by Molly E. Lee
Blake laughed, poking a spoon into the red sauce that simmered on the stove. “Thanks for cooking, Mom.” Her eyes rolled back in her head as she took a bite.
Funny, I’d made them do that not one hour ago. So basically I’m her human version comfort food?
She snuck a quick bite of a chocolate chip cookie from a pile that rested on a platter on the counter and moaned.
Yep. I’m definitely her living, breathing version of a cookie.
“Blake Caster!” her mom chided, swatting her hand, so she dropped the cookie. “I worked for hours on this sauce and you will not ruin it by eating dessert first.”
Blake laughed and held her hands up in defense. “Sorry, Mom. It’s been weeks since we’ve eaten anything that didn’t come from a restaurant.”
“Oh, poor you,” she said and went back to stirring the sauce.
I cleared my throat. “It is wonderful to have a home-cooked meal, Ms. Caster. Thank you.”
“Anything for you, dear.”
Blake shook her head. “I get swatted, and you get the royal treatment.” She laughed. “I’ll be right back,” she said, heading in the direction of the bathroom.
Silence filled the kitchen as I stood there alone with Blake’s mother. I’d been waiting for an opportunity like this almost as long as I’d been waiting for the perfect moment to propose to Blake.
Ms. Caster peeked around the corner, checking that the coast was clear before she waved her hands at me hurriedly. “Let me see it. Let me see it,” she whispered as she rushed toward me.
I dug in my right pocket and fished out the ring I’d carried around all season. It was white gold with a single diamond in the center. Simple, but elegant. Just like my Blake. Her mom carefully took it from me, looking it over with a smile on her face before handing it back. I pocketed it quickly, eyeing her.
“It’s gorgeous,” she said, covering her chest with her hands.
“You think she’ll like it?”
“Positive.” Tears glittered in her eyes, and I shook my head.
“Don’t cry!” I whisper-shouted. “She’ll know something is up!”
She blinked rapidly while fanning herself. “Right,” she said. “Why isn’t that on her finger yet?”
I sighed. I had asked Blake’s mom’s permission before I’d even bought the ring. She hadn’t hesitated a moment to wrap me in a hug and call her son, but she was impatient when it came to the big moment. “I haven’t found the right time yet.”
“Anytime is the right time,” she said, returning to her sauce.
“No. I have to make it perfect.”
“Boy, you live in a world of chaos. You chase it for a living. How do you think you’ll ever manage to pick a perfect time?” She held a wooden spoon out for me to taste. I took a quick bite and moaned.
“That’s probably the best marinara I’ve ever tasted.”
She glowed for a moment before her gaze turned serious. “Didn’t answer my question.”
“I know. Trust me. But this is Blake we’re talking about. I won’t do this until it’s right for her. I won’t push.”
She nodded at me, smiling. “You truly know her so well.”
“I do. And I love her. I plan to love her every day until she tells me to stop or I die. So, please, no more texts, okay? She’s going to catch me one of these days and then we’ll both be in trouble.”
“Fine, fine,” she relented. “I’m just excited. You can’t blame me.”
“Can’t blame you for what?” Blake asked as she walked back into the kitchen, making me jump. She eyed me before she looked at her mother.
“Oh,” her mother said, frantically stirring the sauce.
“Blame her for worrying about you on the alley,” I said, desperately hoping that was the only part of our conversation she’d heard.
Blake’s eyes softened, and she wrapped her mother in another side hug. “Awh, Mom. You worry too much.”
“I know.”
“But you’ve got nothing to worry about. You know I’m always safe with Dash.” Blake glanced at me, her eyes slightly fiery from the passion we’d shared an hour ago.
Her mom patted her hand. “I do,” she said, winking at me.
I resisted the urge to tilt my head to the ceiling and shake it. Her mom would be the end of this secret. “Now, set the table, Blake. Then you and this handsome piece of man can tell me all about what it’s like to live out the movie Twister.”
