Chapter 11 #2
Jett nods emphatically, focusing back on the screen.
Mateo hovers nearby, not close enough to touch, but with so little space that my skin is lit aflame, a thousand firecrackers dancing along my arms. He shifts, leaning to grab his water bottle, and the overwhelming, intoxicating scent of his cologne permeates the air.
Doug films the room, focused on Vivian and Jett, who chirps a mile a minute, hands waving enthusiastically in the air.
I have made it my mission to avoid Doug and his camera at all costs. I start to slink back, but he swings around, focusing on Mateo and me. My heartbeat quickens, thudding faster and faster, but I’m paralyzed by fear.
The short-sleeve top was a horrible idea.
I’m sure I look like I’ve seen a ghost because the camera falls and Doug offers a quizzical look. “Are you okay?” he asks.
“Mm-hmm.” Freaking out at the mere idea of millions of people viewing me online. No big deal.
Doug shrugs and moves on, and I creep to the back of the control room, out of the camera’s aim. The screen is visible if I squint and stand on my tiptoes, so I can do my job just fine in the back corner.
I make it three steps before I slam into a wall of concrete, also known as Mateo’s chest.
“Where are you going?”
He peers down at me with mirth.
By the minute, it becomes more difficult to deny my physical response to him. The way my pulse quickens when he walks into a room, or how, when he rolls his sleeves up to display his forearms, my core clenches and my internal temperature spikes.
“Hiding from the cameras,” I whisper conspiratorially. He doesn’t need to know why I’m hiding, only that I am evading Doug and his recording device. Mateo’s tall; maybe he’ll let me use his body as a human shield.
“Why?” he whispers back, but the single word is full of understanding as he shifts to distance us from the group.
This is too much. This trip. His kindness. The cameras. My scars. It’s all too overwhelming. If we were at home, or hell, even just on land, I would run away. Hide until I could shove my emotions deep into the abyss and pretend they don’t exist.
Here I have nowhere to run, and Mateo continues to shine a light on all the emotions I’ve tried to hide away.
Mateo clears his throat, and I realize I’ve been staring. “Bruja, why are you hiding?”
It’s a question and a demand, and I fight the urge to curl in on myself, but still subtly cover the scars on my forearms. This morning I was daring, but right now I want safe .
Frowning, he moves so closely I can spot the speckles of gold in his irises. He blocks the rest of the room from view before whispering, “Do you want to go change?”
One question, asked with softness and understanding, and I nearly crack, the flood of emotion threatening to consume me. I’ve never grown comfortable with the scars. I wish I could say I wear them as a badge of honor, as a reminder that I fought and survived, but I can’t.
Every scar is a reminder of the weeks spent in a hospital.
They represent whispered conversations between my parents about overdue medical bills.
And though they’ve told me hundreds of times not to worry about the cost of my recovery, I know they had to cut into their retirement savings to support me.
The scar crossing my brow is a brutal reminder of the sacrifice and loss, one I’m forced to face every time I look in a mirror.
I shake my head, lifting my chin with more confidence than I feel, and if I were insane, I would say pride flickers across Mateo’s gaze. I cling to that asinine thought, moving to the center of the room to watch the video feed.
The ROV reaches the seabed, and Mateo and I work together to identify any organisms or points of interest while documenting the time stamp. We collaborate for the first half of the day, before taking shifts to complete the remainder of the time.
I’m on a solo shift, documenting sea pigs and, sadly, plastic debris, but whenever there’s a lull in the video feed, my mind wanders to Mateo, to the way he shielded me, saw my discomfort, and offered a solution.
He returns to the control center with Jett, sitting on the opposite side of the room at the small table and chairs. Every time he laughs or huffs, my concentration shifts from the video. I want to know why he’s laughing.
The jealousy strikes unbidden, and I physically recoil from its strength, knocking my phone and notebook onto the floor. It lands with a loud thud, and Mateo spins, concerned. My stomach flips and I nearly vomit.
What the fuck is happening to me?
“Charlie, are you all right?”
My name rolling off his tongue does wild, concerning things to my insides. I need to go somewhere far away, void of the sensual way he says it. Maybe I’ll plunge myself into the ocean to cool off.
“Going to the bathroom.” My voice squeaks at the end, and I increase the space between me and Mateo’s cologne, at least as much as possible on the boat.
If he was less attractive, mean, and inconsiderate, I would not have this issue. All he had to do was prove my theory that he was the mighty ruler of hell. Instead, he threw my theory in the trash and revealed himself as endearingly sweet and mind-bogglingly hot.
This is Mateo’s fault.
By the time Mateo lies down on the bed, I’ve moved my arms into a dozen different positions. At my sides. Behind my head. Across my body like a corpse. I’m nervous and don’t know what to do with my limbs.
The pillow wall jostles as he settles beneath the covers. He’s so close I can barely breathe, afraid that a rogue puff will give away what thoughts are swimming around in my mind.
An arm flies over the barricade and I yelp, arms flailing. Mateo’s laughter is a deep rumble that caresses my skin.
Fuck.
I turn to peer over the pillows, and time slows.
In the dim light, his irises resemble moss, illuminated by rays of sun peeking through the canopy.
His lips tug upward, one side lifting higher than the other.
The shadows of a beard have grown after the long day, and his hair, the color of rich, freshly brewed coffee, is messy.
It’s unlikely that many get to witness Mateo this way, unkept and mussed, worn down by the day. It’s special, I’d assume, that someone gets this version of him, and for some insane reason, I’m absorbed with the thought that I’m that person.
A sharp cough breaks my trance, and the tips of my ears burn.
“Uh…what?”
A slow, knowing smile glides across his face, and the dimples in his cheeks hypnotize me.
“I was asking if we could watch more of the TikToks. ”
“Sure.” I spin away, hoping to conceal my blush in the darkness, but Mateo removes the pillows dividing us, and I’m confident he could see the red of my cheeks all the way at the bottom of the ocean.
My breath hitches in the quiet room, and I conceal it with a cough.
While we scroll through videos, he leans his head on his bicep, his gaze fixed over my shoulder. Every soft chuckle causes goosebumps along my skin.
Eventually, my heartbeat finds a steady rhythm the longer we watch, but after a story time video, a heavy weight falls onto my shoulder. Affection lodges in my throat when I turn my head and find Mateo’s cheek resting on my arm.
A pang of longing strikes my chest, and it’s like a douse of frigid water, dragging me back to reality. This is not meant for me. I am not the found safety needed to fall asleep on someone’s shoulder. I am not soft or vulnerable in the way men desire.
My body is not a divine shrine, but a battlefield, full of emotional wounds and physical flaws.
These moments—the ones hidden in the fold of silence where people fall in love—they don’t belong to me, but perhaps for the first time in my life, I desperately want them to.
It terrifies me, the deep-rooted yearning that burrows in my chest.
I pack it away with every other emotion I’ve buried over the years, locking it into a cage. It’s easier to pretend those feelings don’t exist than allow them to consume what’s left of me.
“Mateo,” I murmur, and he rustles, his body inching closer. My heart sinks. “You need to put your mask on.”
His sleepy eyes crack open, and so, so slowly, he rolls to the other side of the bed and slides the mask over his face. The area where he touched me cools, and a small voice whispers for him to come back, but I throw it into the cage where it can’t grow and hurt me .
I plug our phones in and turn off the light, and as I fall asleep, I feel like a fool for missing how his body felt against mine.