5. Lila #3
“I can see what it's doing!” I snap, focusing on navigating the flooded road. “I don't need a play-by-play!”
He falls silent, and I immediately regret my harshness. He's scared, falling back on what he knows—analyzing the storm. It's what I'd do too.
The tornado begins to shift again, its path bending more northward—away from us. I ease off the gas, calculating distances.
“We're out of immediate danger,” I remark, scanning the sky and the road ahead. “It's shifting north.”
He exhales heavily beside me. I can feel him staring at me, but I don't take my eyes off the road. The tornado continues its northward trajectory. The rain hasn't let up, though, turning the rural road into something closer to a river.
I drive for another mile before I yank the truck off the road, tires splashing through a puddle as I cut the engine.
The tornado has moved far enough away now, its massive funnel visible but no longer an immediate threat.
Rain drums on the roof in sheets as I turn to face him, fury rising in my chest like a secondary storm.
“What the hell were you thinking?” I demand. “You could have gotten yourself killed out there. You could have gotten us both killed.”
He blinks rapidly, chest heaving from the sprint through the rain. “I was collecting data?—”
“Bullshit.” The word explodes out of me. “You were stalking me.”
His expression flinches—not dramatically, but enough that guilt twists low in my stomach.
Too late.
“You tracked me down in the middle of nowhere during an active tornado warning because what?” I continue, voice shaking now from leftover adrenaline. “I didn’t answer your email fast enough?”
“That’s not?—”
“Do you have any idea how stupid that was?” I slam my palm against the steering wheel hard enough to sting. “That tornado shifted course without warning. If we’d been thirty seconds slower, we would be airborne right now.”
He falls silent.
Rainwater drips from his dark hair onto the dashboard, his soaked button-down plastered to broad shoulders that are trembling—not from fear, I realize, but cold and adrenaline crash.
And all I can see is him disappearing into that black rotation. One second there. The next, ripped away screaming into the storm like debris. The image hits me so violently my stomach turns. The realization only makes me angrier.
“You don’t get to act reckless out there,” I snap, because fury is easier than admitting what I felt when I lost sight of him. “Storms don’t care how smart you are or how prepared you think you are.”
His jaw tightens. “I understand the risks?—”
“No, you clearly don’t.” I cut him off again. “You had no business being out here.”
Something flashes across his face then. Frustration. Hurt.
“If you’d just responded to my email?—”
I stare at him in disbelief. “So this is my fault?”
He opens his mouth, then closes it. His confidence seems to drain away, replaced by something that looks uncomfortably like shame. “That isn’t what I?—”
“You drove into an active supercell because I didn’t answer you fast enough?” My voice rises over the rain hammering the roof. “Do you hear how insane that sounds?”
Every window is fogging, the storm’s breath hot and relentless, and it feels like we’re sealed in a submarine under pressure.
I can see the muscles in his jaw flex, and for a second I want to laugh at him, this man with his soaked button-down and the look of someone who’s just realized the ocean doesn’t care if you can swim.
But instead I’m angry—so angry my hands shake on the steering wheel, and I can’t tell if it’s leftover adrenaline or the fact that he’s staring at me like I’m the only fixed point in the universe right now.
“I didn’t know if you were ignoring me,” he says, turning the words over like they might sound less pathetic if he said them slow. “Or if you...” He shrugs, and the gesture is almost childish. “If you were alright.”
I stare at him.
“You barely know me.”
“I know.”
“Then why does it matter?”
He lets out a short, airless laugh. “I've been trying to figure that out.”
The anger in my chest shifts, which is the last thing I need right now. Because the fact underneath all the adrenaline and fury is that Jonah drove three counties into a tornado warning because I walked away from him. And something in me—something I'd rather not examine—responds to that.
I break the silence because I have to, because if I don’t I’ll start shaking too. “You scared me,” I say, the words out before my brain can smother them. I regret it immediately, but I can’t take it back, so I stare through the windshield at the tornado’s retreating outline.