Blake and I rolled our eyes at the same time. If we had a dollar for every time a non-chaser brought up Twister . . . well, we wouldn’t need funds from the network.
Blake
JOHN AND PAUL’S hotel room in Dodge City, Kansas had quickly become our makeshift lab as we tracked a supercell through the state. All our laptops were out and opened, even the few we’d brought from our brand-new lab.
“How’s it looking, Blake?” John asked from where he sat, leaning against the other side of the bed.
“Close,” I said, flipping between maps on my screen for the hundredth time. “Too close to choose one route over the other. Each one has the mild likeliness of producing a tornado, but neither one is wicked strong.”
“Talk about confidence. Something shake your resolve on our break back home?” Paul snorted as he double checked his cameras on the other bed. Dash smacked him since he was the closest.
“No,” I said, but didn’t bother glancing up to see if Paul believed me. The break had been wonderful—I loved seeing Mom and getting some much-needed Hail time—but the conversation with Justin had thrown me a little off.
It was hard because I had been sure I would stay angry with him forever. The anger was what I used to push down all the memories that fought their way back to the surface at random times. The anger is what made me strong against the visuals of what he’d done to me, and how I hadn’t realized they were wrong until Dash had shown me differently. After seeing him again, and seeing what rehab was doing for him, how it was changing him . . . well, I’d forgiven him.
Now I couldn’t use anger as a fallback, but forgiveness didn’t make all the bad shit of our past disappear, either. And several nightmares, which I assumed were crystal clear again because of the mere act of seeing Justin in person, had kept me up every night this past week. I wanted to be mad at him all over again, but I had to stick true to my word as I’d told him to his face that I had forgiven him. I’d never really understood the whole forgive but not forget phrase until recently, and it had forced this constant battle inside me that left me exhausted.
So, yes. I was off. And I didn’t like it. I’d worked hard—hell, Dash had worked hard, too, to help me rebuild myself after leaving Justin—and I didn’t want to go back to being weak.
I was strong. I chased tornadoes. I had the sexiest man in my life who wanted to devour me at a moment’s notice. My past could not touch me.
I kept repeating this to myself, and while the mantra helped a little, there was a part of me that was terrified I wouldn’t be able to hold that weakness back and that Dash would see it creep in and give up on me.
He wouldn’t.
Or would he? It was hard to say. How would I feel if he let one of his many exes turn him into a distant puddle of contradiction? How would I feel if I had to deal with him having a conversation with his ex after she’d done something as bad as Justin had? And then he forgave her? I’d be downright pissed—proud of him, but pissed. And I couldn’t imagine how frustrated Dash was now, that after a year had passed he still had to put up with the damage Justin had inflicted. How some nights we weren’t able to make love because I couldn’t stop shaking from the awful memories, and I wouldn’t let them taint the perfection Dash and I had.
It was a shock the man had stuck around this long.
I glanced at him across the room, my chest threatening to crack with the thought that all this weight of mine would soon be too much for him to bear. And really, could I blame him? Before me, he’d had an endless buffet of beauties ready s
erve him, never burdening him with personal baggage. He could chase and play. Despite the two of us having several instances of play while on the alley, I wondered if there was a point he viewed it all as work? The constant need to check on me, watch out for me, worry about me, include me . . . it wasn’t something he was used to.
Our first trek down the alley had been fast, with an even quicker ending because of our late start to the season. This trip had already lasted a month, and we had two more before we’d take a serious break and return to home base for a while. If we could make it till then, well, if Dash could put up with me until then, maybe we’d be all right. We just had to survive exes, baggage, and the occasional tornado. What could go wrong?
I jumped as Dash’s warm hand rubbed the back of my neck. I closed my eyes. “You okay?” he asked, his voice soft.
“Fine,” I lied. I wanted to tell him every single thing I was agonizing over, but talking about all my insecurities wouldn’t really help with the whole not wanting to look weak thing.
