked on every heartstring he had.

He swallowed hard. “It’s from our apartment,” he said, watching the change in her eyes. She pulled it from her mouth and looked at it.

“You—you wear it,” she said.

“I do.”

Her lips quivered. “All these years.”

He tilted his head in a sort of shrug. “Kept me—me. Kept me grounded.” He pulled it from her fingers, tucking it down between them. “I meant it when I said I miss this,” he said. “This.” He pointed back and forth between them. “Me and you.”

“Hanging out in mud puddles?” she said.

“We do rock a puddle,” he said, making her laugh again. He could listen to that laugh all night. All week. All . . .

Damn it, things were going to get bad. All he wanted to do was keep the moment going, but his phone was buzzing again.

“Somebody wants you,” she said, meeting his gaze knowingly.

“They can wait.”

She raked his hair back and looked at him with—love. Whether she said it or not, it was all over her face, and he knew right then and there he’d never see something more beautiful than that.

“Zach?”

“Yeah?”

“This was—”

His phone started up again, and he dropped his head, pressing his forehead against hers. “I’m so sorry.”

“You need to get it, don’t you?” she said softly.

“It might be work,” he said.

Of course it was work. It was always work. He gave her a long look and blew out a breath as he let go of her to fish out his phone. Instantly, the air went chillier.

“Don’t move,” he whispered. “Please. I’ll tell them to call me back. And besides, it might just be Mom looking for you.”

She smirked. “Because that wouldn’t be awkward at all.”

“Hello?” he said into the phone without looking.

“Seeing this weather?” Simon said in his ear.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“Kinda,” Zach said. “Can I call you back?”

“Just wanted to tell you it’s probably gonna be an early morning tomorrow, bro,” Simon said. “The cells moving in have a lot of activity going on.”

Zach looked uneasily at Maddi. This was not a conversation to be having with his dick still inside her. “Okay.”

“Makes me a little nervous, actually,” Simon said.

“I’ll call you back, Sim—” Zach said.

“It’s awfully close to home,” Simon said, cutting him off. “Don’t think it’s gonna be a long drive.”

The words made Zach’s skin tingle, and not in a good way. The last time—

“What are the projections?” he asked.

Maddi’s body relaxed from the lockdown grip she had on him, and she gently pushed him off her and to the side.
Damn it.

“Wait,” he whispered. “Baby, please.”

She’d looked at him like he’d invented orgasms earlier when he’d called her that. Not so much this time. But Simon was rattling on and on about the forecast, and—

“Simon, let me call you back in a few, okay?” he said, cutting him off midsentence when Maddi found her bra. “Maddi,” he said, hanging up. “What are you doing?”

“Going on a scavenger hunt for my clothes,” she said, peering around in the dark. “You wouldn’t think they’d have gone that far.”

“I mean, where are you going?” he said, getting to his feet and pulling his jeans back over his ass.

“Home,” she said, and then stopped and shook her head. “I mean, back to the house. Your mom’s house.”

He reached for her as she pulled on the baseball shirt, struggling to get it on as the soggy fabric stuck to her.

“Wait a minute,” he said, pulling her to him.

“What?” she said. “It’s done. You’re done.”

Zach flinched as if she’d slapped him. “What?”

Maddi raked her soaked hair back with one hand as the now soft-falling rain fell on her face. “This,” she said, gesturing between them like he’d done. “Magic’s over. Real life is back,” she said, her voice quivering a little in spite of her smile. “Just help me find my flip-flops, please. I swear I must have thrown them a mile when we fell.”

“Maddi, no,” he said, feeling all the good they’d just put between them fading away. “It’s not—damn it, will you quit looking for your shoes?”

“I need my shoes!” she said, her voice wobbling more as she looked off on the other side of the driveway.

Zach moved to stand in front of her and lifted her face. “It’s not over, and real life is what we make it. We—” He blew out a frustrated breath. “It was just a phone call, it’s not the end of everything.”

She chuckled, and he felt the hot tears fall on his hand again. “You know, I used to joke back in the day, that I could stand naked in a field in front of a tornado, and you’d get a hard-on for the funnel cloud.”

“Wasn’t a funny joke,” he said.

