CAROLINA ELIZABETH, WE'VE GOT GUESTS.

THEY DROVE ALL NIGHT, making it to Sapulpa before the sun came up. Admittedly, Carolina slept most of the way, leaving her older sister with the burden of driving.

And Carolina only slept so that she wouldn't have to think about what Javi had blurted out for Tyler and Boone to hear. But now that she was back home and going down the gravel driveway, all she could think about was that look on Tyler's face. He looked downright pissed and a little bit disgusted — with her or himself, she didn't know. And she hadn't even gotten a chance to look at Boone before running away.

But it wouldn't be a problem if she and Kate never went back. Already, Carolina was just formulating a plan to silently go back in the night and get her truck before returning to campus, never to see Tyler, Boone, or even Javi ever again.

When they parked outside the little farm house, both eyed the barn they'd spent so much time in. Carolina glanced at her sister, wondering how she felt given that she hadn't been there in five years. For just a moment, Kate eyed the barn that she'd spent so much time in before getting out and heading toward the house.

Carolina got the spare key out from under the potted plant on the door, thinking that her mother needed a better hiding place even though there wasn't a lot of crime around Sapulpa.

The girls headed to the kitchen, Kate dying for something to drink after not even stopping to eat after driving for so long. Carolina grabbed two glasses while Kate got the pitcher of water from the fridge. And as they relaxed, they heard the floorboard creaking.

"Mama, it's me and Care," Kate said to calm her down as she entered the dark kitchen.

And the last thing Cathy expected was to see Carolina and Kate — together. She appraised the two girls in disbelief, taking in their horrible appearance. "What happened? What?"

Rather than answer, Carolina went in for a hug, Kate joining her. Cathy squeezed them tight, and Kate instantly started crying, missing the comfort her mother brought her.

When Carolina started crying too, Cathy ran her fingers through her tangled hair. "Tell me what happened."

Before Kate or Carolina could answer, a very familiar bark caught their attention. And Carolina pulled away and dropped to the ground just as a blue tick hound ran up to her, his tongue rolling out. She hugged him around the neck, crying into his dark fur.

"Oh, Frodo. Have I got a lot to tell you."

☁︎

After checking on Kate, Cathy made her way to Carolina's bedroom where her youngest daughter was sitting on her bed, wiping silent tears from her eyes, a frustrated look on her scrunched-up face. Frodo was curled into her side, licking her fingertips every now and then, trying to comfort her.

"Honey, the storm's over. It can't hurt you," she said softly, coming over to her.

"I ain't... crying about the storm," she mumbled as Cathy sat next to her, putting her arm around her. "I'm crying about... a boy. Well, two boys."

Carolina was tired of lying about Tyler and Boone. She was tired of lying to them as well.

"Two boys?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "You usually can't even snag one."

Carolina scoffed, making her mother laugh. "Uncalled for."

"So," she said, leaning back against the headboard as Carolina leaned into her chest. "Tell me about these boys."

She was silent for a moment, thinking it over. "Well, there's Boone. And he's like... don't laugh, but he's like if a golden retriever was a person."

That made Cathy laugh as Carolina smiled.

"He's so sweet and gentle and funny," she went on. "And handsome, Mama. He's got these eyes. They're like a mix between a Disney Prince but also the sweet but vacant eyes of a baby cow."

Now it was Kate who laughed, who had been listening at the door. But she let herself in and sat on the edge of her sister's bed.

"Eavesdropper," Carolina accused, glaring playfully.

"I will say I much prefer Boone over the other one," Kate said teasingly.

"Well, let's hear about this other one," Cathy said with a grin on her face. She'd missed this. Time with her two daughters.

"Tyler is—"

"An asshole," Kate cut her off flatly.

"He is," Carolina agreed, giggling. "He's stubborn and got this attitude, you know? But when he wants to be, he's really sweet and soft. And the makes me feel so safe and protected — they both do. And I like 'em so much that it scares me."

Cathy nodded, taking it in. "And, uh, how'd you get tangled up with these two?"

Carolina blushed as Kate smirked. "Met them at Milton's."

"That bar where they definitely know your ID is fake?"

"That's the one."

"They know how old you are?" Cathy asked in a slightly accusatory tone.

"They do now," Kate answered. "Javi blurted it out earlier."

"Figure they thought I was about twenty-three or twenty-four before that," she mumbled.

Cathy blew out a long breath, shaking her head. "And here I was thinking my little girl was studying hard away at college."

"In her defense," Kate said, "she has been studying in the middle of chasing this week."

☁︎

Carolina hadn't slept well, her mind full of horrible dreams. Ones of losing Kate and Javi in storms. And ones replaying the storm from the night before, it ending with having Boone and Tyler ripped away from her.

Even when she knew it was over now that they knew she was nineteen, she still cared about them so much that it scared her when it'd only been a week. It was far more than lust, which she was terrified to admit to herself.

After a morning of helping out with the cows and horses, Kate braved going to the barn, her sister at her side.

