Hell of A Storm (Twisters Tyler x OC)

Chapter 5 - Dead End Road

This chapter was a lot harder to write than I thought. There was a lot of emotion in it. Hope I did justice to everything going on.

Regardless, I am having so much fun writing this whole story, and my sister is helping me come up with ideas for after the movie story ends and how to keep it going.

Annabelle POV

I wanted to tell Kate to leave me alone. I wanted to just keep walking when she pulled up beside me in Javi's truck, but the truth was, I was exhausted, my body hurt, my shoulder hurt, and I had nowhere really to go. She didn't say anything as we drove, and I didn't ask her where we would be going, I just laid my head on the window and watched the town's lights turn into fields.

Eventually the truck came to a stop outside an old barn, a small cottage off to its left with a porch light on and I felt the lump in my throat get bigger as I realized where I was. I hadn't been back here in years. The last time was the night before we left on our 'groundbreaking' tornado chase that changed everything.

"Kate." I said softly as I watched her hesitate, looking at her childhood home.

"Yeah, I know." She sighed, shaking her head and unbuckling her seatbelt. I mimicked her motion and followed her up the steps, waiting anxiously as she lifted the flowerpot by the door to find the spare key. We both slowly walked into the house, trying to stay quiet. Looking around the entry way, nothing had changed. It was still the charming home I spent almost every day at. The pictures of young Kate made me smile as we passed them until we made it to the kitchen.

Kate acted like she had never left, going to one of the cupboards and pulling out two glasses before going to the fridge. Sitting at the small table I stifled a groan as I sat down and put my arms on the wooden surface before laying my head on them. Javi's words were still echoing in my head. And no matter how hard I tried to drown them out, they were still there. Deep down I knew he hadn't meant them, not really, but that didn't stop them from hurting, because since that day I blamed myself for the experiment not working, for the mixture not working. He was right, my numbers were wrong.

Kate put the glass next to me just as we heard the sound of footsteps coming towards us. Looking up I met Kate's eyes, and I saw her pain. She hadn't seen her mom in years, she talked to her on the phone, but she hadn't physically been back because it was too hard, and now here she was.

"Mama, it's me." Kate called after a second as the shadow of her mom came into view.

"Kate?" Her mom called stepping further into the kitchen out of the dark. "What's going on?" she asked, walking up to Kate and wrapping her arms around her. Witnessing their reunion brought tears to my eyes. As Cathy embraced her daughter, and I watched my friend melt in her mother's arms I felt out of place. Cathy had walked past me originally to get to her daughter and I didn't blame her, so I tried to stay quiet as I slowly stood up to go back outside, only for the chair to squeak against the floor. Closing my eyes I cursed and suppressed a groan as I turned back to Kate and her mother. Kate stared at me with a scowl of disappointment at my attempt to leave.

"Anna?" Cathy questioned releasing her daughter taking a step towards me. "Oh, my goodness, look at you. What happened?" She asked as soon as she saw the state of my appearance and before I could protest, she was directly in front of me, her hand touching my cheek gently. And then I was wrapped in her arms in a similar gesture she had given Kate.

There was a twinge of guilt as I hugged her. Unlike Kate, I hadn't spoken to Cathy since I left. After our accident, after the tornado, as my parents grieved the loss of their son and Cathy did her best to stay with me. She was beside my bed as much as she was beside Kate's, and when Kate was released, she came back each day and sat with me. My parents didn't cope with the loss of my brother and could hardly look at me after I came home. They weren't bad parents, they still loved me, they were glad I was alive, but they couldn't bring themselves to be who they were before and couldn't look at me without seeing that I had lived while their son had died.