“You can,” I agree, trying my best not to scare off her sudden surge of bravery. “I’ll be right behind you. It’s not deep—all that’s at risk here are wet shoes.”
That’s notexactlytrue—she could slip and hurt herself, in theory, if she were out here on her own—but I’m more than capable of preventing a dangerous fall. I’ll steady her before anything like that comes close to happening.
She swallows, nods. “Okay. Okay, I’m going.”
I don’t believe it until the toe of her sneaker makes contact with the first rock—but it does, and she’s solid, confidence already higher than before. She glances over her shoulder to smile at me, but wobbles just a little.
“Eyes ahead, not on me!” I instruct, a little more drill sergeant than I intend.
She listens, though, and makes her way to the next rock with ease.
I follow, one step behind.
“You can do it, Sadie!” Trey calls, ever the hype guy. “You’ve got this!”
It’s smooth going until we get to the first jagged rock, its surface jutting out of the water at a thirty-degree angle.
“The trick with this one is to go quickly,” I coach her. “Don’t plan to stop on it—just put one foot on, then push off to the flat one right after it, okay?”
She nods, her entire focus on the rocks. We’resoclose. Three more rocks after the trickiest one and we’ll join the rest of the group.
“Don’t think too much about it,” Parker calls out, to everyone’s surprise; she’s been the quietest of the three tennis girls so far. “Don’t think about what could go wrong—just picture it going right.”
It’s great advice, and it works.
Sadie takes a deep breath, pushes off from one rock to another, then powers straight through the rest. Parker and Trey bury her in a hug when she’s safely across; Emma and Brittany join in, too.
When Sadie finally pulls away, she turns to me, beaming.
No one has looked at me like that in a long, long time. It’s a smile so open, so sincere, so unguarded—sopersonal, reminding me I’m a person, too, and not just the leader on the outside whose sole purpose is to get everyone from place to place.
Sometimes I forget that.
Sadie’s smile stirs something in me, and it scares me: my first instinct is to push it away. The last person to look at me like that was Blair, and she ran off with Matteo to Peru…so…yeah. There’ve been other nice people along the way, of course, but they always leave and never look back. It’s become a habit of mine to not get close in the first place.
I swallow, keeping my face neutral as I give her my most professional nod of approval. Falling for one of my trekkers is thelastthing I need out here—it’s against the rules, for one. I also simply can’t affordto be distracted. What would have happened to Sadie today on those slippery steps if I hadn’t been alert enough to spring into action?
Nothing good, that’s for sure.
For her best interest and mine, I should probably keep my distance.
“Ready to head out?” Matteo says, addressing the rest of the group—but not me. Never me, not the entire time we’ve been out here.
One by one, they fall in line behind him. Sadie lets the others go first, hanging back to wait for me, and gives me another smile even brighter than the first.
“Thanks for today, Thorn,” she says, that cute dimple popping once again.
That’s when I know I’m in trouble.
8SADIE
I’m so proud of myself I could cry.
Today was hard. Likereallyhard. There hasn’t been a moment all day without pain of some sort—my shoulders, my back, my hips, my feet. A headache that started blooming somewhere around mile four. Add in my treacherous experience back at the waterfall, crying would make sense.
The creek shouldn’t have scared me. It was, objectively, not scary—the water was so clear I could see fish swimming.
I’m proud of myself for not listening to the voice in my head that kept whisperingrocks are slippery, rocks are deadly, maybe rocks and rivers are not your thing. I listened to Thorn instead—and Trey, and Parker—and their voices drowned out the anxiety.
