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We stopped for the night, having made roughly six or eight clicks. Nowhere near enough, but we’d gotten a late start, and the going was hard. I let Jax deal with collecting wood and getting a fire going, and he proved the truth of his claim to be comfortable out here, scrounging up enough deadfall for a small and smoky but hot little fire in short order. I rigged a rudimentary shelter for us with the tarp and fishing line. It wasn't much, but it kept the worst of the rain off of us, at least. It was tough to do much more than that without a hatchet, though. Our dinner was a few sips of chlorinated sock water and some wild blueberries I'd found.

We set up our shelter in a space formed by three huge pines clustered together in a loose delta formation, with a fourth fallen nearby. We made the fire in the pit left by the uprooted rootball of the fallen tree so it reflected some of the heat back to us, the tarp tied to the other three at a downward angle, making a windbreak as well as shelter from the rain. We cleared a space on the ground close to the fire, which I could have held in both cupped hands. The tree here had thick branches heavy with needles and cones, the tips of the lowest branches drooping to the ground. This blocked the worst of the wind and filtered out some of the rain, so relatively little made it down to the tarp.

For a while, we just sat in the silence, shivering before the fire, lost in our own thoughts.

My thoughts were morbid and dark—memories of the trek across the mountains of Afghanistan, first with Luke, Terry, and Boulder, then just Luke, and then just me.

"I had a full ride to Caltech," Jax said, apropos of nothing.

Grateful for anything to pull my attention away from my own awful thoughts, I snapped a twig and fed the pieces to the fire, glancing at him. "Caltech isn't in Ketchikan, last I checked."

He snorted. “I didn't go."

I frowned. “You turned down a full ride to Caltech?"

He nodded. "I did."

"Why?"

"Actually, I initially didn't turn it down. I committed, did a visit, went through orientation, the whole nine yards. Even met a girl."

"But?"

He sighed. Knuckled his forehead. "I just…it wasn't what I wanted. A university degree in my field doesn’t mean much. Experience is king. Knowing the various coding languages is key. Your resume is key. My own Uncle Xavier said as much. He told me in so many words that a candidate with a degree can be less qualified than a high school dropout with a CV showing consistent, quality work in the appropriate field. My family was pissed, though. They felt it could only help to have a backup. Just having a degree in anything puts you ahead, my mom kept saying. Even though neither she nor Dad has a degree. Dad was a SEAL, you know that, and Mom was a combat medic."

"No shit?"

"No shit."

"They meet downrange?" I asked.

Jax chuckled. "You'd think, but no. They met at Uncle Bast's wedding. Uncle Bax got shitty, did something stupid, and cut his leg open. Dad apparently saw the blood, his habit kicked in, and he yelled for a medic. Well, the wedding was at our family bar, and Mom happened to be nearby. Being a combat medic, she heard the yell and hopped to it automatically. And that's how she met Dad. The rest, as they say, is history."

"Hell of a meet-cute," I said.

"My family is kind of defined by our meet-cutes," Jax said. "Everyone's got a kind of wild story. Aunt Dru and Uncle Bast? Aunt Dru found out her fiancé was cheating on her—the day of the wedding. As in, at the church, in her dress, about to walk down the aisle. So she got wasted and hopped on the first plane going anywhere—which happened to be a bush plane heading from Seattle to Ketchikan. She ended up in our bar, still in her wedding dress, and met Dad. She never went back to Seattle."

"How'd she end up on that plane?" I asked.

"She ran out onto the runway and flagged him down as he was taking off. He was so flustered by her bawling her eyes out that he took her on just to make her stop. Or so goes the lore, at least."

"I have so many questions."

He just shrugged. “You'd have to ask them. I've heard the story told any number of ways over the years. There's a version where she held him up at gunpoint, but that's bullshit. Aunt Dru hates guns."

"Do you regret not going to Caltech?" I asked.

Jax shook his head. "No, not really. It may have been a fun adventure, living in California, but…” he shook his head again. "You want the brutally honest truth?"

"Always."

"I didn't go because I couldn't leave home."

I frowned at him. "Scared of being on your own?"

Jax rolled a shoulder. "Maybe? Partly? I don’t know. I’ve tried not to think about it too hard, honestly. I just…couldn't. It didn't feel right. I know it's probably kind of dumb to make a decision that important on the basis of a gut feeling, but when it came time to pack my shit and get on a plane with a one-way ticket to Pasadena, I just couldn't go. Metaphorically speaking, it felt like my feet were glued to the floor. I just couldn't make myself go."

"You know how many times my life has been saved by a gut feeling?" I said. "Dozens, at least. Up in the air, you have literal milliseconds to make decisions—life-or-death ones, and not just your own life, but those of the people you're responsible for.”