6. Jonah
JONAH
I've never fully appreciated how the human body can become both a shield and a torture device until this exact moment.
“Are you kidding? This is the best thing that could've happened!” Lucas gestures wildly at the mangled remains of the news van. “The footage I got is career-making! Emmy-worthy! Plus, now the station has to give me a new van with better equipment!”
Lila shoots me a look that clearly translates to, Is he actually insane? Well, I think it does. Maybe it’s more of a how can you be friends with that kind of idiot? At the moment, I am questioning that myself.
Lucas spots Lila leaning against her truck. His expression brightens even further, which I wouldn't have thought possible. “Ms. Brooks! The savior once again! First you rescue that family in Woodward County, and now you've saved my colleague from certain death!”
I wince at his dramatic phrasing. “I wasn't in 'certain death'—”
“You absolutely were,” Lila interrupts flatly.
“And I'm giving both of you a ride back to the civilization to figure out how you’re getting home,” she adds, pushing off her truck and heading for the driver's side door.
“Let's go before I change my mind and leave you both out here with your stupidity.”
I trudge through the mud toward Lila's truck, painfully aware that my shoes—formerly pristine leather oxfords that cost more than I care to admit—are now permanently ruined. Lucas bounces alongside me like an excited puppy, clutching his camera bag to his chest.
“Isn’t it ironic how the universe keeps throwing us all together?” he whispers, loudly enough that Lila can definitely hear him.
“The universe threw a tornado at us,” I hiss back. “That's not the same thing.”
When we reach the truck, I realize with dawning horror that her entire backseat is full of the equipment I salvaged from the weather van.
Maybe if I just shoved it over a bit more, there would be room for me in the back seat.
I study the space realizing that unless I possess the ability to shrink in half, no one was sitting back there.
That leaves only the front bench seat open.
“I call window!” Lucas chirps, holding the door out for me, which means I'll be sitting in the middle.
I hesitate, one foot on the running board, calculating the physics of three adults on this bench seat. It's going to be tight. Very tight.
“Problem?” Lila asks, one eyebrow raised as she watches me from the driver's side.
“No, no problem,” I mumble, hauling myself into the middle position, my knees awkwardly bent as I try to fit my frame into a space clearly not designed for someone my height.
“Cozy!” Lucas declares with entirely too much enthusiasm as he shoves in next to me.
I’m immediately trapped in what feels like the world’s most uncomfortable sandwich.
My shoulders are too broad for the bench seat, forcing me to angle inward slightly, which only makes the situation catastrophically worse because now I’m partially facing Lila.
The damp fabric of my shirt clings to my skin, cold and restrictive, while my knees are jammed awkwardly against the dashboard at an angle that’s going to require medical intervention if this drive lasts longer than twenty minutes.
“How far is the closest town?” I manage, trying to position my arms somewhere neutral that doesn’t involve elbowing Lucas or having to drape it around the back of Lila’s seat.
“About forty minutes,” Lila replies, shifting the truck into gear. “Unless another funnel drops.”
Forty minutes. In this position? Excellent. I’m going to die here.
As Lila navigates the muddy road, I become acutely aware of several facts simultaneously: Lucas is still soaking wet and smells like a Golden Retriever that lost a fight with a lake.
I am pressed close enough to Lila that I can feel the warmth of her body through our damp clothes every time the truck shifts over uneven pavement.
By far most dangerously, she smells incredible.
Not perfume. Nothing overly feminine or artificial.
Rain-soaked denim. Wind. The faint scent of storm air tangled with warm skin.
Like summer heat on asphalt right before rainfall.
My entire body tightens instinctively. Jesus Christ.
The thing about near-death experiences, apparently, is that they have absolutely no respect for timing.
I shift against the seat, angling my knee towards Lucas under the present of finding a more comfortable position, and stare very deliberately at a water stain on the dashboard.
Doing everything that is within my power to fight off my growing erection while trapped shoulder-to-shoulder with the woman causing it and my best friend is literally six inches away.
This may actually be the most humiliating experience of my adult life.
Lila glances sideways briefly, one hand steady on the wheel.
“You okay over there, Professor?”
“Perfectly fine,” I say immediately, which is the least convincing thing I’ve ever said in my life.
