Chapter Twenty-Five

Avery’s heart jumped at the mention of that night and the unbelievable kiss that had rendered her completely unable to concentrate on anything the week after.

She wanted to say, “Me, too,” but she was still getting over the fact that she had already asked—or demanded—he kiss her twice before.

They pushed into the store together. “Mr. Hardy!” she called. “Did you hear that thunder?”

“I’m sure it’s nothing, dear,” he said, emerging from the back and wiping his hands on his Hardy’s Hardware apron. “It’ll probably skirt Hillside entirely. I think Pecos had a storm on their forecast this morning. I’m going to pop home. Mrs. Diaz said she left something on my doorstep, and I don’t want it to blow away.”

“Take your time—we’ll be fine here,” she replied as he went through the door. She threw Lucas his sandwich.

He caught it easily with a smile. “You want to eat in the back?” he asked. “You’ll hear if anyone comes in.”

“Sure,” she said. But she was getting to know that smile. That was the one that made her stomach pang. That was the one that said he was about to kiss her.

He held out his hand, and she took it. He walked several paces before she realized she’d forgotten her sandwich. “Wait a second!” she said as she ran back to the counter to get it. “Sorry,” she said as she retook his hand.

“I’m not getting between a hungry girl and her food,” he said, leading her into the back.

She put her sandwich down on one of the workbenches and pulled out a stool to sit on. Lucas took the next door stool, and they knocked knees as they tried to swivel around so they could eat. She giggled.

“Hey,” Lucas said, leaning forward and putting his elbows on his knees.

She did the same, mimicking his posture. “Hey back.”

Inside, her whole body was smiling. He was going to kiss her, and she realized, all at once, that she could kiss him whenever she damn pleased. She jumped down from her stool and stood between his legs.

He straightened and tipped his head back slightly, putting his hands on her waist. She leaned into him and put her lips against his. He opened his mouth under hers, and their tongues touched. It was like a flash of lightning inside her. Her breath hitched as she kissed him, pressing her mouth hard on his, wondering if she was being too forward, too brazen. She just wanted to be as close as humanly possible to him. He wrapped his arms tight around her as he pulled her to him.

Then he stood up, picking her off the floor as he did, and deposited her on the counter, his legs still in between hers. He dragged her to the edge and wove his hand in her hair and slowly pulled it through as he kissed her.

He pulled away, looking at the strands as his fingers brushed through them. “Your hair was the first thing I noticed about you,” he said. His hand dived in again, this time staying pressed against her scalp, as he pulled her face to his.

After a few seconds of bliss, she pulled away, trying to catch her breath. “So what do you want to do tonight?” she asked.

“This,” he said, kissing her again.

She pushed him away and giggled. “Sure, sure. But what else?”

“Is there anything else?” He nuzzled her neck and gently bit her earlobe. She tipped her head to allow better access and then overrode the shivers that were running down her spine. She moved out of reach.

Lucas immediately stepped back and helped her down. “Sorry. Okay, I’m not sorry at all, but I’m going to let you eat your lunch.” His hair was adorably mussed, the way it had been that morning, and his cheeks were flushed. In that second, she felt herself falling in love. The way he’d stepped back as soon as she’d leaned out of the way—Blaine had always tried to “persuade” her to stay. The way Lucas obviously felt the same as she did when they were kissing. The way he was always honest with her. The way he wasn’t scared to talk about her mother. Oh God. She had it bad.

The store bell jangled, and he stepped back. As she went out of the repair room, there was a weird rattle. Maybe a display had fallen over. She went out into the store. “Hello?”

The door was swinging open. Wow. There was no one in the store. It must have been blown open. She ran to it and pushed it on the latch. Lightning flashed as she did, and she looked outside at the suddenly dark street. There was no one in sight.

She opened the door again to look down toward the gas station, but the door flew out of her hand and smashed against the wall, cracking the glass. Before she had time to react, another flash of lightning lit up Main Street. Seriously, it was dark like it was the evening already.

And then she saw it. A huge circular cloud across the intersection moving toward them. “Lucas!” she shouted. “Help me.” Shaking, she grabbed the things outside and threw them into the store, not caring that they spilled over the floor. It had been nearly three years since the last tornado. They’d been at her aunt’s for a visit, but when they came back, she remembered seeing the whole Lowes strip mall in the next town in ruins.

