Chapter 28 Sadie
I didn’t hear everything that went down in the cave, but I heard more than enough. Everyone heard.
Thorn hasn’t been the same since.
All afternoon, he’s been brooding and distant. He’s had a couple of chats with Trey off to the side, and spent a bit of time on the phone—with his boss, he told us before he stepped away—but has otherwise kept to himself.
His mood has been pervasive throughout camp; all of us seem a little shell-shocked by what happened. Usually at this time of day, as the sun dips low on the horizon, the air is thick with laughter and the sounds of lively conversation around the campfire.
Today, it’s nothing but whispers. If that.
Emma is still a bit on edge after her rappelling experience, and who can blame her?
I had a panic attack even with a smooth, untangled rope—I can’t imagine how much harder it was for her.
Fear has a way of clinging to your bones even after you’re safely through whatever sparked it—it’s the what-if that shakes you up the most.
My life motto has always been that it’s easiest to just avoid risk altogether.
Which is why I’m so proud of what I accomplished today. I was as terrified as Emma—but I trusted Thorn, trusted the process. It was scary, but I did it.
Tonight, that sense of accomplishment has been muted by the dramatic turn of events with Matteo and Zoe and Joshua.
“I never meant for him to do something so stupid,” Zoe confesses to me now, the two of us roasting a pair of lonely marshmallows over the fire.
“Who, Joshua?” I ask.
She gapes at me. “Yes, Joshua.”
I didn’t think the answer was that obvious—he and Matteo both did stupid things today—but apparently only one of them is living rent-free in her head.
“I don’t regret it,” she goes on.
Regret…what? I wait for her to clarify, because it feels as ambiguous as her last comment, but she just turns her marshmallow over, letting it burn. Does she realize she’s talking to me and not just having this conversation in her head?
“Kissing Matteo?” I venture.
“What?” she says, gaze drifting to meet mine.
“Oh, right. No, I don’t regret that, either.
I was still talking about Joshua—I don’t regret breaking up with him.
” She tilts her head thoughtfully. “Though maybe I should have thought twice before trying to make him jealous. I didn’t expect it to turn out like this. ”
I’m not sure she thought at all about the potential fallout from her actions, but I don’t say so.
Zoe and Joshua are like a cautionary tale of everything I could have been going through if Caden had actually come on this trip. Doing this experience together wouldn’t have brought us back together—it most definitely would have driven us apart.
I turn my marshmallow over in the fire, try to imagine him here.
Caden likes to think of himself as chill and unbothered, but I think he would have hated the bugs and the fact that he couldn’t wash off the sweat and the dirt in a hot shower at the end of every day.
He would have been good at the rappelling, though.
Probably the kayaking, too. But the two of us out here together—yikes.
I shudder to think about how he might have treated me.
I’m pretty sure I would have suffered a crisis of confidence by this point, at best, barely holding myself together under his myriad little jabs about my heavy backpack, my shoes, how not-cut-out-for-any-of-this I am.
Without him here, I’ve been able to stretch my wings instead of having them pinned down at every turn.
The breeze picks up, and all of a sudden Zoe’s fiery marshmallow blooms into a small inferno at the end of her stick.
“Zoe!” I exclaim. “Your marshmallow!”
She shrieks, panicked, and attempts to shake the flames out. It only makes things worse—she comes dangerously close to setting Thorn’s shirt on fire when he rushes over to help.
Swiftly, he swipes Zoe’s stick from her hands, then dumps out a generous pour from his canteen. The flames sizzle out, leaving only a soggy, charred marshmallow corpse.
“You, uh…might want to start a new one,” Thorn says, handing the sad stick back to Zoe.
I bite back a laugh. His comedic timing hits just right even when it’s unintentional—and I know it’s unintentional now because his expression is every bit as sober and unsmiling as it’s been all afternoon.
Thorn’s eyes lock with mine.
Can we talk? I mouth behind Zoe’s back.
He glances over at the rest of the group, Parker and Emma and the coffee bros, all having a picnic dinner together a bit farther away from the fire.
Where? he mouths back.
It would probably be a bit too obvious for us to sneak off right now, especially after what Matteo said in the cave: Everyone knows you’ve been hooking up with Sadie.
If they didn’t know before, they know now.
Later, I tell him. My tent?
He seems to be on the fence about the idea of alone time with me—and I get it, I do.
Just to talk, I add, even though I would do much more if given the chance.
He nods, and that’s that.
