Force of Nature

  BY: CARMEN JENNER

  Prologue

  CRICKET

  Texas, 2012

  I tuck my face into the crook of my arm, so they won’t hear my heavy breaths. I always find the best hiding places.

  “Cricket! Come on, now,” Judge says.

  “You best get your butt out here,” Lucas shouts. “Before we eat all the Twinkies.”

  I gasp. They wouldn’t dare. They’re just saying that because they want their stupid Xbox controller back, and they know there’s nothing I love more than Twinkies.

  “Alright then, we’re going inside. Gonna find your Twinkie stash. Probably read your diary too,” Lucas taunts. Lucas Fortune is my brother’s best friend, and I get as melty as a popsicle in the summer just thinking about those pretty hands of his, or the way his hair falls in his eyes. Something he’s sure to read all about if he finds my damn diary.

  Judge chuckles. “Hmm, I wonder if Lucas will find anythin’ of interest in there.”

  That rat bastard.

  “Stay the hell away from my room!” I shout, and then I cover my mouth and squeeze my eyes tightly closed as their boots crunch in the long grass toward me, gripping the stupid controller that I just had to steal.

  A siren splits the air around us, and fear sinks its teeth into my chest. Tornado. No, no, no. Mama and daddy aren’t home from town yet.

  “Shit, twister!” Lucas shouts.

  “Cricket, come on!”

  I leap out of the long grass and grab Judge’s hand, and the three of us run for the house. The sky overhead is gray as asphalt, and the clouds form a wall that’s half a mile long and headed right for us. My feet dig into the dry soil and Judge’s hand jerks from mine.

  “We gotta move!” Judge screams.

  I shake my head, staring at that cloud wall and the wide funnel that sprouts from it. “Mamma and daddy,” I whisper.

  “They’ll be okay.”

  Lucas steps in front of me and cups my cheeks. His frightened gray eyes search mine. So pretty. At eighteen, he’s just two years older than me, but he doesn’t mind if I hang around, and he never treats me like a kid. “Honey, come on. Your parents are probably already in the storm shelter in town. But we’re gonna get sucked up in that twister if we don’t haul ass.”

  My entire body trembles as I nod, but I can’t move my feet. Lucas yanks me forward, and I drop the X-box controller as he drags me toward the house. As our closest neighbors, we spend a lot of time playing in the fields with Lucas and his brothers Bax and Jesse.

  We shove inside the back door, and Judge grabs the whistle and flashlight from the hook on the fridge. Living in northern Texas, tornadoes aren’t a new thing for us, but like many in these parts, we don’t have a cellar or basement. The Fortunes have a storm cellar, but it’s on the other side of that twister, so we all head for the bathroom and pile into the tub. Lucas and Judge throw themselves over me protectively.

  The wind howls outside, like rushing water, an endless deluge over the falls. The entire house shakes, glass shatters, siding rips away from the studs one plank at a time, and then all at once, showering us in a cloud of debris and plaster dust. The claw-foot tub we’re huddled in shudders and the faucet springs free of the wall, drowning us in the downpour. An almighty groan comes from above as tin and wood explode around us and the roof rips right off the house. I raise my head, peeking it out between Lucas’s arms. We hold tight to one another, the three of us, and then just as quickly as it came up, the rushing wind is gone and what’s left of our roof and these four walls bury us in rubble.

  Judge and I scream for help, huddled together under a beam, and piles of debris while Lucas slips in and out of consciousness. I’m thirsty. My throat burns, and my body runs hot and cold. I can’t feel my left leg, it’s pinned beneath something sharp and heavy, I think maybe the bathtub cracked and a piece of it is embedded in my shin. All I want to do is sleep, but I blow on the whistle that Judge handed me when my voice gave out.

  “L-Lucas?” I croak in a whisper, and reach out to touch his arm. It’s clammy, covered in blood, and far too cold. He doesn’t answer. “Judge. I’m s-scared.”

  “I know,” he rasps.

  “Why isn’t Lucas answering?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t even see him from here. I can’t see anything.”

