Page 7 of His Problem Alpha
It’s him. It’s the sound of Devon.
Five songs in, I realize what I’m doing. A playlist is taking shape—each track a different facet of him. The quick, staccato beat of his footsteps. The rare, genuine laugh I heard through the wall. The cutting precision of his sarcasm. The unexpected softness of his apology in the kitchen.
It’s too intimate. Too revealing. Not just of him, but of me. Of how closely I’ve been listening, how deep he’s gotten under my skin without either of us realizing it.
A hot wave of panic washes over me. I select the entire folder. My finger hovers over the delete key. This is a mistake. Getting this close, even sonically, is a mistake.
Caring leads to loss. Always has, always will. Ethan’s face flashes through my mind, his easy grin in the passenger seat of my old car. The proof I never needed.
I hit delete.
The action feels like cutting off my own arm, but I have to do it. Self-preservation. Devon isn’t someone I can allow myself to care about, to notice, to immortalize in sound. He’s a temporary problem, not a permanent fixture.
I force myself back to Professor Harrington’s project, rebuilding it from memory with mechanical precision. But even as my fingers move over the keyboard, setting cue points and adjusting levels, I can’t escape the ghost of the melody I created for Devon.
And I can’t escape the memory of his scent in the kitchen—changing, sweetening, calling to something primal in me that I’ve spent the last six years trying to bury.
I scrub a hand over my face, trying to erase the memory. But I don’t understand that the change isn’t just in my head. It's in the air, in the floorboards between our rooms. And it's getting stronger.
Devon
The rage from yesterday has apparently decided to take up permanent residence in my joints.
I wake up feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck, then backed over, then hit again for good measure. A low, throbbing ache lives deep in my bones, and a strange, feverish heat crawls under my skin. Even the light brush of my sheets feels like sandpaper.
“Perfect timing,” I mutter to the empty room, my voice a rough croak. My body protests as I force myself to sit up. “Nothing says ‘professional freelancer’ like being incapacitated by stress-induced illness right before a major deadline.”
The digital clock on my nightstand reads 9:37 AM. I’ve already slept through two alarms. Great. Fantastic. Just what I need when I have exactly two days to finish the Eco-Soap rebrand before Monday’s presentation.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed, and the room tilts alarmingly. My hand shoots out, gripping the nightstand to steady myself as the world spins. This has to be some kindof karmic retribution for unplugging Alex’s equipment. The universe has a sick sense of humor, making me physically ill after that confrontation in my bedroom.
The memory of Alex crowding me against the wall, his heat and scent and fury a physical presence, sends an unexpected shiver down my spine. I blame it on the fever. It’s just a fever.
“Coffee,” I decide, my voice raspy. “Coffee will fix this.”
Shuffling to the kitchen in sweatpants and a t-shirt that feels oddly rough against my skin, I’m grateful for the silence. Alex must still be asleep after his all-night mixing session. Small mercies.
The coffee maker hums to life, and I lean heavily against the counter, my limbs feeling like lead weights. I pull out my phone to scroll through emails, but the screen is too bright, the words swimming before my eyes. I squint, trying to focus. Three new messages from the Eco-Soap people, all with urgent subject lines. A reminder about Monday’s presentation from Richard Shaw’s assistant. An invoice that needs to be paid. My head pounds in time with my pulse.
The rich, dark smell of brewing coffee fills the kitchen, and my stomach lurches violently. I clap a hand over my mouth, stumbling to the sink and dry heaving. Nothing comes up—I haven’t eaten since yesterday—but the waves of nausea are intense and deeply wrong.
“What the hell?” I gasp, turning on the faucet and splashing cold water on my face. The coffee smell, my usual lifeblood, now makes me want to vomit. That can’t be good.
I abandon the coffee and fill a glass with water instead, gulping it down. My throat feels parched, my skin too hot. I press the cool glass against my forehead, trying to think through the fog in my brain.
A flu? Possible, but I never get sick. Food poisoning? I haven’t eaten anything questionable. Stress? Definitely a contributor, but this feels… different. More intense. More elemental.
I make it back to my room and collapse onto my desk chair, opening my laptop. I have work to do, illness be damned. The Eco-Soap rebrand won’t finish itself, and I can’t afford to lose this client after yesterday’s disaster.
But as I stare at the screen, the colors seem too vivid, almost painful to look at. The low hum of my laptop fan, normally unnoticeable, sounds like a jet engine whining in my ears. I wince, turning down the screen’s brightness, but it doesn’t help. Every sense is dialed up to eleven, raw and oversensitive.
“Just power through,” I tell myself, gritting my teeth. “You’ve worked through worse.”
I manage about twenty minutes of unfocused design work before another wave of heat washes over me, this one so intense it steals my breath. Sweat breaks out across my forehead, my back, under my arms. My t-shirt clings to me, suddenly unbearable against my hypersensitive skin.
I peel it off, tossing it aside, but even the air against my bare chest feels abrasive. What the hell is happening to me?
A sound filters through the wall—Alex’s stereo, playing something low and bass-heavy. It’s not loud, not even close to his usual volume, but each beat hits me like a physical blow, reverberating through my bones and setting my teeth on edge.
