Chapter 26 From Zero To Six #2
I laugh.
Full and bright and bouncing off the apartment walls with an ease that surprises me, because laughing around Cal has started to feel natural in a way that should unsettle me given our history but instead feels like finding a comfortable position in a chair I have been sitting in wrong for years.
"I am not attractive to you, obviously," I say, waving my hand dismissively. "So the restraint thing is a non-issue."
The shift is immediate.
Cal's head lifts from the cushion, his amber eyes sharpening behind the dark frames with an intensity that makes my breath hitch.
The playful exhaustion drains from his expression, replaced by a focused attentiveness that transforms him from tired hockey player to alert Alpha in the space of a single heartbeat.
"Why would you think that?" he asks. Quiet. Measured. The voice of someone who is choosing his words with care because he senses landmines beneath the surface of the conversation.
I shrug, aiming for casual. Landing somewhere closer to brittle.
"Well, Rafe said plenty of times that I am ugly. You were there. You surely agreed."
The words come out lighter than they feel.
I have had years to practice the delivery, years to refine the art of mentioning old wounds with a breeziness that deflects attention from how deep they actually go.
If you say the cruel things about yourself first, if you beat others to the punch, the impact is dulled. Theoretically.
Cal's frown deepens, carving lines between his brows.
"I have never verbally agreed to any of that," he says.
I smile.
It is the smile I use when I am trying to keep sadness from reaching my eyes and failing. The one that sits on my lips like a guest who arrived at the wrong party and is trying to blend in.
"Just because you do not verbally agree with what someone says does not mean you are not supporting it."
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.
"Elaborate," he says quietly. "I want to understand what you mean. Properly."
I consider him for a moment. His posture has shifted, his body angling toward me on the couch, his elbows resting on his knees.
The glasses make his amber eyes look larger, more earnest, the frames drawing attention to the furrow of concentration between his brows.
He is not asking to argue. He is asking to learn, and the distinction matters more than he probably realizes.
I fold my hands in my lap, the jersey's fabric bunching around my wrists.
"If you do not stand up for someone, why would they assume you are not against them?
" I ask, letting the question breathe before continuing.
"Every time Rafe bullied me. Every time he insulted my intelligence or mocked my appearance or made me feel like existing in the same space as him was an inconvenience I should apologize for. You were there. Beside him. Silent."
The word silent hangs between us with the weight of a verdict.
"You may not have spoken his cruelty into existence, but you stood in its shadow and let it grow.
Standing up against his words would have proved you disagreed.
It would have forced Rafe to confront the possibility that maybe being an asshole is not the social currency he thinks it is.
That maybe the people he surrounds himself with do not actually endorse his behavior, and maybe that realization would have made him pause. "
I shrug again, smaller this time.
"But you stayed quiet. And quiet, when someone is hurting in front of you, is its own language."
The apartment falls still.
No television noise. No hum from the refrigerator. Just the muffled sounds of campus life filtering through the windows and the particular silence that descends when two people are sitting with a truth that neither can unsay.
Cal does not defend himself.
He does not deflect or minimize or perform the exhausting gymnastics of reframing his complicity as misunderstanding. He sits with what I said, turning it over behind his eyes, and the absence of excuses is more meaningful than any apology he could construct.
Then he moves.
He slides off the couch and kneels in front of me.
Not dramatically. Not with the grand choreography of a man performing vulnerability for an audience. He lowers himself to the floor with a quiet purposefulness, settling onto his knees so we are eye level, his amber gaze meeting mine without flinching.
My eyes widen.
"What are you doing?" I ask, a nervous laugh punctuating the question. "Proposing?"
He laughs, and the sound breaks the tension by a fraction, loosening the knot forming in my sternum.
"No, because I do not have ring money." His grin is crooked and self-deprecating. "But let me get into the NHL and I will circle back."
Heat floods my cheeks so fast it should register on a thermometer.
