14. Jonah
JONAH
I can hear my heartbeat in my ears, and it has been doing that ever since I kissed her, which is not ideal for someone trying to operate a vehicle in heavy rain.
The windshield wipers keep up a steady rhythm, back and forth, back and forth, like they are trying to calm me down.
It is not working. Rain slams against the truck hard enough to turn the road into a smear of gray, and inside the cab, it is completely silent.
Lila has not spoken in twenty-three minutes.
The kiss replays in my head anyway. It refuses to be ignored.
The wind in her hair, the way she grabbed my shirt like she meant it, the fact that I, a person who usually plans conversations three sentences ahead, apparently decided to just kiss her in the middle of an active storm system.
No warning, no analysis, no contingency plan.
Just impulse. I do not do impulse. And yet, here we are, with me driving through a downpour and trying not to think about how her lips felt or how quickly she kissed me back.
I glance over at her in the passenger seat.
Her head is tipped against the window, eyes half-closed as she watches the rain slide down the glass.
The medication is probably making her drowsy again.
Her hair is a mess from the wind earlier.
I look away quickly because that is not helping anything.
Max is curled up in the back seat, letting out a soft whine as thunder rolls somewhere behind us.
I should say something. Anything. Preferably something normal.
“The motel should be about ten miles ahead,” I say, and immediately regret how formal that sounds.
Lila stirs, blinking slowly. “Hmm? Oh. Good.”
That is it. That is all she says.
I nod anyway, even though she is not really looking at me, and turn my attention back to the road.
There are several problems here. One, I kissed my research partner during a storm chase.
Two, she kissed me back. Three, I am thinking about kissing her again.
None of these are manageable variables, and I do not currently have a system for fixing any of them.
Are you feeling okay?” I ask, concern cutting through everything else. “Is your arm bothering you?”
“I’m fine,” she murmurs, but she sounds softer than usual, like the edges have been sanded down.
Yeah, I may not have a ton of experience in dating, but even I know when a woman says she’s fine. She’s far from it.
“About what happened back there—” I start.
“Don’t,” she cuts in.
Lila finally turns her head to look at me, and the expression in her eyes stops every coherent thought in my brain. She looks exhausted from the pain medication, curled into the passenger seat with her sling pressed against her chest, but there’s absolutely nothing foggy about that glare.
Message received.
“We should probably talk about it eventually,” I say carefully, tightening my grip on the steering wheel. “For the sake of our research partnership.”
The second the words leave my mouth, I know I’ve made a catastrophic mistake.
“Our research partnership,” Lila repeats flatly.
I risk a glance at her. She’s staring out the windshield now, jaw tight, like she’s deciding whether or not to shove me out of the moving truck. Right. Definitely the wrong thing to say.
“I just mean?—”
“No, I know what you mean.” Her voice has that dangerously calm quality that somehow feels worse than yelling. “Nothing says unforgettable first kiss like immediately pivoting to tornado data collection.”
I blink. “…What?”
She turns toward me slowly. “Jonah, you kissed me like you were losing your mind.”
That does not help my pulse.
“And then,” she continues, holding up her good hand, “the second the warning went off, you basically turned into a weather robot.”
“I did not?—”
“You absolutely did.” Her eyes narrow. “One minute you were gripping my waist like you never wanted to let go, and the next you were talking about debris signatures.”
I open my mouth. Close it again. Because when she says it like that…yeah. That sounds terrible. In my defense, there had been an actual tornado warning. But apparently that is not the point.
“I was trying to keep us alive,” I say weakly.
Lila gives me a look so unimpressed it physically pains me.
“Oh, good, excellent,” she says dryly. “Very romantic. Thank you so much for prioritizing public safety after kissing the absolute shit out of me.”
The worst part is she’s not wrong.
That kiss had completely wrecked me. My mouth tingles every time I think about the sound she made when I pulled her closer. About the way she grabbed my shirt and kissed me back like she wanted me just as badly as I wanted her. An overwhelming amount, actually. Possibly life-altering.
And then the sirens had gone off and the researcher part of me kicked in before my brain could catch up with the fact that I was standing in the middle of a field kissing Lila beneath a rotating supercell.
I glance over again. She’s annoyed, arms crossed awkwardly beneath the sling, staring stubbornly out the windshield.
And suddenly it clicks. She thinks I shut it off. Like I kissed her and then just moved on.
