Chapter 30
Charlie
The hushed whispers in the mess area raise the hair on the back of my neck. The usually loud room is eerily quiet, and when I turn the corner and step into the space, I could hear a pin drop.
What the hell?
My skin crawls as crew members offer me varying looks—sympathy, concern, pity .
Something is very, very wrong.
At this point, I’m sprinting to Mateo. I hear the tail end of his conversation with Jett when I reach him.
“ … before Charlie sees.”
The pit in my stomach grows, a deep, endless abyss of anxiety capable of drowning me.
“Before I see what ?” I ask.
The guys turn, both wearing looks of shock and discomfort. Mateo moves first, taking a step toward me. Jett slips his phone in his pocket, but his face is frantic.
“It’s nothing,” Mateo rushes out .
I know every one of his smiles—cataloged every one he’s ever offered me into my mental storage. This isn’t one I’ve seen before; it’s forced and uncomfortable.
“Tell me,” I demand, anxiety clawing its way to the surface as they exchange a glance.
“Charlie.” Mateo says my name with an air of caution, like speaking with a cornered animal. “It’s not worth it. Trust me.”
He exhales deeply when I shake my head. I want to know.
Silently, Mateo hands me his phone; the video I recorded for Jett plays in the background, but that’s not what he was trying to hide from me.
There are thousands of comments, each one worse than the previous.
The other chick was hotter.
Scargirl is an appropriate nickname.
Some people shouldn’t show their faces online.
A handful are kind, and I try to cling to them, but for every positive one, there are three that comment on my appearance. Each one slices like a knife, flaying me open.
Mateo’s hand covers the screen. “They’re wrong,” he says, full of conviction. “None of those comments are true.”
Good thing she’s smart. She’ll get nowhere with looks.
Keep her in a lab and away from a camera.
“I’m taking the video down,” Jett says. “I’m so sorry, Blondie. If I knew—”
“Keep it up.”
My voice is strong, resolute, which is surprising because I’m one moment away from crumbling to the ground.
Every self-deprecating thought in my head is on the screen, making each one real. It’s been easy to forget them on the boat, but this is a bubble. This isn’t the real world.
The comments—that is the real world.
And now Mateo has a taste of how the real world perceives me .
The phone is pulled from my death grip while my hand shakes. Anxiety coils in my chest like a cobra poised to strike as Mateo tips my chin with his thumb. It takes everything I have to fight the tears. I don’t want to crumble, not here, but he surveys me with unease, and my lip quivers.
The room closes in, and then I’m running away, my phone ringing as I fly down the hallway, trying to escape every thought chasing me.
I’m not soft in the way Mateo deserves. I’ve always had hard edges, but after my accident, I became jagged, sharpened to a point. He deserves someone gentle, who makes him homemade chicken noodle soup when he’s sick and can carry his burdens.
He doesn’t need someone who wakes up thrashing after a nightmare, someone who is the burden.
I tried to be that person—the one who takes care of him.
My phone rings again, and I answer Amy’s call with shaky fingers, crouched in the room’s corner where it feels safe.
“Charlie, are you okay? Mateo called me. He said…”
She trails off when I peer into the camera. I shake my head, words clogged in my throat. No, I’m not okay, not when I may be falling in love with Mateo, but there’s no way this will last in the real world when he realizes I’m more than he bargained for.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, and for the first time since she began asking the question, I change my answer.
“Yes.”
“All right.”
I stare at Amy through the phone screen, focused on the pieces of hot-pink hair falling out of her bun. I can’t carry this on my own, but maybe I don’t have to.
“Mateo sent me the video,” she murmurs. “None of what they said is true, Charles. ”
“It feels true,” I croak, pointing to the center of my chest, where pain twists every time I breathe. “It’s nothing I haven’t told myself or others have said to me.”
Tears stream down my cheek, and I press tighter into the corner, hoping I’ll melt into the walls and escape the demons chasing me.
