Chapter 35 Sadie
Maybe I should have kissed him.
We need to talk first, though—he’s been sending me mixed signals ever since our last conversation, and while I think he regrets pushing me away, I can’t be totally sure about what he wants until he tells me.
Besides: Trey was right there, which would have been weird.
But.
What if that was my last chance? What if something happens to him out there while he’s all alone on the trails tonight? Yeah, he’s a pro. Yeah, he knows these trails like the back of his hand.
That doesn’t mean he has a lot of experience hiking at night, or hiking all by himself.
Won’t he be exhausted by the end of his journey there and back?
What if he has to take an unplanned break to sleep for a while, but isn’t able to tell us for some reason, and then doesn’t make it back by sunrise and we all start freaking out wondering if he’s fallen into a bottomless pit?
Did he take enough food?
Did he take enough water?
Will he be warm enough?
These thoughts and more spiral in on themselves all evening. I can’t stop worrying—not about us, we’ll be fine.
About him.
About things I couldn’t control even if I wanted to. About how I won’t feel settled until he comes back safely to us tomorrow.
All my worst instincts flare to life in his absence: my tendency to worry that things will go horribly wrong until proven otherwise; my active imagination, dreaming up a thousand scenarios in which Thorn ends up in distress; the way I can’t set my fears aside and just enjoy this otherwise-pleasant evening with the people who are still here.
“Sadie,” Hunter says.
It sounds like it isn’t the first time he’s said my name.
My eyes focus just in time to see my marshmallow turn into a blazing torch—but from the way Hunter’s looking at me, I don’t think that’s why he was trying to get my attention.
The way everyone is looking at me, I realize.
“He’s going to be okay,” Hunter goes on. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“Who—Thorn?” I do my best to keep my voice light and casual, as if it hadn’t occurred to me that he might not be okay.
I blow the fire out, examining my marshmallow.
“Of course he means Thorn,” Emma says. “You’re obviously worried.”
So much for trying to act chill.
“I’m more worried about Matteo sitting still, honestly,” Trey adds. “Imagine Thorn making it all the way there, only to find they got bored and went somewhere else…”
Parker swats him on the arm. “Not helpful. Sadie’s already freaking out as it is!”
“I’m not freaking out!” I protest.
“Show of hands,” Trey says. “Who here thinks Sadie is freaking out?”
One by one, all the hands go up…except for Zoe’s.
She’s been in her own world, in her own head, ever since the waterfall. At the moment, she looks extra checked out.
“Zoe?” I say, and not only because I desperately want the spotlight off myself. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m— I just—” she starts. “Today was a lot. I think I’m still a little shaken up?”
Not to mention she must be hurting from the scrapes on her legs and the purple bruise on her upper thigh.
“Have you been drinking enough water?” Trey chimes in. “When’s the last time you ate?”
“Um,” she says. “Yesterday, I think? Maybe at lunch?”
Zoe hasn’t eaten since yesterday? No wonder she seems checked out.
“Here,” Trey says, offering his canteen. “Drink this.”
She takes a tentative sip.
“You need some food, too,” I say, “as long as you’re not nauseated. Are you nauseated?”
Zoe shakes her head and takes another sip from the canteen. Silas offers her some berries he foraged today—thimbleberries, non-poisonous—and Parker manages to get her to eat a protein bar. She perks up considerably after that.
An hour later, once the guys have moved Zoe’s tent right next to mine so I can keep an eye on her overnight and give a fresh dose of ibuprofen if she needs it, my thoughts shift back to Thorn.
Has he made it to Matteo and Joshua yet? For the first time, it occurs to me how hard it must have been for him to head out today. Not just because he was afraid to leave us alone—but because he and Matteo weren’t on good terms before all the drama that went down.
Matteo is lucky to have a friend like Thorn…if friend is even still the right word.
I really hope Thorn is okay.
Zoe shifts in her tent, turning to face me. The guys positioned us so we could leave our doors unzipped and see straight into each other’s tents; she’s lying on her side, tucked into her sleeping bag, one arm curled up underneath her like a pillow.
“You’re so good at this,” she says sleepily.
My eyebrows raise. “Good…at what?”
Sitting in a tent, writing in my journal until she falls asleep? Being a silent neighbor so I don’t disturb her?
“This,” she says. “Camping. Hiking. Knowing what to do to help people. All of it.”
I’m so stunned I can’t quite process her words.
Not even Abby would say I’m good at camping and hiking with a straight face, and she knows me better than anyone else on the planet—though it occurs to me that Abby hasn’t lived this experience with me like Zoe has.
Still, my instinct is to deflect.
“I don’t know about that,” I say. “I’ve never done this before—and I’ve missed my bed and the air conditioning and, like, so many other things, from the moment we left.”
“Really?” she says. “I never would have guessed you hadn’t done this before.”
