I wanted to believe him. Needed to believe him. But all I could think about was Marcus out there in that storm, helping people get to safety while a tornado bore down on them. Marcus, who’d finally started letting himself be happy. Marcus, who I was supposed to have two more days with before I had to leave.
Marcus, who I’d been too scared to tell I was falling in love with.
The lights flickered once, twice, then went out completely. Someone had flashlights already, their beams cutting throughthe darkness as the wind screamed outside. The whole house groaned and shuddered, and I heard something crash in the distance.
“Everyone into the cellar, now!” Beau ordered.
We crowded into the narrow hallway and down the cellar stairs, bodies pressed together in the darkness. I ended up wedged between Lucas and one of the ranch hands whose name I couldn’t remember. The flashlight beams caught the stone walls of the basement and the dust falling from the ceiling. Mabel and Frank were close by, their arms wrapped around one another. On the other side of the room I saw all of the wedding guests crammed in, Beau’s family and Lucas’s friends. Talk about a terrible vacation. Upstairs the weather radio kept crackling updates, each one worse than the last.
“Tornado has intensified... now an EF-2... significant damage reported on the western edge of town...”
My stomach dropped. Western edge of town. That’s where the sheriff’s office was. Where Marcus would have been coordinating the emergency response.
I pressed my face against Lucas’s shoulder, trying to control my breathing. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t lose him. Not now. Not when we’d just found each other. Not when I hadn’t told him how I felt.
The roar of the wind grew deafening, like a freight train bearing down on us. The house shook violently, and I heard glass shattering somewhere. Someone was praying in Spanish. Someone else was crying. I might have been crying too, I couldn’t tell anymore.
And then, as suddenly as it had come, the roar began to fade.
The wind continued to die down, replaced by an eerie silence that was somehow worse than the roar. Rain began to pound against the house, but that freight train sound was gone. We allstayed frozen in the cellar, nobody willing to move yet, listening for any sign that it was coming back.
“I think it passed,” Beau finally said, his voice sounding too loud in the sudden quiet.
Lucas’s arm tightened around me. “Give it a few more minutes. Sometimes there’s more than one.”
I pulled away from him, fumbling for my phone even though I knew it was pointless. Still no signal. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking as I stared at the dark screen, willing it to light up with a message from Marcus. Anything. Just three words to tell me he was okay.
“Xavier, he’s fine,” Lucas said again, but even he sounded less certain now.
“You don’t know that.” I shoved my phone back in my pocket. “The western edge of town. That’s where the sheriff’s office is. That’s where he could have been.”
“Marcus is smart,” Beau interjected, climbing the stairs to check conditions above. “He wouldn’t have stayed in the office if it got bad. He would’ve gotten everyone to the shelter.”
I wanted to believe that. I really did. But I kept thinking about Marcus’s text.Always am. Like he was invincible. Like sheriffs didn’t get hurt or killed doing their jobs.
Beau’s boots thudded on the floor above us. “All clear!” he called down. “Looks like we got lucky. Missed us by a mile or so from what I can tell.”
Everyone started filing up the stairs, relief evident in their voices. I followed on shaky legs, my chest so tight I could barely breathe. We emerged into the main house to find surprisingly little damage inside the house. There were some broken windows, water everywhere, and debris scattered across the floor. But the structure was intact.
Through the broken windows, I could see the storm still raging to the northeast, that sickly green cloud illuminated byconstant lightning. But it was moving away from us now, away from the ranch. Moving away from Sagebrush.
Outside the wedding tents were in shreds. Poles were scattered across the ground, the plastic canvas was destroyed, and it looked like one of the barn doors had ripped clean off the barn. It was a mess, but it wasn’t total destruction.
But I felt zero relief.
“I need to get to town,” I said, already heading for the door.
Lucas grabbed my arm. “Xavier, you can’t. The roads are going to be a mess. Trees down, power lines?—”
“I don’t care.” I jerked free, my voice rising. “I need to know if he’s okay. I need—” My voice broke and I pressed my hands to my face, trying to hold it together and failing miserably.
“Hey, hey.” Lucas pulled me into a hug, and I didn’t fight it this time. “We’ll go check on him. But we’re doing it smart, okay? Let Beau and me drive. We know these roads.”
I nodded against his shoulder, not trusting myself to speak.
“Give me five minutes to assess the damage here and make sure everyone’s accounted for,” Beau said, already moving toward the door. “Then we’ll head into town.”
Those five minutes felt like hours. I paced the living room, stepping over broken glass and soaked furniture, checking my phone obsessively even though the screen stayed dark. No signal. No messages. No way to know if Marcus was alive or dead or hurt somewhere.