"Fuck off," I mutter, slapping his chest with the flat of my palm. The contact lands against solid muscle beneath the white shirt, warm even through the fabric, and I pull my hand back before my fingers can register how good that felt.
He catches my wrist.
Not aggressively. With a gentleness that contradicts his size, his fingers wrapping around my forearm to still me, his thumb finding the pulse point on the inside of my wrist where my heartbeat is probably broadcasting my internal state with the subtlety of a foghorn.
His other hand settles on my waist.
The weight of his palm against my hip, separated from my skin by only the thin fabric of his jersey, sends a current of awareness through my body that I file under things I refuse to examine on a Thursday evening.
"How I treated you since we were kids was unfair."
The statement arrives without preamble. No hedging. No qualifiers. No but I was young or but I did not mean it or any of the hundred escape routes that people use to avoid the unvarnished shape of their own wrongdoing.
I blink at him.
Surprised, despite myself, that he has chosen this moment to open this door. We have been circling this conversation since the day I arrived on campus, stepping around it with the careful choreography of two people who know where the cracks in the floor are and have silently agreed to avoid them.
He looks down at his hand on my waist, then back to my face.
"I thought supporting Rafe was the only path to becoming an official pack," he confesses.
"I have always craved company. Always needed people around me.
Being alone terrifies me in a way I have never fully admitted because Alphas are not supposed to be afraid of solitude, are they?
We are supposed to be self-sufficient and dominant and perfectly comfortable in our own skin without needing anyone to validate our existence. "
The vulnerability in his voice is raw. Unpracticed. Not the polished confession of someone who has rehearsed this speech, but the stumbling honesty of a man speaking truths he has barely acknowledged to himself.
"I thought if I sucked up to Rafe. Supported his behavior.
Laughed at his cruelty and stood in his corner even when his corner was built on other people's pain.
Then I would fit in. I would find a pack.
I would find an Omega who wanted me, and the loneliness would finally stop eating me alive from the inside out. "
He swallows hard.
"Obviously, I have learned over the years that it is more complicated than that.
That loyalty to a person who treats others like garbage does not earn you love.
It earns you proximity to their toxicity and a front-row seat to the damage they leave behind.
But I was hopeful in some stupid, naive way.
Thinking I had to be an asshole to win the girl.
Like the enemies-to-lovers plots in Netflix shows where the cruel Alpha gets the Omega in the final episode and the audience swoons instead of calling the police. "
I sigh, the sound carrying more affection than exasperation.
"You know enemies to lovers does not translate to real life, right? That trope requires a screenplay, a sympathetic backstory reveal in act two, and a soundtrack that emotionally manipulates the audience into forgiving behavior that would result in a restraining order in any functioning society."
He chuckles.
The sound is warm and self-aware, the laugh of a man who has already arrived at the same conclusion and is not offended by having it reflected back to him.
"I am starting to realize that, yeah." His smile dims slightly, his gaze dropping to his hand on my waist. "Maybe I tried the hopeful romantic route and got my heart broken instead."
"Really?" My voice softens.
"Yeah." He nods, the admission landing heavy. "There was an Omega. A while back. I liked her. Genuinely liked her, not the performative interest Alphas display when they are trying to impress their friends, but the real, quiet, keeps-you-up-at-night kind. And she despised me."
His jaw tightens briefly.
"Not because of how I looked or my status on the team.
It was exactly what you described. I may not have insulted her directly, but my actions communicated everything my mouth did not.
The company I kept. The behavior I endorsed through silence.
She saw through the neutral expression and recognized the complicity underneath, and she wanted no part of a man who watched cruelty happen and did nothing. "
He meets my gaze with an honesty that makes my chest ache.
"I did not understand it back then. But having you explain it, having you put the concept into words I can picture and apply to real memories, helps. It makes the pattern visible in a way my own reflection could not."
He pauses, his thumb tracing an absent arc against my hip through the jersey fabric.