Kyle slammed the door and started to dart through the rain toward his own truck, but Coop got out and grabbed him before he got there.
“I’m going with you. I’ll put the truck in the barn first but I’m going.”
Kyle jerked free of his best friend’s grasp and shook his head. “There’s no time. EJ’s in the worst place she could be. I have to go now!”
“To hell with the truck, Kyle. I love her. I’m going.”
“I love her, too, Coop. She’s my damned sister. But I need you to stay here. Run inside and make sure Mama is down in the basement.”
“No,” Coop said, shouting to be heard over the downpour. “I mean, I love her like I’m in love with her. You can kick my ass for it later, but I’ve always loved her. I love her more than I should. Not like a brother. Nothing like a brother, in fact.”
Excellent time for a heart-to-heart, Coop. Kyle nodded frantically as water blinded him. “I know that, jackass. That’s why I trust you to take care of her. It’s why I asked you to do that when I’m gone. But I’m here now and I need you here and every second we waste arguing is a second she’s out there alone. Move your truck and then go the hell inside.”
His words must’ve finally gotten through because Coop’s shoulders dropped in defeat as he acquiesced. “Bring our girl home safe, okay?”
“I will,” Kyle hollered as he jumped into his truck. “And I promise to kick your ass later for taking so long to man up and tell me the truth.”
Kyle flashed his lights at Coop as he headed out of the driveway. His headlights barely made any difference in the pitch he was driving into as he pulled onto the back road that led to The Ridge.
Every muscle in his body was tense as he navigated the treacherous path through the worst storm he’d seen in all of his eighteen years. Throwing up a silent prayer that all of his girls were okay—his mama, his baby sister, and his gorgeous Belle—he gripped the steering wheel with all of his strength.
The automated storm warning played over and over on the radio as he drove as fast as the monsoon he was struggling against would allow. If anything, this was just the confirmation he needed that running off to college wasn’t what was best for his family.
What would’ve happened to EJ if he wasn’t here? It made him sick to even allow that thought into his mind. He’d already dropped the ball once and let City Boy break her heart. Though now he had full confidence that Coop would help mend it. Normally, he wouldn’t have let either of them within reaching distance of his little sister, but what he had with Cami had softened him a bit, made him believe that even people from two different worlds might have a chance.
One summer had changed everything.
His Belle would come around. She’d see that his staying home was what was best for all of them. As if she’d been conjured by his thoughts, his phone lit up in the dark cab of the truck.
Dammit. He’d have to lean way over to get to it, and that would mean taking a hand off the wheel.
By the time he was in a safe enough spot to make a grab for his phone, her call had gone to voicemail. Thank God she’d actually left one.
He smiled as her beautiful voice filled his head. Pulling up at The Ridge, he saw Ella Jane’s silhouette illuminated in his headlights. Crazy girl had gotten out and was trying to push her own truck out of the mud.
He was still listening to his voicemail from Cami when he put his truck in park and opened his door to get out and help his little sister. A vibration from his left startled him and he dropped his phone into the mud.
The train was coming right at him. Just like that linebacker he’d felt coming all summer. The one he wasn’t ready for. It was airborne, off the tracks, and being carried straight toward him and his little sister by a funnel cloud that looked to be as wide as Hope’s Grove.
If it didn’t change course, he’d have to go back on the one promise he never thought he’d break.
He couldn’t protect her. Not this time.
“THE National Weather Service has issued a Tornado Warning for Calumet County. At 9:55 p.m., trackers confirmed a tornado on the ground,” the radio informed her.
She couldn’t tell which was falling harder—the tears or the rain against the windshield. Even with her wipers on full blast, she couldn’t see to drive. How could I have been so stupid? Being at Hayden’s party, around all the people she used to think were worth impressing, made her realize just how trivial her old life was.
She should have never let her pride get in the way of telling Kyle how she felt, and she should have never worried about what everyone else thought. She was being punished for her past. The way she treated people. The lies. The constant need for approval. All of it.
