Chapter 11
Charlie
Can he move any fucking slower?
The muscles in my lower back ache from maintaining my uncomfortable position, and my joints scream in protest from the pressure on my hips and angles of my knees. A girl can only pretend to be asleep for so long, and my arthritis is telling me I’m reaching my tipping point.
A pillow beside me rustles, and I hold my breath, peeking over the covers. Mateo moves around the room, humming to himself as he shuffles through his shirts in the closet.
He turns, and I slam my eyelids shut.
Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Don’t think.
As long as he believes I’m asleep, we don’t have to have a conversation about last night or any of the other tension-filled moments since we embarked.
The bathroom door clicks shut, and once the water turns on, I fly out of bed to escape before he exits.
I’ll greet the rest of the crew with horrifying morning breath before I face what may be happening between us .
If there’s no interaction between us, I don’t have to address Amy’s messages or how, when I woke up this morning, I was closer to Mateo than when I fell asleep. The pillow wall was still intact but barely holding itself up.
I slip on a pair of pants and a top, not bothering with matching, when a shiny blue wrapper glistens in my periphery.
I know the distinct color and can imagine the sweet caramel on my tongue, followed by the smooth dark chocolate. It’s placed on the vanity, my crystals and trinkets moved to surround it in a circle, with a note folded and tucked beneath a heart-shaped amethyst.
Have to keep up the tradition.
It’s scribbled in Mateo’s distinctive handwriting—messy and scrunched together, like his brain moves more quickly than his hand.
The tradition? What tradition?
It takes a beat to understand his meaning, but when it lands—when it becomes clear who’s been leaving these on my desk—it becomes difficult to stand.
My legs buckle, and I fall onto the edge of the bed, the sweet treat clutched in my grip and an uneasy sensation burrowing in my chest.
It’s a piece of chocolate, yes, but it’s so much more. It’s the daily kindness from Mateo I’ve never acknowledged. It’s the fact he leaves a second one on bad days. Hell, it’s the notion he knows when I have bad days.
The piece of candy shakes in my grip.
It’s even my favorite kind. Not the store-brand version I buy to save money, even though they’re half as good as the original.
Mateo exits the bathroom, steam pouring into the room as he dries his hair with a towel.
I’m momentarily stunned by how attractive he looks backdropped against steam, but quickly remember why my heart is racing in my chest .
“You’re my Willy Wonka?”
“What?” A confused smile brightens his features, as if I said something endearing and didn’t ask the question that’s rocking my world. He glances down at the blue wrapper in my palm. “Oh, good. You found the chocolate. I tried to get Darwin the Bobblehead to hold it, but it wouldn’t stay up.”
He shuffles his clothes in the closet, pulls out a sage-green button-down, removes the t-shirt he’s wearing, and then buttons the shirt, all while I sit on the bed and stare at him, dumbfounded.
“You’ve been leaving these every day?” I hate the way my voice quivers.
A chocolate every day for two years means something, doesn’t it? This is more than a kind gesture on a bad day. Leaving one daily is a conscious choice, one that requires effort. But why?
It’s shocking how a single piece of candy can uncover layers upon layers of suppressed emotions. Guilt swirls in my chest alongside something far more unsettling: yearning.
I’ve always been afraid to be noticed or perceived, but as I stare down at the wrapper, I’m painfully aware Mateo has seen me all along.
Memories flood my brain, a tsunami of small moments I overlooked. Iced coffee at joint meetings with our advisors. Chocolate every day. Knowing things about me I’ve never told him. What kind of person am I for treating him as a rival all this time?
A pretty shitty one.
My breathing quickens as I stand at the precipice of a life-altering discovery: Mateo’s never been the cocky asshole. I have.
I need Amy to pull me out of the spiral I’m descending into and bring me back to the real world. I need her kind yet wise words about how to move forward, because right now, simply looking at Mateo rots my insides with guilt.
His smile is tender, and something in my chest cracks .
“Every day since I first saw you eat one.” He laughs, and the sound dances along my skin. “You scarfed it down in one bite and did this little pitter-patter.” He pushes up on his tiptoes, hopping back and forth to mock the movement. “I decided I wanted to see that every day.”
I frown at the accuracy of the reenactment.
“You’re scowling because you know that’s exactly what you do every time,” he says, and this—the back-and-forth—is what’s comfortable, not the quiet moments in bed or the way his fingers dance along my scars.
