Chapter 26 Thorn
It’s whiplash, going from Sadie to…this.
Parker’s all over the place. I can hardly keep up.
“Emma finally got brave enough to try rappelling, but only after I went back up to give her a pep talk,” she’s saying, full of nervous energy.
She keeps glancing over her shoulder, back toward the climbing site.
“By the time she started going, none of us realized Matteo wasn’t down there anymore, and something happened about halfway down, and now Emma’s stuck—Trey says the rope is twisted, or caught on a branch or something, and—and—”
Her words get caught in her throat.
“Is she okay?” Sadie asks.
It’s a good thing she’s here, because of course that should have been the first question on my mind, too. Not Where the hell is Matteo?
“I mean…define okay?” Parker says. “She’s hanging in there. Literally. But, like, freaking out?”
I leave for twenty minutes and all chaos breaks lose.
And seriously—where the hell is Matteo?
“Let’s go.” My words sound like I’m spitting fire.
Trey has the climbing situation under control by the time we get back—he knew exactly how to fix whatever snag caught Emma up on her way down, and must have done a good job keeping her calm enough to finish her descent.
He shouldn’t have had to. That’s not his job.
“Thanks, man,” I tell him. “You shouldn’t have had to take over like that.”
He waves it off. “I don’t mind. I’m just glad I knew how to help. How’s Sadie?”
It takes me a minute to realize he’s asking about her hand. Every thought of Sadie, right now, involves the things we were doing when we were interrupted.
“Better,” I say. “Got her all fixed up.”
Got her all fixed up, and then—and then—
I swallow down my desire, my guilt. As much as I enjoyed it, and as much as I wish Parker had never cut into our time together, I never should have let myself get sidetracked like that.
And I never should have trusted Matteo.
His words haunt me, even if he’s lost all right to have any say whatsoever about being responsible: You need to get it together, man. You’ve been distracted out here.
I thought I could do both. As much as I hate to admit it…I accept that, maybe, he had a point.
“What happened with Matteo?” I ask.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Trey says. “None of us noticed he was gone until Emma was stuck and he wasn’t around to help.”
I scan the group. Matteo’s not the only one missing, I realize: Zoe and Joshua aren’t here, either.
“And the others?” I ask.
Trey looks perplexed for a moment, but then realization sinks in. “No idea.”
This particular area isn’t densely wooded like so many of the other campsites we’ve stopped at—there are only so many places they could be.
The first, the top of the cliff, is easy to rule out. That’s where everyone was when all the drama started, and Zoe had already rappelled down before Sadie even took her turn.
Second: the flat, rocky expanse where we slept last night—Sadie’s not the only one who set her tent up, so it’s possible they might be inside another one. But all three of them? To each their own, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that’s not happening.
The only other place that’s out of sight is the cave behind the waterfall.
I can think of just one good reason for any of them to be in there together—that Joshua and Zoe are finally working things out in private—but then a movement near the tents catches my eye.
“There’s Joshua,” Trey says.
He’d be hard to miss on a normal day, but today his shirt is electric pink, bright against the pale landscape.
It only takes a moment to realize Zoe’s not with him—and neither is Matteo.
Ohhhh no. No, no, no.
“Thorn!” Sadie calls as I rush past. “Where are you going? What’s wrong?”
I can’t tell her what I’m thinking without telling everyone.
Maybe my instincts are off—I hope my instincts are off.
But Zoe’s performative flirting has been in full force this afternoon, and I’ve seen Matteo rebound twice in the past with people he hardly knew, forgettable girls who helped him forget his own pain.
Hell, even on this trip, he spent the night in Brittany’s tent after Blair broke up with him.
I have a strong suspicion about what I’ll find behind that waterfall, and the flash of anger I feel at the pit of my stomach burns. Not just for the hypocrisy of it all—Matteo has no right to accuse me of being distracted ever again—but also for Joshua.
I’m vaguely aware of the others trailing behind me as I retrace the path Matteo and Zoe must have taken when they slipped out of sight. It’s only a short walk from our climbing site to the cave, and on this side of the creek, it doesn’t even require a swim.
Despite the waterfall, it feels too still, too silent.
I’m the first to crash the party.
Sure enough, there’s Matteo—a very shirtless Matteo—and, by process of elimination, Zoe. She’s practically eclipsed by him; from all the clothes littering the cave floor, that’s probably for the best.
I clear my throat.
It echoes, bouncing from the rock walls, refracted back on itself over and over. I don’t have to say a word: they break apart—as if I haven’t already seen everything. At least she’s wearing underwear, and a bra.
Matteo keeps a neutral expression. No acknowledgment that he left the rappelling group without a leader by ditching his post, and definitely no acknowledgment that he’s just been caught rebounding in the world’s sexiest cave with the fiancée of one of our trekkers.
I have no words.
“Please don’t tell Joshua,” Zoe says, too busy rushing to gather her clothes that she doesn’t notice him slip into the cave right behind me.
“Don’t tell Joshua what?”
His voice is a live wire, steady but lethal.
The cave suddenly feels suffocatingly small.
I have my own issues with Matteo, but now Joshua does, too—with Matteo and Zoe.
“What were you thinking?” I explode at Matteo, who’s casually shrugging back into his T-shirt as if two of the three people in this cave aren’t staring daggers at him. “This is completely inappropriate in so many ways, Matty.”
The smirk he gives me is absolutely infuriating.
“I don’t see how it’s any different than what you’ve been doing,” he says. “Everyone knows you’ve been hooking up with Sadie.”
“You can’t be serious,” I shoot back. It takes effort to not go for his bait—to not get sidetracked by him bringing Sadie into this.
