But it wasn’t. That was the bad choice. The problem was, the worse choice was probably their only option.
Jeannie lay against him, completely past her limits. It would have to be the worse one. He swore he’d never again do this. Not after losing Jacob in that Montana fire four years ago. He would never let himself be so trapped that he had to hide and hope under a flimsy foil shelter.
“They say it’s last resort.” He closed his eyes, trying not to see anything as he said it, but his friend’s face shone before him: clean and laughing in a bar, exhausted, sooty, and sacked out in the Black—and burnt to an unrecognizable crisp beneath a burned-through shelter while Cal had stood back and taken the picture. A picture that shamed him to this day because he’d never directly looked one last time
