Edge of Chaos (Love on the Edge #1)

by Molly E. Lee

  My lips parted and heat rushed to my cheeks, the images of all I wanted to do with Dash pulsing behind my eyes. I clenched them shut, but that only made his body pressing against mine play on HD in my mind. “He’s my best friend, Mom . . .”

  She put the dish up and reached for me. I hugged her, sighing into her shoulder. “You know what they say the definition of true love is, honey?” she asked, placing her hands on either side of my face.

  I shrugged.

  “True love is friendship set on fire.” Mom pushed some hair out of my face and gave me a too-knowing grin. I hadn’t told her everything, but she’d understood regardless.

  I STRAIGHTENED UP at my register trying to focus on the task instead of analyzing the events that occurred since the start of last semester. In that time I had rid myself of the heavy weight of Justin and I could finally do whatever it was I wanted without fear. And yet, his absence wasn’t what left a hole in my chest. It was Dash’s.

  I’d grown used to all the time we spent together, and these last three weeks where he’d given me more than enough space, I missed those times more than I missed any moment with Justin over our entire relationship.

  The kisses Dash and I had shared burned the back of my eyelids and a flush raked over me. I tried to hide it with my hair as my next customer approached, a young man with brown hair and evidence of a five o’clock shadow. He had pretty blue eyes and was handsome enough. I was a single woman for the first time in . . . well, ever, but no urge to flirt tickled my insides. No curiosity on how his skin would feel against mine.

  I handed him his bag of video games and sighed. How could I be newly single and already completely in love with someone else? And why did it have to be Dash? My heart was twisted, locking on to the only person in the world I’d ever considered my best friend—human wise anyway.

  Despite my best efforts and all the space and time I’d taken, I’d still come to the conclusion that I loved him. Loved him with every piece of who I really was, and I couldn’t deny that I’d learned more about myself through our friendship than I had any other time in my life. He pulled the best out of me, encouraged me, supported me, and believed in me. And he did this without asking for anything in return, except for a chance at my heart.

  I sighed, looking at the clock. The second I got off I would call him and see if he’d meet me. See if he still wanted to take a chance on us. Part of me feared he’d changed his mind, that our time apart had let him realize how damaged I was, or that we were better as friends. I swallowed the fear and reminded myself that I wasn’t that girl anymore, the one who let fear control her life. I was a girl who went after what she wanted, whether that be a tornado or a man.

  “Blake!” John called, snapping me out of myself. He walked into the store, his laptop tucked under his arm and his brick red faux-hawk clashing terribly with his bright yellow T-shirt. Paul jogged after him, catching up to him with a strained look on his face.

  My excitement over seeing the pair almost hurt. I shook my head, not realizing how much I’d missed my friends. “Hey,” I said as they stopped in front of my register. “What are you two here for? Music or video games?”

  “Neither. I’ve tried calling you, but the line said your number was disconnected.” John squinted his dark eyes.

  “Long story. I thought Dash would’ve passed the new one on to you guys.” I studied his and Paul’s expressions, and it was like a punch in the stomach. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Dash—”

  “Don’t, man.” Paul cut him off, shaking his head.

  All the air around me disappeared and my stomach hit the floor. “What happened?”

  John glared at Paul before returning his eyes to me. “Nothing, yet.”

  “What do you mean, yet?”

  Paul grabbed John’s arm like he could hold his words back with the motion. “I’m telling you, man. Don’t.”

  “She’s the only one who can help us.” John jerked his arm away. “All right, look, Blake, he said he’d kill me if I told you. In fact, he made me promise not to, but he took off earlier today for a storm near Broken Arrow.”

  Paul groaned and shoved his hands in his pockets.

  I sighed, relieved at first and then it quickly turned to aggravation. “So what? That’s what Dash does. Damn it, John, you made me think he’d been in an accident or something.”

  “No, you don’t get it. No one is going after this storm.” He set his laptop on my counter and opened it. “Doppler has been tracking it for hours, and it’s going to drop something so nasty tonight, we were all warned off it. The locals are already preparing.”