As Kate began uncovering her old supplies, Carolina went up to the loft overhead. She'd moved a cheap couch they found on the side of the road up there so that she'd have somewhere to rest on long nights when her sister was working late. She'd always loved watching Kate work, but at fourteen, she couldn't stay up nearly as late. More than once, Jeb or Javi had carried her back to her room.

"How you doing?" Cathy asked, coming into the barn as Carolina sat down, her legs handing over the edge of the loft.

"Just the way I left it," Kate mumbled.

"I've been wondering what you wanted to do with all this stuff," her mother said.

"Oh, you can just throw it out."

"You done?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. Clearly, Cathy wasn't impressed. Carolina wasn't either but knew Kate had been through more than they could comprehend. "It's funny. I keep seeing more and more tornados, and floods and droughts and the price of wheat and seed going up and up and up. But I'm still here."

Kate looked at her mother apologetically. "I'm sorry, Mom. I haven't been good about calling."

"I'm just saying, you even call Care once a year, so it hurts," Kathy shrugged. Then her phone rang. "I gotta get this."

But before she left, she scoffed and shook her head. "Throw it away." As if she'd ever do that. As she left, she added a, "I'm still waiting for you to save the world."

It left the girls in silence, Carolina just closed her eyes. She listened as Kate moved around the barn, not entirely sure what she was doing until she heard the familiar hum of the miniature tornado model that Kate built back when Carolina was just a toddler.

Carolina had loved playing with it growing up, thinking her sister was a genius for designing it.

"You built your own tornado." At hearing Tyler's voice, Carolina's eyes flew open as Kate whipped around. "Look at that."

He was standing at the barn, Boone at his side with his hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts. Carolina quickly retreated to the back of the hayloft so that they wouldn't see her.

"Middle school science fair project," Kate explained, turning it off.

"You must've won," he said, earning a nod from her and a look as if to say, 'Of course.'

"Where's, uh, where's your sister?" Boone asked, clearly nervous as his eyes flitted around the barn, searching for her.

Kate did her best to not look up at the loft, knowing Carolina didn't want to face them. She broke the silence but not with an answer. "How'd you find us?"

"Boone called the bar we met Carolina at. Asked for her last name. Dexter pieced it together after that. He remembered your name from the news a few years back... I'm sorry about your friends," Tyler told her.

Kate just tensed up, nowhere near ready to talk about it, especially with two people she didn't know very well. But thankfully, Cathy came to break the tension.

Or make it worse.

"I'm fixing some food. You all okay eating outside?"

Instantly, all three began to protest.

"Oh, I'm not—"

"We ain't—"

"They're not staying—"

"They're staying," she said, not wavering in her decision. "You can call me Cathy. Kate, why don't you set up the table?

Kate huffed childishly and slid past her mother to do so, leaving Cathy behind with the boys. But before Boone could yet again ask where Carolina was, Cathy beat him to it, calling up to the loft.

"Carolina Elizabeth, we've got guests. Get down here."

Carolina clenched her eyes shut before getting off the dusty floor of the loft and heading down the stairs, keeping her head held high as she refused to look at either man. She didn't want to see their reaction to her.

"Good," Cathy said with a smirk. "Now, how about you fix these gentlemen some sweet tea to have with their lunch."

"Yes, ma'am," she said, still keeping her gaze off them as she left the barn.

Because of that, she missed the crushed look on Boone's face from her lack of attention and the frustrated one on Tyler's, who wasn't really sure what he was doing there all of a sudden.

A few minutes later, they were all sitting at the picnic table outside — Cathy sat at the head of the table while Carolina was stuck across the table from Tyler and next to Boone. Thankfully, other than a 'thank you' when she filled their glasses with tea, neither man spoke to her.

But Cathy loved asking them questions, wanting to know more about the men that her youngest had gone on and on about the night before. And Tyler and Boone were having the time of their lives explaining their work to Kathy. They got just as excited as Kate, which put a secret smile on Carolina's face.

"Data only gets you so far," Boone said, not thinking much of data at all.

"But every chaser has to make a guess. And the good ones have an instinct for it," Tyler said, not so subtly bragging on himself.

"Oh, she had that early on," Kathy told him, nodding to Kate. "Always knew when weather was coming. Even better than the cows."

Tyler smirked smugly at Kate. "Oh, you hear that? You're better than the cows."

Carolina couldn't help but giggle down at her plate, and Boone perked up at the sound while Tyler just smiled softly. Then she caught Kate's eye and let out a low, "Moooo," under her breath.

Kate scoffed and stomped on her foot under the table.

"That's a compliment," Cathy insisted. "They have a feel for it."

"She always had a feel for it?" Boone asked. He never had that. He had to learn everything from Tyler.

"Oh, yeah. One time, I was giving her a bath—"

As Carolina snickered, loving this story, Kate cut her off, her face burning. "Mom, can we not?"

Kathy pinched her fingers together. "Maybe just a little. And we heard thunder, and she shot up out of the tub, and ran out the house naked as the day she was born—"

"Oh, my god," Kate groaned.

