Edge of Chaos (Love on the Edge #1) (5 page)

“Awesome, I’ll hang around till you get off. Be easier if you follow me.”

“All right,” I said, the butterflies resuming their flapping in my stomach. I told myself this was because I was thrilled at the prospect of actually making some friends before I graduated college and not at all to do with how his lip quirked when he smiled.

“You should text your boyfriend and tell him to meet us there,” he said while walking toward the exit. He had his cell phone out and typed as well. “I’ll be out here when you’re done closing up.”

I watched him walk through the automatic doors. I saw the outlines of defined, but not bulging, muscles through his snugly fitted red T-shirt. I blinked and forced myself to snap out of it. He literally just told me to text my boyfriend!

I pulled out my cell phone from underneath my register and stared at it for a few moments, contemplating the right way to invite Justin. I knew he wouldn’t come out, not with his boys’ night in full force, but I also knew he’d want me to go home and study. Not go to a bar. The idea of getting to know Dash—a person I’d admired and respected, who also shared my field of study—filled me with a confidence I hadn’t experienced before. I finally shot Justin a quick text, and then proceeded to do my closing duties.

Forty-five minutes later I clocked out and headed to my car. I glanced at my phone for the first time since I’d texted Justin. Six missed calls. My heart pounded a little harder in my chest. Six calls on a COD night was unheard of.

“Hey, you ready?” Dash leaned against his black F150, his hands in his jeans pockets.

“Sure,” I said, stopping at my car parked a few spaces away.

He gave me a nod and hopped in his truck. I dialed Justin’s number while following Dash out of the parking lot.

He answered after the first ring.

“What do you mean you’re going to a bar?” he snapped.

“Hello to you, too.” A loud mixture of male banter and video game gunfire boomed in the background.

“Don’t get cute with me, Blake. Why in the hell are you going to a bar?”

“To hang out with some people from class. What’s the big deal? You’re with your friends tonight,” I said, sighing.

“That’s different.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I’m not getting drunk with a bunch of college assholes.”

No, you’re getting drunk with a bunch of drop-out assholes. “I’m not going to get drunk, and they’re not assholes. What’s the problem?”

“I know you. Ten to one you’re not meeting a bunch of sorority girls.”

“They’re guys from my class and their girlfriends. You could meet us there, you know.” I continued to follow Dash’s truck, which took me on the familiar route toward campus.

“I shouldn’t have to do that,” he said, the anger in his voice mounting.

“You’re right. You shouldn’t
have
to come out with your girlfriend on a Friday night. You should want to,” I snapped and instantly regretted it. Where had my fight-filter vanished to?

“I can’t believe you’re choosing to do this over your responsibilities. You should be studying, and if not that then you should be here.”

I gripped the steering-wheel harder, waiting for the guilt that normally hit me when he pulled those lines. It didn’t come. “My classes are under control, and you don’t even notice me when COD is up.”

“Whatever. This is bullshit. Hope you have a great time tonight. Try not to get roofied.” He hung up.

My mouth dropped, and I scoffed at my cell phone, resisting the urge to throw it out the window. I opted instead to shove it in my purse and crank up my stereo.

Going out with a storm chaser from class who had arms that tornadoes would change course for wasn’t wrong. I was an aspiring meteorologist. It was networking. Despite repeating this to myself, I was still fuming when I parked next to Dash’s truck in front of the bar.

The small brick building had a lone neon sign hanging out front. Posters with specials plastered the windows, and Dash held the door open for me as we walked in. The smell of cigarettes and fried food instantly hit me as we entered. Music blared from speakers in the corners of the small room, and a wooden bar took up most of the space. To the left were a few round-top tables with red leather bar stools and a shuffleboard pressed against the wall behind them.

The place was packed with people, most in OU shirts. Chatter joined the music bouncing off the walls, drowning out the angry thoughts in my head. Dash gently touched my lower back, sending another spark soaring through me. I tried not to freak out that the creator of the website I practically stalked guided me to a tall, round-top-table in the back next to the shuffleboard.

The other two guys from class sat there with giant frosty mugs in front of them.

“Whoa, who invited the meteorologist?” the dark-haired one asked. He wore an OU T-shirt and jeans, his brown eyes looking me up and down.

