“All is fair in love and weather, right, Sebby baby?” I toss back, and his mouth twists into the hint of a grin. “How did you find me?”
“You share your location with Mia. I barely had the chance to tell her you could be in danger before she rattled off your general area, and tracking you down was easy when I realized you were fucking with me. I wanted to capture the beginning of the storm formation for the series, but all I have is shitty footage from inside my car. Thanks for that.”
“You’re so welcome.”
A drop of water rolls down his cheek. Another hangs off hisnose. Sebastian turns his attention to the sky and fumbles with the binoculars around his neck. “How wide do you think it is?”
“Can’t be more than twenty yards or so, right?” I squint, looking up. “Weird.”
“What’s weird?”
“The path of the storm. Before you got here, it was moving across the horizon in a perfect line, left to right. Now it doesn’t look like it’s moving at all.”
“Holy shit.” Sebastian lifts the binoculars and sucks in a breath. “This thing isn’t a few yards wide, Quincy. It’s closer to half a mile across.”
“What?” I grab his binoculars, not caring that they’re still attached to his neck. “Shit. Look how erratic the subvortices are, Sebastian. There aretwins.”
“Never seen twins before. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I think it’s going to be a monster. And you wanted to be out here by yourself.”
“Bigger than the ones that came through Florida in 1998? Those were F3s and—why is it changing directions?”
“Let me see.” Sebastian puts his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close so he can take a turn with the binoculars. “Where is it going? The full condensation funnel is making it impossible to tell what the hell is going on.”
“I haven’t looked at any radar scans today.” The wind picks up around us. Visibility is reduced, and a sheet of rain soaks me to my bones. I have to raise my voice so he can hear me. “Were there any other indications of storms with possible tornadic activity? Has anything else touched down?”
“I, uh, haven’t had a very exciting Saturday night.” I glance up at him, and he throws a sheepish smile my way. “I’ve been monitoring the radar scans, and all I could find was heavy rain and hail. This is—” Sebastian’s hold on me tightens. Both our phones go off withanother emergency notification. Aseek shelter immediatelywarning, if I had to guess. “We should get to the cars.”
“This could be historic. I don’t want to miss—”
The earth roars around us, drowning me out. A branch from a nearby tree cracks and snaps. Sebastian yanks me back by the belt loop of my shorts a second before it falls on my head.
“Get to the fucking cars, Quincy.”
The insistence behind his demand awakens something inside me. It has me nodding. Widening my eyes when I see the tornado has changed paths again, no longer moving across the horizon but straight for us instead.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, but the rumble coming from in front of me swallows it up. The rain had shielded the tornado from view, deceiving us, and now I can see how massive it is. How fast it’s moving, howcloseit is, and my heart drops to my feet. We waited too long. There’s no possible way we can outrun something of this size. “Sebastian.”
“Let’sgo, Quincy.”
His damp hand finds mine. It’s a promise. An unspoken agreement that we’re in this together, and when he tugs on my arm, giving me the signal to move, I take off in a sprint.
It’s so unbelievably loud, I can’t hear what he’s saying six inches away from me. I can’t hear myself think, but I don’t look over my shoulder. I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll give up.
Forward movement is nearly impossible. Sticks and leaves are pulled off the ground, swirling around us like they’re being called to the sky. Hail pelts my arms, the back of my neck, stinging like the prick of a needle. I try to run faster, pushing past the ache in my legs. The burn in my lungs. I don’t think I’ve breathed in the last thirty seconds, and I can’t find our cars.
All I can see is Sebastian, and the look on his face is more terrifying than the storm itself.
I’m used to him being calm and collected. The few times we’ve chased a storm together—back in college for a group project and the summer before he left for New York when we ended up at the same weather spotting location by chance—he’s always been the perfect picture of unbothered. Enthralled by the pandemonium around him and thriving in the unexpected.
Not now.
Now, his jaw is tight. Chest heaving, his grip on my hand is bruising. We’re operating in pure survival mode, but somehow, amid the chaos, he looks so breathtakingly beautiful.
I drag my eyes away from him, gasping when my shoe connects with something solid. I let out a yelp and fly forward, my body tumbling over my feet as I roll across the wet grass.
“Quincy,” he yells, my name ripped from the trenches of his chest. It’s an agonizing, painful thing, a noise I feel deep down in my soul.
I grab my ankle, the pain immediate. A throbbing sensation radiates up my leg, and I fight back tears. “Go,” I tell him. I try to push myself up on an elbow, only to fall right back down. “Go, Sebastian.”
