Chapter 36 Thorn #2
“All I could think about was how miserable I felt.” He swallows, hard.
“And how miserable you must have felt back then, how much worse it must have been for you when I was the person who’d blindsided you with Blair.
I couldn’t handle it, Thorn. I’ve been such a disaster out here.
And I’m—I’m really, really sorry, man. For everything.
I don’t blame you for never wanting to speak to me again. ”
My eyebrows raise. “I never said that.”
He’s quiet, all out of words.
“Matty.” I wait to go on until he looks up.
“Just because what you did made me miserable, it doesn’t mean I enjoy seeing you miserable.
” The words feel weighty on my tongue—weighty and true.
“You’ve changed since we were close, yeah.
Had different priorities that led you to some things I think you probably regret.
You weren’t always like that, though, so I’m choosing to take that as proof that you can change back. ” I pause, then add, “If you want to.”
The fire crackles and sparks.
As the silence expands between us, I realize I haven’t acknowledged the fact that he finally owned up to his betrayal.
“Thanks for your apology,” I say.
I knew I needed to hear it in order to close the door on our painful past, but I didn’t realize how much lighter I would feel. It doesn’t excuse his behavior, everything he told me, but at least I understand it a little better now.
One comment he made stuck out in the moment: It was time to choose something for me instead of just tagging along with the career you had chosen here in Cali.
I’m honestly not sure I chose this career so much as I fell into it. My dad took me out here so often as a kid, and then as a teen, that when someone offered to start paying me for it—part-time at first, and later, full-time—it just made sense.
I was good at it, a natural.
I loved being out in the wild; I loved seeing people expand their worldview.
It made me feel close to my dad to hike the trails he adored but could no longer experience himself—like I was hanging on to part of him, maybe even doing it for him.
This trek has been different.
I didn’t realize how much I could relate to Matteo’s desire for adventure…
that just as his was born out of an aversion to stagnancy, mine might be, too.
Not once did I expect that this active job—where I’m always moving, rarely sleeping in the same place two nights in a row—might start to feel like I’m stuck, moving in circles but ultimately going nowhere.
I always considered myself such a risk-taker, purely because it comes with the territory: there’s nothing inherently safe about sleeping under the stars, or navigating tricky terrain and surprise downpours, or rappelling off the side of a cliff.
Those things, for me, though?
They feel like home.
They’re my comfort zone.
And maybe they’ve been holding me back.
A series of vibrations hits my phone: texts from Danica, hours’ worth of messages only just now finding enough of a signal to get through.
Got your voicemail, sorry I couldn’t pick up. Stay safe out there.
Have you found Matteo yet?
Please have him call me as soon as possible.
I clear my throat, and Matteo looks up.
“You need to call Danica,” I say.
He nods, no fight left in him. “Can I use your phone?” he asks. “Mine’s still dead.”
I hand it over.
But before he gets the chance to call, it starts ringing. Danica—finally.
I nod for him to pick up.
“Thorn?” she says, her voice loud on the other end. “Sorry, Charlotte’s still sick, and I’ve also been having issues with my phone today—I only just got your last text—”
“No,” Matteo cuts her off. “It’s me.”
He doesn’t have to elaborate—she’d know his voice anywhere, that light Italian accent that still clings after all these years.
“What happened, Matteo? Joshua called a little while ago for an emergency pickup; he’s at the hotel now. He said you’d left him on his own—care to explain?”
“That’s a load of shit,” Matteo says. “He left me.”
“You do realize that’s not much better, right?” she says. “Care to tell me why he felt so desperate to get away from you, and apparently throw you under the bus to your boss?”
Matteo fumbles his words, but finds his way to a full confession after some meandering: how he ditched his post at the rappelling site, how he kissed Zoe behind the waterfall, how he followed Joshua into the woods only for Joshua to leave him behind.
He tells her how Joshua stole his phone charger and snacks—and left some seriously filthy laundry behind in its place, which is news to me.
I overhear enough to gather that Matteo’s out of a job.
And when she says, “Let me speak to Thorn,” I start to worry that maybe I am, too, even though I’m not the one who lost an entire person out here.
He passes the phone to me.
“Hey, Danica—I’m so sorry about Joshua, I had no idea—Matty told me they were lost, and his phone had died, and I didn’t want them stranded without GPS, so I weighed my options and decided it made the most sense for me to come help, and—”
“Thorn. Stop,” she interrupts. “You’re not in trouble—you were in an impossible spot. You don’t have to defend yourself for things you had no control over.”
Her tone catches me off guard. It’s night and day from the clipped voice she just used with Matteo, and I don’t know what to say. It’s not at all what I expected—and it’s slow to sink in: You don’t have to defend yourself for things you had no control over.
I most definitely always feel responsible for everything that goes down while I’m in charge, whether they’re within my control or not.
“You’re not in trouble,” she reiterates, “but, given the circumstances, I do think it would be in everyone’s best interests—yours included—to cut the rest of this particular hike short.”
I need a break.
I do.
But I can’t help feeling like I’ve failed: that the rest of the group won’t get to finish out the final stretch of our hike as planned.
That I won’t get much of a chance—if I get any chance at all—to smooth things over with Sadie.
“We’re so close, Dani,” I tell her. “Just Mount Valerie, and then Lavender Fields. The group has come so far—I think we owe it to them to finish strong.”
She’s quiet on the other end, for so long I fear we really will have to cut the trek short. Instead of being at the top of a mountain tomorrow, everyone will disperse to go home.
Sadie will head back to Texas.
And I will return to my empty apartment, where I’ll try to work up the energy to do all of this over again when the next trek begins.
I’m exhausted just thinking about it, and I don’t think it’s only because today has been exhausting.
“You can finish out the trek,” she finally says, “but I want you and Matteo in my office the second you get back to the museum, okay?”
“Sounds good, yeah,” I reply. “We can do that.”
I slip my phone into my pack when we’re done.
Under normal circumstances, I would probably opt for a decent break before heading out again—it’s late, I’ve barely eaten, and the idea of hiking for several more hours tonight feels excruciating, especially considering we’ll be getting up with the sun to summit a mountain tomorrow morning.
Sadie is on the other side of that hike, though. And she deserves the chance to climb that mountain—I want to see her face when she’s on top of the world, looking out over all the ground we’ve covered together. It might be brutal for me, but it will be worth it for her.
“Ready to go?” I ask. “We should put the fire out and head back.”
“I’ve been sitting here for most of today,” Matteo says, rising from the boulder he’s been using as a chair. “Let’s move.”