Chapter 26 From Zero To Six
From Zero To Six
~MABELINE~
Technology hates me.
I have been sitting on this couch for forty-five minutes, cross-legged in a jersey that falls past my thighs, squinting at a screen so crisp and responsive that every tap registers before my brain finishes deciding what I actually want to press.
The new phone gleams in my hands like a weapon I have not been trained to wield, its rose gold surface reflecting the overhead light of the apartment in a way that makes me feel like I am holding a miniature sun rather than a communication device.
The tutorial video playing on the screen is explaining something about widget customization with the enthusiasm of a man who has never known a moment of technological confusion in his entire privileged existence.
"And then you simply long-press the home screen to access your layout options," he chirps.
I long-press the home screen.
The entire display rearranges itself into a grid I did not ask for, relocating my four downloaded apps to positions I cannot find and replacing my wallpaper with a stock image of a mountain range that I have no emotional connection to.
"No," I whisper, stabbing at the screen with my index finger. "No no no. Where did you go? I just put you there. I literally just organized you. We had an arrangement."
The phone does not respond to my distress. It sits in my palms, glowing, smug, aware that it is prettier and smarter than me and determined to prove it.
Beatrice would never.
Beatrice, rest her cracked soul, was predictable.
Slow. Loyal in the way that only outdated technology can be, requiring three taps to open a text message and freezing during video calls with the reliability of a Swiss clock.
I understood Beatrice. We had a rhythm. A mutual respect built on years of shared hardship and lowered expectations.
This new phone is a thoroughbred racehorse and I am a woman who learned to ride on a donkey named Perseverance.
I am mid-crisis, hunched over the screen with the intensity of a surgeon performing a delicate operation, when the apartment door opens.
Cal walks in yawning.
The yawn is enormous, the kind that cracks his jaw and scrunches his entire face, one hand half-covering his mouth while the other drags his school bag behind him like a child hauling a security blanket through an airport.
His blond hair is slightly disheveled, pushed back from his forehead in a way that suggests he has been running his fingers through it during whatever class or practice just released him, and his amber eyes are glazed with the particular exhaustion of an athlete whose body has been pushed past the point of reasonable cooperation.
He closes the door with his heel, his gaze sweeping the living room with the automatic surveillance of an Alpha entering a shared space.
His eyes land on me.
One eyebrow arches.
"Why are you wearing that?"
I look up from my phone, pausing mid-tutorial, and the words die on my tongue because my brain has suddenly abandoned its technological frustrations in favor of processing the visual information standing in the doorway.
Cal is wearing a button-down shirt.
White. Fitted. Tucked into dark slacks that sit at his waist with the kind of tailored precision that transforms a college hockey player into a man who looks like he bills by the hour.
A tie hangs loosened around his neck, the knot tugged down just enough to expose the hollow of his throat, and sitting on the bridge of his nose, framing those amber eyes with dark rectangular frames, are glasses.
Glasses.
Cal Whitmore is wearing glasses and a button-down and slacks, and my brain is performing emergency maintenance because none of those items were supposed to be combined on this particular human being without a written warning issued in advance.
"Damn," I breathe.
He frowns.
"What?"
"You look like a hot professor who is having a scandal with a student."
The observation exits my mouth with zero filtering, delivered with the blunt conviction of a woman who calls them like she sees them and has no intention of apologizing for accuracy.
Cal stares at me for a full two seconds, his expression cycling through surprise, confusion, and a flustered irritation that stains the tips of his ears pink.
He rolls his eyes.
"Great. Exactly the aesthetic I was going for," he mutters, dumping his bag by the door with the carelessness of a man who has no respect for the organizational systems I have been mentally designing for this apartment.
He crosses the room toward me, his long legs eating up the distance in four strides, his fingers already working at the knot of his tie.
"It is the glasses giving you character," I add, tilting my head to study the frames as he approaches. "Very distinguished. Very I grade papers by candlelight and quote Dostoevsky at dinner parties. The slacks are doing the heavy lifting, but the glasses are the co-star."
He groans, the sound dragged from somewhere deep in his chest.
