Chapter 20
Mateo
“Mateo?”
A soft knock echoes through the bathroom as I shave. I drop my razor on the side of the small sink and crack the door open to find Charlie drowning in the t-shirt I offered her last night.
She was still in bed when I slipped in here, and I wanted to give her some time to sleep, given last night’s events.
I’ve seen a panic attack before. I know the signs, and when Charlie’s features went blank and her hands began to tremble, I knew she was in the early stages of a major attack.
She shifts on her feet, playing with the hem of the shirt.
“I wasn’t sure if you left for breakfast,” she says, staring at the shaving cream covering my face. Red spreads across her cheeks, and she shifts her attention to the carpet. “Sorry, I’ll let you finish.”
“You can sit with me if you want.”
She hesitates before slipping behind me to perch on the toilet seat. Wordlessly, I resume my task, dragging the razor along my skin. She watches me through the mirror, her blond hair frazzled from sleep .
The last thing I want is to overstep any of Charlie’s boundaries, push her too far and ruin what we could have. So I wait and allow her to make the first move.
I’m nearly done shaving when she whispers, “I’m sorry.”
They’re the same words she whispered last night, full of so much self-hatred it was a punch to the gut. Her head hangs low while she picks at a loose thread on my shirt, like the guilt is too heavy to look up.
“For what? Letting me in?” Surprised by my question, she snaps her chin up and meets my stare. “There’s no shame in leaning on someone.” I spin to rest against the tiny basin, heart thudding in my chest as I face her. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Do you want to call it? Put an end to whatever’s happening and return to how we were before?”
My heart lodges in my throat, but I need to know. I don’t want to give her any more of myself if she’s going to break this off. She already holds so much of my heart. If I give her any more, it will become hers alone.
She doesn’t understand. Doesn’t know there’s nothing she could do or say to scare me away.
“I don’t want to burden you.”
I barely hear the confession, the pained words she believes are true. But it’s not a yes, and I lean into that.
“You don’t get to make that decision.” I take a step and lift Charlie’s chin. “You don’t get to decide what I want or don’t want. What I consider burdensome or worth the effort. But, in case I haven’t made myself clear, you are worth it. To me, you will always be worth it.”
She doesn’t say anything, but her pupils glass over like she’s fighting to believe the words .
“I need to know if you think I’m worth it,” I continue, “because I can’t stand here and give you everything if you’re not willing to try to do the same.”
Does she see I’m as scared as her?
I have no idea what I’m doing, standing at the cliff’s edge, teetering, and all it would take is one gust of wind before falling. She has no clue how deeply she’s embedded in my chest.
Relationships require work—two people making a conscious decision to choose each other.
It’s not fate or destiny; it’s a daily choice to see the other person, to acknowledge their flaws and fears, to cherish what makes them special, to champion their accomplishments, and pick them up when they stumble.
I’ve witnessed it in my own parents, who strive every single day to lift up the other.
Even in their fights, they never forget the love they share.
I hear it in the way my abuela talks about the forty years she shared with my abuelo before he died, how he would have stolen the moon for her if she had asked, and she would have done the same.
No relationship is perfect, but rather, it’s a complex weaving of two people giving it their all—that’s what I want with Charlie.
My stomach churns as she remains silent. One minute grows into two, and bitter disappointment sits heavily on my chest. Maybe I’m not worth it after all.
I spin to leave when she grabs my forearm, digging into my skin.
“I-I’m sorry,” she sputters, and I pull my arm from her grip, exiting the bathroom. I need some air to escape the sickening feeling in my chest that’s telling me I’m not enough for her. “Mateo, wait!” Charlie flies out of the bathroom. “I’m trying to say—”
“I hear you loud and clear.” My throat tightens. “Let’s go back to being—”
She launches herself, hurtling into me so forcefully I stumble back onto the bed. Her head collides with mine, and pain sears against my temple. Clutching my cheeks between her palms, she forces my head upward as she stands between my legs.
“I’m in. I don’t know what it means, and I can’t tell you I won’t mess this all up, but you’re worth facing the fear. I just need you to hold my hand while I face it.”
Her thumb swipes against my cheek, and I lean into the touch, my lashes fluttering shut. The words she offers are a balm, soothing the hurt, and when my eyelids crack, she’s watching me with an open expression, full of fear and admiration. It’s a shock to the system, seeing her openly vulnerable.
“You have to let me in,” I say. “No more running away.”
She nods, dropping her forehead against mine and wrapping her arms around my neck.
Letting someone know how you’re feeling, what you’re thinking, is a form of intimacy. It’s something that requires trust, and we’re still building the foundation.