It’s a full three hours later when he finally stops by. I’m in pajamas and a hoodie.
“Knock, knock,” Thorn says quietly.
I unzip the door to my tent, let him in.
“Maybe I should turn my lamp off?” I whisper. “So it’s harder to tell we’re both in here together?”
Also because if I look at his face for a second longer—that stubbled jaw, those perfect lips—it’s going to be really, really tough to stick to the whole let’s-just-talk plan.
The touch lamp’s metal sensor is cool under my fingertips; an instant later, the world is jet-black. I know my eyes will adjust eventually, but for now it’s just Thorn and me and my oh-so-helpful imagination reminding me of all the things we could do together in the dark.
“How are you?” I ask instead.
He’s quiet for so long the silence starts to bend in on itself, thick and heavy.
I wait.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he finally says, his voice low and gravelly. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“We’re not doing anything,” I reply. “We’re just talking.”
And we’re barely even doing that.
“I just—” He cuts himself off, lets out a long exhale. “Today was partly my fault. We shouldn’t have stayed out here so long after I fixed up your hand.”
It’s the last thing I expect him to say.
“Is this because of what Matteo said?” I ask, thinking back to all I overheard at the cave. “Don’t let him get into your head, Thorn. He has no right to tell you how to lead, especially after what he did.”
“That’s just it, though,” Thorn says, more urgently. “He did some stupid stuff, but he still had a point when he said I’ve been too distracted out here.”
That’s outrageous—Matteo’s in the worst position to be slinging accusations, not to mention Thorn is the most responsible, reliable human on the face of the planet. It doesn’t sit well with me at all that Matteo has caused Thorn to doubt himself like this.
“Um, have you met you?” I ask. “You’re the most incredible wilderness guide I’ve ever known.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” he says, “but am I not the only wilderness guide you’ve ever known, other than Matteo?”
“Details.” I grin—a joke is good progress right now.
He gives a little half laugh, shakes his head.
“As I was saying,” I go on, “in my very extensive experience with all the wilderness guides I’ve encountered while on planet Earth, you are not only the most attractive, but also the most attentive.
You always know exactly where everyone is at every single hour of the day—you anticipate when we’ll need rest breaks, and snacks, and water, and sunscreen, and bug spray, before we even realize those things ourselves.
You don’t need the internet to tell you about the landmarks out here, or the terrifying night beasts—”
“The night beasts?!” Thorn interrupts, laughing despite himself.
“Yes, Thorn. The night beasts.” I’m laughing, too, but not too loudly—I can tell he feels like all eyes are on us right now and wants to keep whatever this is between us chill and out of sight.
“You know about the night beasts, and even the day beasts, and you know about stargazing and waterfalls and how to do surgery on scraped-up hands without making your patient pass out from the pain.”
It’s possible I’m performing, just a little: that my instinct, when things get hard, is to try to make them fun instead—to make him forget whatever guilt trip he’s putting himself through right now.
Hopefully it’s working.
“What I’m saying is,” I go on, “even if you have been a little more distracted than you’re used to, you are still incredibly attentive.
Emma’s rope could have gotten tangled even if you’d been there, right?
Trey handled it, and Emma’s fine. Matteo is the one who dropped the ball, not you.
It bothers me that he’s trying to make you feel guilty when he knows it isn’t your fault. ”
I’m breathless when I finish.
And Thorn…is speechless.
My eyes have finally adjusted enough to see the outline of his profile, the dip of his lashes as he stares into the darkness.
“You give one hell of a pep talk, Sadie,” he finally says.
His fingers brush against mine. It’s the lightest touch, but I feel like we’ve just bridged a canyon-sized gap, finding our way back to each other after the afternoon forced us apart.
“I’ll be here all night!” I reply, like I’m some sort of stand-up comic.
It’s part defense mechanism, part invitation; it’s code for I want to touch so much more than your hands right now.
As if he can hear every word, he runs his palm up my arm, all the way up until his fingers graze my neck, then find their way into my hair. I inch closer, feel him do the same—but I can still sense him holding back, pulling away.
Maybe I was too quick to hope we could just move on. Today must have shaken him up even more than I realized.
“Get some good sleep, okay?” he says, his breath hot against my skin.
He plants one soft kiss on the curve of my jaw, slow and purposeful, lingering just long enough that I think he wants to keep going, but can’t trust the voices in his head—Matteo’s voice in his head—telling him we’ve done too much already.
“See you in the morning,” I say as he slips out into the night, without me.