  I swallowed hard, glancing at the radar images aligned next to the weather map that filled John’s screen. My heart kicked up in speed, I didn’t even need to be good at compiling this data to see it would produce something awful. “Dash knew all this?” I asked, returning my focus to the boys.

  John shrugged. “‘Course he did.”

  “And he went anyway?”

  “He’s been acting weird the past few weeks. Distant, but more reckless than normal. He almost totaled his truck last weekend when we tracked a mesocyclone in Shawnee. He snagged an incredible shot, but the hail damage was ridiculous.”

  He must’ve registered the hurt in my eyes because he sighed. “I wanted to call you for the chase, but Dash told me you needed a break.”

  I nodded, knowing it was my fault for pushing him away.

  “Damn, bro, why don’t you go ahead and tell her everything,” Paul snapped.

  “There’s more?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” John said. “A few weeks ago he showed up to the lab with a black eye and scraped-to-hell knuckles after a fight with J—”

  “Shut up, John!” Paul cut him off and punched him in the shoulder.

  John flinched. “What the hell? She’s one of us; she needs to know.”

  My stomach sank, the visual of Justin’s beaten face the last time we spoke clear in my head. I’d assumed as much but had never confirmed it since I’d known from the two times we’d spoken that Dash was fine as opposed to hospitalized. I shuddered and piled on another load of guilt.

  “Anyway,” John continued, “you’re the only one who has ever been able to pull him off a storm. I’ve never seen anything like it. We’ve both tried for years when he’s gotten too close, and he never once left when we did. You join the team and the man finally listens.”

  I took a deep breath. I hadn’t gotten Dash to leave as early as them, but apparently it had still been earlier than he normally would have. Dash had always lived on the edge with storms, but I never believed he’d be this careless. “Has he left already?”

  “About an hour ago. But it’s a three-hour drive and then the storm isn’t predicted to hit until late tonight, between ten and midnight. We could make it and you could call him off, at the very least keep him from getting too close. Paul and I would go alone, but like I said, he’s never listened to us before.”

  It was only two o’clock. I could get there before nightfall. I flipped off the bright yellow number above my register and practically sprinted to my manager’s door. I pounded on it till he opened.

  “Dustin, I’ve got to go. Emergency,” I said and whipped around, rushing to my car.

  John stopped me before I opened my car door. “Blake, I hate to do this to you. I never would put you in this kind of danger if I wasn’t honestly worried about Dash. You know how rare and ugly cells like this can get, especially after dark.”

  “I know.” I held my cell to my ear willing Dash to answer, hoping I could talk some sense into him sooner rather than later. I pocketed the phone after two more attempts. “How are we going to find him?” I glanced at Paul climbing into the passenger seat of the Tracker Jacker across the lot.

  “Just follow us,” John said, reaching in his back pocket and handing me a walkie-talkie. “We’re all linked to the same hot spot for our laptops, so when we get within a five-mile radius, we’ll know his exact lo
cation.”

  I gripped the radio and arched an eyebrow. “What if we don’t get in that radius?”

  He set his laptop on the trunk of my car. “He’ll most likely be near where the storm is predicted to drop down. You’ll probably be able to predict the location better than me at this point.”

  I eyed the data carefully. After a few moments I had a better handle on the storm. “Everything points to a section off of 51,” I said.

  He quickly clicked the data to the side and pulled up his go-to site for maps. “Got the routes. We’ll check the back roads surrounding that area. 209 E Ave is the where I would’ve taken him if I’d been tracking, so you can start there while we try to get a hit on the network.” He eyed the radio in my hand. “We’ll have ours on. Stay in touch.”

  I gave him a firm nod and opened my car door. John held it as I sank inside.

  “And Blake?” He looked down at me.

  “Yeah?”

  “Be safe.” He shut the door and jogged to the Tracker Jacker.

