The bitten-off, one-word question makes his point for him. Inviting Wes to my home, doing him this kind of favor, it goes beyond the standard duty we all feel to help each other out ofa bad situation. It’s definitely outside the realm of our standard frenemies routine.
“I’m not going to force you,” I say wearily with a glance down at the crumbles of safety glass littering the pavement.
Wes’s expression doesn’t so much as flicker. His inscrutable look leaves me clueless as to whether or not I managed the easy-breezy tone I was aiming for, or if some of the uncomfortably squishy feelings I’m desperately trying to ignore escaped. But then he nods, sweeping his hand out toward my car. “After you, Nurse Sloane.”
Wes begrudgingly allowsme to clean up the various cuts and scrapes caused by the glass. By the time I’m done, I still think he could use a few stitches in the largest cut by his eye, but he waves me off and dry swallows a couple of ibuprofen before he slides off my rear bumper.
“You going to tell me how this even happened?”
He only shrugs. “RFD got me.”
The RFD—rear flank downdraft—is an atmospheric punch from the sky. Supercells are powered by hot surface-level air slamming into cold air in the upper atmosphere. Once the storm starts to rotate, cold air gets kicked out on the storm’s backside—sometimes with enough force that it can knock over trees like matchsticks.
I rub my temples, where a headache is starting to form. “Wetoldyou something like this could happen.”
“Yep,” Wes says dismissively, opening the map app on his phone. “What’s your address?”
Trying to get him to see how dangerous his decision was to chase this thing the way he did is a losing battle. If he doesn’t care about his own safety, nothing I say is going to change that.
Shoving aside the realization that Wes is going to know where I live now—obviously, I’m the idiot who invited him—I rattle off my address before opening my car door. “You sure you’re okay to do the drive? Windshield will make it?”
There’s a long spider crack across it, but it’s low enough that he should be able to see. And he’s right that there’s nowhere around here where he can get the glass fixed until morning, if that. Camping out on the side of a farmer’s field isn’t going to solve anything.
Wes brushes some loose bits of glass off his seat and leans on the doorframe. “Guess we’re going to find out, aren’t we?”
Gritting my teeth at his blasé attitude, I point at the windshield. “Call me if that gets worse.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you worry far too much?”
“Just you,” I grumble before slamming my door shut.
The uncomfortable twist in my belly at the sight of all that shattered glass and Wes’s blood lingers. I’m not sure I’ve really managed to push it aside three hours later when we pull into my driveway in Colorado Springs just after midnight.
My house isn’t anything special. The front steps are sagging in places, and the roof probably needs to be replaced sooner rather than later, but I was so happy when I found something I could afford that I figured I’d get to it eventually. Eventually has turned into five years. Oops.
“It may not be up to your standards,” I tell Wes when he gets out of his car parked behind mine in the short driveway. Iknow from his social media that his condo is one of those gleaming, modern palaces in a high-rise that probably has a doorman. “But I’m tired and don’t want to hear it.”
He mutters something too low for me to catch, then reaches through a blown-out window into his back seat. Out comes a massive camera bag and a smaller black duffel he slings over one shoulder after brushing off more glass.
“Watch the second step,” I call back, pointing to the half-rotten board I keep meaning to replace.
From my spot on the porch—I’m taller than Wes for once—I catch the full breadth of his annoyance when he stares up into my face, the porch light illuminating the hard line of his jaw. “You’re going to end up with a broken leg if you don’t get this fixed.” He skips the step entirely, one long leg stretching up before he effortlessly joins me on the porch.
“That’s rich coming from you. You could have died today.”
Another one of those maddening shrugs. “I didn’t.”
“This time,” I snap, shoving my key into the lock and twisting hard. The last thing I need is for the lock to stick and Wes to crawl up my ass about that too, but thankfully it decides to cooperate.
My place isn’t huge. Living room, kitchen, bathroom, and what the real estate listing optimistically called two bedrooms. Only one of those rooms has space for an adult-size bed. The other is my office. At some point I’ll finish off the basement to give myself more space, but for now it works just fine. It’s not like I have even so much as a plant to share it with.
What I do have is a handful of my favorite storm images I’ve shot over the years printed on large metal canvases sprinkled around the house. Wes walks right up to the one closestto the door, an elephant trunk tornado half twisted over a road, and lightly traces the shape of it with his index finger. “I remember this one.” He throws a sheepish grin over his shoulder. “My shots didn’t come out this well.” His attention drifts to the next image, mammatus clouds and a double rainbow over a brilliant green field. “Gorgeous colors.”
The praise sits uncomfortably in my stomach. I know I’m good when it comes to weddings—I wouldn’t be booked out more than a year in advance if I wasn’t—but having Wes in my house is strange enough without him complimenting my storm work. “Yeah, that lab does a good job with color,” I reply. “It’s late. Maybe you can play art critic another time?”
He lets out a snort of laughter, but turns away from the prints on the wall and gestures to the couch. “This me?”
I eye my couch dubiously. “Maybe we should see if one of the hotels in town has a room. You’re too tall for life.”