Lucas snorts beside me. “You sound like a hostage reading a prepared statement.”
“I’m trapped between two people in a truck not built for three people in the front seat, and at least one of them actively wants me dead.”
“Debatable,” Lila mutters.
Lightning pulses somewhere behind the tree line, and for half a second the cab fills with white light. Her mouth is doing something it's trying not to do. Naturally, this makes everything significantly worse.
The truck drops hard into a washed-out rut. Her arm knocks into mine, warm through the wet fabric.
I stop breathing.
I have a doctorate. I have published seventeen peer-reviewed papers. I have, on at least three occasions, been described as “intimidatingly rational.” And yet here I am, completely undone because a woman smells like rain.
Lucas looks slowly between us, the way a cat looks at something before it knocks it off a shelf.
“Oh,” he says softly. “This is bad bad.”
“Lucas—”
“No, no.” He gestures vaguely at the six inches of air between me and Lila, as if he's indicating a chemical spill. “I get it now.”
Lila laughs under her breath, low and private, and I feel it more than hear it, a small vibration where her shoulder meets mine.
“So!” Lucas suddenly booms, filling the cab like a foghorn. “This might be the perfect time to discuss that research collaboration, don't you think?”
Every muscle I have goes into a full defensive lockdown. I stare straight ahead through the windshield and think very seriously about opening the door.
“Lucas,” I say through clenched teeth, “maybe now isn’t?—”
“Actually,” Lila cuts in, “I was going to email you back.”
The words take a second to land. My head turns toward her so fast I feel something pop in my neck. “You were?”
She nods once, steering carefully around a fallen branch half-submerged in floodwater.
“And?” The word comes out before I can stop it. Somewhere behind me, my dignity waves goodbye.
Lucas immediately leans forward, practically climbing over me in his excitement. “What were you going to say? Please say yes. I'm begging. I will get it tattooed.”
The door handle is right there. I could do it. We're barely doing thirty on this washed-out road. The mud would probably break our fall.
Lila’s mouth twitches again. “I was going to say I’d consider it,” she says after a moment. “Under certain conditions.”
My heart rate picks up. “What conditions?”
She glances sideways at me briefly. And because the universe has a very specific grudge against me, I catch that scent again and my entire nervous system immediately stops functioning like a respectable adult.
I have stayed in the lab because I am whole-heartedly convinced that I will combust if I stay in this truck a second longer.
“For starters,” she says calmly, “Weather Boy stays home.”
“Absolutely fair,” I answer instantly.
Lucas gasps beside me like I’ve stabbed him. “Betrayal. Incredible. I survive a tornado just to be abandoned by my own people.”
“You’re the reason we’re all crammed into this truck right now,” I remind him, then look back at Lila as much as the tiny cab allows. “What other conditions?”
“My data stays mine. Full ownership of anything I collect. You can use it for research with proper attribution, but nobody repackages my work into academic jargon and pretends they discovered it first.”
Something sharp flashes behind the words. Old hurt. Old battles. And suddenly I understand exactly how many times she’s had to fight to be taken seriously.
“Agreed,” I say immediately. “Without hesitation.”
“And I maintain complete autonomy in the field,” she continues. “If I say move, we move. If I say stay, we stay. No debates while a funnel cloud is forming.”
“Of course,” I nod, trying not to sound too eager. “I will defer to you on all safety concerns.”
Lucas looks between us suspiciously. “Wow. You folded fast.”
Lila makes a quiet sound beside me. Something between a scoff and a laugh.
My pulse quickens, followed by my body doing something inadvisable.
The rest of me follows suit–given the current square footage and Lucas’s new hobby of cataloging my every reaction.
This is a very deeply inconvenient development.
My only hope is that she doesn’t notice.
“And,” she adds, voice quieter now, “if we do this…I’m not becoming some side note in your research.”
I turn toward her fully before I can stop myself.
“You wouldn’t be.” There’s a part of me that wants to ask the names of the researchers she’s worked with in the past because it’s clear that she’s been burned by them.
If they’d used her data, and didn’t fully credit her, they should be reported to their respective ethics board.
Using another member of our community to gain notoriety is theft, plain and simple.
Lucas’s head swivels between us with slow deliberation of a man watching something catch fire after dousing it with gasoline.