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When the adrenaline starts wearing off, she almost falls flat on her face. Tyler’s arm is the only thing that stops her from keeling over, and he decides they’re going to the hospital about five seconds later. Kate doesn’t bother arguing. She feels like death warmed over, and from the concerned looks Javi keeps shooting her in the back of the ambulance, she looks like it too.
Things are hazy after that. She registers bright lights, the cool press of her mom’s hand, gentle fingers probing at her neck. Other than that, nothing sticks; she floats in and out of consciousness to the muted soundscape of talking and beeping.
When she wakes up again, some unknown length of time later, Cathy is in the chair beside her bed, and the relieved look on her face makes Kate want to cry. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispers, and Cathy shakes her head, reaches for her hand and kisses the back of it.
“You did it,” she says, quiet and fractured. “Always knew you could.”
Kate tries to sit up, winces, falls back against the pillows. Her entire body aches. “Concussion?” she asks, although she’s pretty sure she knows the answer. This feels familiar.
Cathy nods. “Got your ribs pretty bad too. And your fingers.”
As if on cue, Kate becomes acutely aware of the stinging ache in her hands. “You know,” Cathy continues, “that Tyler’s been hanging around here ever since you came in. Seems real worried about you.”
Kate remembers, abruptly, that Tyler had been hurt too. “Is he okay?”
Cathy nods. “Messed up his leg a bit, but he’s not too bad. Seems the type to downplay it, though.”
Kate huffs a laugh. “I can see it.” She studiously does not think about him worrying about her.
A doctor comes in then, confirms what Kate already suspected. Concussion, cracked ribs, fractured fingers, whiplash. “You’re very lucky to be alive,” he tells her, stern, like she doesn’t already know that. “Next time you see a twister like that, maybe don’t drive right into it.”
But it worked. Kate’s chest is tight with it. It worked and we saved people. That alone is worth any scolding.
She fades out soon after, and when she opens her eyes again, it’s quiet, stars peeking through the blinds. Her mom isn’t next to her anymore, but Tyler’s asleep in the chair by the bed, leg propped up on a second chair. The bed creaks when she tries to sit up, and he’s awake in an instant. “You doing okay?”
She feels like she drove into a tornado. “What are you doing here?”
He has the grace to look a little sheepish. “I ran into your mom when she left, and she asked if I’d mind sitting with you for a bit. Something about not wanting you to be alone?”
Kate holds back a laugh. Cathy Carter is many things, but subtle is not one of them. “So she sent you here to watch me sleep?”
“Well, she didn’t use those words.” He smiles, shrugging. “Probably just didn’t want you to wake up alone.”
“Shouldn’t you be resting or something too?” Kate looks pointedly at the bandage on his leg. “You break that?”
“Nah.” He glances down at it like he’s forgotten he even got hurt. “Not that lucky. Bruised the shit out of it, though.”
“And you’re not on bed rest?”
“Not anymore.” He’s fully grinning now, eyes sparking. “Takes more than that to keep me down.”
“I see.” She winces, closing her eyes. Her head hurts.
The chair scrapes gently when he stands. “Get some rest,” he says, quieter, more serious. He’s gone when she wakes up again.
She’s almost positive she didn’t hallucinate him touching her hand before he leaves. In fairness, she’s on a lot of painkillers, but the warmth of his fingers had been very real.
They don’t let her go home nearly as soon as she’d like. “You were hurt very badly,” the nurses keep saying every time she asks. You’re lucky to be alive goes unsaid, thankfully, but it’s in their eyes.
Kate knows she got hurt. Her body still aches in places she didn’t know it could. It doesn’t change the fact that she wants out of here.
When she finally does get out, it’s with strict instructions to take it easy for the next week. She’s still just as fussed over; Cathy makes her soup and brings her fun drinks – “because you need fluids” – and sets up the couch with about a million blankets so she doesn’t feel confined to her room. It’s a little stifling, but Kate still feels guilty for her absence over the years, so she lets it happen.
Three days in, Tyler shows up at the front door with three coffee cups in a tray and a box of muffins from the little bakery downtown. “Yours is decaf,” he tells her, handing one of the paper cups to Cathy, who’s smiling like Christmas came early. “Concussion and all that.”
Kate levels him with a stare. “Did you talk to the doctors or something?”
He laughs. “No, but I do know a thing or two about getting hit on the head.”
It’s all so painfully charming that she finds her irritation, however slight, dissipating. “Well, bring it here, then.”