The change is instant: The fight leaves him, replaced by something fragile and open. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he really means it, and I want to punch the dashboard for how much that matters. “I wasn’t trying to,” he adds, and I nod because I can’t say anything else without losing more ground.
I look away first, suddenly far too aware of how small the truck cab feels with him sitting beside me soaked to the skin. Rainwater drips from the ends of his dark hair onto the collar of his shirt, the thin fabric plastered against his chest and shoulders.
As much as I want to stay angry, I can see the regret written all over his face. Worse, I can see how hard he’s trying not to look at me the same way he did in that bar. Like he already wants too much.
“I need to get you back to your vehicle,” I mutter finally, shoving the truck into gear before I say something reckless. “Assuming it’s still there. Lucas is probably wondering where you are.”
Something unreadable flickers across Jonah’s face at Lucas’s name, but he only nods quietly.
I ease the truck back onto the flooded road.
Neither of us speaks. The only sounds are the splash of tires through standing water and the rhythmic thump of windshield wipers.
Every time lightning flashes across the cab, I catch pieces of him in my peripheral vision.
His hands are trembling slightly. He's trying not to let them
I reach behind the seat and toss him the old flannel blanket I keep back there.
He catches it, startled. “You don' t have to?—
“You're going to freeze to death and I'm not dealing with that on top of everything else.”
The corner of his mouth moves. Just barely. That almost-smile. I wish it didn't register the way it does.
“Thank you,” he says, pulling the blanket around his shoulders.
I put both hands back on the wheel and watch the road.
We turn back onto the main highway, heading toward where we’d left the news van. The rain has slowed to a drizzle now, revealing the full violence of what moved through here. Downed branches litter the pavement. A massive oak lies uprooted in a nearby field, dirt and roots clawing into the air.
When we round the bend, a shocked gasp escapes me before I can stop it.
The Channel 8 van is there, but barely.
Every window has been blown out, jagged glass clinging to the frames. The hood is crushed inward like something enormous stepped on it. The satellite dish mounted to the roof is simply gone.
“Jesus,” I breathe, pulling beside the wreckage. “Hope Channel 8 has good insurance.”
Beside me, Jonah goes pale. Not because of the van, I realize. Because if we’d been any later getting out of there, we would’ve been inside it when the tornado hit.
The thought sends a delayed chill down my spine.
“We need to find Lucas,” I say quickly, shoving the feeling away. “Where did you say you dropped him off?”
“About two miles north of here.” Jonah swallows. “He wanted footage from the ridge.”
I kill the engine and glance toward the ruined van. “Salvage what you can. I’ll give you a ride.”
“A ride?” Jonah repeats, looking genuinely surprised.
“Unless you’d prefer to walk back to town.” I gesture toward the wreckage. “You’re not going anywhere in that van except the salvage yard.”
For a second, he just looks at me. And there’s something in his expression now that wasn’t there before the storm. Something quieter. Less guarded. Relief, maybe.
Or maybe disbelief that I’m still here after screaming at him for twenty straight minutes.
“Right,” he says softly. “Okay.”
He climbs out into the mud and drizzle, blanket wrapped around his shoulders. I watch him wade through puddles toward the wreckage, tall and hunched against the cold wind.
And against all logic, my chest tightens.
I drum my fingers against the steering wheel, considering my options.
I could leave him here. Serve him right for his reckless stupidity.
The storm has passed. He has a phone. He could call for help.
But then I picture him stranded on this empty road as night falls, soaked through and exhausted, waiting hours for a tow truck while pretending he’s fine because he doesn’t know how to ask for anything.
And worse—I picture what almost happened out there.
The tornado swallowing him whole. The sound of me screaming his name into the storm.
I exhale slowly, frustrated with myself.
I don’t forgive recklessness. I don’t excuse it.
But I don’t leave people behind just because they made bad choices.
Especially not ones that have somehow already started mattering to me more than they should.