Page 52 of Deep In Love
I’m halfway there when someone slides into the seat across from her. She glances up briefly, a hidden message in the look, one I can’t decipher.
The voice grows louder, and the hairs on the back of my neck rise. Shaun laughs, reaching out to squeeze her forearm.
My fist clenches as I move closer, and I’m a step away from the table when I hear the end of his sentence.
“…last night.”
It’s like someone dumped ice water over my head, and I’m frozen as Charlie offers him a hesitant expression.
She did leave last night to meet him.
I never had a shot.
The food I ate churns in my stomach and bitter resignation falls like thick snow, suffocating me until I have to spin on my heels and leave. Escape the soft laughter and playful smiles she offers so freely to Shaun.
I make it to the room—our room—and the first breath is freeing until the scent ofherfills my nostrils. Cinnamon and mint. Intoxicating and poisonous.
There’s no escape. She’s in every nook and cranny. Her scent in the air. Her trinkets on the desk. Piles of clothing on the bathroom floor.
She’s consumed every inch of the space and every cavern of my mind, and I don’t know how to banish her. How to stop thinking about her or caring. How to get rid of the pain in my chest knowing she slipped away to spend time withhim.
Jealousy is a bitter, ugly thing, and I’m its victim.
The silence is suffocating, but when it becomes easier to breathe, I slip in an earbud and allow Elora’s poor decisions to drown out my own.
Maybe one of us will get a happy ending.
Chapter 16
Charlie
Mateo silently labels sampling tubes on the bench space across from me, his head down with his earbuds in. As he moves a tube from one rack to another, I jerk to look around the centrifuge, hoping we’ll make eye contact.
When I woke this morning, he was gone and the sheets on his side of the bed were cold. There was no chocolate sitting on the desk, no morning smile upon exiting the bathroom, no companionable walk for coffee.
I found him sitting at a table with Jett, halfway through his meal, laughing, but when he spotted me, his demeanor shifted. Too afraid to sit with him, I sat alone, nibbling on my toast, watching him like a lunatic until Shaun joined me. When I was finally able to check for Mateo again, he was gone.
He’s evaded me all morning, as much as he can in the small lab space. If we’re walking at the same time, he slides as faraway as possible. Every glimpse of him worsens the deep ache in the center of my chest.
Am I so horrible that he’s tired of dealing with me? Did I cross a line, take something too far, and now he wants nothing to do with me?
He rises from his bench, and I steel my nerves, spinning to intercept him.
“Mateo, can we—” My words are slow and unsure, but he bulldozes past me and into the reagent room.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
I slam a pipette back onto the rack with brutal force.
“Hey, asshole, I was talking to you,” I yell, stomping into the small room, Mateo’s back facing me when I grip his arm.
“Agh!” He leaps a foot into the air and rips out an earbud. Oh, shit. I’m glad he didn’t hear me call him an asshole. Probably wouldn’t have helped with clearing the air. “What, Charlie?”
I don’t know if it’s his tone, harsh and direct, or the use of my name instead of bruja. My name sounds wrong on his tongue. I want to be bruja again.
“Oh…I—” The practiced apology fizzles off my tongue as he stares. His irises have always been a comforting green, a verdant shade that pulls me in, but right now they’re guarded. “Did you want some help?”
I refrain from smacking myself upside the head.Just apologize, you big doofus.