“You just literally had me naked underneath you, and talked to Simon about weather formations,” she said, laughing like she couldn’t believe it. “That’s actually some scary foreshadowing there.”

“Maddi, it was work,” he said. “You heard me trying to hang up. It’s my job. All hell is about to break loose tomorrow. What if your boss called
you
while we were lying down there?”

“Simon’s your boss now?” she said.

“Come on, you know what I’m saying,” he said, scrubbing his fingers through his hair and sending water slinging behind him. “Don’t pick it apart.”

“I know I wouldn’t answer the phone for anyone for the few minutes it takes to bask after
seven years apart
,” she said, her voice finally cracking. “The nice thing about cell phones? They have voice mail.”

“Maddi—”

She held up a hand. “Just let it go, Zach,” she said. “We all have a job to do. You have a storm to chase tomorrow, and probably need to get ready. So do I.” She headed toward a dark spot in the grass. “Here they are.”

Zach watched her snatch up her shoes and give one last glance over her shoulder. Even in the dark, he knew that look. No suitcase this time, but that was just details. Looking up at the sky, he closed his eyes against the rain. Anger roiled inside him as familiar as if it were seven years earlier. Maybe she was right. Maybe the storms
would
always come first with him. Maybe this was all he was meant to have—these small moments, tossed to him like bones.

As Maddi faded into the darkness, he knew the irony of not following. He turned and headed back to his house, leaving a little piece of his soul out in the yard. As he opened his door and looked around the room at everywhere she’d breathed, he clenched his jaw against the burn and forced away the weakness.
Get your head in the game, boy.

Chapter Twenty

M
addi counted her steps as she moved through the darkness, the rain having reduced to nearly a mist. Two hundred and thirty-three till she made contact with the porch, and somehow it was that tangible touch of a wooden post that broke her.

Clutching the wet wood, pressing her forehead to it, Maddi let the floodgates fall open, sobbing into it without restraint. She sank to her knees and hugged the post, wanting the darkness to swallow her whole. Wishing for her car, for a taxi, for anything to whisk her away from this place. She’d been wrong to think she could do this. To think she could just land back in her old life and come out unscathed and unaffected.

She’d known she was playing with fire and doused herself with fuel anyway.

Part of her had wished for the fire, wished for the fairy tale. Wished for Zach to have changed enough to give them a second chance. Being in his arms again, loving him again—God help her,
that’s
what she was calling it?

Yeah, that’s what she was calling it.

Loving him again felt out of this world. It felt right, it felt real, it felt connected and synchronized in a way she had never felt with any other man. When she was with him—not just sexually, but just plain
with
him—she felt every bit his. All the little dots lined up where they were supposed to in the universe.

The universe was fucked up.

Simon’s car was gone, as was Eli’s, but Hannah’s was still there. She didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing, but she couldn’t stay outside forever. The rain was picking up again, and damn it if she didn’t keep looking behind her to the road. Again. Just in case.

Because women are fucked up, too.

“Find your big-girl panties, Maddi,” she said under her breath, pushing to her feet. Ten more feet to the front door, and she spent that space wiping the snot from her face. Rain could explain the wet, but a meltdown had its own signs.

One more glance behind her to firmly establish her pathetic state, and she opened the door. Just opened it like she lived there and wasn’t a guest.
Home
, she’d said to Zach. Too much was happening here. Too much too quickly.

The likelihood of making it to her room without being seen was pretty low, but she gave it a shot anyway, tiptoeing through the entryway. The squeak of her flip-flops made her curse under her breath and take them off.

“Maddi?” came Hannah’s voice around the corner. “Holy shit,” she said when Maddi turned. “Where’ve you been?”

A gasp from Miss Lou made Maddi wish she’d slept on the porch.

“Maddi Marie Hayes,” Miss Lou said. “What on earth?”

“I thought you’d gone to bed!” Hannah said.

“No,” Maddi said weakly, feeling like she was nine and caught sneaking a cookie from the kitchen.

“You’re drenched,” Hannah said, grabbing her arm and pulling her to the kitchen. Because—that was logical.

“Did you fall in a ditch?” Miss Lou said, going straight to her version of fixing everything: making a cup of hot tea.

