Page 10 of Whirlwind

He looks at me funny, eyes squinting in confusion. “Why would that be weird?”

Yeah, Finley, why would that be weird?I sure as hell made it weird now.

“I, um—I suppose it’s not.”

His cheek twitches in a lopsided smile, then he turns his computer monitor so I can see the tornado better.

“Holy cow,” I breathe, studying the freeze frame of the multi-vortex tornado. The two funnels look like a man walking through the sky, destroying anything in its path. That’s why it’s called “Dead Man Walking”—they are a truly terrifying but amazing phenomena of Mother Nature. “What was it like?”

My gaze moves back to Ryker, but his eyes are on me instead of the tornado. They have the same glazed over look that mine must get when I’m thinking about him. That can’t be, though—I must be reading itwrong.

After a moment, he blinks and sits up in his chair. “Beautiful, shit-inducing scary, but a thing to behold.” He presses the spacebar on his keyboard, and the video starts up. The twisters are rotating, walking across the video like thick legs. His team was so close I can hear the whistling roar of the funnels as they tear across the Texas plains.

Eventually, Ryker comes on-screen, and my heart beats even faster. I remember this moment from when I watched the livestream. He has a hand on his head to stop the red backward cap he’s wearing from flying off, and he’s smiling so wide I can see his teeth and his eyes crinkling at the corners.

He yells“Can you fucking believe this, man?”to a teammate off-screen before he cheers and hollers in his excitement. Then he turns to the camera.“Are you seeing this, everyone? There’s no taming this twister. You can only stand back and hope it doesn’t eat you alive!”

Ryker pauses the video again after another few seconds, and I smile at him. “I can’t believe you were that close.”

“I’ll never forget it, that’s for sure.” He points to a few scratches on his cheek. “Maybe they’ll scar, and I’ll really never forget it.”

I laugh softly and sit forward in my chair so I can see him better. They’re shallow cuts so they won’t scar, but I can’t deny they’d probably be sexy if they did. Not that Ryker needs to bemoresexy…

I wet my lips. “I wish I could’ve seen it in person. I wanted to take photos, but I couldn’t get to Texas with all my schoolwork.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “You take storm photos?”

I play with the thin silver ring I have on my middle finger, one in the shape of a lightning bolt. “Yeah, um—it’s a hobby of mine.”

“Do you have some on you?” His eyes are shimmering with a giddiness that has the Twister Tamer fangirl in me jumping up and down. My weather idol wants to see my photography!

“Yeah, I do.”

“Do you mind showing me some?”

I shake my head, not caring that I came here to discuss dew points, probabilities, and other data that normally I’d find interesting but right now sounds terribly boring. Ryker West is asking to see my storm photos.

I reach down to grab my bag and pull out a folder. “I just developed these in the school’s dark room—I was trying a little experiment with film instead of digital.”

More surprise colors his features. “You take photography classes as well?”

I nod. “Figure if I’m paying all this money to be here, might as well, right?”

He chuckles as I hold out the folder to him. “Very true.” He places the folder on his desk, and nerves kick up inside me as I realize Ryker is going to be looking at my photos. I wanted him to, but now, he’s actually doing it.

I bite my lower lip as he opens the folder with a care so deliberate it feels out of place on a man who looks like him. Tall, muscular, a little rough around the edges.

His mouth parts as he stares at the image on top. It’s of a wallcloud in western Kansas I snapped two weeks ago. It hangs low in the sky, dark gray and ominous like the ceiling of a collapsing cathedral. What I love most about it is that its edges are ragged and trailing thin wisps of vapor that twist like ghostly fingers. It’s creepy and beautiful.

Ryker leans closer to study the image, his fingers hovering over the cloud like he can feel its movement. “Finley…this is incredible.”

The moisture in my mouth disappears, and warmth blooms all the way from my toes to the top of my head from his praise—from the way he almost whispered my name. “Thank you.”

He gently shuffles to the next image of a lightning strike in Oklahoma then to another image of a funnel cloud from that same storm.

When he’s done, he hands the folder back to me. He was mostly quiet as he studied each one, only muttering words of praise or sounds of awe. My insides have turned into a puddle of goo.

His eyes meet mine. “You’re very talented.”

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