Those intimate moments leave me vulnerable.
And right now, I feel like a snail without a shell. Entirely exposed.
I hum, switching between observing Mateo and my favorite treat, like together, they hold the key to solving climate change. Right now, uncovering that may be easier than unraveling my muddled feelings.
“You never said anything,” I whisper.
“I thought you knew.”
Silence hangs heavily between us, but I’m unable to form a response. I struggle to meet his gaze, and when I do, there’s surprise in those verdant irises. A surge of understanding flickers over his features, and his lips pop open like he wants to say something.
Instead, he changes the conversation.
“Jett wants to film the sample collection prep for the ROV. I’ll be in the lab, if you need me,” he says.
He’s halfway out the door when I call out, “Thank you, Mateo.”
He peers over his shoulder, surveying me, before saying, “You’re welcome, bruja.”
And with that, he’s gone, leaving me with my thoughts and a piece of chocolate.
Monitors mounted to the wall bathe the space in artificial light, and gauges and buttons flash and shift as the crew members on the main deck release the ROV into the choppy waves.
The glacial descent beneath the surface begins, and the camera technician, Lucas, confirms the video is functional.
As it moves down the water column, Mateo explains to Vivian how many soil and water samples to take.
“We’re going to about a thousand meters today,” Vivian announces.
Mateo, Jett, and I stand behind the control system that resembles a spaceship, and Lucas twists the camera with a joystick, searching the water column as Poseidon continues down through the photic zone.
“There are five main zones of the ocean,” I explain to Jett, who watches the video feed with rapt attention, “epipelagic, mesopelagic, bathypelagic, abyssopelagic, and hadalpelagic. Right now, we’re in the epipelagic zone—or photic zone—the area of the ocean where sunlight can penetrate.”
Mateo winks when the word tumbles from my lips. My cheeks flame, and I lose my train of thought.
Darkness creeps in as Poseidon drops into the aphotic zone and the temperature decreases on the monitor.
“Wow…” Jett trails off as pitch black consumes the camera before the floodlights flash on, illuminating the deep abyss.
“We’re entering the mesopelagic zone, also referred to as the twilight zone,” Mateo says, “where species begin to utilize bioluminescence.”
There’s little more than darkness and debris for over an hour, and as the minutes continue to tick by, a blanket of boredom falls over the room. Jett whispers to Sofía, and Doug sits across from them, making faces each time one giggles.
Mateo scribbles down notes about the environment and some of the small cnidarians, and I pretend not to stare at him like an idiot.
It’s hard work.
Finally, Vivian calls out, “I think I see something,” and everyone in the room scrambles toward the screen, surrounding her and Lucas.
We all hold our breaths, leaning in, and Lucas zooms the camera while Vivian adjusts course. Small iridescent columns of light pulse and shimmer in the darkness like a beacon.
As Vivian moves the ROV closer, the floodlights illuminate the organism, allowing the dark, blood-red hue of its body to luminesce as it floats in the water column. Lucas zooms in further, and the bright red of its stomach comes into view.
“That’s a bloody-belly comb jelly,” Mateo says, awe lacing his voice. “Most light can’t reach this depth, and red light is the first to go, making the jelly invisible to its prey.”
“This is absolutely bonkers!” Jett smacks my back in jest, and I catapult forward, directly into Mateo’s chest. “Holy shit, my bad.”
Jett scrambles to help me, but Mateo’s strong grip holds my bicep, keeping me standing.
His finger dips beneath the hem of the sleeve, swiping against a small scar.
I felt brazen this morning when picking out my outfit.
Whether it was Mateo’s emboldened words at the bar or the softness he offered me this morning, I left the long-sleeve cardigan in my duffel bag.
And when he returned from the lab to tell me Vivian was deploying the ROV, and registered the bare skin—saw the scars I’ve spent years hiding—he nodded approvingly and uttered words I immediately googled and will never forget.
Te ves deslumbrante.
You look stunning .
And the shocking part, the one I’ve struggled to accept, is that I believe him.
“I am so, so sorry,” Jett says, his arms flailing for emphasis. “I’ve been hitting the gym, and now I don’t know my own strength…”
His arm darts out, and I narrowly avoid getting whacked again.
“Maybe we keep our limbs at our sides,” I say, stepping out of the danger zone.