I’m speechless.
My clothes are all wrong. My shoes are all wrong. I had a panic attack on the side of a cliff.
But I guess I must have done something right if she had no idea how uncomfortable and out of my element I’ve felt at so many points along the way.
“Yeah, no,” I say. “I got broken up with for being ‘too high-maintenance’ ”—I exaggerate my air quotes—“so I signed up for this to prove a point. My ex told me to my face that he thought I’d die.
That I should vlog about it for ‘great entertainment’ because it’s such a joke that someone like me would sign up for something like this.
” I glance down at my hands, at my mismatched nails that remind me of Thorn.
“I thought if I just did a lot of research, I’d be good to go, but it’s been so much harder than I thought. ”
“You never complain, though,” she says.
I consider it. “Not out loud, maybe?”
She laughs, but then her smile fades. “Sorry about your ex, Sadie. Sounds like you’re better off without him.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I definitely am—but sometimes his words still get under my skin.” I swallow. “He made it sound like some sort of personality flaw for me to be…the way I am. Overprepared, particular. All of that.”
Zoe scoffs. “People can find flaws in anything. That doesn’t mean there isn’t good there, too.”
It’s a surprisingly insightful thing to hear from Zoe, of all people. She’s got a wistful look in her eye that makes me think we’re not just talking about my issues now—that maybe she’s been thinking about this for a while.
“I hope Joshua’s okay,” she goes on, in a small voice.
“I still don’t regret breaking up with him, and there’s a lot about him—about how he was with me—that makes me want to scream.
We’re so wrong for each other, and I think I knew it a long time ago…
but…yeah. This trip just made that crystal clear in so many ways. ”
I hug my knees to my chest, give Zoe the space she needs to work through things.
“He’s out there because of me, though,” she continues.
“He’s angry—and I get it—but I should have known he’d do something rash when he found out about the ring.
And, um. What I did with Matteo.” She tilts her head down to the arm she’s using as a pillow and wipes her eyes.
“He does stupid things when he’s angry. I don’t want—I don’t want him to— What if—”
She takes a deep breath and tries again. “What if he gets hurt or something and it’s all my fault?”
“I think Matteo would have told Thorn if something had happened to Joshua,” I say. “Try not to worry about that, okay?”
Even as I say it, her fears blend with mine: my mind drifts, again, to the many terrible things that could have happened to Thorn.
I try to redirect my thoughts, focus on Zoe instead.
“Is that why you haven’t been eating?” I ask. “You’re worried sick?”
She bites her lip, lowers her eyelashes.
“I feel like that’s the answer I should give?” she says hesitantly.
“But?” I ask.
“But it’s more selfish than that. I’m worried sick about me.
” There’s an intensity in her eyes that I haven’t seen for days.
“We were together for years, then engaged, then drowning in wedding plans. I wasn’t satisfied, or happy, but I guess it felt easier to stick with what I knew after sinking so much time and money into everything. ”
Her tears are falling fast now, streaking down her cheeks.
“I just couldn’t take it anymore, you know?” she goes on. “It terrified me to think of spending the rest of my life with someone who didn’t really love the real me—someone who tried to change me into someone he thought I should be, over and over.”
For the first time, it hits me how grateful I should be to Caden: that he broke up with me when he did instead of trying to change me into someone else altogether.
If Caden had come on this trip, I might be trying to change myself.
Instead, our breakup became the freedom I needed to find out who I am at my core, when all of my comforts are stripped away, and to discover parts of myself I never knew existed.
Even if I don’t agree with why he did it—and even if he is a total hypocrite for getting engaged to someone even more high-maintenance than I am—there’s integrity in being honest, with himself and with me, about how wrong we were for each other.
“It’s terrifying to have no clue what comes next,” Zoe says, pulling me back to this moment. “For better or worse, my life has been tangled with Joshua’s for a really long time. I have no idea what mine looks like on its own.”
As someone who loves to be prepared for everything, it’s overwhelming to think about facing a completely blank page. How do you prepare for anything when you have absolutely no clue what comes next?
A mix of instinct and confidence, I guess—and the willingness to embrace whatever the future holds with an open mind. Choosing to believe it will be good.
“You don’t have to have it all figured out,” I tell Zoe now. “Just take the next step, and then another one after that. You’re going to be okay.”
A breeze meanders through the gap between our tents, carries my words back around to me: You’re going to be okay.
Logically, I know it’s true, for myself as much as for Zoe.
Still, I feel an undercurrent of fear.
What if all I ever have with Thorn, after this, is the memory of how brightly we burned in each other’s lives for only a short time? Like shooting stars, there and then gone, the briefest flash of beauty.
Clarity—knowing exactly who you are, exactly what you want—is such a great thing until it’s not.
Sometimes you simply can’t have what you want.