Mother Nature was letting her know that she wasn’t going to get away with it. And apparently she was a bigger bitch than Cami had ever been.
The howling wind rocked her white Mercedes SUV as she stopped to check her phone. Just like the time before—no signal. She watched the travel time on the GPS increase minute by minute as she sat still in the middle of the road. It had been twenty-two minutes since she put Kyle’s address in back at the party.
She’d taken it as a sign, fate finally helping her out, that the stack of mail sitting on her passenger seat included an invoice from Mason Landscaping and Lawn Care. Seven minutes it had said.
Seven minutes to get to his house and tell him that she loved him and wanted to be with him no matter where he went to school or what he did. Seven minutes to ride the storm out with him holding her close and whispering in her ear that everything was going to be okay instead of out in the middle of nowhere alone.
Maybe fate wasn’t leading her to safety. Maybe it was leading her to exactly what she deserved.
Sheer panic began to take over as the thunder cracked again and a bolt of lightning lit up the sky. She was lost with no cell service. The robotic voice calling out over the radio wasn’t helping matters. Telling her over and over that she was lost in an area that was directly in the path of an oncoming twister.
She wasn’t usually afraid of storms, thanks to the fact that her house had a fully furnished basement she usually sheltered away in when warnings were issued, but out here she had no place to go. She thought about the last big storm that had hit central Oklahoma and the people who had lost their lives by staying in their cars.
“Shit!” She pounded her hand against the steering wheel and tried to remind herself to stay calm. Her palms started to sweat as she held up her phone again, moving it around the car, trying to get a signal.
As she reached into the back seat, staring at a glowing screen, she saw it. Somehow through the wind and rain, she saw it. A light. A small, amber, glowing light fixed to the top of a pole that was rocking back and forth with each gust of wind.
She might not have been country smart, but she was smart enough to know that if there was electricity running to that pole, there was probably somewhere to hide up there.
Cami flipped the switch from two-to four-wheel drive on her SUV and threw it in reverse, driving backward until she saw the lane. Her intuition was right. As she drove up the muddy path, a two-story farmhouse came into view. The windows were dark, and from what she could make out, a few were broken. It was abandoned.
A small barn sat on the corner of the property. The door that once closed off the building was hanging to the side, appearing to have been broken years before the storm had hit. She pulled her vehicle into the barn and let out a sigh as the old roof blocked the heavy fall of rain. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
Exiting her vehicle, she looked down at her phone. A signal. One bar. She didn’t know if it would go through, but she tried to call Kyle’s number anyway. Maybe he knew where this place was and he would come to rescue her. She figured he was pissed at her for blowing him off, but there was no way he’d leave her out there alone in the middle of a tornado.
“This is Kyle. Leave a message.” She heard his voice and her heart raced as she start
ed to leave him a message.
“Kyle, it’s me. I’m so sorry I haven’t returned your calls.” The rain started to let out as she paced the dirt floor of the barn. “I was coming to see you and I got lost trying to find your house. GPS says I’m at 640 East Road.” The winds calmed. She stepped out into the open air and looked around. Maybe the storm was over?
“I think the storm’s letting up. When you get this message, please call me back. I’ll wait here until I hear from you.”
That’s when she heard it. A sound she’d heard so many people talk about, but never actually experienced. Like a freight train running at full speed.
It was too dark in the distance to see where it was coming from, but she knew it was getting closer. With her phone still to her ear, she said something she’d never said to anyone—something she feared she’d never get to say again. “I love you.”
FUNERALS are depressing as shit. Seriously. Why people even have them is beyond me. Standing around in uncomfortable clothes while people drone on about how unfortunate it is.
I mean no disrespect to the dead, but a funeral is so ass backwards. Crowd around and watch as they put the person in the ground then go have coffee and cake? Who the hell thought of that?
In my opinion, there should be music, dancing, cake, and we can skip the morbid gravesite stuff. People should be celebrating the fact that they’re still alive and not the ones in the ground. But no. We all stand around, hurting, grieving. Each of us replaying the last time we saw or talked to that person in our heads. Wondering if we’d have done something different, changed one little thing, if our loved one would still be alive.