“Be patient with me, okay?” she murmurs against my skin.
“Always, bruja . Always.”
Charlie stands, smooths out her hair, and draws her shoulders back. She nods, as if she’s having an internal conversation with herself, then fiddles with her clothes.
“Breakfast and then to the lab?” she asks timidly.
“Sounds like a great plan,” I respond, and before I can say anything more, she leans down, places a small kiss on my lips, and escapes into the bathroom—all with a creeping blush. I’m still sitting on the bed when the door creaks open and Charlie pops her head out.
“Oh, and Mateo?”
I hum.
“You look hot when you shave.”
And with that, she slams the door shut, leaving me sitting on the bed with unshakable pride.
“Look, we got a worm!”
Charlie dangles it between her forceps before she places the creature into a specimen bag and labels it. We quietly process soil samples collected on yesterday’s ROV dive, each of us enthralled in our task except to offer a brief break, like now, where one has an update.
Her discovery of a worm is much cooler than my previous update, which was to tell her the soil smells like farts. She gave me a disgusted look, unscrewed the cap to the sampling tube, and promptly gagged from the horrendous scent.
I tried to warn her. She should have listened.
She mutters to herself as she continues to subsample, and I pause my task to admire her beauty.
As she digs through the soil, she tucks her lower lip between her teeth, the hair pulled out of her face.
Her breath hitches when she finds a shell, and I’m an insect stuck in her web as she carefully cleans her treasure and sets it to the side.
Our conversation this morning was heavy, and Charlie was quiet at breakfast, but when she slipped her hand beneath the table and intertwined our fingers, my heart soared.
It gives me hope—hope that we can make this work if we both try.
“Good find.”
I resume extracting DNA from the water samples, lost in my task. We work in silence for another hour before Charlie says, “You hum a lot.”
“Huh? ”
She begins to hum. It’s unrecognizable at first—her humming skills need some work—but as she reaches the chorus, I recognize the song she’s mimicking, the one my abuela loves to sing at the top of her lungs when she’s in the kitchen. The song I’ve apparently adopted as my tune.
“It’s always the same song. You hum it while you work. What is it?”
“‘Tuyo.’ It’s the theme song of Narcos .”
I never realized I hum—not to the point that she not only notices but can repeat the tune. Maybe she pays more attention to me than I give her credit for. I might be crazy, but the idea sends a tingle down my spine.
“Ah…” I draw out the word. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but what I’m hearing is that you’re so obsessed with me, you can identify the song I hum.”
A flurry of emotions flashes across her face. Confusion. Realization. Annoyance.
“That is not what I said.”
“It’s implied.”
“No it’s not.”
“Admit it, you’re obsessed with me.” I tug a strand of her hair and raise the pitch of my voice. “ Mateo is so dreamy. He smells like a summer breeze and looks hot while shaving. ”
Her face scrunches like she ate something sour. “I am never going to live down my summer breeze comment, am I?”
“Not a chance, bruja . I will hold that compliment close to my chest until the day I die.”
She huffs, pausing her digging through the soil to cut me a glare. God, I love that glare and the conviction that takes hold of her when she’s ready to debate something. It does something wicked to my insides.
“Fine. But if you’re going to keep calling me bruja,” she grunts, “then it’s only fair you have a bad Spanish nickname. ”
“It’s only fair?”
“Isn’t that the rule? If you’re dating, you give the other person a nickname?” Her voice softens like she’s shy. “I’ve never given anyone a nickname. How do you say ‘annoying asshole’ in Spanish?”
Her question hangs in the air before I keel over in laughter.
I was anticipating a vulnerable moment where she asks if she can call me babe or honey, or hell, she finally asks why I gave her the nickname bruja, but instead, Charlie throws me a curveball, asking the question with the seriousness only she’s capable of mustering.
She’s fucking incredible.
I mull it over, pretending to hesitate offering her the answer. If I’m too quick with my response, she’ll grow suspicious about the true meaning of the word I want to offer her, but if I act like I don’t want to give it away, she may not ask any questions and take my word at face value.
“Well?” she presses.
I sigh, more deeply than I probably need to.
“Carino.”
She repeats the word, testing it on her tongue, and my cheeks twitch. If I want to pull this off, I need to protest—convince her I would rather keel over than have her call me the endearment.
“I don’t really think we should—”
“It’s perfect!”
Huh , that took less acting than I thought. Her smile is feral, pleased she’s one-upped me, or so she thinks.
She returns to her work, and her energy remains for the rest of the day, all the way until we go to bed, when she whispers into the darkness, “Goodnight, carino.”
It’s the perfect ending to a long day.