Chapter six — she do NOT fw his ass

Caroline had lost all track of time.

For what felt like an eternity, she and Tyler stood in the deep end of the pool, staring up at the black sky and all that had been destroyed in its anger. The mother behind them whispered promises to her son—that they were okay, that everything was fine. Caroline wished bitterly she could hear those words from her mama.

Tyler's hand was on the back of her head, her face buried in his chest in a way that felt all too familiar and comfortable. He rested his chin on the top of her head as though it belonged there.

After God knew how long, emergency responders from the next few towns over began to roll in, though their sirens weren't much help at all to alerting the citizens of Old Stillwater to their presence—there weren't any citizens left to hear them. None that Caroline could see, anyway. She hoped they were all just down in their storm cellars.

Some firemen came over and helped the four of them out of the pool, since the metal ladder had been ripped off in the wind and deposited somewhere else. There was a lot of grunting and uncomfortable tugs on Caroline's injured arm, but she spilled out of the drained pool and into real life.

It was worse than she'd thought. Whatever had come through, whatever twister had ripped its way down Main Street, it hadn't been a usual old EF-1. It wasn't one the town was prepared for. As far as the eye could see, not a single building was left standing. Some were flipped on their heads, some were ripped clean in half. Some were just support beams and nothing else.

Caroline bit her lip, then put her hand over her mouth to hide it. But she couldn't hide the tears pooling in her eyes.

Tyler's crew found them not long later. They poured out of their old trailer and greeted Tyler with expressions of the greatest relief and the most necessary of embraces. Caroline crossed her arms, then let out a little gasp as the girl who manned the drone threw herself out in a hug.

"You guys gave us a real good scare," the girl said—Lily, she was called. She pulled away from the hug and gave Tyler a worried sort of look. "We didn't even know where you went."

"We just came out here for a rodeo," Caroline said quietly, pinching the bridge of her nose and shutting her eyes. She couldn't shake the feeling that she was on the verge of tears, even if the storm was long gone.

"We're alright, though," Tyler said; and the tone he used made Caroline feel like he was reminding her of the fact. He reached out and folded her into a hug.

She accepted. She didn't even think about how much physical contact she had had with her ex in just two hours.

Someone called her name from across the street, and she turned out of Tyler's arms to see Javi rushing over towards them. She offered Tyler and his crew a nod of acknowledgment, then met Javi in the middle, only barely taking notice of his Storm Par crew advancing on the ruins of the town. He gave her a hug, which shocked her only a little bit at first.

"When I saw the size of it on the radar," he said, pulling back from the hug to meet Caroline's eyes, "and how close it was to this town, all I could think—"

"I know, Javi," she said, crossing her arms. "I'm okay. We made it out fine. These people, though, this town..."

She glanced around again at the wreckage, finding it to be like a train wreck—horrible, but something you just can't look away from.

"Javi," came Scott's voice. He approached from behind, looking, again, much too out-of-place in his clean white button-up and khaki pants. He lifted his earpiece, tapping the back of a clipboard in what looked like anxiousness. He jerked his thumb back toward the remains of a building. "Apparently this place was family-owned, so I'm gonna go get some numbers. Riggs'll want those first thing."

Javi stammered, nodding, waving Scott away. "Okay, yeah, I–I'll catch up with you, man."

A bitter taste overtook Caroline's mouth, and she couldn't help the glare she was giving Javi when he turned back around. "Javi, can you tell me what Storm Par needs with those numbers?"

Javi hesitated only briefly, then smiled awkwardly, shaking his head. "No, uh, you know... Collecting data from the storms, just like you guys do."

"You know, I don't actually think we're on the same page," she said, bobbing her head in a resentful sort of way. She scoffed in disbelief. "Javi, come on. Don't lie to me. Is profiting off of people's tragedy part of your business plan? Why do you need these numbers?"