“I did,” Dash said and turned to me. “Blake, this is Paul Whitmore.” He pointed to the dark-haired boy.

“Hey.” Paul leaned toward me. “What do meteorologists get after a night of tequila and bad tacos?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, what?”

“Rear-flank downdrafts,” Paul said and burst out laughing. He stopped only long enough to take another swig of beer.

I chuckled. “That’s so corny it’s almost funny.”

“Don’t mind him, he’s an idiot.” Dash pulled out a barstool for me to sit on. He pointed to the boy sitting next to Paul. “And this is John Langston.”

“Wondered what took you so long,” John said, eyeing Dash. “Where’d you have to pick this one up?” He had a perfectly mussed natural red faux-hawk and kind blue eyes.

“I followed him here,” I answered and took a seat.

“Worried about me, John?” Dash asked and sat next to me.

I glanced at Dash. “I’m guessing your close friends call you Ringo?”

The two boys laughed while Dash pressed his lips together to stop his smile.

“Nice! We should start calling you that,” John said before taking a swig of his beer.

“No way, man. I’d be Ringo if anyone in this group was Ringo.” Paul shook his head.

I turned to Dash. “Confession time. I’ve known who you were since the first day of class. I love your site.”

“Whoa, stalker alert.” Paul arched an eyebrow.

“I knew we should’ve put our pictures on the site, too! You get too much attention, man.” John punched Dash on the shoulder.

He rolled his eyes. “Glad you like the site. It’s always a work in progress.”

“Well, I think it’s great. I have to ask, though, how’d you get such an interesting name?” I shifted in my seat and fiddled with a cardboard coaster.

“Don’t let it lead you to believe he’s cool or anything. It’s not his real name,” Paul said.

I glanced at Dash. “What’s your real name?”

“Ha! You’ll never know, sweetheart. He never tells anyone. Not even us.” John clanked his beer against Dash’s before taking another gulp.

“Why does everyone call you Dash then?”

“He’s always making a mad dash for shelter because he stays in the field way too long!” Paul answered before Dash could.

“I can speak for myself, you know.” Dash shook his head.

“In the field?”

“Well, technically it isn’t always a field, though I have had to sprint through several after a tornado changed its course unexpectedly.”

I couldn’t help but picture Dash running through a wide open field as a movie-worthy tornado chased him, hungry for his life. The image actually sparked a flare of terror in my chest. “How long have you been chasing storms?” I asked.

“All my life really. When I was eight I stole my dad’s video camera and stood on the back deck in the middle of a severe thunderstorm. A piece of hail ended up cracking the lens. I was grounded for a month.” His eyes shot downward for a moment. “That same year our neighborhood got hit by an F-3.”

I gasped.

“We were out grocery shopping when it hit,” he continued. “My parents had no idea what to do. Dad frantically drove toward home, like if he got us there we’d be safe. I remember looking out the back window and seeing nothing but a gray-white beast rotating and flinging debris all over the place. We made it to our street, but our home was destroyed. It took a dozen other’s homes, too.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, resisting the urge to reach across the table and squeeze his hand. “Was anyone hurt?”

“Seven people were killed. Two of them were our neighbors.” Dash didn’t blink for a few moments, as if he wasn’t at the table anymore but in front of his destroyed home. “I knew from that moment on I’d never let another tornado chase me . . . that it’d be the other way around the next time. And I knew I’d do everything in my power to learn as much as possible, so I could help people be more aware.” He swallowed hard and shrugged, like he could force the memories away. “Anyway, I’ve been chasing professionally since freshman year.”

“Wow, I bet that’s incredible,” I said, amazed at how he could take such a devastating experience and turn it into a passion.

“It is. You should come on a chase with us sometime. It really puts all those reports you’ll be doing into perspective,” he said.

“I’d love to, but I don’t know the first thing about chasing storms.”

“You know storms, Blake. We’ve all heard you in class. It’s like you were born predicting. You see things in the sky others don’t.”

I parted my lips to respond, but my breath caught in my throat. I didn’t know he’d paid me that much attention. “Still, I’ve never been in the thick of it. Not like you guys.”

