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.