Jesus Christ.
“Lila,” I say carefully, “I need you to understand something.”
She sighs dramatically. “Please don’t say ‘velocity scan.’”
Despite myself, I almost laugh.
“That was the best kiss of my life.”
That finally gets her attention. Her head turns slowly toward me, irritation faltering just around the edges. I keep my eyes on the road mostly because if I look at her too long, I might drive this truck directly into a ditch.
“I was not calm back there,” I admit. “I was trying very hard to look calm because there was a tornado forming two miles away and you were injured.” I swallow once. “But I promise you, I have not stopped thinking about kissing you since it happened.”
The cab goes quiet except for the sound of tires against wet pavement. Lila studies me for a long moment. Then, finally, some of the anger drains out of her expression.
“You handled it badly,” she mutters.
“That’s fair.”
“And ‘research partnership’ was an insane thing to say afterward.”
“I know.” I wince. “I heard it the second it came out of my mouth.”
That earns the smallest twitch of her lips. Not quite a smile. But close enough that I finally breathe again.
I clear my throat. “In my defense, I’m not very good at this.”
Lila arches an eyebrow. “Kissing?” My brain short-circuits so violently I almost miss the next turn.
“What? No.” Heat floods my face instantly. “Jesus Christ.”
Now she’s fully smiling, and the sight of it nearly destroys me.
“I meant…” I tighten my grip on the wheel. “This. Whatever this is.” I gesture vaguely between us with one hand. “I don’t exactly have a lot of experience recovering gracefully after kissing someone I’ve been in lo?—”
I stop. Silence fills the truck. Oh no.
Lila turns toward me slowly. “You’ve been what?”
I stare straight ahead at the road like it personally betrayed me.
“…Nothing.”
“Jonah.”
I exhale hard. “The point is, I’m bad at this and I hope you’ll grant me a little grace.”
Her expression softens completely then. The irritation fades from her face little by little until she just looks at me the way she had before the sirens interrupted us.
“You know,” she says quietly, “for someone supposedly bad at this, that kiss was very convincing.”
I glance over just long enough to catch her smiling to herself as she looks out the window again.
“I panicked,” I admit.
“You absolutely panicked.”
“I saw a tornado warning and reverted to factory settings.”
She laughs again, shaking her head carefully against the seat. “You really did.”
“I’m hoping you’ll forgive me anyway.”
“I probably already did,” she says before pausing. “Maybe next time you kiss me, try not to ignore me right afterwards for data?”
“It will never happen again.” That is a promise I can keep.
Up ahead, the glowing motel sign finally comes into view through the rain and darkness, both of us spotting it at the same time.
“There's the motel sign,” I say, spotting the flickering neon through the rain.
I pull into the parking lot, tires splashing through puddles that have already formed in the cracked asphalt. The motel is a single-story L-shaped building with peeling paint and doors that have seen better decades. But the vacancy sign is lit, and right now, that's all that matters.
“Wait here,” I tell Lila. “I'll check us in and come back for you.”
For once, she doesn't argue. That worries me more than her injury.
I dash through the downpour to the office, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead as I enter.
The lobby, if you can call it that, consists of a small front desk with a bell and walls covered in faded wood paneling.
A middle-aged woman with teased blonde hair looks up from her romance novel, giving me a once-over that feels more like a twice-over.
“Evening,” she drawls, dog-earing her page. “Some weather we're having.”
“I need two rooms, please. Pet-friendly.”
She taps at an ancient computer, the click of her long acrylic nails against the keyboard unnervingly loud in the quiet office. “Two rooms,” she repeats, frowning at the screen. “Well, that's going to be a problem.”
My stomach drops.
“I’ve got one left.” She clicks her tongue like this is mildly inconvenient and not the beginning of my personal nightmare. “Tornado warning sent everyone running for cover. Had a travel baseball team roll in and wipe out almost every room.” She glances back at the screen. “Take it or leave it.”
“One room,” I repeat, because my brain has apparently stopped producing original thoughts.
She nods. “Mm-hmm.”
There is a pause. A very loaded pause.
“The honeymoon suite.” She smiles, and it is not a comforting smile. It is the smile of someone who knows exactly how this is about to go for me.
I stare at her. “Is there anything else? A storage closet? A hallway? I am extremely flexible.”