  Luckily I had a packed bag in my trunk. I’d stuffed a duffle with a couple sets of clothes, a pair of flat leather boots, and a disposable toothbrush in my trunk after the last chase. I’d wanted to be ready at a moment’s notice if Dash ever asked me to go again—knowing that he kept the same stocked bag in his truck, too. Of course, he hadn’t asked me to tag along on this one, and with good reason. He knew I would’ve tried to stop him.

  I changed out of my work clothes quickly when we all stopped at the halfway point to fill up our tanks. I’d ridden John’s taillights the entire way. I had called my mom on the road and asked her to take care of Hail. I’d never been so thankful that I’d given her the new key when I’d had my locks changed. Guilt bit my insides over not telling her the exact storm I was chasing, but she would’ve flipped.

  My knuckles were white I gripped the steering wheel so hard. I broke the speed limits, as John did, but neither of us was bold enough to push it as fast as Dash would’ve. He’d probably made the three-hour drive in an hour and a half. I could clearly picture him already set up on the side of some back road, sitting on his truck bed, camera in hand, just waiting to catch the biggest storm predicted in years.

  I knew we were close before John radioed saying we were only a couple miles outside of the storm. The color of the sky told me everything I needed to know. Night hadn’t taken over yet, but the sky was a dark gray, almost black, and had a green sheen to it. It stretched for over a mile before running into the lighter evening tones of blue in the distance. The contrast settled eerily over the small town, casting the buildings and homes in an odd mish-mash of dark and light. The streets were deserted and stores had closed early. This town knew what headed toward them and smartly took cover.

  “This is where we split up,” John said over the walkie-talkie. “We’re going northwest to see if we can get a signal. You go southeast to the area you predicted. Keep your cell on in case we get too far apart for the radios, all right?”

  I clicked the button down. “Got it. If you find him before I do . . .” I took a deep breath. “Just tell him I’m here.”

  “I will.”

  I set the radio in my empty front seat and a few miles later took a hard right on the road John had suggested. It was a lonely road bordered by farmland and rolling green pastures with tall grass that buffeted back and forth in the steady wind. A chill crept across my skin as the sky grew darker the farther I drove. Normally I would’ve seen at least a few other chasers setting up their gear on the sides of the road, but no one was here. Not for this one.

  After a mile a sliver of hope slipped into my chest. I hadn’t spotted Dash’s truck. Maybe he’d thought better of it and had turned back. I pulled over and grabbed my cell, hoping he’d answer this time. He’d already ignored four of my attempts, but reception out here was finicky, and this time the call cut off after only two rings. I stared at the one lonely bar on my screen before looking at the road ahead. I couldn’t spot anything, no sign of a truck in either direction as far as I could see.

  I shoved my phone back in my pocket and a cold sweat popped from my forehead. The sky moved now. The black wall cloud stretched over a mile wide and had a wicked updraft that slowly churned its way into what would be a terrible beast of a tornado. Two small funnel clouds peeked out of the bottom of the cloud, and their rotation was like two ominous dentist drills preparing to split open someone’s teeth.

  I swallowed hard and threw my car in reverse. This storm would hit earlier than predicted, though when had storms ever really been predictable?

  Dash was here somewhere. I could almost sense it—the passion building in him as he watched the sky with hawk-like green eyes. The wild excitement as he planted his feet on the trembling ground and pointed the camera toward the production. He wouldn’t miss the opportunity to be the only one with real footage of a monster like this, not even if it cost him his life. The data collected would be invaluable to him—and I knew people would benefit from his in-depth research in the field—but I couldn’t justify that as a reason to try to capture a supercell like this. It was too risky. Too much at stake.

  I swung my car around and scanned the area surrounding the fields. Another road led southeast and would allow him to get ahead of the storm. It definitely would be the better vantage point to film, though it was a dirt road and therefore the more dangerous choice. If it rained, which it almost always did, then even a truck like Dash’s could get stuck. And without a vehicle to get him out, he’d just be more potential debris for the tornado to project.