"Hold on." Javi shook his head emphatically, lowering his voice and leaning in like he was trying to keep the matter private. "Caroline, Riggs offers these people a way to move on with their lives. He's doing it to help them—"

"Seems to me he's just making a killing by swooping in on innocent people who've just lost everything." Caroline glared at Javi, rage bubbling up deep inside her. She gestured to the townspeople Scott and Riggs were interrogating. "That was me once, Javi. Those people were my daddy and me. If we'd been approached by Riggs after that storm—after my mama, after my brother—I think we woulda given him everything we had, and not because we wanted to. But you don't get it, do you? You don't know what it's like to—"

"Oh, I don't know what it's like?" Javi scoffed derisively, giving Caroline a disbelieving look. "You lost your family, and I lost the closest thing I had to mine. I didn't get to say bye to three of my best friends in the world all because Kate Carter was trying to land a big, fat grant for her science project. I don't know what it's like, Caroline?"

Caroline swallowed, her stomach clenching with anger—but she let her eyes travel a little ways behind Javi, where Kate Carter in question stood, her eyes shining with tears. Caroline cleared her throat.

From the look on his face, Javi realized how far he had crossed the line. He spun around to face Kate, regret filling his features, calling her name; but she just shook her head, stalking off toward the Storm Par truck she'd just come from.

Javi tried following her for a few steps, but even he seemed to recognize it was a hopeless case. He stopped in his tracks, and both he and Caroline watched Kate rip out of town in his own truck. She never said where she was going, but Caroline hoped it was a hell of a lot further away from Javi than she'd been before.

He turned back toward Caroline, despair written across his face.

"Don't give me that shit," she told him. "You said what you said, Javi. I don't give a damn if you feel bad about it."

"Look, Caroline—" Javi cut himself off by running a hand down his face, sighing. He put his hands on his hips. "Do you wanna scan this town for data before you go, or what?"

That was what did it. Blind with rage, Caroline glared at Javi in absolute disbelief just a moment longer, then scoffed with every ounce of anger in her being and turned to go. He didn't follow her.

"Tyler," she said as she passed his group on her way to his truck. "Come on."

He followed her with his eyes, a slight smile playing on his face. He gave his crew a glance over his shoulder, then—at the insistence of their grins and waving hands—followed her to his own car.

"We goin' somewhere?" he asked her, circling toward the driver's seat—then pausing, curious, as he ran into her. "Oh, you're driving?"

"Of course I am," she said, holding out her hand for the keys. "I got something to show you."

Tyler laughed to himself, relenting, heading back around the truck to get in the passenger's seat. Caroline hitched herself up to get into the driver's side, adjusting her seat so her legs could reach the pedals. She took off without a word of warning.

It was just as the clock hit midnight that the truck pulled into the driveway.

Tyler leaned forward in his seat, peering through the darkness up to the house that sat abandoned before them. He didn't say anything for a long moment, letting Caroline take the reins—as she was so good at—and wanting to keep himself from stepping on any toes. He hadn't heard what had happened between Javi and Caroline, but anybody with two eyes could see it hadn't ended well. He'd wanted to ask her if she was okay, the whole drive down—or west, or north, or wherever she'd taken him.

Wherever they were, there was a house. It was dark and tiny—almost invisible, if it hadn't been for the headlights of Tyler's truck.

Finally, Caroline turned the key in the ignition and took her foot off the brake. "We're in Pampa."

"Texas?" Tyler's eyes just about popped out of his head. "I knew we'd been driving a while, but, damn, Line, I didn't—"

"This is my house."

She said it with such a dry voice that, for a second, Tyler didn't believe her. He knew she was from Texas, of course, but she had lived in Dumas before college, not... Pampa. Not a town named after a diaper brand. This town, this house, they didn't fit Caroline at all. Caroline was big and loud and you always knew she was there. This house—this town—was nothing compared to her vividness.

"I bought it," she clarified, as Tyler went a few moments too long before responding. "'Bout a year or so back. Wanted to live closer to my dad."

Tyler waited a beat to see if she'd go on, but she didn't, so he cleared his throat. "I didn't realize you moved back out here, Line."

"I didn't."