  “Why haven’t they come for us, yet?” I sob, but even this tires me out too quickly. “Why haven’t mama and daddy come for us? Or Lucas’s family?”

  “I don’t know, Cricket. You gotta keep blowing that whistle, okay? Just keep blowing.”

  I swallow hard and blow again, and Judge starts shouting for help, but no one hears us. No one is coming to save us. Lucas might already be dead. Maybe we all are. Hot tears streak down my cheeks, but I keep blowing, even as my breath runs out and the world turns black.

  Chapter One

  CRICKET

  Oklahoma

  Present Day

  My brother kicks my shin under the table of our booth. I grimace and slide my leg back, leaning down to rub the pain away. He always manages to hit me right where my scar is.

  “Ow! What the hell, Judge?”

  He tilts his chin toward the windows. “Incoming.”

  I grit my teeth and slowly turn my head. Outside the bar, a brand spanking new, bright orange, dual cab Dodge Ram takes up two parking spots right next to our beat-up F-150. I raise a brow when a camera crew sets up on the pavement outside. The driver’s side door opens and out steps God’s gift to storm chasing, Lucas Motherfreaking Fortune.

  Of all the bars in Oklahoma, he shows up here.

  I knew Lucas growing up, and a fortune he did not have, but he had a heart of pure gold. Until he broke mine and stole my brother’s idea. Now he had a lucrative reality TV show, Tornado Chasers. And me and Judge? Well, we chase tornados too, only without the hundred-thousand-dollar paycheck.

  Growing up in northern Texas at the tail end of Tornado Alley, we’d seen a few of those brutal bastards injure livestock and make one hell of a mess, but only one had hit us where it hurts. It tore up our home, orphaned Judge and me, and we’ve been chasing them ever since. Instead of hiding in our cellar like normal human beings, we brave the wind, hail, and rain just to chase them. But unlike Lucas and the rest of the Fortune brothers, it’s personal for us. So is stealing our TV show.

  Goddamn it. Lucas’s white T-shirt strains against his chest and biceps and I roll my eyes, so I won’t drool into my beer. His tattooed body is even more jacked than the last time I saw him at my Uncle Buck’s funeral.

  Judge tosses something that hits me in the side of the face. I tear my gaze away from the circus outside and stare at the balled-up napkin floating in my beer.

  He doesn’t look up from his phone, but he’s grinning from ear to ear. “You got a little drool there, sis.”

  “Screw you, Judge.” I scowl and shimmy out of the booth.

  “Where are you goin’?”

  “To get another damn beer.”

  He chuckles and turns his attention back to his phone.

  After our parents died, Buck took us in and taught us everything he knew—especially about chasing storms. What he didn’t know about was how to deal with little girls, so he practically raised me as a boy. Even called in one of his lady friends to give me “the talk”. I was seventeen and didn’t have the heart to tell them I’d already cashed in my V-card on the boy next door, a boy who didn’t deserve it, the same boy who’d conducted that damn horse and pony show outside.

  “Damn, girl,” Bax Fortune picks me up and spins me around so fast I might puke, and I’m not even drunk. “I swear to God you get prettier and prettier every year.”

  I squirm in his grasp. “And you get more annoying. Put me down, Bax!”

  Lucas walks up while I’m still being held hostage, and I kick double time, almost getting Bax in the balls, but just missing the mark.

  “Doesn’t she get prettier, Lucas?” Bax asks.

  Lucas Fortune, and that stupid cap that he wore everywhere. A cap I’d given him at fifteen. A cap he wore year after year just to piss me off. Lucas had been my entire world then. And now? I’m convinced he’s made it his life mission to annoy me.

  Lucas’s eyes roll over my face and tits, cause that’s about all he can see while Bax has me in a bear hug like this.

  “Wow, we got ourselves a live one here, folks,” Bax smacks my ass.

  I buck and wrestle against him, and then I see the third Fortune brother stalking toward us, and shriek. “No! Jesse, don’t you dare!”

