9. Lila
LILA
Three hours into our drive, and Jonah hasn’t looked up from his laptop more than twice.
The first hour was blissful. The calming quiet that I so desperately needed after Lucas and his big mouth left us earlier.
How he and Jonah are friends are completely lost on me.
I’d have shoved him off the nearest cliff after two sentences.
But now, two hours later, the silence is shifting into annoyance.
I consider putting on some music, but considering my taste in music is of the death metal variety and the alternative was true crime podcasts, I opted for continuing in silence.
Though,. I was right in the middle of Morbid’s multi-part saga about Jack the Ripper.
Jonah could get some pointers if and when he decided to ditch Lucas’s friendship in a more permanent way.
I force my attention back to the endless stretch of highway ahead, but it doesn't last. Thirty seconds later, I'm stealing another glance.
What is it about him that keeps pulling my attention back?
I’ve shared road miles with plenty of attractive men.
Storm chasing draws them in droves—all jawline and adrenaline and absolutely nothing underneath.
Jonah isn’t like that. He carries his looks the way he carries everything else: without the faintest idea they’re there.
The memory of that woman in the outdoor store flashes back into my head before I can stop it.
Amber. Blonde, tanned, tiny shorts, too much lip gloss.
The kind of woman who spotted storm chasing decals in the middle of rural Oklahoma and immediately decided it was her civic duty to flirt with the nearest man involved.
And the second she noticed Jonah standing beside me, her entire attention locked onto him like she’d found the last decent man on the Great Plains.
Jonah had just stood there. Amber had practically gift-wrapped herself for him and he’d responded like someone had handed him a form he didn’t know how to fill out.
Every time she laughed and touched his arm, he’d blinked at her with this expression I can only describe as politely baffled.
It should have been funny. Most of it was funny.
Except that Amber had also clearly clocked everything I’d been carefully not thinking about.
The shoulders. The way he focuses when someone talks to him, like nothing else exists.
The fact that his awkwardness somehow compounds the problem rather than solving it.
She’d seen all of it in about forty-five seconds and moved straight toward it.
And something in my chest had gone tight and mean watching her do it.
Which made no sense. We’d known each other for three days. He wasn’t mine to feel territorial over. The man could get flirted with by whoever he wanted.
I just really needed her to stop touching his arm.
It wasn’t about protecting him. By the time I slid my arm around his waist and said the word married, I was past pretending it was. I wanted her attention off him. Wanted her to stop smiling at him like she’d just found something worth keeping.
Like she’d figured out in half a minute what I was still refusing to admit to myself.
I glance sideways at Jonah. He’s got the radar tablet propped on one knee, completely lost in whatever the atmosphere over Texas is doing.
Completely unbothered by the fact that he apparently reduced me to a jealous spiral over a woman in an outdoor store whose name I already wish I didn’t know.
The thought that’s been circling since we left keeps coming back around. Amber had been so obvious about it. Laughing too loud, touching his arm, angling herself toward him like a sunflower toward light. And he’d just stood there blinking at her like she was a phenomenon he couldn’t quite classify.
What if Jonah isn’t into women?
It would track. Most men don’t respond to being flirted with like they’ve been handed an unexploded device. I sneak another look at his profile. There’s no reason it should matter. We’re colleagues. Whatever he does or doesn’t want is none of my business.
I should definitely stop thinking about this. I’m the one who made the lightning-strike story up. I’m the one who told that poor woman we were married. I’m the one who voluntarily cuddled up against him and called him honey.
So why did watching that Amber girl lay it on so thick actually irritate me?
I turn onto the highway, both hands on the wheel, eyes fixed on the road ahead like it holds answers. It doesn’t. It’s just asphalt and paint lines and billboards for Jesus.
Maybe he’s gay. That would make sense. It would explain the absolute catastrophe of a response to being flirted with, the way he stared at that girl like she’d handed him a live grenade instead of a phone number.
Then my treacherous memory decides to rewind to the truck yesterday—Jonah wedged between me and Lucas on that bench seat, his thigh pressed tight against mine, and the unmistakable evidence that he was absolutely, without question, stone cold straight.
