Gabriella
Mateo didn't let go of her.
Not when her shaking started. Not when her breath hitched so hard her ribs hurt. He stayed on his knees in the dirt beside the spring, one strong arm wrapped fully around her back, the other cradling her head against his chest like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The jungle hummed around them, indifferent and alive, a thousand unseen creatures carrying on with the business of existing while her world sat in pieces at her feet.
The air smelled of wet earth and sulphur from the spring, of crushed leaves and the faint copper tang of his blood, and beneath it all—beneath everything—the warm, steady scent of him.
Moss and stone. Something solid in a world that had proven it could dissolve without warning.
She tried. God, how she tried. But her body didn't seem to care what her brain wanted. Her hands were locked into his jacket, knuckles white, as if letting go would send her straight back into the water. Back into hands and laughter and fear.
Don't think about their laughter. Don't think about the water. Don't think about his hands on your ankle.
But she was already thinking about it. The way the spring had turned cold the moment she'd felt eyes on her. The way the warmth had been ripped away so completely, as if the water itself had betrayed her. She pulled her face away from Mateo's chest, her breath coming in shallow, fractured pulls.
“Let me go, please,” she pleaded. Her skin felt too tight over bones she feared would break. Every nerve ending screamed at the press of contact, even as some deeper, more desperate part of her yearned for the opposite. Don't go. You are the only solid thing left I want to trust.
Images of Justin flashed through the dark behind her eyes, uninvited and merciless.
His hands on her when she would refuse him.
The particular quality of his silence before things turned.
She had spent so many therapy sessions learning to name what he had done to her, learning to separate his cruelty from her worth, and she had believed—truly believed—she’d put enough distance between herself and that version of her past life.
And then four men stepped out of the dark and reminded you exactly how small and weak you are.
She hated those men for that. Almost as much as she hated herself for letting it cut so deep.
Mateo shifted, angling his body so he blocked her from every direction as he released her.
His hands hovered above her skin—close enough she felt the heat radiating off his palms, yet far enough she understood the choice to be touched was entirely hers.
Her body protested at the absence of his touch, torn between feeling safe with him and the memories from her past.
Blood from his split lip still ran down his chin, but he hadn't once moved to wipe it away. He was too busy watching her, as if she were the only thing in the jungle—in the world—that mattered.
“I won't touch you until you are ready,” he rumbled softly.
He sat there, painfully close, and studied her with his imperceptibly dark eyes.
“I will wait until the stars burn out if I have to. You are safe with me.” Blood continued to drip down both his chin and knuckles, yet he remained her stoic sentinel. Patient. Immovable.
He's bleeding because of me. The thought slid between the static of her panicked anxiety. He came running to protect me, and now he's bleeding because of me.
She found the strength to curl her naked form against him, and he wrapped his arms around her.
Restrained strength radiated from his every pore, muscular lines tense with unspent tension as she laid her head back against his chest that bore his erratic heart.
This is my choice. She was allowing him to hold her, and he was respecting her right to be touched or not.
He had waited for her consent with a preternatural stillness as well as the understanding of exactly what that consent meant to her.
She felt the damp ground between her toes, gritty with soil and leaf litter, and the rough roots of a nearby tree pressing into her knee. Every sensation was dialed up to almost unbearable. Her breathing shuddered.
“I am so sorry,” he said. And how he apologized carried with it a sonorous pain that told her he meant far beyond this one moment. “None of this should have ever happened to you.”
Her head shook against his chest. “I—I didn't think … if you hadn't shown up …”
If he hadn't shown up. She couldn't finish that sentence, not even in the privacy of her own mind. She knew what came at the end of it—she’d spent the last ten minutes knowing—and those twisted images stung her mind like an angry beehive.