“What is it?” Lucas asked as he came running from the back with his sandwich in his hand.

“Tornado!” she shouted against the wind and pointed to the swirling cloud forming above the clinic. “It looks like it’s coming this way. It’s huge.”

The door slammed against the wall again, and this time, the glass shattered, covering her with tiny pieces.

Lucas grabbed her and pulled her into the store. “Get back.”

Something flew down the street. As Lucas tried to pull things away from the window, she poked her head out to see what it had been. Lucas yanked her back as one of the library’s recycling dumpsters scraped along the sidewalk.

She looked around helplessly. What could they do to save the stuff in the store?

“There’s nothing we can do now!” Lucas yelled. “Look.” A funnel cloud looked as if it were being pulled down to the ground with a string. “Get in the stockroom!” he shouted.

She ran back and opened the door to the small closet. But he wasn’t behind her. “Lucas!” she half screamed. “Lucas!”

He appeared. “It’s okay.” He pushed her inside and closed the door. Instantly, the roar of the wind reduced to a low hum. “I grabbed water and my sandwich. We’ll have to share.”

“I can’t eat,” she said between chattering teeth. “Have you been in a tornado before?” she asked.

“No, just drills back home. Sit.” He pointed at the floor. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.” He sat next to her and wrapped his arm around her.

She appreciated his words but knew he couldn’t possibly know that it’d be okay. “Mr. Hardy has never been wrong about the weather. Not until this week anyway.” It made her feel off-kilter. It was just wrong and really scary.

…

Lucas needed to distract her. “Tell me something that no one else knows about you,” he asked against her ear.

A package of napkins fell off the shelf and landed on her head. He stood up and sat behind her with his legs around her so he could protect her if anything else fell. He’d done a quick scope out, and the heavy boxes were at the back of the stockroom, thank God. “C’mon, tell me.”

She hesitated, but he gave her time. “Something no one else knows? Not even Lexi?”

“Sure,” he said, wrapping his arms around her and clasping them around her middle. It felt like the floor was shaking beneath them—more like an earthquake than the wind. He held her tighter, maybe more to quell his own fear than hers.

“Okay. You know the speed camera on the road north of here?” she said.

“Er, yes,” he said. This wasn’t exactly the kind of revelation he’d been looking for, but whatever kept her thinking about something else.

“I call him Stan.”

He was silent. What was she talking about?

“When my mom died, I felt like I was invisible to everyone except Lexi. No one outside the family talked to me. People’s eyes slid away from me at school because they didn’t know what to say.”

His heart hurt for her. He wished he’d known her back then. Wished he could have held her as she cried and just have been there for her.

“When I was running errands, I would deliberately speed there, so that it would flash up my speed on the display. Sometimes it felt like it was the only thing in the world that acknowledged me. That told me I was visible.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. That was literally the worst and most real thing he’d heard in his life. He leaned over her and put his head next to hers. “I wish I’d been here. I would have seen you.”

She pressed her cheek against his and choked a laugh. “I don’t know. I was a mess.”

“I think I would have loved messy Avery, too,” he said before filtering his thoughts. Before he could examine the source of his words, their whole world shook around them.

“I’m scared,” she said.

“Me, too.”

Avery pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. The walls of the room waved in front of his eyes; despite the fact that there was an upstairs to the store, he was sure he could see daylight between the walls and the ceiling. He was scared. This was bad. How could he keep her safe? The corner of the ceiling peeled up. Shit.

He pushed her onto her side and slid her across the floor. “Get under the shelf!” he shouted. She moved fast and managed to get herself under the lower shelf. She held her hand out to him. He grabbed it but didn’t try get in behind her. He was worried that if he destabilized the shelving system, it wouldn’t keep either of them safe. Instead, he lay down, holding part of the unit that was screwed to the floor. He lay facing her, holding her hand with his other.

Wind roared around them, but he kept his gaze on Avery. She was intermittently squeezing her eyes shut and then opening them to stare at him.

Suddenly, there was one more swoop of wind and then dead silence. “Are you okay?” he asked, moving closer.

“I’m so sorry I brought you here,” she said through tears. “If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t be here.”