As it turns out, he’s good company even when they aren’t running into certain danger. They watch Wheel of Fortune because her mom loves it and it’s on and he’s a good sport, but during commercial breaks, he tells them about what the rest of his team is doing in the wake of the tornado, about running out of t-shirts because they gave a bunch away for free.
It’s sort of like he’s always been there, and Kate finds herself disarmed by it. He slots easily into the existing dynamic, and it helps. She loves her mom, but things have been tense between them since the first accident, and Tyler provides enough of a buffer to negate it a bit. Cathy has someone else to fuss over while he’s here.
When she gets up to start supper, the energy shifts, and Kate is suddenly apprehensive for an entirely different reason. She’s still not sure why Tyler’s here when he could be doing other things, why he seems so content to sit with her and her mom watching game shows. There’s no sign that he’s faking it or that he’s trying to get something out of it.
As if he can feel her eyes on him, he says, “Is it okay that I’m here? Because I can go if it’s not.”
She shakes her head, looks away. “Not really. It’s just a little surreal, that’s all.” Because he opened the conversation, and she’s genuinely curious, she continues, “Why are you here, though? I’m sure there are a hundred other things you could be doing.”
“Just wanted to see if you were doing okay.” He shrugs, something soft in his gaze. “That’s all.”
She’s not sure what propels her to put a hand on his arm, but she does, and it doesn’t feel forced. “That’s nice of you.”
His smile widens. “High praise.”
“Shut up.” She starts to pull her hand back, but his skin is warm even through the fabric of his shirt, and she decides it wouldn’t be so bad to keep on touching him for a little while. She’ll blame it on the recovery. “You guys sticking around for a while, then?”
“Looks like it.” His eyes keep cutting down to where her fingers tangle in his shirt. She wants, abruptly, to kiss him. She’s not sure where the thought came from, but now that it’s here, she can’t get it out of her mind.
She won’t. At least, not today. If he keeps coming by, then maybe.
It happens in the garage, almost a week later, after he’s brought her non-decaf coffee and the raspberry muffins he’s discovered she loves. She’s in the middle of explaining another theory that never fully panned out in college, rambling like she hasn’t in ages – she can’t help it when he seems just as excited about it as she is – and when she finally takes a beat to breathe, he’s looking at her like he can’t believe she’s real. It’s the same expression he’d worn when he and Javi had pulled her out of the truck after the EF5, almost reverent in its vulnerability.
Kate puts her fingers over his on the notebook, slides her other hand along his jaw. He laughs, a breathless little thing, and she pulls him down, closing her eyes as their lips touch. His hand splays over her lower back, drawing her in closer to him, and something bright surges through her. She could stay here for a long time, lost in his arms and his scent.
The garage door creaks, and she pulls away with a whispered curse, trying to smooth her hair down where his hands had run through it. Tyler reaches for the notebook he’d abandoned, face endearingly flushed.
“Oh, here you are.” Cathy comes through the door a few seconds later. “I came home, and you were just gone and – oh.” Her gaze lands on Tyler, who summons up an easy smile, though Kate can tell he’s still flustered. It’s cute.
“Sorry for dragging her out here,” he says, as if Kate hadn’t been just as anxious to go over this theory again, as if she isn’t fully recovered. “Had an idea I couldn’t get out of my head.”
Cathy grins. “Not a problem,” she says warmly. “Supper’ll be ready in about an hour if you’re planning on staying?”
“Sure thing,” he says, glancing back at Kate, “if you’ll have me.”
She just smiles, something warm bubbling up in her chest. It’s tempered by the reality pushing at the edges of the bubble she’s been in since El Reno.
“I have to go,” she tells him a few days later, once the restlessness starts to set in. She’s been gone for far longer than she told her boss she would be, and despite the spark of chasing skittering through her blood again, she’s still not sure it’s the world for her anymore.
Tyler nods, like he’d been expecting this. “Think you’re done chasing?”
“Probably.” One success doesn’t make up for years of self-blame. “They’ll need me back at the office anyways.”
He sighs, a soft smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Guess I hoped you might wanna get back into it after this. You’ve got something special, y’know.”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. "It's not that simple."
He mirrors her. "Maybe it is."
She's not sure she fully believes him, but she thinks about it the entire flight back. Maybe it is.
A few months later, after long nights of wrestling with her mind and fielding knowing looks from her boss, she calls him, and she can hear his smile before she even says anything. "Still think it's that simple?" she asks, and he laughs.
She doesn't look back.