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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Nicole Cubba
Read between
November 12 - November 16, 2025
Charlie may be my favorite person, but I am not hers. I don’t even crack the top ten, let alone get close to Sir Charles Darwin. Trying to bump him from the top spot is futile, but I’ve been aiming for a close second since we met.
“If you want to be seen, Mateo, then you need to stand in the spotlight, even if the light may burn your eyes.”
“Satan?” “The fiery pits of hell don’t bother him. This horrid heat isn’t bothering you. Considering I’ve never seen you and Satan in a room together, I can’t rule out the hypothesis.”
Fall in love with him? Please. He’ll be lucky if he makes it through the trip without me flinging him overboard.
You asked for fiery passion, it whispers, well here you go. I’ll serve you up sexual tension on a silver platter.
I would give up everything for a peek into her mind. She’s brilliant, precise, but an enigma.
Sharing a bed with Charlie may kill me, but at least it will be a glorious death.
A chocolate every day for two years means something, doesn’t it? This is more than a kind gesture on a bad day. Leaving one daily is a conscious choice, one that requires effort. But why?
Could I love Charlie Bowen? With every fiber of my being, if she would let me.
“Do you see me, Charlie?”
I’ve studied her—documented every new discovery until I became an expert.
It’s hard to live your life by absolutes. The world is complicated—messy and ever-changing. But she is my one absolute; my heart begins and ends with her.
“If you go overboard, I’d have to follow you, and our pasta would get cold.” “You’d follow me?” I ask, hung up on the statement. “I’d follow you anywhere, Charlie.”
People dedicate their lives to a cause—curing cancer, saving biodiversity, helping others—but I think…I think if Charlie let me, I would be content to dedicate my life to loving her.
Regardless if she knows it yet or not, Charlie Bowen is mine. Mine to cherish. Mine to worship. Mine to keep.
“I want you to say your affirmations,” he whispers, and my heart drops. “The ones you tell yourself in the mirror. I want to hear them.”
“I’ll help you. I am smart. What’s next?” “I am kind,” I croak. He nods, urging me on. “I am beautiful. I am hard-working. I am deserving. I am not broken.”
“You are not broken, Charlie,” he declares, and I try to avert my gaze, but his grip is firm. “Not to me.”
He’s a breath of fresh air after spending time underwater.
“My ship is my treasure, my god is freedom, my law, strength and the wind, my only homeland is the sea.”
The ocean always called to me, a beacon guiding my life, but as Charlie rests her head on the crook of my neck, I recognize that everything has shifted; my homeland is no longer the sea. My homeland is Charlie.
Everyone has something they don’t like about themselves. And if they say they don’t, then they’re liars.”
“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.”
“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.”
In a thousand different lifetimes, it would always be her for me.
Kissing her is the high of a scientific discovery. Each moment we have is new and uncharted, and I could spend the rest of my life exploring with her. Learning about her. Building her up. Loving her.
I want Mateo to know how I feel about him—that he’s worth breaking down the walls I’ve constructed around my heart, and with him, I’m starting to find the pieces of myself I’ve lost.
Screw him, and screw his infuriatingly attractive dimples that appear at the most inopportune of times, making it painstakingly difficult to focus my thoughts.
“I never knew the best thing to ever happen to me was sitting across from me every day, leaving me chocolate and humming songs.”
“You are a wonderful man,” she says, banishing a tear that falls. “Charming. Kind. Supportive. You make me feel seen and understood, and these last three weeks with you have been the best of my life. I am wonderfully lucky to call you mine.”
I could spend the next forty years as a scientist, but you will always be my greatest discovery. My most important find. My purpose.”
“Te amo, bruja. I love you. Deeply. Unconditionally. It transcends logic or reason, time and space. There is no fear you could show me, or insecurity you could whisper, that would change how I feel.”
Love is meant to be felt. It is meant to be given and received without judgment or forced reciprocity.
When you have days where it’s hard to admire yourself, it feels impossible to believe someone else could desire what you find lacking. How could anyone love me if I don’t feel that way about myself?
That’s what everyone says. You need to learn to accept yourself before you can offer or accept love from someone else. While I believe there’s a sliver of truth in the phrase—it’s important to grow, to accept who you are, and find pride in yourself—I think they’re missing one crucial piece: It’s easier to believe in something when someone else also shares the belief. To have someone in your corner who says “I’ll love every part you’re still learning to accept, and I’ll hold your hand while you work through it.”
“You can disintegrate me with your lasers forever, as long as I’m the only one being melted.”
He’s the one thing I never expected to uncover, but he’ll forever be my greatest discovery.
“It was hard not to fall in love with him.” I’m staring directly at him when the words escape my lips. If I could only accomplish one thing in life, it would be loving Mateo in the way he deserves—freely, fully, without reservations.
He holds every single piece of me in the palm of his hands—the good, bad, and ugly—and he keeps them safe.