“I came as soon as I could,” he rasped. “As soon as I knew, I came running.” His jaw clenched, the muscles tightening, his arms rigid with the effort of keeping his hands still. “I wasn't fast enough.” His next words came out rougher than before, as if they scraped his throat raw. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded. “Thank you.” They sat in silence for a moment, the camp a distant murmur through the trees, the spring still steaming softly beside them as though nothing had happened at all. Eventually, she asked, “Can you help me up?”
He guided her carefully to her feet, both of their hands shaking slightly—a fine, almost imperceptible tremor that neither of them acknowledged—while keeping her wrapped in both his shirt and his arms. The fabric smelled of him, saturated with his earthy scent, and she pulled his shirt tighter around her shoulders.
When her knees buckled, he caught her without hesitation or comment before effortlessly lifting her fully into his arms, scooping her off her feet into a princess carry.
It was as if she weighed nothing against the solid wall of his chest.
“Can’t seem to keep yourself steady around me can you?” he joked, and it had the desired effect.
She gave him a smile. “Only because you seem to run me ragged.”
She did feel tired. Her entire body had been flooded with adrenaline and was beginning to fade when a new feeling slowly began to replace it.
Her breathing quickened at the man who held her.
He felt so solid beneath her, holding her, carrying her back along the lantern-lit path.
He is … tense? Every muscle of his was taut, his eyes scanning the jungle around them.
A lethal awareness rolled off him in waves.
The camp lanterns cast pools of amber light across the dirt path, the shadows between them thick and shifting.
Anyone who glanced their way looked once and then away, quickly, as though they'd read something in his expression that made the choice easy.
Sally was nowhere to be found. Probably ran off to hide with her father.
Gabriella was grateful for small mercies.
Once back inside their shared house, he kicked the door shut behind them and set her gently on the bed.
The mattress creaked beneath her. The room was small and dim, the single lantern on the table throwing warm, unsteady light across the peeling walls, the rough-hewn floor, the narrow window with its curtain drawn.
Outside, the jungle pressed against the walls.
Inside, for the first time since the beach, the world felt briefly, tentatively contained.
His hands hovered over her waist, not ready to let her go.
“May I touch you?” he asked quietly, his voice pitched low and cautious. “I need to check you.”
He's asking. Something about that broke through the numbness in a way nothing else had managed. He was asking. As though her answer genuinely determined what happened next. As though there was no version of this where he simply proceeded regardless.
Justin never asked.
His eyes were as dark and calm as an endless night, as if Sibo, the Costa Rican deity, had just taken her leaves from the palm tree and used them to block out the harsh light. He really is too handsome for his own good.
He waited for her reply. She saw the cost of his patience in the set of his shoulders, in how his jaw muscle twitched, in the controlled stillness of his hands.
She nodded once and slipped his black shirt from her shoulders to reveal her nude form once more, the warm air of the room settling against her bare skin.
His hands were careful and professional, methodical in the way of someone who had done field assessments before, but it was obvious he was fighting against himself from turning his examination into something more than clinical.
He checked her arms, her legs, and finally her ankle, where she'd been grabbed—his jaw tightened when she flinched.
The bruise there was already darkening, a deep purple bloom against her skin that he studied with an expression she thought was a mix between fury and grief.
“Aside from this—” He laid his hand ever so gently, the barest ghost of a touch, on her ankle. “Were you hurt anywhere else?” His voice was deadly calm, measured as if he was calculating in his head. As if he were contemplating how much more violence he should deal out if she had been injured more.
“No,” she whispered. “You came.”
The pain on his face reflected the pain in her heart, a mirror she hadn't expected and one she didn’t know how to look at. He’s furious, but at whom? Me for being so weak, Sally for being so deceitful, or those men for being monsters? She didn’t know, couldn’t know, for certain.
Until he said, “I will never forgive myself … for letting this happen to you.”
He’s furious with himself. The realization did little to ease her own anger.
Despite him rescuing her, she was still angry at him.
How could she not be, given everything he’d done?
She wanted to beat on his chest, demand to know why—why this path, why these lies, why she had to be collateral damage, why her?