“Well, we’ll change that,” he said.

“Yeah, it’d be nice having someone else to listen to other than these two!” John said. “They think they know absolutely everything, and they never stop at the good gas stations. Pretty girl like you, I bet they’d stop where the clean bathrooms are just to be polite.”

I couldn’t help but laugh because I never would’ve guessed a guy with a faux-hawk would care about bathroom cleanliness. “So, what are all of you majoring in then? I thought all storm chasers were meteorologists.”

“Common misconception,” Dash answered. “Atmospheric sciences is our field. Though I’m minoring in videography and photography as well.” He motioned his head toward John. “So is he.”

John shrugged. “They really like me for my skills driving the Tracker Jacker.”

“Fan of The Hunger Games?” I asked.

“Don’t get me started!” John set his beer down. “These two give me so much crap for reading the books.”

“I love the series, too,” I said.

“Nice.” John stuck his fist toward me.

I gave it a bump and asked, “What is your Tracker Jacker like?”

Dash patted John on the back. “A beat-up pickup with instruments hooked to the top that follows my beast of a truck.”

John cut his eyes at him. “Yeah, act like you’d get anywhere without me.” He turned his attention back to me. “I navigate the paths and am constantly connected to Doppler to help us get ahead of the storms. Can’t always rely on Dash’s ‘instincts.’” John framed the last word with his fingers in the universal quotation mark sign.

Dash motioned to Paul. “He’s a double-major, alongside engineering.”

“Wow, that’s a ton of work.”

Paul shrugged. “These two have to have someone who can build useful and working equipment if they want to be the top chasers in Oklahoma.”

“It’s nice that you all have an important role.”

“Still missing a tried-and-true meteorologist though.” John eyed Dash.

He smiled at me. “Don’t worry. I’m not planning on forcing you to join the team . . . yet.”

I grinned, enjoying the thought of being part of anything outside my boring routine. “Does the University pay you guys to chase?”

Paul grunted. “Nope, all the funds come from Dash’s website. We did just get a grant to build some probes—mobile devices with instruments measuring wind velocity, atmospheric pressures, and temperature—”

“She knows what probes are,” Dash interrupted him.

“Oh, yeah, of course she does.” Paul tapped the side of his near empty beer glass. “Well, ours won’t be fully operational until next season.”

John set his mug down. “We just have the tools hooked up to the Tracker Jacker for now. That and Dash’s abilities to get the best footage out there,” he said. “It’s going to be a killer season.”

“It better be!” Paul interjected. “We’ve spent the whole winter planning for it. I swear if I look at another map for more than five minutes at a time I’m going to set it on fire.”

“Dash!” a high-pitched voice squealed above the bustle of the crowded bar and cut through our conversation.

Dash jumped up and grabbed an empty barstool from the table next to us, dragging it to the other side of him. A few seconds later a blonde who barely came up to my shoulder wrapped her arms around his waist. She wore a blue-jean miniskirt with a white tank top and her lacy red bra peeked through the fabric. Dash kissed her quickly and offered her the barstool.

Something sharp stung my chest. I chalked it up to jealousy of the tiny girl who had a boyfriend who liked to hang out at fun bars and pulled her chair out for her. Justin would never do that.

“This place is always so crowded, Dashy. It took me forever to find a parking spot.”

“That’s because it’s so good.” Dash sat back down.

“It’s crazy I never noticed this place before. My apartment is only a block away,” I said, glancing around.

“Oh, is that an invitation?” Paul asked, waggling his eyebrows.

“Negative,” I answered.

“Denied!” John shouted.

The girl eyed me from across the small bar table with an intense territorial look.

“Lindsay, this is Blake,” Dash introduced.

“Nice to meet you. How did you and Dash meet?” I asked, knowing acknowledging their relationship and her claim on him was a smart play in getting her to stop looking at me like I crashed her private party.

Her tiny pink lips curved into a smile. “I met Dashy about a year ago at an Alpha Chi Omega party. He’d asked the DJ to play some awful rock band—”

“They are not awful,” Dash interrupted.

“Anyway, I put a stop to that and the rest is history.”

I wondered if Blue October was the band she claimed was awful. “So you’re a member of that house?”