His heart just about broke. “Are you kidding me? Right now, you’re the best thing in my life.” He made himself laugh at her. “I’d rather be right here, right now, than anywhere else.” He paused. “Except maybe the Super Bowl. But aside from that.”

She choked out a laugh. “This is just the eye right?”

He nodded. “So what do you want to do tonight?” he asked with a rueful smile.

“This.” She laughed, repeating what he’d said earlier.

He laughed out loud. Tornado sirens started screaming in the air. “Better late than never,” he said. “I mean, watch out—there could be a tornado coming.”

She laughed again but scooched over further toward the wall, under the shelving. “There’s room for you.”

“It’s okay. I’m pretty sure my very big, very hard, very handsome body might make the screws holding this thing down pop out.”

“You’re not that big, hard, or handsome,” she replied with a grin but grabbed his hand tighter.

The wind kicked up again. He moved closer so they were lying facing one another, as they had been that very morning. “Yes I am.”

“Yes, you are,” she agreed, her gaze fixed firmly on his. This time as the wind raged, he could only feel warmth inside. She didn’t take her eyes off him. Not even when the ceiling eventually peeled back. She just pulled the hand that was clenched around hers to her mouth and kissed it. Right then, she became everything.

Right then, he knew he was in love.

She rested his hand against her mouth as the contents of the shelves toppled onto the floor around them. Thankfully just more napkins, packages of paper plates, plastic utensils, and things that made them jump as they fell instead of hurting them.

The wind finally died down. And carefully, he helped her slide out. She wrapped her arms around him and just hugged him. He hugged her right back in relief.

After a few seconds, he pulled away. He checked their surroundings. Where the ceiling had been, clear blue sky was now. He helped her up.

“Have you ever seen Twister?” she asked, looking around them.

“I have a vague memory of that movie,” he replied. “Enough to remember that we’ve lived through it.”

“We should check to see that it’s safe to leave before we barge out,” she said, trying to look out of the door without actually opening it.

He tentatively pushed the door open and looked up through the crack, but there was nothing but blue sky above them out there, too. He went to open the door farther, but it was obstructed. He managed to force it open enough for Avery to get out under his arms.

As she ducked under his first arm, she stopped and kissed him quickly on his lips. “Thank you for staying with me,” she said and slipped under his other arm out into the debris.

He managed to get out behind her as another wall of boxes slammed the door shut again. “What? You think I would have left you?”

She took in the absolute annihilation of the store. No doors, no windows, no shelves, and a mass of debris from other places in town lay where they’d blown when the wind faded. Half the roof had gone, too. He was slightly embarrassed that his first thought was that he wasn’t going to get paid for the day.

Suddenly, out of the dead quiet came voices in the distance calling for Avery. She fought her way through the mess on the floor of the store to the front. “I’m all right,” she called, getting tangled in some netting that had covered the ceiling of the main sales floor.

Lucas made his way over to her and tried to stomp down the netting enough that she could extract her feet.

Coach and Colin came running toward the store and came to a halt when they saw them. Coach stood, hands on hips, and head tilted back, trying to catch his breath. Colin did the same, but he recovered faster. “Shit, Avery. You scared the crap out of us.”

“I’m so sorry you were scared while I was trapped as a tornado destroyed the building I was in! What’s the matter with you?” she nearly screamed back, obviously releasing a little tension.

Colin laughed.

“You all right, son?” Coach asked Lucas, looking behind him into what was left of the store.

“Yessir. We stayed in the stockroom,” he said.

“Where’s Benny, Avery? Where’s Mr. Hardy?” Coach made as if he was going to wade into the store.

“He went home about ten minutes before it hit. Wait, where else did it hit? Is everyone else okay?” Lucas asked, walking to the middle of the road and trying to see where the tornado had struck and the path it took.

Police cars sounded in the distance. “I don’t know how far it went when it passed you,” Coach said. “Colin and I were heading for lunch when we heard the tornado warning siren.”

“It was already right on top of us when the siren started. Luckily there was no one else in the store.”

“Oh my God,” Avery said in a horrified voice, looking at the space where the counter used to be.

Lucas turned around, worried by the tone in her voice.

“My planner. It’s completely gone.”