Till I Kissed You (33 page)

She ran back outside and looked around, not sure exactly what she was even looking for. In the brief minutes she had been inside, the atmosphere outside had grown worse. Rain bursts pelted her, and she pushed her hair out of her eyes feeling like a deer caught in a hunter's spotlight.

A ground-floor closet was her best option. Time to make a decision was slipping away. What if she'd waited too long? What if something terrible happened before she had the chance to tell him?

She ran back inside. Two steps into the kitchen, and a loud crack made her jump. Various parts of her body stung. Wind whipped her hair around her face, the noise growing louder. Seconds ticked off before her brain lined up the facts. The branch of a crepe myrtle, a few tenacious pink blossoms dangling from the end, was in Sawyer's kitchen. The small window over the sink was broken and tiny cuts from flying glass stung her arms and legs.

She wiped her cheek, and her trembling fingers were red with blood. Terror froze her, barefoot and with glass over the floor.

From a great distance, she heard her name. Sawyer.

Then before she could move or call his name, the back door banged open and he was there.

“What the hell are you doing here? Don't you know tornadoes have been spotted?”

A sense of calm came over her in the swirling chaos. Only one thing mattered in that moment. “I had to tell you … I love you. I love you, Sawyer Fournette.”

His eyes flashed. “We are cursed with crappy timing—have you noticed?” He tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, but the wind negated his efforts. He rubbed a thumb across her stinging cheek and looked around. “Let us try to stay in one piece, shall we?”

He lifted her into a cradle hold and carried her outside. A flying piece of debris hit her temple, and she ducked her head into his neck. He muttered a curse and bypassed the shed. She peeked over his shoulder, blinking against the rain. The metal of the shed seemed to waver with the force of the wind.

Sawyer tried to run, but between her weight and the wind, he moved like he was swimming through thick honey.

“Put me down. I can walk now.”

He set her down, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her toward a copse of pines at the edge of what used to be a cotton field. Adrenaline kicked her into a higher gear, but she wasn't afraid anymore. Not with him.

Double doors sat a few feet higher and nearly parallel to the ground. A storm cellar. He grabbed both handles and pulled. Nothing happened. He kicked at the hinges and applied himself to opening one side. With a squeal of rusted hinges, the door lifted. The wind caught it like a sail and slammed it open. A musty, moldy smell poofed out, and she covered her nose and mouth.

The situation took on an unreal, dreamlike quality. While Sawyer descended a few steps into the black hole, she looked around. Debris floated in the air as if gravity was no longer in effect. In the distance, white birds flew in the storm, flitting and diving.

He took her hand and pulled her backward.

She pointed. “What are those birds doing?”

The birds seemed to move closer, the noise increasing with each second that passed. He went from still to frantic. “That's siding off houses, not birds. Get your sweet ass down here. Now.”

He pushed her past him into the blackness. The steps were rough. Splinters cut at her feet, the pain a reminder of their current reality. A cobweb wrapped around her calves. She was too scared to scream. She kept her gaze up. Debris was spinning over them now as Sawyer wrestled with the door, finally winning.

The darkness was complete. Her knees were watery, her body shaky, and imagining what lay beyond wasn't helping her state of mind. Her foot touched solid ground. The distance seemed immense as she descended, but it was only ten feet or so in reality. Sawyer clamored down with less hesitancy. A rain of dust had her blinking and finally closing her eyes.

Her toes scrunched in dirt. The air was cooler, and her rain-dampened clothes chilled her. The door bucked, but she kept her eyes closed. She wished she hadn't watched that movie
Twister
a dozen times when she was a kid.

Sawyer's arms came around her, and she burrowed her face into his neck, grabbing him tight around his waist. “I'm scared,” she murmured.

“Me too.” White noise from the storm filled the silence. His hands roamed her body and as if they had actual healing power, her various stings receded. “How badly are you hurt?”

“Some cuts. Nothing serious.” His hands skimmed over her backside and stayed to knead it. Her twinge of laughter bordered on hysteria. “My ass is fine.”