  Jesse grins and flicks his long hair out of his face. He sidles up to us and squeezes me from behind, sandwiching me between the two of them. They run their scruffy beards over my hair and smother me in the scent of day-old man sweat and road-trip funk—which oddly smells a lot like Cheetos and farts. Bax rubs his armpit over my hair, and I screech.

  “Alright, you two,” my brother shouts from the booth, obviously deciding it’s time to do the brotherly thing and step in. “You’ve had your fun.”

  “Put her down,” Lucas barks.

  I kick again, hitting Jesse in the balls. He lets go and doubles over, cupping his groin. I struggle free of Bax’s hold and slide down his gigantic frame to set my feet on the floor.

  “You get prettier every year, but you sure as shit don’t get any lighter.” Bax rubs at his shoulder. “I think you about broke my damn shoulder, Cricket.”

  “That’s enough!” Lucas growls.

  I scowl at him, because he knows I’ve never needed a man to speak for me a day in my life.

  “You boys get more and more annoying. No one asked you to pick me up, asshole.” I shove him out of my way and get up in Lucas’s face. “And I don’t need you to fight my battles, Fortune.”

  A dark brow arches and he looks down at me as if he wants to take a bite, but then I guess—like me—he remembers that every one of our actions is being filmed. Damn it. “My mistake, ma’am. It won’t happen again.”

  I whirl on my heels and glare at the camera crew. “I’m sure you’re gonna ask me to sign a release form, but I do not consent to using my image or likeness.”

  The camera man’s shoulder drops, and he takes the camera off me. The tall, skinny guy standing beside him hides his clipboard behind his back.

  “Come on, Cricket.” Jesse pouts. “We we’re just having fun … like old times.”

  “Fun? You think being covered in your arm-pit funk is fun?” I shake my head and turn to glare at Lucas. “I guess I remember old times a little less fondly than you.”

  He shakes his head and raises his beer in a silent toast, and then he’s swarmed with hot, available women, just waiting to get a piece of Texas’s latest reality TV star.

  I have curves for days, and confidence enough to rock any man’s world as he’s exploring them, but something about Lucas Fortune smirking at me across the bar with his group of bimbettes turns me back into that lovesick little girl who followed him around like a lost puppy, just praying he’d give me a pat.

  Stupid.

  I may not look like these other Barbie dolls, but I bet I could still have any man in this bar.

  Too bad I don’t want any of them. Just one … one that I hate.

  I glance at Judge, who’s making his way over to me, but I shake my head and don’t bother going back to our booth. Fortune’s ruined this bar for me anyway. Among other things.

  I push through the door and out into the balmy early evening. The bruised sky above promises a storm, but it’s not the kind you chase. It’s barely even a blimp on the radar, all crashing thunder, pelting rain, and white-hot streaks of lighting, but it’ll be over as quickly as my mood. I just need to get far away from the first boy who ever broke my heart, the boy I’ll never let get close enough again.

  Chapter Two

  CRICKET

  2012

  My uncle squeezes my hand. “We’ll be back as soon as visiting hours are open again, okay?”

  I don’t say anything, I just look at him and Judge, and roll over onto my side. I haven’t said anything to anyone since I learned of my parent’s passing in the storm that put both me and Lucas in the hospital. What was there to say when your parents went to run errands and were now just suddenly gone?

  Friends had visited, the Fortunes had called on me too while they’d been with Lucas, but I didn’t want to talk to anyone. They had pulled Judge from the wreckage with barely a scratch, but Lucas and I were a little more broken. My left foot had both pillion fractures and a ruptured Achilles tendon, and I had several broken ribs. Lucas’s collarbone was sticking out of his body when rescuers pulled us from the rubble of our house, but he clung to me with his other arm as if he was still in the thick of the tornado. He had a few broken ribs too, and cuts and bruises everywhere.

  So far, I hadn’t seen him. I didn’t want to screw with his recovery and Judge said he slept a lot for the first few days after surgery, but it’s not like I could just walk across the hall anyway. The doctors weren’t sure I’d ever walk normally again. Right now, I have pins holding my ankle and shin together, and years of painful surgeries ahead as my body outgrows my fancy new hardware. Oh, and my parents are dead. So there’s that.