I don’t want to be this way. Don’t want to look in a mirror and wince. Don’t want to hide in a crowd or dodge the stares of children who know nothing more than curiosity. I don’t want to question Mateo every time he calls me beautiful or deny his words.
And I’ve tried so hard to battle the whispers and stares. I’ve fought the self-deprecating thoughts with affirmations in the mirror. I’ve stepped so far out of my comfort zone and let someone else see my scars, but it’s done little to rebuild the confidence I lost.
The confidence that was stripped away from me with a few callous words on a screen.
It was foolish to think I could curl my hair, put on makeup and a nice outfit, and pretend everything was normal—that I was normal.
“I don’t want to feel like this anymore,” I admit, my voice cracking with the confession.
There have been slivers of time where the thoughts shut off and I was free. I want to feel the shine that Amy talked about, and I want to believe Mateo when he compliments me. I want to be confident enough to ignore the stares in public.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to look in the mirror and hate the reflection.
” The words are out, and the floodgates open on everything I’ve been holding in and allowing to grow until it consumes me.
“I want to be strong and brave, but I feel weak and powerless. I wish I had thick skin and could brush the comments off, but I don’t know how to let it go, because they hurt .
Those words burrowed deep into my bones, right to the marrow like bone-eating worms, where they’re devouring what self-esteem I have left.
A few comments tore me apart, and I’m letting them.
” My voice cracks. “I’m letting strangers destroy me, but I don’t know how to stop because part of me believes them . ”
“They only have the power if you give it to them,” Amy says.
“But you are beautiful and strong, and there are days I wish I had your confidence and intelligence, because maybe I wouldn’t be a barista with a useless art history degree and a mountain of student loan debt.
Everyone has something they don’t like about themselves.
And if they say they don’t, then they’re liars. ”
“I don’t know how to like who I am. Or how to get back the woman I lost.”
Before Amy can respond, a deep voice rattles through the room.
“That’s how you feel about yourself?”
Amy hangs up, and my phone slips from my grip, tumbling onto the floor as I spin to face Mateo, who stands in the doorframe. He blinks, and the sadness that flickers across his gaze is proof he heard every depressing, self-deprecating thought I shared with Amy.
He’s not supposed to know that I hate my reflection and that, some days, it’s easier to pretend I don’t exist than face the world’s icy stares.
Mateo takes a hesitant step into the room, approaching like I’m an injured animal moments away from attack. Maybe I am, because the words “Don’t look at me like that” slip from my mouth, full of vitriol and fear.
“Like what?” he asks, taking another step, closing the space between us.
“Like you pity me.”
I don’t want his pity, nor do I want to be the recipient of the look he offers: one full of understanding.
“Come here, bruja,” he demands quietly, extending a hand. When I make no effort to move, he adds, “Please, Charlie.”
It’s the use of my name in place of his nickname that moves me to place my hand in his, allowing him to pull me into the small bathroom. There’s barely enough room for us to both stand, and Mateo’s chest is pressed against my back, where the warmth of his skin burrows deep into my bones.
He stares through the mirror until the silence is thick and I’m squirming beneath the intensity of his gaze.
Mateo lifts a hand, tenderly tangling his fingers through the loose strands of my hair.
I hate how his touch settles the rolling in my stomach, how it only takes one look from him for me to soften into something vulnerable.
And I hate how much I need him to help me calm down—that he’s become the rock tethering me to reality.
“I’m not going to tell you you’re pretty,” he murmurs, the confession hanging heavily between us.
My stomach hollows out.
I never asked him to do that, but now he’s telling me he won’t…why does it hurt so much?
“I know what I look like.” The crumbling foundation I’ve been standing on the last few years finally breaks, burying me in the rubble. “I’m mangled.”
The confession is a whisper, and I choke on the rancid memories the words resurrect.
Embarrassment twists tightly in my chest. I don’t know how to look in the mirror and see anything other than what I am: undesirable.