“No arguments here.” How they could find humor in their predicament was beyond her comprehension.

“Your face is cut,” he said softly.

“Is it bad? Will you still love me if I'm hideous and scarred?”

“I will. I'll even love you when you turn gray and lose all your marbles.”

She rubbed her cheek against his but pulled back when his words sank in. “Wait. You mean ‘if' not ‘when,' right?”

His laughter tumbled through her but faded quickly. “Did you mean it?”

“Mean what?”

“Do you love me?”

With the fear of the storm and their lives hanging in the balance, the truth came with ease. “Of course I love you. I loved you even when I hated you.” In the darkness, her lips found his for a brief touch. “I talked to Mother. She got to you, didn't she?”

He rested his forehead against hers and twined their fingers together. “She did. I knew what she was capable of and yet she still injected doubts. That night in the truck … I was hurt and stupid and thought you were just after a hook-up for old times' sake.”

“This summer hasn't been about closure or reliving the past for me. It's been about the future.”

He sighed. “That's what I thought too, but then your mother said—”

“How about we cut that phrase out of our lives? It doesn't matter what my mother said. Not anymore. I know that what happened between us so many years ago was fundamentally my fault, but you scared me.”

“I scared you?”

“You were so handsome and mature and confident. We were young, and I didn't trust my feelings, I suppose. Mother only amplified what was already bothering me. When I found you with that girl, my worst fears were realized.”

“I wasn't as mature as you thought I was, obviously, or I wouldn't have gotten so blitzed that I blacked out. I should have tried harder to get through to you, but…”

“But what?”

“I never felt good enough for you, but the way you treated me afterward drove that point home like a stake through my heart.”

She leaned away and slid her hands over him until she cupped his cheeks. She couldn't see him, but maybe he could see her just a little with his Fournette sight. “I was the flighty, pageant girl who never felt good enough for you. Everything you went through and dealt with made me love you even more. I was never ashamed of being your girl, Sawyer Fournette.”

*   *   *

He grabbed her wrist and laid a kiss on her palm. The world might be going to hell above them. He didn't care though with her in his arms, her words filling the voids in his heart. “Maybe being good enough doesn't matter when you're perfect together.”

“I love you and want to be with you, and if you want me to organize a parade to announce it to all of Cottonbloom, I will.”

He thought about taking her up on the offer for the amusement factor alone. “I don't think that will be necessary, but I'd be honored to take you to the Cottonbloom Country Club for dinner tonight.”

“That would be—” She gasped. “If it's still standing.”

Anxiety pierced the cocoon of their existence. Uncertainty existed outside of the darkened storm cellar, and Sawyer was loathe to face it. “I don't hear anything, do you?”

The wind had stopped battering at the doors, and the trainlike noise had faded into a pattering rain.

He tried to pull out of her arms, but she wrapped her hands around his nape and jerked him in for a kiss. It was quick and confined to a press of their lips together. But he understood. It sealed their commitment to each other no matter what they faced.

His steps on the ladder reverberated. It took a long heart-stopping minute of imagining them dying in each other's arms in the dank pit before he managed to wrench the door open.

Dark clouds raced across the sky, but the unnatural purpling was gone. From the adrenaline-fueled race up the river to outrun the storm to the shock at Regan's appearance to the bone-deep relief at finally settling things after a decade apart, his emotions were all over the place. And now this.

“Dear Lord,” she whispered beside him.

A soft rain fell on the destruction. Shingles and siding and broken planks lay around them. The roof of the metal shed had been peeled back like a tin can and tilted like a cartoon house. The farmhouse had taken the brunt of the damage. It looked like a giant had smashed a fist into one side. His kitchen was exposed and covered in debris.

He pulled out his phone, punched buttons, and stared at the “call failed” message. “Cell service is out. That means at least one tower is down.”