A man does not have that kind of reaction while sitting between two people unless one of those people is doing something to his wiring, and I can say with 100% certainty it wasn’t Lucas.
Because there is simply no planet in any solar system where anyone finds Lucas Bennett charming. Not one. Not unless it’s a planet where the entire species shares exactly one brain cell and they take turns passing it around in a bucket.
“You're staring,” he says without looking up from his screen. “Is there something on my face?”
Heat rushes to my cheeks. “Just making sure you're not getting carsick from staring at that screen.”
“I never get motion sickness,” he replies matter-of-factly. “Though approximately twenty-five to forty percent of the population experiences some form of?—”
“If you quote statistics at me for the next hundred miles, I'm going to drive us straight into a ditch.”
He turns his head and stares at me with horror etched onto his face. Almost as if he is analyzing me to see if I am serious. I am. “Noted.”
“Care to share with the class what you’ve been working on over there?”
“I was just checking the latest model runs. The system is developing faster than originally predicted.”
“I've been feeling it,” I reply, tapping the steering wheel. “The air's getting heavier. We'll hit the convergence zone about an hour before the NWS timeline.”
Jonah gives me a curious look. “You can feel atmospheric changes?”
“Not literally. But after enough years chasing, you develop a sense for it. Like how farmers can smell rain coming.”
He considers this for a moment, his brow furrowing in that way it does when he's processing new information. “Interesting. Sensory pattern recognition based on accumulated experience rather than conscious data analysis.”
“Or maybe I'm just psychic,” I say with a straight face.
His eyes widen before he catches my smirk. “You're joking.”
“Am I?” I raise an eyebrow dramatically before laughing. “Yes, Professor, I'm joking. Though there are days when I swear storms call to me like they're alive.”
Something shifts in his expression—not dismissal, but curiosity. “My grandmother used to say something similar. She grew up in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl era. She always claimed she could feel the storms in her bones before they arrived.”
I glance at him, surprised. He hasn’t once offered personal details. “Did you believe her?”
“I did,” he admits, closing his laptop . “She was right too often for it to be coincidence. Though I’ve always suspected it had more to do with subtle barometric pressure changes affecting her joints than any supernatural connection.”
I hum thoughtfully. “Way to take the magic out of it, Professor.”
Jonah glances over at me, and there’s that small, genuine smile again. “Science doesn’t eliminate magic, Lila. It just explains the mechanisms behind it.”
“Well,” I say, leaning back in my seat and keeping my eyes mostly on the road, “since we’re talking about bodies detecting things they shouldn’t—what else does yours detect?”
Jonah’s head turns slowly toward me.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The body. Your body.” I shrug one shoulder, casual, like I’m asking about tire pressure. “You said your grandma could feel storms in her bones. You’ve got a whole Ph.D. in this stuff. So what else does yours pick up that your brain hasn’t gotten around to explaining yet?”
He stares at me.
I let the silence hang just long enough to be deliberate.
“Are you asking me that scientifically,” he says, very carefully, “or are you intentionally trying to derail this conversation?”
“That depends. Is the answer going to be boring or interesting?”
“Lila.”
“Professor.”
We hit a seam in the road and the truck bounces.
Jonah’s hand flies to the dashboard to steady himself, and the laptop slides sideways on his knee.
He catches it just before it topples, and I watch his forearm flex under the rolled sleeve of the henley.
Goddamn that henley. I am starting to kick myself for picking that our for him.
“Because if you’re going to tell me about joint pain and barometric pressure,” I say, “I’ll take the boring version. But if you’re going to tell me you can feel when someone’s looking at you from across a room—that’s the one I want.”
His fingers go freeze on the keyboard.
“You’ve been staring at me for the last forty-five minutes,” he says, almost to himself.
“I’ve counted, but to answer your question scientifically the human body can feel pressure changes,” he says.
“Humidity shifts. Static buildup before storms.” His eyes flick toward me briefly.
“Elevated heart rate in high-stress environments.”
“Mm.” I glance at him sideways. “And what qualifies as a high-stress environment for you?”
The look he gives me is almost suspiciously steady this time. “You, apparently.”