Page 22 of Badd B*tch

“You have them a lot?"

I started to shake my head but thought better of it. "No, not really. Not…anymore."

He took my hand. "You were so calm, Tea. You…that was seriously impressive, how you got us down safely."

"Not my first rodeo."

"I see."

"Jax, I can't talk about—"

He cut me off. "Not asking, Tea. You don't have to tell me anything. You don't have to talk. Just rest. I'm here. We're gonna be okay."

“Are we, though? We're alone in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from anything, in the Alaskan bush. Which, as you said, is some of the most rugged terrain on the planet. Our supplies are limited, we have no radio, and you don't have wilderness survival training."

“Um, well actually?”

His tone got me to open my eyes and look at him. "Do you?"

"Not, like, military wilderness survival training, no, but my Uncle Ramsey runs hunts, hikes, and fishing expeditions into the interior. As in weeks-long trips to places just like this, with only the supplies you can pack on your back. Most of us kids have done a few of them with him over the years. Me, Dane, and Dunc go on month-long camping trips with Uncle Ram every summer. Or we used to, at least. Dunc just got married, and Dane is in a serious relationship now too, so I’d doubt we’ll get out as much as we used to,” he said, and sighed. “The point is, I'm pretty comfortable in the woods. I can make a fire, fashion a spear, catch fish, forage for berries and edible mushrooms, and whatever. I can filter water, all that shit. I may not have your caliber of training, but I'm not some helpless city slicker, despite being a computer dork."

I shivered again, and now my teeth were chattering. It may have been summer, but at this elevation, this far north, the nights got cold, it would seem.

And…my go-bag was gone. It must have gotten ejected sometime during the crash, along with my spare clothing and my jacket. And my flare gun. And my SAT phone. And my water filter straw. It wasn’t just a go-bag; it was a survival bag that I never went anywhere without.

"Shit, shit, fuck," I snapped. "My bag is gone. I had survival stuff in there."

“Hey, maybe it’s just up the tree or something. We'll see if we can find it in the morning."

"Right. A hundred feet up a tree, probably."

Jax's bag hung half out of a broken window, and he reached out and snagged it. His suitcase was still on the floor, too big to fly out the window. He opened that too, hunted through it until he found a thick black hoodie, and handed it to me. “Here. Put that on. It's super warm."

"Do you have another one?"

He lifted another hoodie from the suitcase, this one hunter green with yellow pull strings. "Yep."

I accepted the black hoodie and pulled it on, then laughed: it was huge on me. I'm a small woman, and Jax was a pretty big guy, standing over six feet and weighing around two hundred pounds of solid muscle—this hoodie was probably sized to be baggy on him, so it was absolutely colossal on my five-five and one-thirty frame. I could fit into it twice over, if not three times. But it was heavy and warm, and the inner material was softer than microfleece. I pulled the hood up and bunched the ends of the sleeves in my fists, tugging the hem over my knees.

I wanted to cry, then.

I didn't, but I wanted to.

I have a hoodie back home—one of Luke's. It was similarly large on me, and when I missed him, I put it on and did this: drew my knees up into it, balled my fists into the sleeves, pulled the hood over my face, and just cried.

Shit, shit, shit.

It doesn't smell like Luke, though. Luke's hoodie smells like cordite and sweat. He wore that hoodie downrange, at home, to the shooting range, the gym, everywhere. After he died, most of his belongings went to his mother and sister, but they let me keep the hoodie, knowing how much it meant to me.

This hoodie smelled like…I sniffed surreptitiously. Cannabis, very strongly. Layered under that, an indefinable but definitely male scent. But mostly cannabis.

“I’m gonna get a contact high wearing this, I said. "Good lord."

He laughed. "Yeah, I wear that to bonfires and hangouts, mainly.”

"I don't see the connection to your hoodie smelling like Snoop Dogg."

He cackled. "Good one. The connection is that when we have bonfires, we spark it up. And when the cousins get together, we spark it up. None of us kids are too into alcohol. We prefer the mary-jane."