"I am getting contacts."
"Wait." I sit up straighter, tucking my legs beneath me. "Do you actually wear glasses? Like, prescriptively? This is not a fashion choice?"
"I do." He drops onto the couch beside me with the boneless exhaustion of someone whose muscles have collectively agreed to stop functioning, his body sinking into the cushions until our shoulders are nearly touching.
His scent arrives with him, ocean salt and warm amber and the faint trace of ice that clings to hockey players long after they leave the rink.
"But I hate wearing them during school or practice because every time I do, it becomes a whole production. "
He yanks the tie free, tossing it onto the coffee table.
"People either swoon over me and make it weird, call me a hot nerd and make it weird, or decide I look like a predator and make it extremely weird.
Every outcome involves weirdness. There is no neutral response to Cal Whitmore in glasses.
So I leave them off and squint at the whiteboard like a man with dignity. "
I snort.
"You do NOT look like a predator. That is absurd.
The predator association is entirely Netflix's fault for putting glasses on every serial killer in their true crime adaptations like poor eyesight is a character flaw that leads to homicide.
The glasses look good on you. People are just incapable of processing attractiveness outside of their pre-established categories, so when the hockey jock shows up looking like a literature professor, their brains malfunction and they default to the nearest pop culture reference. "
Cal stares at me.
"Did you just psychoanalyze the public's reaction to my eyewear?"
"I am a woman of many talents."
He sighs, the sound long and deflating, and stretches his arms across the back of the couch, his biceps straining against the white fabric of his sleeves.
The posture is unconsciously territorial, his body expanding to fill the space with the casual dominance of an Alpha who does not realize how much room he occupies in a world designed for smaller people.
"Fuck," he breathes, his head tipping back against the cushion. "Practice was brutal. New drills. Raphael is trying to kill us. I am eighty percent sure he enjoys watching us suffer and is disguising sadism as coaching methodology."
He turns his head toward me, one amber eye cracking open beneath the dark frame of his glasses.
"You did not answer my question, MaeBell."
"Hm?"
His gaze drops.
Slowly. Deliberately. Traveling from my face to my neck to my collarbones to the oversized jersey hanging off my frame, the fabric pooling around my thighs, the hemline barely reaching mid-thigh where it gives way to bare legs tucked beneath me on the couch cushion.
His jersey.
I follow his gaze downward and realize, with a flush that ignites so fast I am surprised my face does not audibly combust, exactly what I am wearing.
"Oh." I pull at the jersey's hem, a futile attempt to stretch it an additional three inches through sheer willpower.
"This. Right. So, you gave it to me on race day, and I fully intended to wash it and return it to you, which I did.
The washing part. But then I forgot to give it back, and then it ended up at the bottom of my drawer, and then today all my actual clothes are in the wash because I procrastinated on laundry, so this was technically the only thing I could wear. "
The explanation is a rambling, barely coherent mess that sounds exactly as incriminating as it is.
Cal's eyebrow arches higher. The gesture is almost audible.
"Are you trying to tell me, an Alpha, that you are wearing my jersey and nothing else?"
The phrasing. The emphasis. The way he says an Alpha like it is a job title and not a biological designation. The way nothing else leaves his mouth wrapped in a controlled tension that makes his ocean salt scent thicken perceptibly in the air between us.
"No!" My face is volcanic. "Well... okay, maybe.
BUT." I raise a finger with the authority of a woman presenting a critical legal defense.
"I am wearing underwear! Full coverage underwear!
Proper, responsible, appropriate underwear!
This is not some sort of seduction scheme!
I am simply a victim of poor time management and an insufficient wardrobe! "
He groans, his head falling back against the couch again, his eyes squeezed shut.
"MaeBell, you are going to fucking kill me with that odd innocence of yours."
"I am not innocent!"
He pinches the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses, the gesture so exasperated it borders on theatrical.
"You are. Because you either enjoy taunting me for the sheer entertainment of watching me suffer, or you are genuinely unaware of the effect you have, which means you are testing my level of restraint without even realizing you are administering the test." He exhales through his nose. "Both options are equally dangerous."