Chapter 17 Thorn
We wake up face-to-face, Sadie’s knee hiked over my hip—and my hand holding her leg there, right on top of the place where her silk shorts end and her soft skin begins. She must have turned over sometime in the middle of the night while we were asleep.
I can’t believe I slept at all. Today is going to be hell.
Her eyes flutter open.
“Hey,” she says sleepily.
I swallow. “Hey.”
Her eyes grow wide when she realizes how tangled we are—but she doesn’t move, not even a little.
I grin, tightening my grip on her thigh. “Worried I needed a little extra warmth last night?”
“Must’ve been,” she says.
Her voice is raspy with sleep, too, and—sweet miserable goodness—the things it’s doing to me are impossible to ignore.
Probably for both of us.
Her gaze flickers down to my lips, then back up again. Instinctively, I do the same, which is a mistake, because now all I can think about is what it would feel like to kiss her.
My job, I remind myself. The rules.
Danica would understand why I slept in here, given the circumstances; the rules are black and white, but she’s usually fine with shades of gray if they make sense. She’d give me hell if I’d slept out in that thunderstorm while this tent was an option.
That said, now that I’m here, the boundaries aren’t merely blurred—they’re obliterated. I’m tangled up with a beautiful girl, and it’s been years since I’ve felt anything close to a spark with someone like I do with Sadie.
Maybe Danica would understand this, too. What if I were to push Sadie away for the sake of abiding by the rules only for Danica to tell me I should have gone with my gut? It’s not like I’m a chronic rule-bender. This isn’t the norm for me, not by a long shot.
Sadie’s arm is draped over me, just like her leg. Until now, it’s been loose, relaxed—but I feel her hand curl around the back of my head, her fingers raking up through my hair, a signal that she’d maybe be okay with getting even closer.
It’s still raining outside. I have no idea how early it is…but instinct tells me we have a little time before the others are up.
I make the first move, leaning in, a clear invitation—
And she meets me halfway.
The kiss is sleepy and slow and tender, something I could sink into for hours if we had time.
Her fingers tighten in my hair as I trace the line where her shorts meet skin, then rub away the goosebumps I’ve caused.
She shifts under my touch, hiking her knee up even higher, and we fuse even closer together.
Her mouth is so soft against mine, the lingering taste of whatever lip balm she last used sweet under my tongue—coconut, I think, and a hint of lime—and her skin smells like flowers. She’s a tropical paradise caught in a California monsoon.
I settle my hand onto her hip, dig in just a little, not so hard as to hurt. She makes a sound, the slightest sigh that will play on a loop in my head for days, and it’s all I can do to just stay in this moment instead of wishing for a million more.
She shifts again, her toes curling into the back of my leg, but it gives me a surprising jolt: she’s cold as ice.
I break away on instinct. “Holy— You’re freezing!”
We lost our sleeping bag cover sometime in the middle of the night, not that it was all that effective in the first place.
Sadie gives a little shrug. “Only my toes. The rest of me is fine, thanks to you.” She burrows in even closer, tucking her head against my chest. It’s impossible to go back to our kiss in this position, but it’s good even so.
As if reading my thoughts, she shifts, turning her face back up toward mine. “You’re a good kisser, Thorn.” Her eyes are shining even in the dim light. “We should do that again sometime.”
I’m stuck on the way she’s said my name, soft and round and delicate—but then the rest of it registers.
“Like now?” I say, both of us still grinning even as we fall back into another kiss, this one hungrier, more electric than the first.
Her knee digs into my hip, my fingers grip the back of her thigh.
There’s not much fabric between us—only her silk pajamas and my boxer briefs—and as soon as I wrap my mind around that, I can’t think of anything else.
I resist the urge to push the limits of where my hand could go, keeping it firmly in we-only-just-met-this-week territory, but it’s not easy. Not easy at all.
The rain picks up, heavier than it’s been for the last twenty minutes.
It’s cozy—peaceful, even—the two of us safe and dry in our tent as nature rages all around us.
My hand is dangerously close to exploring uncharted territory, teasing the hem of her shorts, when a peal of thunder rips our quiet morning in two, startling us apart.
If anyone was still asleep, they’ll be awake now.
I run a hand over my jaw, my days-old stubble rough to the touch.
She sighs. “Guess you should probably go check on the others now?”