He pointed to the screen. “This one looks good.”
I glanced at the weather map I’d already stared at for an hour.
“They all do, that’s the problem. None of them are particularly strong.”
“So let’s go to this one,” he said it casually, like it didn’t matter where we chased, as long as we were chasing something.
I wished that mentality was true. Maybe it would have been back before we’d signed with the network, but now we had other people counting on us to catch tornadoes, which meant we had more people to fail than just ourselves.
The sound of laptops snapping closed surrounded the room as John and Paul packed up.
“Our fearless leader has spoken,” Paul said. “Let’s move.”
For once, I didn’t jump. Instead I gathered my things to follow them, my enthusiasm about the chase lackluster. If I couldn’t get excited about the prospect of a tornado—little though it may be—then there was absolutely something wrong with me. All the negative thoughts had gunked together in my soul and muddied up the two things that actually caused a fire to roar in my belly: storms and Dash. With my recent train of thought, I doubted the very things that made me feel the strongest. All in the name of fearing to return to the weak girl I’d been.
What the hell is wrong with you?
Forcing all the cruddy thoughts away, I focused on the sensations of the chase. The sound of the trucks starting, the clicking of seatbelts as Dash and I sped off to the front of the line of vehicles that would follow us into the storm. The rush of excitement when the blue sky shifted from gray to near black as the storm clouds battled to take it over entirely.
Rain patted against the windshield once we made it just outside Dodge City, right where the cell had formed. The bubble-like clouds in the sky were dark, but I couldn’t spot a single instance of rotation.
“You see anything?” Dash asked as if reading my mind.
“No,” I said, scanning the sky for even a whisper of movement. “Nothing yet,” I added, trying to sound hopeful.
“We’ll set up shop here.” He pulled the truck over and parked it, unbuckling his seatbelt. “Then we can move if we spot something.”
I nodded, following him out of the truck with my camera. John and Paul stopped five hundred yards behind us, Daniel and Travis and the rest of the crew stopping behind them, too.
I chewed on my lip as I watched the sky, the light mist of rain tickling my skin. The storm rumbled, but not in a threatening way, more in a way that could lull me to sleep if I let it.
“It wouldn’t hurt the network to see a bust, you know?” Dash said, his green eyes zeroing in on the lip between my teeth.
I sighed, giving him a soft smile. “You don’t know me.”
He leaned over and kissed me quickly. “Sure I don’t.”
“With the way the past week has been, a bust would just about sum it up,” I said, returning my focus to the clouds in the sky.
“I don’t know,” Dash said, shrugging as I glanced at him. “Checking out the new lab was a big win for me.”
A flush raked across my skin, successfully heating my entire body. The image of me riding Dash in what would now forever be his favorite office chair filled my mind, overtaking all thoughts. It had been spontaneous yet absolutely necessary when I’d decided to seduce him in the lab. He was so good to me, and even after a year I still couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have him. And whenever I thought about that, I always instantly thought of when my luck would run out, which led to me lashing out in passion for fear of never getting the chance to experience it again.
“You all right?” Dash said, a sly grin on his face. “You’re looking a little flushed.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “No more than you did when I rode you in the lab.”
His mouth dropped open, a look of utter shock crossing his face as he pointed to the cameras we had rolling.
I shrugged, past caring. “That’ll drive ratings for sure,” I said, winking.
“Vixen,” he said, lightly smacking my butt.
The slight sting sent a rush of pleasure through my core, reminding me of all the times he’d spanked me to help rid me of my bad habit of saying sorry every other sentence.
The first time had been in his bedroom, fresh into our relationship. We’d only made love a few times and yet I was more than willing to give myself to him completely. Relinquishing control to him was a huge leap of trust and I knew then and there I’d always love him. Plus, I’d gotten quite good at keep unnecessary apologies to myself because of his technique, but there was part of me that craved the control he wielded when he did it.
