It’d been an accident.

And as such, obviously, not intended. As in a “what was supposed to happen sort of happened but went shit-fucking-sideways” sort of accident.

The kid you’d taken with you was a newbie with patrols. Your first mistake, but everyone had to start somewhere, right? He’d looked like he wanted to puke, clutching onto the gun like a lifeline.

You’d been gentle, all things considered. Not a ‘hold his hand’ sort of gentle, but a ‘get your shit together or you will get killed’ kind of way. The kind of gentleness akin to the way a giraffe enters the world, hard smack of reality to get them running.

And then things had gone sideways.

And now you were half-way to some sort of haze from the cocktail of antibiotics and painkillers in your system and sporting a spiffy new bullet wound in your shoulder.

You wish you could blame raiders. The kid had already apologized a dozen times. But you knew apologies definitely wouldn’t pacify Jesse once he heard.

“There you are.” Speak of the devil. His expression is neutral, but the look in his eyes is a stormcloud of fury. “Start talking. What happened?”