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” I say, with one last kiss because I can’t help it. “But yeah. Probably. And I should touch base with Matteo.”
Only now does it occur to me that I’m not the only one who was set up outside last night—what on earth did Matteo do once the storm hit?
“Are we still planning to leave for the next campsite today?” she asks, leaning up on one elbow.
“We hike in all weather as long as it’s not dangerous,” I tell her, reaching over to grab the pocket-sized AM/FM radio I use when I don’t have easy access to my phone. “I’ll see what the weather guys have to say, and also check the radar—my guess is that it’ll be fine after another hour or so.”
“Wait, how are you going to check the radar?” she asks. “I thought we didn’t get a signal down here?”
I bite my lip, regretting that I’m going to have to tell her this, especially when she’s done such a good job with limited access to the real world.
“I’ve got a satellite phone plan,” I say, “so we always have a lifeline in case of emergencies.”
Her eyes grow wide. “So, theoretically, I could upload some vlog footage or check my socials if I really needed to?”
And this is why I don’t make a habit of telling anyone about it: it’s hard enough to get people to forget about their phones and just embrace the experience of being out here, but once they realize they could stay connected—as long as there’s a signal—it becomes a distraction again.
“I mean, you could…” I say, choosing my words carefully. “But it didn’t look like your phone made you any happier yesterday, right?”
It’s the first time either of us has acknowledged what happened up on the cliff. How her tears wouldn’t stop; how I pretended not to notice when all I wanted to do was wipe them away.
She meets my eyes.
“No, yeah, you’re right,” she says. “I liked being able to text Abby. But not the rest of it.”
I want to ask what happened, what made her so upset, but I don’t want to push. She’ll tell me when she’s ready, if she wants to.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she says after a long moment. “If I’d just stayed off my phone in the first place, I could have avoided all that drama.”
“That does sound like me,” I say, grinning.
“Please resist the urge to say ‘I told you so,’ ” she goes on, “but honestly? I actually kind of like not being attached at the hip to the internet. I thought it would be harder not to check it, but it’s like being in another world out here.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” It’s why I forget I even have sat-phone access most of the time. “I like seeing the world with my own eyes, not just through a camera lens or through someone else’s pictures.”
“I never thought about it that way,” she says, brows pinching together—very adorably, I can’t help but notice—as she considers it. “I like that, thank you.”
Her eyes meet mine, and it’s all I can do not to kiss her again.
If I kiss her again, we will never make it out of this tent.
“My absolute pleasure,” I manage. “I’m glad you’re here.”
I swallow, finally look away.
My clothes from last night are still damp in the corner of the tent; I tug them on and head out to find Matteo. I stop by my pack first, dig around until I find my charger and my phone, then tuck both in my pockets along with the radio.
I do a double take once I’m out of our clearing: there’s Zoe, all alone, doing yoga on the big rock by the lake despite the lingering rain. How she’s keeping her balance, I have no clue—I can only hope she won’t slip and hurt herself.
It takes longer than it should to find Matteo.
He’s not in the clearing he originally shared with Zoe and Joshua, though I do see the tarp I lent him stretched out over his pack.
Eventually, I find him over with the tennis girls—chatting, specifically, with Brittany as he gnaws on a protein bar.
She’s laughing at something he said, and he’s grinning, no obvious trace of his heartbreak from yesterday. He actually looks well rested, even.
But I know better.
I know his tells: that smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, the way he avoids talking about himself and masks it by asking a thousand questions to whoever he’s with at the time.
You’d never notice he was hurting if you didn’t know what to look for.
“Sleep okay, man?” I ask when there’s a break in the conversation.
He and Brittany look up. She bites back a smile, her eyes cutting to Matteo, though he pretends not to notice.
Ah. No wonder he seems well rested—I probably have the same look about me this morning, a take-refuge-with-gorgeous-girl aura that’s distinctly different from the wet-dog-left-out-in-a-thunderstorm situation I was expecting.
“Yeah,” he says, shaking the hair out of his eyes. “Not bad.”
Like he can hide it…Brittany’s face gives everything away.
Not that I have room to talk.
“Good,” I reply.
“You?” he asks.
I shrug. “Fine.”
Brittany glances between us uncomfortably, clearly picking up on our monosyllabic awkwardness.
“Head out in an hour unless conditions look too bad?” I ask.
He nods. “Sounds good.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”