Chapter 34 Thorn
The silence is so thick between us while Sadie and I walk back to camp that I wonder if we’ve both simply reverted to the rules of the day—but then, just before we get to our tents, she breaks it.
“Thanks for the coffee this morning,” Sadie says quietly, head down, focused on the path in front of her. “And my mug. That meant a lot.”
I stop walking.
I want to see her face—need to see it. I can’t tell from her voice what she’s feeling.
A moment later, she stops, too.
When she looks at me, it’s like an arrow to my chest, seeing her expression so careful, so guarded.
I made those walls go up. I’m the reason she’s not smiling right now.
“Sadie, listen,” I start to say. “I just— I want—”
My words break off.
I want to kiss her. I want to time travel back to before I ever told her it would be most helpful for her to go away, and tell her what I truly meant was the exact opposite: that she’s the first person in years who’s made me feel alive.
I want to spend the rest of this day having a picnic with her in the wildflowers, talking each other’s ears off, counting butterflies and dreaming about clouds and, later, searching for constellations.
And then, under the moon, I want to stop talking entirely, to see how quiet we can be and how close we can get.
Touching her back there at the waterfall—I almost didn’t want to let go.
Also, I owe her an apology.
“What do you want, Thorn?” she asks.
I swallow.
A loud buzzing in my back pocket slices clean through this moment and everything I was about to confess.
I pull out my phone.
“It’s Matteo,” I say, showing her the screen, as if she needs proof—proof that I’m not just looking for another excuse to push her away.
“You should probably answer it, then.”
I pick up the call a second too late.
A moment later, it starts vibrating again.
This time, I answer on the first ring. “Matty? What’s going on—are you okay?”
His voice, patchy and broken, barely pierces through the static.
“I can’t hear anything you’re saying,” I say, even though he’s still talking away on the other end. “I’ll call you right back, okay?”
When I hang up, I turn to tell Sadie I’m off to find higher ground, see if the connection is any better up there—
But she’s already gone.
“Pick up, Matteo,” I mutter under my breath ten minutes later, when I’ve managed to find a slim two bars of signal on the high hill across the stream. I can see our entire camp from here, but it’s far enough away that no one will be able to listen in. “Pick up.”
I’ve tried calling twice now. Twice, it’s gone straight to voicemail.
Third try’s the charm, hopefully.
“Thorn?” Matteo says when we finally connect. “You there?”
The signal is a thousand times clearer here than it was down on the nature trail.
“I’m here,” I say. “Is everything okay?”
“We’re, uh…how do I put this?” Matteo says, a panicked edge to his voice. “We’re extremely lost.”
“Define extremely,” I reply, as calmly as I can manage. “Also please define lost.”
There’s a long pause, but I hear his ragged breaths on the other end. He’s either been running or hyperventilating—from the sound of it, my guess is the latter.
“I think we’ve been going in circles,” he says. “Or maybe we took a wrong turn? Or maybe both.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to mentally calculate how far they would’ve been if they’d managed to stay on track.
“Did Joshua find the engagement ring, at least? Did you even make it back to the lake?”
Matteo heaves a sigh so loud and crackly I have to pull the phone away from my ear.
“I don’t think we’re anywhere near the lake,” he admits. “I tried to tell him he should just forget it…”
“But?”
“But he’s not really the forgetting type, as it turns out.”
I take in all of this, not sure what to make of that statement—and not sure what Matteo’s asking me to do about it.
“So, what do you need from me?” I ask. “You’ve still got your phone, obviously—so you should be able to get back on track with GPS, right?”
Though maybe I shouldn’t make any assumptions, considering they’re this lost already and the park itself is huge.
“That’s the other thing,” he says. “I can’t find my charger, and my phone is at two percent.”
I mutter a curse.
If they got this lost with GPS, there’s zero chance they’ll get back on track without it.
The only way Matteo and Joshua are getting un-lost is if I go and find them, then lead them back to camp myself.
“Send me your coordinates before your phone dies,” I say, suddenly all out of patience. “Stay exactly where you are, Matteo, do you hear me? I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
We end the call, and he texts their coordinates a minute later.
I do a double take when I see where they ended up—it’s not anywhere near where they were trying to go, but on the bright side, it’s not terribly far from here. I won’t have to leave camp for too long…but I will have to leave.
A wave of realization comes over me: if Matteo’s gone, and I’m gone, that means the seven hikers who’ve entrusted themselves to our care are going to be out here alone.
It goes against everything I know, all my training—all my instincts—to do what I’ve just promised Matteo. The rest of the group shouldn’t have to suffer because of his myriad mistakes.
At the same time, though, if I’m fast, I can make it to where he and Joshua are an hour or two before midnight. It’s only late afternoon right now; we could easily be back before morning.
The rest of the group knows how to make a fire, how to watch over it, how to put it out before bed.
Trey’s got climbing experience and safety certifications; he’s already shown natural instincts we look for in hiking guides.
Sadie was impressive today, too—she spotted Zoe a split second before I did, accurately identified the treacherous aspects of the water, and gave the exact same advice I would have when she beat me there to help. They’d do okay for one night, I think.
Still: I’m not used to relying on anyone but myself. The thought of leaving—even if it’s a search-and-rescue for two other people who are technically still my responsibility—just doesn’t sit well with me. Especially when the people I’m rescuing are the reason we’re in this mess in the first place.
I need to call Danica, give her a chance to weigh in—but it rings and rings.
I try again. No answer.
I can’t wait much longer. If I’m going to go, I need to leave soon.
The third time it kicks over to voicemail, I leave a message.