“I was outside,” Maddi began, going with a seed of the truth. “Looking at the sky—”

“And it fell on you?” Hannah asked. “Jesus, we just had gale-force winds come through here. Simon was jumping up and down. You were out in that?”

“I—kind of—got held up in it, yeah,” Maddi said. She met Hannah’s narrowing gaze and blinked away, but then the question behind it made her look back. Damn it! The burn started behind her eyes before she could stop it.

“Are you kidding me?” Hannah asked under her breath, and Maddi shut her eyes tight. “Outside?”

“What?” Miss Lou said, jolting Maddi’s attention back to Hannah, pleading with her eyes to let it go.

“Gah!” Hannah said, covering her face and shaking her head. “Nothing.” She dropped her hands, presumably to start something merciless, but then her expression changed when she saw Maddi’s face.

“Nothing,” Maddi said, looking at her hands and biting her bottom lip.

She heard Miss Lou turn around and prayed she wouldn’t think too hard on it. She didn’t have long to wait to find out.

“Lord,” Miss Lou said on a sigh. “Just so you two smarty-pants overgrown teenagers don’t hurt yourselves talking in code, I’m aware what
outside
means. I’m not that old.”

“Kill me now,” Maddi said, leaning over to rest her forearms on the island and her head on her arms.

“Just tell me it wasn’t right outside my door,” she said.

“Gah!” Hannah repeated, looking like she’d just put her hand in a bowl of worms.

“No,” Maddi said, in the smallest voice possible.

“And are you okay?” Miss Lou asked, taking Maddi by surprise and bringing all the hot emotion back full circle.

Maddi laughed through tears that once again wouldn’t be denied, her head still on her arms. “I’m so stupid,” she breathed.

“Oh, shit,” Hannah muttered. “He was a dick, wasn’t he?”

“Hannah!” Miss Lou exclaimed.

“Just saying,” Hannah said, digging in a cabinet for a Little Debbie cake. Unwrapping the cupcake, she placed it in front of Maddi. “Men are men. Being brothers and sons doesn’t exempt them from being dicks.”

“Okay, I can’t have this conversation with y’all,” Maddi said, raising her head. “Oh, chocolate,” she said, grabbing the cupcake. “Bless you.”

“Do I need to go have a talk with him?” Hannah said.

Looking at her, laughter bubbled up from her chest. “Thank you for being you,” Maddi said. “But dear God please no.” Maddi wiped tears as they kept coming, and plucked off a piece of chocolate yum. “And he wasn’t a dick.”

“Explains the crying,” Hannah said, reaching over and pinching off a bite for herself.

“No,” Maddi said, waving a hand and dropping crumbs. “He didn’t make me cry, it was—I just wish—”

“That you didn’t still love him?” Miss Lou said.

Maddi gasped, and her eyes filled with fresh tears as she looked at Zach’s mom. “Oh, God, don’t say that out loud,” she whispered.

“Honey, it’s true and you know it,” Miss Lou said. “We all know it. But things are different now and it complicates things.”

No, no, no, no.
She could not go down this road again. She had a busy life with a career. She didn’t have time for love, especially this love. This was too much drama, and she had neither the time nor the capacity for more drama. She’d used up all her drama cards the day she walked away from this.

“No, it’s not like that,” Maddi said, wiping at her face, willing the floodgates to close. Willing her heart to shut down.

“Girl, you are a smart, savvy woman,” Hannah said. “Usually. I don’t see dropping drawers and doing the wild thing in the middle of a thunderstorm as something in your wheelhouse.”

“God,” Miss Lou muttered, laughing and going back to fixing the tea.

“Not normally, no,” Maddi said, rubbing her arms.

Hannah leaned across the island on her arms so she could look up into Maddi’s face. “Then it’s
like that
.”

Maddi felt the exhaustion weigh down upon her like a wet quilt.

“I might need something stronger than chocolate,” she said.

Hannah winked. “I’m on it.”

Maddi woke to a loud sound and a monster headache and jumped
across the room to the light switch in one bound. Cracker, having taken
to sleeping with her, blinked in the unexpected bright light. Too
much bright light. There was light peeking around the curtains.

