I fist my hand tighter in his shirt and pull him back down.
He kisses me deeper this time, slower, and his hand slides up my side until his fingertips find the edge of the sling. He stops there. All that intensity, suddenly careful.
It's the careful that gets me.
His thumb traces the strap near my collarbone. “Hey,” he murmurs against my mouth. “Easy.”
“I'm fine.”
The laugh he exhales sounds more undone than amused. “No you're not. “He’s not either.
He kisses me again—less urgent now, more like a conversation. Like he's saying things in the only language he's sure I'll hear.
Thunder moves through the plains in a long, low roll.
Then both our phones go off at once. The tornado siren is unmistakable. Jonah pulls back, breathing hard, his forehead dropping to mine. We stay there a moment, mouths close, the alarm cutting through the wind around us.
Lightning flashes behind the storm, illuminating the rotating wall cloud in sharp white bursts while the National Weather Service alert blares over and over around us.
“Shit,” Jonah mutters.
He drags a hand through his windblown hair and turns toward the storm almost immediately, focus snapping back into place with infuriating ease. His eyes track the horizon, expression sharpening as thunder cracks overhead.
Just like that.
The wind surges harder around us, tugging at my hair and the loose fabric of his shirt, cold rain-scented air rushing between us where all that heat had been seconds ago.
Jonah squints toward the lowering wall cloud. “The storm’s tightening up. We should?—”
“Yeah,” I cut in. My voice comes out flatter than I mean for it to.
He glances at me briefly, distracted already, attention split between me and the radar data flashing across his screen. Then his gaze drifts right back to the storm.
And irritation sparks hot beneath my ribs. Because apparently he can kiss me like he’s been thinking about it for who knows how long and then switch gears fast enough to start analyzing rotation signatures thirty seconds later.
I step back first, putting space between us even though every part of me immediately hates it. The absence of his hands on me feels abrupt. Wrong.
I turn toward the equipment before he can look too closely at my face, forcing my good hand to adjust the camera settings while my brain struggles to catch up with everything that just happened.
My lips are still warm and Jonah is already staring at the storm again instead of me.
JONAH
I can hearmy 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 shirtlike 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.
