Jonah studies me in the half-light, his expression thoughtful. He hasn't let go of my hand, and I haven't pulled away. His thumb traces small circles against my skin, a gesture so gentle it makes my throat tight.
“That roar,” he continues softly. “The one that seems to swallow everything around you.”
A shiver works through me. Because yes. God, yes.
People always think tornadoes are silent until they’re right on top of you. They aren’t. They scream. The sound is massive and wrong and alive in a way nothing else should be. It crawls beneath your skin and settles in your bones long after the storm is gone.
“It is,” I whisper finally.
“It’s not just loud,” I continue, staring down at our joined hands. “It’s physical. You feel it before you hear it. Like the whole world starts vibrating around you.” I press my free hand lightly against my chest. “Right here.”
Jonah nods slowly. His fingers tighten around mine just .
“I know.”
Something in the way he says it makes me look up. His eyes are already on me.
Jonah’s thumb goes still against my hand. “I’ve only heard that roar one other time when there wasn’t a storm.”
I wait.
“Yesterday,” he says. “When I kissed you.”
He watches me carefully after that. The tension around his mouth is the only thing that gives him away—like the words cost him something, like he’s waiting to find out if they were worth it.
I know what he’s really asking. Not just about the kiss. About what comes after it.
“Lila.”
Something about the way he says it—quiet, like he’s handling something that could break—makes it hard to breathe.
I should look away. I should say something deflecting and funny and safe.
Instead I close the inch between us without deciding to.
Jonah notices immediately. His breathing shifts—barely anything, just a catch—but I’ve spent years reading the sky for subtler changes than that. The space between us feels different now. Pressurized.
“You have no idea how many times I talked myself out of doing that.”
Something pulls tight in my chest.
Because I do know. I’ve been keeping the same tally.
Every time he found a reason to stand closer than necessary at the hood of the truck, shoulder almost touching mine overthe maps. Every argument I picked just to have something to do with the charge that built between us like a sky about to drop. Every time I caught him watching the road instead of me—too deliberately, too carefully, the way you don’t look at something you’re trying not to think about.
“You weren’t subtle,” I tell him.
“No,” he agrees. “I really wasn’t.”
His eyes drop to my mouth for just a moment before he pulls them back up. Like he caught himself. Like he’s waiting for some signal I haven’t given yet—green on the radar, all clear, safe to proceed.
That small, careful hesitation does more damage than the kiss did.
Jonah will walk toward a wedge tornado without breaking stride, call out its rotation while the sky turns green around him. But right now, in this dim room, with Max’s warm weight between us and the curtains glowing faintly orange from the parking lot lights outside, I’m what’s scaring him. I find that I don’t mind at all.
I shift carefully onto my side despite the pull in my injured shoulder, closing some of the distance between us. Jonah’s eyes track the movement immediately, something shifting in them when my knee finds his beneath the blankets.
His breath snags.