“It’s different in every way. I left you in charge back there, but you ditched the group and put them in a dangerous spot.
Trey didn’t sign up to colead this trip, you did.
It’s a good thing he was there—Emma got stuck and he had to handle it on his own. ”
“How long does it take to bandage up a hand?” Matteo retorts. “You were off with Sadie for a while, so I could say the same about you.”
Do not. Take. The bait.
“So you thought you’d sneak off with my fiancée to, what—prove some sort of point?” Joshua cuts in. “Or are you just a clueless jackass?”
“Ex-fiancée,” Zoe corrects. “Or did you think I wasn’t serious last night when I told you I wanted to call it off? Excuse me for finally having some fun out here.”
Joshua bristles. “How was I supposed to know you were serious this time, Zo? You always say you want to break up when things don’t go your way, but you never really mean it. I figured you were just in one of your moods, like you have been for the entire trip.”
“You never should have brought me out here!” she says, her passion melting into fury.
“You should have known the wilderness isn’t my thing, and that springing this sort of trip on me would only make me miserable.
You thought our summer trips could fix us, Joshua, but honestly?
All yours does is prove how wrong we are for each other. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.”
“How wrong we are—” he sputters. “You can’t be serious—you didn’t even return the ring!”
“Oh, I’m very serious,” Zoe says. “We’re done. Really, really done. And I didn’t injure my hand like I told you.” She rips her bandages off her left hand and holds it up for him to see. “I lost my ring in the lake. Days ago.”
Joshua’s eyebrows shoot as far up as they’ll go. “What do you mean, you lost it?”
Matteo seems more than happy to let the focus stay off of himself, but I see him all too clearly: he could have been kissing anyone out here in the cave. Anyone at all, so long as they take his mind off Blair.
“Third day of the trip,” Zoe says. “Good luck finding it again.”
When her words finish bouncing from the walls, the cave falls into a silent stillness that reminds me of disaster movies: the instant before a bomb goes off—one wrong move, then everything explodes.
Joshua, frozen in fight-or-flight, studies Zoe—
And then he takes off, a man on a mission.
“Shit,” I mutter, then follow him out.
Sadie and the others are waiting just outside the cave—they probably overheard every single word.
I try to catch up to Joshua, but he’s too fast, too determined. He’s sprinting down to the place where the creek is shallow enough to cross without getting too wet.
I’m fast, but he’s faster.
Finally, I catch up to him at his tent, where he’s furiously stuffing his belongings into his pack.
“You’re not seriously thinking about going to try to find the ring?” I ask, my breath ragged from the effort.
“I’m not thinking about it,” he replies shortly. “I’m doing it.”
“You have no idea where you’re going,” I protest. “You shouldn’t go off on your own, man.
It’s too dangerous, and there’s a very good chance you’d never find it again anyway.
” I swallow, searching for just the right words to talk him out of it.
“It’s completely understandable that you wouldn’t want to be around the group after what just happened.
Let me call my boss, arrange for her to pick you up—”
“I’m not interested in anyone picking me up,” he cuts me off. “I want my ring.”
I take a deep breath. “Okay,” I say, scrambling for something, anything. “One of us can take you back to the lake after the trek ends, if you want. We’ll get a metal detector—we can help you look.”
But it’s no use. Joshua isn’t thinking rationally, probably isn’t thinking about anything other than Zoe’s multifaceted bomb.
“I’ve got GPS on my phone,” he says as he slings his pack over his shoulders, tightens the straps, and turns his back to me. “I’ll figure it out.”
In all my years as a hiking guide, I’ve never had anyone desert the group before a trek is over. It’s a first I would rather not experience, but it appears he’s hell-bent on getting out of here and not interested in being convinced otherwise.
“Please reconsider?” I call out. “It’s not worth it—it’s not safe to go out by yourself. You’re not even taking your tent?”
But he doesn’t answer, only picks up the pace.
He’s halfway across the rocky flat when I hear a long exhale from behind me. I turn and see Matteo, arms crossed.
“You need to go after him,” I say.
“That’s the last thing either of us needs,” Matteo says. “Dude wants to throw me off a cliff.”
At least he’s seeing things clearly.
“You made this mess, Matty. You need to fix it. He’ll try to take the loop all the way back around, and he’ll never make it on his own—if you go with him, you can show him the shortcuts.”
His brow furrows. “Cloverleaf Creek? And…what else?”
I nod. “Cloverleaf Creek all the way back up to Mackenzie Lake, then you can take Hedge Key Pass over to catch back up with us at Sparrow Valley. Shouldn’t take more than a day, two at most. You probably won’t find the ring, but hopefully he’ll drop it if you at least help him look.”
I don’t know why Matteo doesn’t fight me on it—maybe because he’s aware enough to realize this situation is very, very bad, both for us as leaders and especially for Joshua.
“I’ll go,” he says carefully. “But this isn’t all on me, man.”
All his accusations from in the cave, and earlier, slither like vipers back into my head: his insinuation that I, too, irresponsibly ditched my post at the rappelling site—that maybe if I hadn’t been so distracted with Sadie, we wouldn’t have ended up here.
“I wasn’t the one making out with one of our trekkers’ exes,” I say through gritted teeth. “That was you. No matter what led to it.”
This is a disaster.
I honestly think no coleader would be better than this—which is fortunate, I realize, since that’s exactly what this situation is boiling down to.
Matteo doesn’t say another word.
Ten minutes later, he’s gone, following at a distance after Joshua, armed with a tent and a tarp and enough food to get them both through the next day or two before we all meet up again.
Until then, it’s all on me to get everyone else through this trek in one piece. More than ever, I can’t afford any distractions—not from Matteo, not from Sadie.
Not from anyone.