Chapter 12 Sadie #2
Its wriggling, slimy body is also the last thing I need to touch—but is this not exactly the sort of challenge I came out here for? I can feel Thorn’s eyes on me, wondering if I’ll back down in disgust too.
Absolutely not.
He holds out the cup, and I see now that it’s full of dirt and worms. My confident smile falters, and I’m sure he can see straight through it. I swallow down the feeling of revulsion that climbs up my throat and pluck a worm out as fast as I can.
“Ew, Sadie, I can’t even look!” Brittany wails.
Thorn holds the hook steady as I take a deep breath, knowing what I have to do.
I imagine I’m on Survivor, that Thorn is Jeff Probst presenting me with a covered dinner tray that turns out to be fish eyes instead of a delectable vanilla milkshake—that I’ll be on track to win the million if only I manage to turn off everything in my body screaming no!
“I can do it for you, if you want?” Thorn offers, sensing my hesitation.
I shake my head, determined. “I can.”
This is so we can eat dinner tonight, I coach myself. My stomach growls, as if on cue—protein bars and pumpkin seeds only get you so far out here. My body needs calories after all the hiking this week. You don’t need a guy to do it for you. You can take care of yourself.
I hate every second—but a minute later, it’s done.
Thorn loads worms for Brittany and Zoe, who reluctantly agree to participate after my show of bravery, then demonstrates how to cast the reel.
Zoe attempts to cast hers three times, each try worse than the one before—Thorn eventually asks if she just wants to take over his fishing pole, and she takes him up on it immediately. Brittany tries twice, then nearly sends the pole itself out into the lake on her third attempt.
Muscle memory kicks in for me, and I somehow get it right on the first try.
Thorn gives a low whistle. “Impressive, Sadie! Looking good!”
My cheeks go hot. I know he’s talking about my surprisingly solid fishing technique, which apparently did carry over into adulthood, and not how great my lower half looks in these pants—but the way he’s phrased it takes a moment to properly register.
I don’t know what sort of magic happens next, but within thirty seconds—a minute at the most—something’s tugging my line hard.
“Ahhhh, Sadie!” Brittany says, clapping excitedly, forgetting about the fishing pole in her hands. It falls to the ground, but she’s far more invested in what’s going on with me. “Reel it in!”
Even Hunter and Trey are watching from a bit down the bank as I reel in a good-sized trout. My face hurts from smiling—I did it! I caught a fish all on my own!
“Talk about beginner’s luck!” Zoe says, still hanging on to Thorn’s line, which hasn’t moved even a millimeter.
It turns out to be so much more than beginner’s luck—it’s more like beginner’s miracle. Over the next half hour, I pull in six sizable trout. Brittany catches one, while Thorn and Zoe don’t have any luck at all. Combined with what the guys catch, we’ll have more than enough to feed us all tonight.
I’m so proud I could burst. After days of feeling entirely out of my element and like I’m slowing the group down, I’m actually contributing something.
“Need anything else before I go help the guys prep the fish for dinner?” Thorn asks, glancing from Brittany to Zoe to me.
“A vat of hand sanitizer?” Brittany says, and Thorn grins.
“I’ve got extra up in my pack,” he replies. “Happy to share.”
Brittany follows with a spring in her step like she’s on her way to the spa.
Which, for the record, I would also be doing—but Zoe’s sitting on a nearby rock, elbows on her knees and chin in her hands, looking like she might just turn into a statue and stay there forever. Now that it’s just the two of us, I can sense a storm brewing from the tension radiating off her.
“Everything all right?” I ask. “It’s okay that you didn’t catch anything—Thorn didn’t, either.”
“It’s not that.”
Zoe toys with her engagement ring, the diamonds glittering in the lingering rays of the setting sun. She spins it around on her finger, then slides it off altogether.
“I’m thinking about breaking things off with Joshua,” she says, voice quiet and eyes low.
They present themselves as the perfect couple…but there are cracks. Clearly.
“And this is because Joshua wasn’t up-front with you about the trip?” I venture. “How you thought you’d be going to Hawaii or Fiji instead?”
She nods, biting her lip as she absently turns the ring over in her hands.
“That,” she says, her gaze hard, “and also a comment he made last night. He said he wants to keep diving with sharks even after we have a baby.”
Wait. Is she pregnant? Surely I would have remembered if she’d mentioned that.
“Our eventual baby,” she clarifies, seeing the look on my face.
“He knows how worried I get when he goes out on his dives. I just don’t think I can be with someone who’s willing to risk his life like that—it’s one thing when you’re single, but when you have a family depending on you, it’s just…
ugh. He doesn’t get it. And those trips are expensive, you know?
Why would we dig further and further into debt for something that could end up killing him? ”
She makes a lot of valid points, and I say so.
“Thanks,” she says with a rueful half laugh.
“Honestly, I think he takes his entire life for granted. He thinks he can run off and blow money we don’t have to dive with freaking monster sharks just because he loves the adrenaline rush, with no regard for what I think about it.
He thinks he can spring a trip like this on me—on me, knowing I absolutely hate this sort of thing—and assumes I’ll go along with it without pushing back.
” Her expression darkens as she stares at the placid water before us, still toying with her ring. “Are you seeing anyone?”
It’s an abrupt subject change, especially considering she hasn’t asked a thing about my life since our first hour on the trail together.
A heated rant about Caden forms on the tip of my tongue—
But I swallow it down. I don’t think it would make Zoe feel any better to know we broke up because he didn’t invite me out here. There are parallels, some shared common ground—both Caden and Joshua made some wild assumptions about us—but at the end of the day, I’m out here because I chose to be.
Zoe can’t say the same.
“I was,” I eventually say. “We broke up a few months ago.”
“Ugh,” Zoe says. “I’m sorry.” She swats at a mosquito. “Well, I told you all of my drama—you can tell me yours, too, if you want.”
I swat another mosquito away.
“Thanks,” I tell her. “I might take you up on that sometime.”
The mosquito near her ear is stubborn—it doesn’t get the message, and relocates down to the back of her arm. On instinct, she starts to slap it away—
But while the mosquito doesn’t move, her engagement ring does.
“Oh shit,” she says under her breath, both of us watching in horror as it flies from her hand out into the open lake, a good six feet from the rocks where we’re sitting, maybe more.
It’s shallow and crystal clear here at the edge—but the ring practically swan-dived into the worst place possible, a deeper section of water that neither of us can access without jumping in fully clothed.
My pulse picks up. “No need to panic,” I say, but it’s futile.
The sun has dipped almost fully below the mountains, leaving everything bathed in dim dusky blue. Honestly, I doubt we’d be able to find it even if it had landed right here next to us in full daylight.
“That was his grandmother’s ring,” Zoe whispers, her face pale. “He’s going to freak out, Sadie. What do I do?”
My mind races. There’s no getting that ring back—not tonight, for sure. Probably not ever.
We could at least, maybe, put off the inevitable fallout.
“I’ve got a first-aid kit back in my tent,” I say, thinking as fast as I can. “What if I doctor up your ring finger? You could tell Joshua you had an accident—fishing hook, if he asks—and that’s what the bandages are for?”
It won’t work forever, but it’ll at least work for tonight.
Zoe melts in relief. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, okay.”