“No one calls me Douchehawk! No one! Except you! If I wanted to take the time, I could figure out a shitty nickname to call you, too! If there’s even anything shittier than being called a huge, hateful bitch.”
There it was again. The B word. And he was using it to describe her. If her hideous tourist T-shirt had sleeves, she’d roll them up in preparation to rear back and knock him on his ass. “You could figure something out? Really? Could you?” she asked, pitching her voice patronizingly high. “Well, I don’t think we have that kind of time.” She lowered her brow and balled her hands on her hips. “And I am not a huge, hateful bitch!” A blast of wind smacked against her back, and she tensed to keep from stumbling forward.
“My parents are dead,” Tate paused, biting his lower lip. “I watched them get sucked up by a tornado and then burned in an explosion. And then you come along and kidnap me so I won’t be able to plan their funeral or be there for my g-pa or help fix my town. In one evening my life has been destroyed, and I want to know why and how I can put it back together. I can’t do that driving away from my home with you. So, bitch! Move!” Tate’s gaze narrowed as lightning cracked overhead.
“Kidnap you?” Foster’s nails dug into her palms as she tightened her fists. “No one would ever kidnap you. You’re a dick! You keep saying that your parents died like this is a competition—like Cora isn’t important to me, like I didn’t just leave her body back there on a field. You don’t have to be spewed from someone’s vagina or be the result of one lucky sperm to call the people who love you your parents. Cora is a better mom than a lot of bio moms out there, and she’s dead. My mom died today, too! And thirteen years ago my birth mom and dad died in a car accident. Five years ago my adoptive dad, Cora’s husband, died when his boat capsized. So guess what? If this is a competition I win big time because apparently everyone around me dies!” Her skin felt hot and tight, like it had suddenly stretched too thin to contain her. Tears stinging her eyes, Foster’s anger fueled her as she shoved her open palms hard against his chest. “And stop calling me a bitch!”
Tate stumbled backward, landing flat on his butt in a cloud of dust. She shielded her eyes against the stinging rain. Something was … different. Tate sat on the ground looking dumbfounded as water dripped off of him, staining the parched clay brickred. Foster glanced down at her feet as the wailing wind lifted her dank, red hair. Muddy earth bubbled around her Vans as heavy rain pummeled the inch of standing water. But dust had plumed where Tate landed. His hair wasn’t flying around in the wind. There wasn’t any wind where he was, and the earth was dry and …
“Tate!”
He blinked up at her, his chin bobbing as if words would come if he only continued to move his mouth.
No, he wasn’t staring at her. He was staring at the rain-wrapped windstorm she stood in the center of.
Foster took a hesitant step toward him. Beneath her feet, the fresh section of cracked, dry earth swallowed the steadily falling rain.
“I think I know what’s happening!” She rushed to Tate, shrouding him in her cloak of rain and wind. Taking his hands in hers, she guided him to his feet.
“I’m glad one of us does.” Tate squinted, looking up at their patch of swirling gray sky.
“Breathe with me,” Foster said, releasing some of her anger with a long exhale.
“I’m always breathing.” Black hair flopped in wet clumps against his forehead as he shook his head. “If not, I’d be dead.”
“Can you, just for a second, try not to be so—” Foster caught herself before releasing another insult.
“Confused? Freaked? Worried? Pissed?” Water slid down Tate’s face like errant tears.
“Douchey,” she corrected.
Tate stiffened, recoiling slightly as if she’d pushed him … again.
“Relax. Don’t be so, I don’t know, squishy. Just listen to me. Now, inhale,” silently, Foster counted to five before instructing them to exhale. The raindrops slowed, turning from dive-bombing water warriors to a gentle, caressing mist. “It’s working!” Excitement lifted Foster to her tiptoes. So far, she was three for three. “Inhale again.”
Tate’s compression top stretched across his broad chest with another slow inhale.
“And exhale.” Foster tilted her chin to the sky. The wind and rain ceased, the sky clearing to its dusky orange glow. “It’s gone.”
“Whoa,” he paused, surveying the dissipating clouds. “That was amazing and we did it. We made it stop.” The corner of Tate’s lip quirked up in a half smile as he squeezed her hands.
Foster nodded her head and, realizing he still held her hands in his, yanked them away and stuffed them into her pockets. “Yep. We sure did.”
“Damn,” Tate groaned. “This means that this—all of this—has something to do with us.”
Foster couldn’t roll her eyes hard enough. “Jesus, god! Yes! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you this entire time.”
“Ah, ah, ah. You can’t get mad at me.” He waggled his finger before pointing up at the sky. “’Cause, well, you know what’ll happen.”
With yet another deep inhale, Foster retied her matted, wet hair on top of her head and trudged back to the truck. “By the time this is all over, I’ll deserve some kind of deep-breathing award.”
“Yeah, well, what exactly is all of this?” Tate opened the door and, with a painful groan, slid onto the upholstered bench seat that they’d officially ruined. “I mean, whatever’s going on with us, the rain, the storms, the tornadoes. You have answers, right?”
Foster chewed the inside of her cheek. “Well, kind of. I mean, I have some, but I need help to figure the rest out.”
Tate fished the dry T-shirt out of the bag and wiped his face. “If we figure out how this is happening and stop it from happening to anyone else’s family, I’m in. Totally.”