“What the hell?” she said, pressing the button on her phone. “Shit!” she exclaimed, yanking off her pajama pants—different ones; she’d never be able to wear her favorite cutoff sweats again. “Eight forty-five? How did it get to be so—”

A loud bang against the house made her yelp. Cracker just snuggled back down in the covers again, and then she heard voices.
Damn it, damn it
. Pulling on jeans and a nearby tank top and twisting her hair up with a tie she always had around her wrist, she ran out the door. Hopefully she wouldn’t have to breathe on anyone.

“Damn it, guys,” she said, rounding the corner of the hallway and hearing Rudy’s voice. “Why didn’t someone wake—”

Maddi’s words died in her throat, threatening to circle back around and strangle her. Zach was standing only feet away, talking to Rudy, his eyes landing on her like a wrecking ball.

The night before came crashing over her, replaying every word, every touch, every kiss and sensation in a matter of seconds. But she couldn’t do that, she reminded herself. What were those things?
Job, Blakely, tornadoes?
Well, she still had two out of three.

Maddi tried to recover, pulling back at the air that rushed out of her lungs.

“Rudy, I’m sorry, I overslept,” she said, blinking fast, focusing on anyone else in the room but Zach. “Why didn’t somebody come bang on my door?” She took a quick visual inventory of the room all abuzz. Crew members were in and out, doing checks, Miss Lou was passing out muffins on the go, shoving one into Simon’s mouth when he declined. “Where are Hannah and Quinn? We have to wire them all up and—”

“We aren’t going,” Rudy said softly.

“What?” she asked, stopping short. “There’s no run?”

“No, they’re going,” said a nearby sound tech with microphone packs under his arm. “The girls are on their way, I’ve heard. Picking up the grandmother or something.”

“Picking up Gran?” Maddi said, frowning and glancing toward Zach, who was unnaturally silent. “For what?”

She noticed a camera rolling from a corner tripod and a cameraman steadily panning the room.

“What’s the filming?” she asked Rudy.

“I’ve already wired up Eli and Simon,” the sound guy said. “Zach, can you lift your shirt up for me, bud?”

Thank you, God.
If Maddi would have had to do that today, she would have lost her shit for sure. She couldn’t even look him in the eye without blinking away.

Zach looked down at the guy like he was a mosquito, raising his pullover T-shirt. “Sure thing,
bud
.”

“Rudy, what’s going on?” she asked again.

“They are going,
we
aren’t,” Rudy reiterated, raising an eyebrow when she met his eyes.

Maddi flinched. “The hell we aren’t,” she said. “That’s how it works.”

“Not today it doesn’t,” Zach said, finally breaking his silence.

Maddi met his gaze over the sound guy’s head, and she lifted her chin a bit and mentally sprouted roots into the wood floor to give her strength. It dawned on her what the active camera was about. Someone took it on themselves to catch the drama. That guy needed a raise.

“What are you talking about?” she asked. No wiggle in her voice. Well, at least that was something.

Zach shook his head, his expression troubled. “It’s bad today, Maddi. Crazy cells converging, making everything unpredictable. And it’s too close.”

Maddi frowned, not liking his tone. “So what does that mean?”

“It means some bad shit is barreling down,” he said, pointing down at the floor. “We don’t even have to drive far. It’s coming here. And we have no idea what we’re in for out there.”

Another bang turned her around, and out the window she saw the rain already blowing in gusts, whipping trees around and knocking a lattice arch against the side of the house. Her mouth went dry and she licked her lips.

“Doesn’t change anything,” she said. “The show goes on.”

His jaw twitched as his eyes flashed. “Damn it, Maddi, you aren’t getting it,” he said. “This one isn’t going to be normal.”

She scoffed. “None of this is ever
normal
, Zach.”

Yeah, there was maybe a little too much acid in those words, but her headache was pumping it out in droves with each pound against her skull.

“Do you remember the last one that came here?” he said through his teeth, yanking his shirt down as the guy finished. He stepped closer, and Maddi clenched her fists. “That one wasn’t normal, either. It jumped around and got away from us. It was unpredictable.” He stopped and breathed in slowly, as if needing to control himself. His words. “We can’t protect you out there.”

“I don’t need protecting,” she said.

Zach shook his head, and Eli walked up beside him, appearing to be a rare wall of solidarity. The look on his face mirrored Zach’s.