Like we have that kind of power. I mean, I’m a confident guy, but even my balls aren’t that big. I believe in God. Or I believe in…something. There’s definitely a higher power that controls this type of thing. There has to be. Otherwise there’d be some kind of order to it. Or no one would ever die. Or we’d all just hit the designated age and drop dead. But that’s not how it works. It’s just the luck of the draw.
One minute you’re here and then you’re off to who knows where. Summer is officially over and it’s time to move on to whatever’s next. College for some. Work for others. Both, maybe. Or neither.
But there are those who don’t get a choice, a few who don’t make it out alive. A knife slices through their lives, cutting it short at sunrise. Before they’ve even really lived. A future that once seemed so bright can be extinguished in a single second.
Heads that were bent in sadness, some shielded by hats and sunglasses, glance up as it starts to rain. More storms are coming. If the weatherman is right, they’ll be here before we’ve even recovered from the last one. A few black umbrellas open, and I want to tell them that their efforts are pointless. There’s no way to be prepared for what’s coming.
Dark clouds gather on the horizon and roll toward us. We’re in the worst possible place. They don’t call it Tornado Alley for nothing.
Yet here we stand. Mourning. Grieving. Too distracted by loss to notice that we’re right in the path of destruction.
Look for Broken Heartland Book #2: Path of Destruction
Coming Spring 2014
We each have so many people to thank that we couldn’t possibly list them all here. But we are going to do our best to try!
Thank you to all of the Broken Heartland Beta Readers for all of your feedback, to our AMAZING street team The Backwoods Belles for working so hard to spread the word about this book, and to the many readers, reviewers, and bloggers, who participated in the promotional events for this book.
Special thank you’s go out to both of our publicists Kelly & Jessica at InkSlinger. And also to Regina Wamba at Mae I Design for turning our incoherent gibberish into that beautiful cover. Thank you to Emily Tippetts for making the inside as pretty as the outside
Great big hugs of gratitude to our editor, Mickey, and our proofreader, Rahab. You ladies mean the world to us. As do our sweet families who we appreciate so very much for allowing us to work on this project even when it mean you didn’t have clean clothes, or dinner, or our full attention. We love you and appreciate you so very much.
Thank you to everyone in Utah who is going to be a part of the Broken Heartland Fan Pages and Events. Lauren, Jade, Britt, Cheyanne, Justin, Tanner, and Houston, we love y’all and are so excited for each one of you to be a part of this amazing adventure.
And lastly and MOST importantly, thank you to each of you who took the time to read this. We hope you enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed writing it!
Whether you believe in destiny, divine intervention, or just plain ol' dumb luck, several things happened in 2013 that caused E. Lee’s and C. Quinn’s paths to cross. It may have been that the stars aligned perfectly or maybe it was just that their small town roots and country girl attitudes were magnetically drawn together. Despite geography keeping them apart—Lee in Illinois and Quinn in Alabama—they did. Thanks to three-hour phone calls, ridiculous amounts of online chats, and umpteen Google Docs—Storm Warning is the first book in their edgy new Young Adult series, Broken Heartland.
This ebook interior was designed by C. Quinn and formatted by
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations for reviews. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet, without the publisher’s permission and is a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment.
Storm Warning
Broken Heartland #1
www.readbrokenheartland.com
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Copyright © December 2013 by E. Lee & C. Quinn
Cover Design by Regina Wamba of Mae I Design
Editor: Mickey Reed
Proofreader: Rahab Mugwanja
Formatted by E.M. Tippetts Book Designs
This eBook is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or have been used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
Published in the United States of America
First publication: December 2013 by Elizabeth Lee and Caisey Quinn.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the original vendor and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Benjamin Alire Saen Quote
Dedication
Introduction
Prologue
June
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
July
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter
21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
August
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
Coming Soon
Acknowledgements
About the Authors
About the Formatter
Copyright
Storm Warning (Broken Heartland) Page 20