Gabriella #5
God.
She fixed her face, willing it not to break into the smile she wanted to given the seriousness of their conversation. Her steady tone betrayed none of her inner turmoil. “You love me? Why tell me this now? You lied to me, betrayed me, and what about Sally?”
Silence settled between them as he stroked long fingers over his rough jaw, his expression thoughtful. “Valid questions. I was hoping you would be happier at my confession,” he said instead.
Oh, this cocky bastard.
She arched an imperious eyebrow towards him.
“Were you expecting a sappy love confession? From a divorcee who had escaped a shitty marriage? After confessing you were undercover and that’s why you let my friends die?
” she asked, overly sweet and with a tiny bite, her irritation bleeding through the words.
He ran a hand down his face, letting off a long sigh before squaring up to face her. Everything in his body relaxed as if he had made the decision to accept her demands of truth.
“Gabriella, I'm sorry. For everything. For it all. I wanted to tell you. I’ve loved you since you first walked through the door and if you want me to be honest, I would sacrifice the lives of a thousand men to keep you safe.”
Oh. Oh my. She leveled him with a cool look, but his attention dropped to her hands as they clenched together. She was trying to keep herself together in front of him.
I love you too, she nearly said but held back. She knew she should trust him. He had laid everything bare and open, yet she couldn’t stop this nagging feeling in her gut. “Mateo, no more lies. Let’s try to—”
She took a step towards him as the safehouse door burst open.
Sally filled the doorway—her luscious brown hair loose around her shoulders, her eyes moving between Gabriella and Mateo with a quick, assessing glance that landed and calculated in less than a second—and then she crossed the room and put her hands on Mateo's chest and kissed him.
The air left Gabriella's lungs in one complete, silent exit.
Oh.
Not the good kind of oh. The kind that arrived when the data you had been assembling revealed itself to have been wrong from the start. The kind that landed in the sternum and radiated outward.
So much for being important to him. The thought was a cold, clear current running beneath the sudden nausea. So much for love.
Mateo pushed off Sally, his hands coming up to grip her arms and create distance, his expression hardening to something between fury and mortification. “What are you doing here?” he ground out through his teeth, the words low and sharp at the English he spoke.
Gabriella noted how he didn’t reprimand her for kissing him.
“I couldn’t wait for you anymore,” Sally said in English, her hands making another attempt at his shirt, her voice carrying the confidence of a woman who had never encountered the experience of being unwanted.
Gabriella felt uncomfortable, like a voyeur to an intimate moment she hadn’t consented to.
Her eyes bounced between Gabriella and Mateo. “Are you finished caring for her?”
Mateo ignored her and looked past her to the open door, his jaw ticking with a steady, controlled rhythm as if counting to a number he hadn't decided yet.
“Did your father and the men make it?” he asked in that deep rumble of his.
A hot flush crawled through Gabriella’s body, the familiar sting of betrayal building once more. Still not addressing the kiss are we?
Sally nodded. “Yes, and he wants to see you.”
Dark brown eyes glanced back to Sally, then once over to Gabriella. His jaw muscle working its steady beat. “Fine. We will go see him,” he pointedly said. “I don’t trust you alone with Gabriella,” he added in Spanish.
Sally pulled away, laughing. “Sure thing.”
He looked past Sally to Gabriella—a single look, direct and loaded and carrying more than she had the context to fully decode—then pointed to the bed with a flat, unequivocal. “Stay put. We’ll finish our conversation later.” Before he followed Sally out the door.
The door closed.
Gabriella stood in the room, in the jaundiced afternoon light, with the stale air pressing against her from all sides, and looked at the cot she'd been pointed at like a dog being told to wait.
Real, he'd said. Everything between us is real.
She let out a sardonic scoff. Once again, left in the dark. How many secrets did he have?
Too many, she thought bitterly. Now, it was up to her to decide, would she stay with a man like Mateo or would she find a different path?
She sat down on the edge of the cot. The springs groaned beneath her weight, a thin and mournful sound in the close quiet of the room.
Outside, the town went about its business.
Inside, she pressed her fingers to her lips—to the places his teeth had been—and stared at the wall and thought about what real meant when the man saying it walked out the door with someone else.
Figure it out, she told herself. I am a scientist. I have worked with worse data than this.
She wasn't entirely sure she believed that.