"And I had no idea where she was — I was terrified and Care was just a baby, so I had to grab her outta the crib. And when I finally caught up with her, she was standing in the middle of the wheat field, staring at the sky."

"I gotta try that," Tyler joked.

"Will you stop encouraging her?" Kate asked him.

"Keep your clothes on, Kate. Let your mom finish," he said, making Carolina laugh hard. And he loved the sound of her laugh even if he was frustrated with her now.

"All I'm saying is she always loved weather," she said, smiling at Kate. "Worse the weather, the happier the girl."

"That the case for this one here?" Boone asked, nodding to Carolina, who was still avoiding looking at him.

"Oh, no," Cathy said, shaking her head. "This one was always runnin' to the storm shelter any time it so much as thundered. She only went into meteorology to be like her big sister. Always admired Kate."

"Damn," Boone said, snapping his fingers. "So, we ain't got no embarrassing field stories for her?"

Carolina scoffed and nearly glared at him playfully just like he wanted, but she held off.

"Oh, I got stories," Cathy smirked. "One's Katy ain't even heard since she's been off in New York."

Carolina groaned and pushed her barbecue around her plate. "Don't make me go back up to the loft."

"That's right! You sure do love that loft," Cathy said, catching Carolina's eye, a silent threat in her look. "Katy, you missed it. She brought this city boy back home with her for her birthday last month. You know, the one from the Wendy's where the police got involved—"

"I'm gonna just go kill myself real quick," Carolina grumbled, moving to get up. Because not only was it embarrassing, but now Boone and Tyler knew she was freshly nineteen.

But then Boone slid his arm around her waist, pulling her back down and making her cheeks heat up.

"Now, I wanna hear all about this city boy," Boone said, not hiding the jealousy in his tone. He knew from the Wendy's comment that it must've been the first guy she ever slept with who didn't treat her right.

"He's some boy from Chicago," Cathy told him like it was a gossiping session. "She's been talkin' about him since first day of classes last term. Biggest crush on him I ever seen. They been dating what? Two months now."

"You got a boyfriend?" Tyler asked in a hard voice, feeling used all of a sudden.

Carolina's face went red. "He broke up with me last week, Mama. Hadn't had the chance to tell you."

"Oh," Cathy grimaced. She'd just been trying to gently get all the facts out there for everyone so that no one's feelings were hurt more than they already were. Seemed she'd made it worse. "I'm sorry, honey."

"Why'd y'all break up?" Kate asked. She didn't mind asking given that Carolina wasn't exactly heartbroken. She'd already moved on with two new guys so quickly.

All of them noticed how her cheeks flushed, making them guess the breakup had to do with intimacy issues. "Jackson just didn't like, you know, how I was when we were, you know."

Tyler and Boone's eyes could've popped out of their skulls in disbelief. Because that night with Carolina was easily the best one of their lives, so clearly, the college boy didn't know what the hell he was doing and he didn't know what he'd lost.

"Anyway," Carolina said, clearing her throat as she looked at her amused mother. "Enough embarrassing stories, thank you very much. I'd prefer we keep talking about tornados, and I know Kate would too."

Cathy just snickered before nodding, then looking between the two. "What about you? Tyler, Boone, how'd you come to do this work?"

"Oh, Ty got me into this," Boone told her with a grin. "Yeah, anything dangerous and stupid — I love it."

"Yeah," Tyler said, his eyes trailing to Carolina. "He's right. When you love something, you'll spend your whole life trying to understand it."

Of course, Carolina missed the look because she was still avoiding eye contact. But it sure caught Cathy and Kate's attention, who both raised an eyebrow. If Tyler was mad about Carolina's age, he wasn't very good at acting mad.

Then again, he was saving it for when he was alone with her.

Finally, Cathy broke the heavy silence, always good at keeping things from staying awkward. "Katy was studying for her PhD."

"Wow," Tyler hummed.

"I keep telling her to come back and finish it."

"Okay, Mom," Kate groaned, not wanting to talk about it anymore than Carolina wanted to talk about Jackson.

"They was heading up a big study with their friends. Disrupting tornado dynamics—"

Suddenly very uncomfortable, Kate stood up abruptly. "Um, does anybody need anything?"

"Uh, naw, I'm good. Thank you," Tyler told her softly.

"Me too," Boone added.

"Okay," she mumbled before taking her plate inside.

Carolina sighed and got up to follow after her. "Mama, you know she don't like to talk about it," she said before going off.

Once she caught up to Kate, neither said anything. Neither had to as Kate set her plate in the sink. The weather station was on, talking about all the recent tornados, which upset Kate even more. So, Carolina grabbed the remote and turned the TV off.

"I invited Tyler and Boone to stay the night in the guest room," Kathy said, coming back into the house.

Carolina paled. The guest room was right next to hers on the bottom floor while her mother and sister were on the second one. She didn't want to be so close to them and alone.

But it seemed her mother was just determined to ruin her life.