“Hey, Danica,” I say. “Just got a call from Matty saying he and Joshua are lost and need help. They’re not too far from the rest of us here in Sparrow Valley, so”—I let out a long exhale, glance down at my watch—“unless I hear back from you saying otherwise, I’m planning to head out within the next half hour to go get them.
I’ll touch base when I meet up with them. ”
I run a hand over my jaw, then slip my phone into my pocket and head back to camp.
This is an unprecedented situation. If this happened on a normal trek, protocol would be for one guide to stay with the group while the other went off on the rescue mission—but on a normal trek, no one would need rescuing in the first place.
Especially not a guide who’s supposed to be partly in charge.
This entire trek, Matteo has been more of a hindrance than a help.
All this time, he’s given me such a hard time about Sadie being a distraction…but in reality, he is the one who’s caused unnecessary problems on this trek. Matteo wasn’t even here to witness the water rescue today—and if he’d called ten minutes earlier, he would’ve interfered with it.
Parker and Emma glance up as I pass them, not even trying to hide the fact that they’ve given up on all things solitude and silence.
“Have you seen Trey?” I ask.
“I’m here,” a muffled voice calls from one of the tents at the far perimeter. A moment later, Trey sticks his head out, runs a hand through his hair. “What’s up?”
I tell him to sit tight—I want to make sure Sadie’s in the loop, too.
“Sadie?” I say quietly when I’m right outside her tent. “You in there?”
She doesn’t answer.
I wait for a bit, and think I hear a rustle from inside, but it doesn’t amount to anything else.
“Sadie?” I try again, a little louder this time. “Can we talk?”
Okay, that—that was definitely a rustle.
She zips open her tent door. I catch a whiff of something fresh; her hair has looked really incredible all day.
Focus, Thorn.
“Can you come with me for a minute?” I ask.
She scrunches her nose. “We can’t talk here?”
“Oh, um. We need to talk”—not about us, my mind fills in—“with Trey. You and me and Trey.”
Now she’s really confused.
I don’t blame her. I realize, now, that it must have sounded like I wanted to apologize, or at least explain myself better. And of course I do—just not right this second. I don’t want to rush it, not when I need to make sure camp is settled before I head off.
“Sure, I guess,” she says.
She follows me, and soon it’s just the three of us in a semiprivate spot where I can lay everything out for them.
“Matteo and Joshua are lost,” I say, getting right to it. “They have also, somehow, misplaced their phone chargers—which means they have no GPS to help them get back here.”
It takes effort to sound neutral about the whole thing, and not a panicked mess who wants to have a quick off-the-record rant about how ridiculous it is that my coleader has completely wrecked this entire trip in a thousand different ways—
But that would be unprofessional.
Mark this down as one more way I stifle myself, who I really am, for the sake of my job.
“So,” I go on, “I really don’t want to do this, and this shouldn’t be on either of you—I hate to put you in this position, but—”
Trey laughs. “If you’re trying to ask for help, you can chill out a little.”
Sadie cuts her eyes at me, clearly sensing my trust issues. “He doesn’t want help,” she tells Trey. “But I think he’s trying to say he needs it?”
Busted.
“I should only be gone for the night,” I say.
“Matteo sent me their location before his phone died, and they’re actually not too far—I can be there and back by morning, we’ll climb Mount Valerie tomorrow as planned, and ideally you’ll never even feel like I was gone.
But that means you’re all without a guide overnight, until I get back. ”
“It’s just eating and sleeping and hanging out, man,” Trey says. “No need to stress.”
When I take a step back, look at it from his perspective, it sounds so simple: eating, sleeping, hanging out.
They’re not navigating any trails, they’re not attempting any risky excursions.
They’re all extremely aware of the waterfall risks after today—I expect they’ll be hypercautious now, considering what happened with Zoe.
So why is it still so hard for me to step away and trust someone else to take over, even just for a single night?
“You put too much pressure on yourself, Thorn,” Sadie says, her voice softer toward me than it’s been all day. “It’s going to be okay. We will be okay. Okay?”
“We’re all adults,” Trey adds. “And you’re a hiking guide, not a babysitter. We’re not hiking tonight, so if we’re being technical, a ‘guide’ isn’t strictly necessary. If something happens, we can handle it.”
When he puts it like that, it makes a lot of sense. Maybe I’m overthinking this.
“I’m more worried about you being off on your own, honestly,” Sadie says. “I really do think we’ll be fine, Thorn.”
I meet her eyes. She does still care, even though I clearly hurt her by pushing her away—and she’s done a damn fine job all day of not letting it show. She cares a lot.
A spark of hope flickers amid my racing heartbeat.
Maybe—
Maybe, after all of this is over—
Maybe I should focus on rescuing Matteo and Joshua first, and then I can think about after.
“Just kiss her already,” Trey says, oblivious to the fact that we’ve had some drama of our own. “It’s obvious you want to.”
Sadie’s gaze flits down to my lips.
I want to. I really, really do.
But I don’t want to if she’s not comfortable.
She reaches for my hand instead, and I take that for the answer it is. “Don’t get lost out there yourself,” she says. “If you don’t come back, we’ll really be screwed.”
Everything in my chest tightens: from the rejection, from the fresh wave of panic at how it feels to let go of the reins and trust someone else for once—and how, underneath the surface, there’s a part of me that thinks Matteo deserves to stay lost a little while longer, seeing how this is entirely his fault.
“That was a joke,” Sadie says, squeezing my hand. “We’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
I feel her touch for hours, long after the sun has gone down and I’m in the middle of the dark woods, alone.