Cowboys Cry Too - A Tyler Owens Story

Chapter 25

Oklahoma
Present Day

Maybe she wasn't meant to be a mother or wife, maybe Jackie Peterson was just meant to be Tyler Owens' girl till the very end. And honestly, she's okay with that. Because she got to love, and love has it's science but part of it's beauty and havoc is by the magic included, much like a tornado. Sometimes we don't know how it forms, it's a little bit of science, a little bit of magic, and each love is different.

Romantic love, or eros, is intimate, infatuated love. It's the love between two strangers turning into a whole.

Familial love, storge, the love between family.

Philautia, self love, is the love and care for oneself, encompassing self-respect and self-compassion.

Unconditional love, agape, is selfless, often associated with altruism and compassion. Forever interwoven.

And sacrificial love. The type of love where one person willingly sacrifices their own desires, needs, or even their life for the sake of another. It's so powerful, so pure, that it doesn't have a Greek name.

And she's gotten to experience this all with Tyler, the romantic love of her heart combining with his. The familial love, never feeling her heart pour as deeply as it did for their baby boy, truly becoming a family. Self-love, learning to deal with the heartache and come out of it stronger and wiser, Tyler breaking her, but doing it so she could build herself back up. Unconditional love, being obsessed and compassionate, feeling interlinked. And now this, the sacrificial love, willing to give up her own life for his. So he can live and love and chase.

So yeah, she's Tyler Owens' girl. And she's proud of that. But she's also Jackie Peterson, and she's proud of that as well.

She's a damn smart woman, and she's going to die that way.

She didn't say goodbye, which is something she wishes she did. She knows if she did he would hold her back and curse her out for even thinking of doing this, though. She also didn't get one last I love you, but she has hope that he knows, even without the phrase being uttered a final time. Like always, they are interlinked. An invisible string keeping them tied together. She hopes he feels her love now, how she is willing to do anything for him. She feels his pain, she knows when he is in danger. Interlinked and soul tied.

Soul mates to the very end.

"You're crazy for doing this with me!" Kate's yelling over the wind, her eyes ahead.

The tornado, the beast of a storm, is staring at them as if they are prey and it's terrifying. But with its danger is beauty, because mother nature created this.

"Couldn't let you do this alone! Way too scary!" She screams out over the roar, her head dropping as debris flies around them.

She's never been this terrified before, staring death in the face. She's also never been this prepared to let herself go, saving Tyler and the thousand others.

She knows there is a part of him that may never forgive her. They aren't on good terms, for all she knows he might hate her. But... Well she would rather him be alive and hate her, then him dead and in love.

She feels the truck shake, it's body trying to lift in the air and give in to the storm, but that can't happen. It can't work. This is their one chance at saving thousands. This is her opportunity to prove her love to Tyler.

Kate forces the truck to a stop, making sure it drills into the ground and stays anchored into the wet soil. It's moments like this, when the monster stares with no escape route, that the fear and dread sets in.