“Sorry,” I said, meeting his eyes in defiance.
He shook his head, his lips pursed. “Oh, Blake. You are such a bad girl.”
He rolled his fingers at me, the devious look in his eyes promising my punishment would come when we weren’t surrounded by the crew and trying to capture a storm.
Happy for the tease, I turned back to the sky, which didn’t show any rotation. The longer we stood there, the easier it was surmise that this would be a bust of epic proportions. We didn’t even get any good lightning strikes to make a still shot out of.
Disappointment came naturally with a bust, but this time around, it merely filtered into the offness I’d felt since the Justin incident. It was as if seeing him had made all my insecurities, all the hurtful things he’d ever whispered in my ear for years on end, surface and combine to turn me into one giant ball of doubt. I hated it, and combated it at every turn with the knowledge that Dash was nothing like him, that he loved me in the purest way anyone could love another person—not in the twisted, controlling way Justin had.
But it was hard not to let it affect me even a little because I’d spent eight years of my life constantly questioning who I was and what I was worth. That kind of crap was natural to me—the doubt, the wonder if I was good enough, the worry over Dash bailing because it was too much to deal with. Add to that Dash’s constant line of girls popping up at every stop and the added pressure from the show, plus this bust, and I was ready to crawl into bed with a carton of ice cream.
“You ready to call it?” Dash asked.
“Yeah,” I said, slightly breathless. My mind was a chaotic mess.
Dash tapped the button on his earpiece. “Calling it. The cell is weakening by the second. Let’s move out.”
“Bust drinks on you?” Paul asked, his voice ringing in my ear.
“Yeah, sure.” Dash clicked the button. “Good with you?”
I nodded. I was too busy to voice an answer, replaying what he’d said about the storm and how it was weakening, unable to stop the comparison to how I was feeling in that exact moment. Maybe for the past year I’d been just like a strong supercell ready to break out and produce a badass tornado, but then one slight adjustment in atmosphere and I was weakening, broken. A bust.
By the time we’d made it back to the hotel, I was too tangled in my own head
to go out with the guys. I insisted Dash go, despite his more than tempting offers to stay behind and draw me another bath. I simply wanted to lie down and screw my head on straight again.
The longer I laid there under the covers, attempting to force all the negative thoughts and memories away, I realized I shouldn’t be doing that at all. Forcing them down was a temporary fix. I needed to either combat them or accept them and move on. That was the only way I’d rid myself of the constant doubt I had.
Sucking in a deep breath, I let them hit me one by one.
Justin always said you were terrible in bed. Dash is faking it.
Dash couldn’t fake it with me; I knew him too well. Plus, he wouldn’t keep initiating it if I was bad.
Justin always said you were horrible under pressure and would never amount to anything as a chaser. No wonder Daniel is questioning you at every turn.
Dash had me in the shotgun seat for a reason. Half the catches we’d made could be credited to my analyzing the data and pointing us there. Daniel lived for drama; that’s what he wanted for the show. And if he didn’t have it, he’d create it.
Have you seen who Dash chose to spend his nights with on the alley in the past? They’re practically supermodels, just like Lindsay was. Just like you’ll never be.
Fuck off, Blake.
The last thought was all me, and one exposed nerve when it came to this trip. I was sick and tired of worrying about it. Simple fact, if Dash didn’t want to be with me, didn’t like the way I looked, he wouldn’t be with me. Easy as that.
I sat up straight in bed, shaking my head and resisting the urge to facepalm myself. Here I was, lying in bed while the guys were out having a fun time at a local bar. All over what?
Me.
This wasn’t Justin’s fault. This was my fault. This was me letting my past get the better of me, once again. It was me letting the girls of Dash’s past get the best of me, too. Which was ridiculous, because not one of them had what Dash and I had. They couldn’t possibly compete with the love that roared in my heart for that man.