I tilt my head, studying the squint. His pupils are constricting against the light filtering through the canopy, but the effort seems disproportionate. Like the brightness is a personal offense his eyes refuse to negotiate with.
"Can you not see?"
The frown deepens.
"Well." A pause weighted with reluctant admission. "You knocked my glasses off."
I gasp.
"Oh, shit."
My head snaps to the side, scanning the trail around us. There. Approximately two feet to his left, resting against the exposed root of a birch tree. Wire-rimmed glasses. Delicate frame. Thin lenses that catch the morning light and throw tiny prisms across the packed earth.
Cracked.
Not just cracked. The left lens has a fracture running diagonally from the lower rim to the upper corner, splitting the glass into two distinct sections that are still holding together through what appears to be sheer optimism and a miracle of optical engineering. The right earpiece is bent at an angle that no earpiece was designed to achieve, jutting outward like a broken wing.
I reach for them, lifting the damaged frames with the delicate care of someone handling a baby bird. Or a murder weapon. Or an expensive piece of corrective eyewear that she just obliterated with her forehead.
"I am." I hold the glasses up, gritting my teeth as the full scope of the damage becomes visible. The left lens shifts in its setting, threatening to pop free entirely. "So sorry. Genuinely. I am incredibly sorry."
He frowns at the blurred shape of the glasses in my hand, his expression shifting from inconvenience to resignation. Not anger, I notice. Not the explosive, ego-driven fury that most Alphas display when their property is damaged by someone they consider beneath them.
Just a tired acceptance. Like broken glasses are a recurring theme in his life rather than an isolated incident.
"It's fine," he says again.
A beat of silence settles between us.
It stretches longer than it should. Long enough for me to become acutely aware of the birdsong filtering through the canopy overhead. The distant hammer of the woodpecker. Thesound of my own breathing, still elevated from the run, and his breathing beneath me, steady and controlled in a way that makes my hindbrain purr with an appreciation I would very much like to revoke.
"Are you going to get off me?" He tilts his head, and even through the squint, I catch a flicker of dry amusement buried in the question. "Or are you comfortable? Because I can wait."
Oh.
OH.
I am still sitting on him. Still straddling this stranger in the dirt like a feral gremlin who has claimed her territory and refuses to vacate the premises.
The blush returns. Nuclear grade. Incendiary. The kind of blush that starts at the sternum and climbs with the speed and intensity of a wildfire consuming drought-stricken brush.
"I am NOT comfortable!" The protest erupts with defensive force that probably undermines its own credibility. I scramble off him with the coordination of a newborn giraffe on a frozen lake, knees catching dirt, elbows flailing, the oversized t-shirt tangling around my thighs as I haul myself into a standing position that bears only a passing resemblance to dignity.
He sits up slowly. Brushes a leaf off his shoulder. Runs one hand through the ginger chaos on his head with the unbothered calm of someone who gets knocked to the ground by sprinting Omegas on a regular basis and has long since stopped being surprised by it.
I dust off my knees, palms stinging from the gravel embedded in the trail's surface, and pick up his glasses from where I set them on the root.
"Listen." I hold the damaged frames toward him. "I will pay for the repair. Whatever it costs. Full replacement if that's what it takes. Just tell me the number."
He sighs, rising to his feet with a fluidity that draws my attention to his full height. We are nearly eye to eye. Six foot two, maybe. Close enough to my five-eight that I do not have to crane my neck the way I usually do with Alphas, which is a pleasant change from the perpetual crick I develop at social functions surrounded by men who treat altitude as a personality trait.
He takes the wire-rimmed frames from my outstretched hand, his fingers brushing mine during the transfer in a contact so brief it should be insignificant. It is not. The ghost of his touch lingers on my skin like a static charge, and the cedar-graphite-amber scent spikes with proximity, hitting me with a fresh wave that makes my stomach clench.
He slides the broken glasses back onto his face. They sit crooked, the bent earpiece holding the right side at an angle that makes him look like he is perpetually questioning reality from a tilted perspective. The cracked lens catches the light and fractures it across his cheek in a tiny, accidental rainbow.
And I find myself thinking, against all reason and self-preservation, that he looks better without them.
"You definitely look better without glasses," I hear myself say, because apparently my mouth has disconnected from the portion of my brain responsible for social calibration.