Her voice carried so much conviction—so much guilt—that Tyler wanted to take it, take the tangible shame she felt, and carry it away from her so she never had to feel it again. He was familiar with thick, suffocating shame—he and it were old friends.

For some reason, he hated that it had infected Caroline. He hated it more than anything in the world.

"Oh." Tyler rubbed his jaw, his eyes lingering on the dark house before him. "Well, are you still plannin' to?"

She lifted and dropped her shoulders in an exhausted shrug. "Don't know. But I didn't want to stay at that motel on Storm Par's tab anymore. And I didn't want to stay in Oklahoma anymore. And I guess I just wanted to show you this."

He turned to face her, brow furrowed. "Why me?"

She managed a sad kinda smile, her eyes glittering. "Don't know. Guess you're the only good reminder of my past that I have."

Before he could respond, she threw off her seatbelt, and for a moment Tyler was worried the house had no idea what was coming for it. She was through the front door—after picking up a little silver key from beneath a potted plant to unlock it—in the blink of an eye.

Smiling to himself, Tyler followed her. Of course he did.

The house wasn't one of those that tricked your perspective—looked small from the outside but is pretty damn big on the inside—but Tyler didn't mind that, 'cause he decided the interior fit Caroline much more than the exterior had. It was just barely furnished to the lowest possible degree that it could be and still be called a home: One sofa pressed against the wall of a living room, a fridge (empty) next to an oven, a mattress on the floor of the only bedroom in the house. There wasn't even a television or anything.

"Wow," said Tyler, glancing around the place—he'd had to duck his head to get through the doorway. "I feel like I've been teleported back to the 2000's."

Caroline rolled her eyes, pulling some blankets out of a closet in the middle of the hallway. "Give me a break. I'm not a millionaire; I'm paying rent in California, of all places, on top of this. Plus it's not like I really expected to spend a night here anytime soon."

Tyler raised his eyebrows. "Oh, we're spendin' the night? I thought you were just showing me—"

"You don't have to if you don't want to."

"You wouldn't have a car, Line. You'd be stuck here until I came back to get you."

"I'm surprised you're saying you'd come back at all."

Tyler chuckled, his hands on his hips, and let their rapid fire conversation lull to a pause. He cleared his throat. "'Course I'd come back for you. But that doesn't matter, does it, 'cause I'll be here with you."

He took the blankets from her arms and turned to lay them across the couch like a makeshift bed. When he turned over his shoulder, Caroline was twisting her fingers together, not meeting his eyes.

"Actually," she said quietly, "I was wonderin'... if you'd—"

"Oh," said Tyler, his eyebrows flying up on his forehead. He cleared his throat, a small smile dancing across his face inquisitively. "Y–you serious?"

Caroline coughed awkwardly, then sniffed, clearly trying her best to draw out a long pause as much as she could. "Just... 'cause today was like a bat outta hell."

Tyler smiled. "Whatever that means."

Caroline gaped at him in awe. "You guys don't have that sayin' in Arkansas? Are you serious?"

"Well, I also lived in Texas for a couple years," Tyler pointed out, wrapping an arm around Caroline's neck and directing her back toward her own bedroom, "and I can safely say I've never heard that saying before. You make it up? Be honest."

"Hand to God," she claimed, grinning up at him, "that's an actual thing people say. You just came to the wrong parts of Texas."

"We were in the same damn part!"

He and Caroline laughed together again—almost as if the last few years hadn't happened, as if they'd been this way all along. Neither of them acknowledged their past in such a way. Neither of them thought about the fact that they were two exes about to spend a night in the same bed (if you could call it that).

They just talked and laughed. When Caroline woke up the next morning, she didn't remember falling asleep.

It was the first night she'd slept without nightmares since 2009.

something about this one hit me harder cus javi wasn't even saying it to kate's faceee omg why do i want to die lowkey 😭😭😭😭😭😭 also yeah i government named kate cause this whole time i thought her name was kate cooper for some reason until a commenter cmo. if you're that commenter i want you to know i appreciate it and i've learned from my mistakes and i respect you