Kisses after midnight (WICKED #0) | ✓

16

HIS WORDS WERE SUCH a clear threat that Jay and Chase both froze for a moment. Mateo slowly cracked his knuckles then, before grabbing their shoulders again, that same lazy smile he always donned on his face.

"Don't touch me," Jay spat out.

"Don't talk back to me," Mateo said," in case you forgot, you're in my territory now, Ryder."

"Oh yeah?" Jay said, lifting his chin in a challenging move," and what are you going to do about it? Snitch on me to my father?"

"You think I'm a snitch?" Mateo scoffed," for that I would have to need your father to take you down."

Jay stayed quiet for a moment, searching Mateo's eyes for a moment, though Mateo had no clue what he was looking for. When he finally found it, his facial expression settled into his usual bitter mask again.

"I'll believe that for now," he said," though I should know better."

Mateo frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"It doesn't matter," Jay said then, brushing Mateo's hand off as he turned around.

He looked at Sahar, but before he could walk back to her she just shook her head. There was no anger in her eyes, no annoyance, just a stinging disappointment. When she turned around to leave, Jay tried to stop her by grabbing her wrist, but she just shook him off. He pulled his hand back as if he had been burned, face unreadable as he watched her go.

"Aren't you going to go after her?" Mateo said," you're friends, right?"

"She doesn't want to see me anyway," he said.

Mateo didn't pry any further. He was too focused on his own whirlwind of emotions anyway. Somehow he was angry, so angry right now. Not at Jay and Chase, not truly, but at himself.

He should have just taken it slow, should have given her time. Years he had kept this love inside and yet he had let it all shatter in just a brief moment. Though he always had been one to act before he thought, Gabriela wasn't. She wouldn't give him an answer, not unless she had spent hours thinking about it. He knew that.

So why did he do that then? Why did he allow himself to be the primary source of her worries, when she had enough to shoulder anyway?

"Are you alright, Mateo?" Chase asked, hesitant.

Mateo glanced at him, knowing he was asking about his anger, the one he usually never showed.

He had always been one to feel emotions fiercely. When he was happy he was sunlight itself, when he was sad rain after dark, quiet - and when he was angry, he burned. In those soft years, where the world was still his to take, he had raged and squealed and cried to his heart's content. Nothing mattered except his whims and his father always smiled despite them all, opening her arms wide every time he ran home.

His low voice echoed through the house in high notes as he pretended to be Mateo's teddybears and his booming laugh was like an embrace; warm, familiar. At night, as Mateo lay between his parents, his father whispered him stories, soft enough as to not wake his mother. When he dozed off he always dreamed about those exciting adventures and his father was the hero in every last one of them.

Even as he grew older and his father's hair became gray, his wrinkles deeper, the man never ceased to be a superhero in Mateo's eyes. So he didn't notice how his father was getting tired more often, how he was losing so much weight, how he was away for days at an end.

His mother only told him when the cancer had gotten terminal.

Time seemed to stop then. He had sat down beside his weary, old father then, the superhero mask long gone. For him, his parents had always been immortal, no matter how silly that seemed. He held his father's hand and thought about how his mother had once told him you can see how much someone has sacrificed in their palms. And though he had just laughed it off then, when he felt the callouses on his father's hand against the softness of his own, his heart broke.

His father died on his twelfth birthday and the fire within him had as well.

There was no time for burning, not when he should be saving his grief-stricken mother, not when he should keep whatever was left of his family together, and that included himself. So he didn't shed a tear at the funeral, kept his head high and tried to take all burdens off his mother's shoulders. He could manage it, hiding all his emotions away, with a saddening ease even. Even if he had wanted to, he knew he could never be as wild and carefree again as back then.

Still, that couldn't keep him from going to the streets the night of his funeral and searching for a fight wherever he could get one. He had gone home beaten black and blue, but at least he had felt something again. So that his mother wouldn't notice his wounds and he wouldn't add to her worries he had climbed the tree to his room. But when he had reached it, Gabriela had called out his name, uncharacteristically soft.

She didn't ask questions, didn't say anything about his injuries or the empty look in his eyes. Instead she scolded him gently, like the old days, the ones before he had lost everything, and tended to his wounds. It had been when she grazed her hand against his cheek, a question without words, that he had cried. Not only for his loss, of his father and who he had been, but also because she had made him feel warm again and he hadn't thought that to be possible.

So he had loved her, his very own wildfire, and though he could keep the rest of his emotions hidden, he couldn't do the same with that one. It was the only thing he allowed himself to feel.

And he had most likely ruined it.

"I'm fine," Mateo said.

"Why wouldn't he be fine?" Jay frowned.

Mateo parted his lips to reply, ready for an easy-going comment to leave his lips, when he saw her. The world stopped and he looked at her, the way she was a warm light among all these people, the soft kind of fairylights and candles at night.

"Gabriela," he said.

She didn't hurry to his side like she would have done before this, didn't scold him or roll her eyes at him. Instead she just held his gaze, but not even her eyes were enough for him not to notice how pale she had gotten and how tired she looked. So he tore his gaze away and looked at Penelope.

"Hey," he said," I'm sorry, but Gabriela isn't feeling too well, can you take her home?"

"What?" Penelope said, before noticing Gabriela as well and chuckling," oh God, we probably shouldn't have drunk that much." She turned towards Imani, an apologetic smile on her lips. "I'm going to take her home, okay?"

Imani nodded, warmth in her usually cold eyes when she looked at her girlfriend. After a quick peck on the lips Penelope headed towards Gabriela, telling her they would find Sahar and leave. Through the whole conversation Gabriela was still staring at him, still with that undecipherable expression on her face.

When she turned around to leave, he had to keep himself from running after her.