A rogue tear slips out, and I turn to flee, to escape the way my heart clenches knowing how the world views me, but his arm strap me and bracket the sides of the small wash basin.
“I’m not going to tell you you’re pretty, Charlie, because that word falls so short of what you are.
You are stunningly beautiful.” His finger trails down the scar cutting across my brow, the touch reverent as he swipes the tear from my cheek.
“I could tell you that your eyes remind me of the Caribbean Sea, or how, when you smile, the air is knocked from my lungs. ”
I lose the capacity to inhale as he tugs on a few blond strands, twirling them around his pointer finger.
“I could wax poetic about your hair, how I love the wispy bits that fall out of your ponytail, or how it’s a beaming gold beneath the setting sun. I could tell you these things, Charlie, but they aren’t a fraction of who you are.”
My back faces the mirror, and I’m glad I can’t see whatever’s written on my face or how I react to every word.
“The things I love most about you have nothing to do with your beauty. It’s you .
Your brilliant mind. Your loyalty to your friends.
The way you laugh with your whole chest until you’re snorting.
It’s the way you devour chocolate like it’s the last piece on the planet, and how you collect trinkets and knickknacks and hoard them like they’re the greatest treasure you’ve ever found. ”
“I’m not soft,” I admit quietly, tears streaming down my face.
I don’t know why it’s the first thing out of my mouth, or why the confession feels like someone is sliding a knife between my ribs. Maybe it’s because I am soft. A hermit crab without its shell is susceptible to death. It has no armor to protect its vital organs.
With Mateo, I have no shield, and maybe that’s why I’m afraid.
“You don’t need to be gentle. You need someone who is gentle with you. Let me be that man. I want to be that man.”
Clarity strikes me like a rogue lightning bolt, electricity pulsing beneath my skin as I stare at him with wonder.
I will never find a man better than Mateo, nor do I want to.
I’ve fallen in love with him.
He swipes away a rogue tear, cradling my face like I’m the most precious thing in the world.
My arms wrap around his neck as I barrel into him, clutching him like he’s the only reason I’m still standing. I sob into the crook of his neck and drench his collar with tears as he casts soothing circles on my back .
Wrinkles form on his linen shirt from the force of my grip, and I try to smooth them out as I release him. He brushes the hair away from my face and presses a soft kiss to the center of my forehead.
Intertwining our hands, he leads me out of the bathroom and sits down in the chair at the desk, then pulls me into his lap. My skin is splotchy and red, my lower lashes rimmed red, but I offer him a watery smile through the mirror.
It’s weak, but it’s real.
“Can you tell me one thing you like about yourself?” he asks, grazing up and down my thigh.
Pulling my hair to the side, he peppers soft kisses down my neck to my collarbone, making it difficult to focus on anything else.
“One thing, bruja,” he demands, nipping at my earlobe.
“I-I like my…hair.”
His fingers tangle in the loose blond curls, wrapping the strands around his knuckles and tugging so my neck is bare to him. Goose bumps break out along my spine as his hands dip beneath my top and roam along my skin.
“For now, I’ll value all the parts of yourself you’re still learning to love.
But every day, we’re going to find something else you admire about yourself.
” He drops another soft kiss on my shoulder.
“You’re not broken, or mangled, or any of the things people on the internet have said. Give it to me, Charlie.”
“Give you what?” I ask, my vocal cords raw from crying.
“Everything you don’t want to carry any longer. I’ll carry it for you. And when you’re ready, we’ll let go of it. Together.”
I nod, words clogged in my throat. His lips hover over my ear, his warm breath dancing along my skin. Desire pools deep in my lower stomach as his hands roam my body. His touch is reverent and gentle, but my skin heats as the need builds.
His hand slips under my bra, and he pulls my nipple between his fingers, twisting slightly.
Fuck .
My head, clouded with pleasure, falls back to rest on his shoulder.
“Now, bruja, you’re going to ride my cock and see just how beautiful you are as you take me.”