  I close my eyes and ignore the tears soaking my pillow.

  “This a bad time?”

  I wipe my tears with the back of my hand and lift my head to look at the door. Lucas is sitting in a wheelchair on the threshold.

  “I figured you two could use a little company.” Nurse Trudi wheels him to my bedside and engages the brakes. “I’ll leave you to catch up. Just have Miss Cardeaux push her call button when you’re ready to return to your room.”

  “Thanks Trudi.”

  She gives us both a smile and walks to the door. “You two behave, or you’ll get me in trouble.”

  “Don’t I always?” Lucas asks smugly.

  I sit up and try to fight the way my heart twists at seeing his face all bruised and banged up. “You look terrible.”

  Lucas turns to me. “Don’t lie, you were checking me out the second I got wheeled in here.”

  I laugh but it hurts my ribs, so I clutch them tightly and take shallow breaths until the pain subsides.

  His smile slips away and he says, “I’m so sorry about your parents, Cricket.”

  That does it. I squeeze my eyes closed and hold my breath, as if I could stop the pain. A sob tears from my chest, tears stream over my lashes and down my cheeks, and the pain in my ribs and heart is blinding.

  “Oh shit. God. I didn’t mean to …” Lucas gets up out of his wheelchair and carefully climbs on the bed. It takes a little effort on his part, because he’s just as broken as me, if not worse.

  “Y-you … d-don’t h-have …” I trail off because I can’t get the words out.

  Lucas settles on the bed beside me and gently pulls me back against the pillow. I curl into him, careful not to touch his broken shoulder, and afraid to move for fear of hurting us both.

  “It’s okay, honey. I got you.”

  I cry until I have no more tears, and he threads his fingers with mine, and then we just lie there, two kids who’ve stared down death and are still kicking.

  Chapter Three

  CRICKET

  Present Day

  We’ve followed a super storm cell all day through Kansas, stopping only to eat, stretch our legs, and takes some shots of the electric light display Mother Nature puts on. These pictures go a long way to helping us survive the nine to five, until July, when we load our equipment into the truck and hunt down storms like hungry hounds with a bone.

  I adjust my livestreaming camera on the dash, and grab my phone and turn it on Judge. “You ready?”

  His lips curl up in the corners. “Am I ever ready for you to point that shit in my face?”

  “Oh, come on. Tell me you don’t love it?”

  “I’m not opposed to the followers.”

  “Right, so long as they’re cute, blonde, and hang off every word the crazy Tornado man says.”

  He tosses a Flaming Hot Cheeto at me. “You gonna be busting my balls all day, sis?”

  “Is there an alternative option? Cause you and balls in the same sentence is grossing me out.” I grin and turn my attention back to the camera, hitting the “go live” button. “Hey guys, welcome back to our channel. I’m Cricket and this is my brother, Judge, and we are professional storm chasers. What that means is, we do this crazy tornado hunting stuff and bring you all of the information live, so you don’t get caught out.”

  I watch a bunch of likes and comment pop up on the feed, and then I turn toward my brother, “So where are we headed, Judge?”

  “Well, Cricket. We’re going wherever that damn storm takes us.”

  Someone honks behind us and I turn in my seat with the camera recording the bright orange monstrosity, with the steel grill that’s so close on our ass it’s practically a hemorrhoid. Bax is driving—like a fucking lunatic—and the Fortune boys fly by with their stupid production van that judge nearly runs off the road because they’re not going fast enough.

  “Look at this jackass.” I say, forgetting that we’re live.

  Judge sneers. “They’re trying to steal our tornado.”

  “Fortunes and thievery. I wish I could say I’m shocked.” I shake my head. “Step on it, Judge. We’re gonna get to that storm before them.”

  My brother puts his foot to the floor and veers into the opposite lane. We pass the van easily, but Bax is into playing games today, it seems. He speeds up just as we’re hitting the rise. The needle hits ninety, and we get actual air beneath us over the slope. Out of nowhere, a Honda Civic appears, and we’re heading right for it.