Fear for his family layered his anxiety, stymieing him. Cade. Where would Cade have been? The shop probably. He was probably out of his mind with worry for Monroe. And Tally? Had the downtown and her gym escaped damage?

“What do you want to do? Save things from your house or go driving?” Regan asked.

He strode toward the house. Anything of value was in a safe tucked into a hall closet, but there was one item, not worth anything beyond kindling, that he had to salvage. He heaved himself into the kitchen and knelt down next to the kitchen table. It was tipped onto its side, but miraculously seemed intact. He ran a hand over the scarred top before heaving it to all fours. A new chip marred one side, but it had survived with another tale to tell.

He picked his way across the kitchen and into the hall. The wood floor made a cracking sound, and he stopped. Everything seemed ready to collapse like a rickety house of cards. He stayed close to the wall and shuffled to the closet to grab a tarp.

The blue canvas would protect it from the worst of the rain. Regan was barefoot and picked her way over to where the back door used to be. The screen portion was fifteen feet away on a crepe myrtle tree that had tipped over like a passed-out sailor on leave, its roots dangling.

“I need to find Cade and Tally.” Bone-deep fear grew, the kind he hadn't felt since right after his parents died and he'd overheard Cade and Uncle Del's whispers about the state separating them.

He jogged to the front of the house. The willow tree had fallen on Regan's car. His truck had been spared minus a few scratches, the ends of the braches blocking the passenger side.

“I guess we should take your truck,” she said.

“Sorry about your car.”

She climbed through the driver's door and over the console. “If we're going to be together, I need to get something you're comfortable riding in anyway. Because I don't think you're going to be doing all the driving.”

He grabbed her hand in a tight hold and pressed it against his mouth unable to thank her for being her—pragmatic and funny and fierce. As he swung inside, the sound of a vehicle coming closer had him out and running around the fallen willow to the edge of his drive. The rain had slowed to a few plinking drops, the sun edging into the dark clouds on the western horizon.

Cade. It was Cade in their daddy's old truck, swerving around fallen branches. Sawyer ran up the last few feet to meet him and grabbed his brother up in a tight hug on his first step out of the truck. Tears pricked his eyes. He didn't even care if Cade saw them and called him a wuss.

Cade's arms were just as tight around his back, and when they finally broke apart, his eyes were as misty as Sawyer's. They turned to face the caved-in farmhouse at the same time, neither one speaking for a long moment.

“Sorry about your house.” Cade's voice was rough. “But, damn I'm glad to see you in one piece. Where'd you ride it out?”

“Old storm cellar out back. It was touch and go whether I was going to get the doors open. Did you get in touch with Monroe? I don't have cell service.”

“Called from the shop—which made it through fine besides some downed trees—she's fine and so are Tally and Nash.”

Regan picked her way toward them. Shingles and siding, not all of it from his house, littered the field. “Thank goodness, Cade. How's Monroe?”

While Cade filled Regan in, Sawyer hauled her close and nuzzled his chin at her temple. He'd learned life was fragile years ago with his parents' deaths. The tornado had been a refresher course.

“You two got everything worked out, then?” Cade smiled one of his rare smiles.

He opened his mouth to answer, but Regan beat him. “We do. I love your brother very much, Cade. I hope you'll give us your blessing.”

Cade rubbed a hand over his jaw, his voice growing even rougher. “You don't need my blessing. I know we've had our differences in the past, but let's leave them there. The two of you were obviously meant for each other.”

Sawyer bumped Cade's shoulder with a fist. “Thanks, bro.”

“What do you say we head to town?”

“Did Monroe say anything about damage?”

Cade shook his head. “We didn't have long to talk. There was a line of people to use the landline.”

They sat three across in Cade's truck. He swung them out into the field to turn them around. Trees were down all along the county road. They met a handful of trucks out doing the same thing.

The going was agonizingly slow. The rain had stopped and rays of sun crept over the sky by the time the steel-beamed bridge came into view. Regan scooched to the edge of the seat, one hand on the dashboard, the other blindly reaching for him.