  As much as I prayed he didn’t pick that road, I turned and drove down it.

  A strip of sky lit by the sunset peeked below the pitch-black wall clouds that stretched farther than I could see. It hovered over the massive field like a slowly lowering velvet curtain, but this wasn’t the end of an act . . . no, the show was about to begin, and way ahead of schedule.

  Just as I made out a black truck a mile down the road, a loud crash of thunder boomed and rain fell in sheets as if the thunder had burst the massive balloon holding it. I turned my wipers on to full blast and stupidly kept my speed. I grabbed the walkie-talkie. “I found him!” I shouted into it.

  “What’s your . . . cation?” Static crackled over the line, causing John’s voice to cut in and out. I repeated my location twice while gaining ground on Dash. The static grew louder, so I tossed the thing aside.

  Dash stood on his truck bed, pointing the camera toward the wall cloud. His chest puffed out slightly as if he taunted the storm. His gray T-shirt clung to his carved abs like a second skin and his jeans were so soaked they looked black.

  I skidded to a stop next to his truck. He glanced in my direction and instantly threw his head back, eyes clenched. He stomped his foot before leaping off his truck. I’d barely made it out of the car before he was within inches of my face, his green eyes practically on fire.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he screamed. “I’m going to kill John!” Dash darted his eyes around the area behind me, like he was searching for the Tracker Jacker. I spared a second to hope they’d heard my location before anger flared in my stomach.

  I shoved him backward and flung the wet strips of hair out of my face. “What the hell are you doing here, Dash?”

  “This is what I do!” He jerked an arm in the air, the camera steady in the other and still pointed expertly at the clouds, like it wasn’t even a thought.

  “No, Dash, this is what we do, and even I’m not this stupid!”

  He scrunched his eyebrows together. “Did you just call me stupid?”

  I smacked his chest. “Yeah! I did! This is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done!”

  Dash didn’t try to fend off my attack. “Have you ever seen an entire town wiped out, Blake? Homes destroyed, sucked into the sky and spit back out like shredded junk mail? This needs to be studied. You’ve got to understand that. No one has captured a storm like this. It will help!”

  “It’s not wo
rth your life!”

  “How many times do I have to tell you? I know these storms and how to handle them.”

  “You can never know storms, Dash. And the minute you think you do, it’ll turn on you.”

  “Well, I’m used to that, aren’t I?”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I yelled at his back as he walked toward his truck.

  “Nothing,” he said and flung his truck door open, leaning over an opened laptop.

  The rain continued to dump buckets on us, and it thundered so loud I flinched every time. I gripped his shoulder and forced him to look at me. “What did you mean?”

  His shoulders dropped. “You! I know I said I’d give you time, and I still will, but it took me all of five minutes to realize I was crazy about you. That’s why I can’t be around you until you’ve made up your mind. It physically hurts to be near you and not touch you.” He grabbed at his chest like the lightning cracking the sky had hit him.

  I looked toward the sky and raked my hands through my soaked hair. “I’m so sorry. But I couldn’t be that girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “The relationship girl or the broken girl. I had to figure out who I was outside of him before I could even think of giving myself to someone else.”

  “I know that. Did you figure it out?”

  I took a step forward, the rain drenching my entire body. The move felt like a leap. No going back. “I’m the girl you saw, even before I could see her myself. I’m the girl who always eats three cookies instead of one and who thinks Nutella belongs in the dairy food group. I’m the girl who chases tornadoes, interprets weather maps on the fly, and senses when it’ll downpour.” I glanced up, my eyes stinging with the rain. “I want to save lives someday, and I want to be an asset in weather reporting and tracking. So, which girl am I?” I took a deep breath, my revelation pouring out of me harder than the rain. “Yours.”

  Dash’s eyes widened. “Truly?”

  “If you’ll have me as is. Baggage and all.”

  “Took you long enough, woman.” He lunged at me, pinning my back against his truck, his lips crushing mine.