C3 The First Crack

I woke up the next morning with one single thought looping in my head like a song I could not turn off.

Alexander Black had almost kissed me. Almost.

That word had been sitting on my chest since last night, heavy and irritating, refusing to leave. I stood in front of my mirror, fastening the last button of my blouse, and studied my own reflection like it might have answers.

I had expected to feel victorious. Instead, my stomach was doing something strange and fluttery, and my hands would not stay still. That was unacceptable.

The bet was simple. “Make Alexander Black fall for me.” Nowhere in the terms did it say I had to fall for him first, and I intended to keep it that way. So I decided to change my strategy entirely. No chasing. No obvious flirting. No conveniently standing too close to him in doorways. I was going to make him notice me without giving him a single thing to hold onto. At least, that was the plan.

When I walked into the classroom, Alexander was already there, papers spread across his desk like always. He looked up, and his eyes met mine for exactly one second too long. Something in his expression flickered — subtle, but I caught it. His gaze dropped over me, just briefly, then climbed back to my face, and a faint crease appeared between his eyebrows before he looked away.

I almost smiled. He noticed. Good. I walked past him without saying a word, and I could feel his eyes following me the entire way to my seat, like a hand pressed lightly against my back. I sat down, heart thudding a little faster than it should have for something so small.

A few seconds later, he cleared his throat. “Good morning, Claire.” I looked up, all innocence. “Good morning, Professor.”

Nothing else. No commentary, no teasing remark about his tie or his terrible coffee habit. His eyes narrowed slightly, suspicious already.

“What happened to your usual commentary?” he asked.

I shrugged one shoulder. “I am learning self-control.”

Something flickered across his face, amusement, maybe surprise, maybe both fighting for the same real estate. “That is progress,” he said.

“I know,” I said, and smiled sweetly before opening my notebook and refusing to look at him again.

At least, not directly. Every few minutes, I caught him glancing toward my side of the room, and every single time, I pretended not to notice, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning. It was strangely satisfying, watching him try to figure out what I was doing. Until I realized something that made my pen stop moving mid-sentence.

I was not enjoying making him uncomfortable anymore. I was enjoying being noticed by him. That distinction, small as it sounded, made my stomach twist into something uncomfortably tight.

After class, Alexander stopped me before I could slip out the door. “Claire.”

I turned. He stood beside his desk, one hand resting against the edge of it, sleeves rolled up like he had already forgotten he was supposed to look untouchable.

“Your next assignment,” he said, holding out a file.

I took it. Our fingers brushed. Neither of us pulled away immediately — it lasted maybe a second, but a second was more than enough time for my whole body to notice. I felt the faint tightening of his fingers before he finally let go, and judging by the way his jaw shifted, so did he.

His eyes lifted to mine. Neither of us said anything for a moment that stretched far longer than it should have.

Then he stepped back, clearing his throat like he was resetting himself. “Read it.”

I opened the folder. It concerned a meeting with three senior executives, and I frowned immediately. “You want me to present this?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because you want to inherit Blackwood,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“And?” I asked, already bracing myself. “You will have to convince people who do not care about your surname,” he said.

That stung more than I wanted to admit. I closed the folder with a snap. “You think I cannot?”

“I think you have not had to prove it yet,” he said, calm as ever, which somehow made it worse. My pride flared instantly. “Fine,” I said, and turned for the door.

“Claire,” he said.

I looked back. His expression had softened, all the sharp edges gone for a moment. “Do not try to impress them,” he said. I frowned, literally confused now. “Then what should I do?” I asked.

“Know what you are talking about,” he said simply.

I stared at him. That was annoyingly reasonable, the kind of advice that made me want to argue purely on principle and yet had nothing wrong with it. "You make everything sound easy,” I said.

“It is not,” he said, and his voice changed — quieter, the humor gone. For a brief second I saw something tired flicker behind his eyes, something he did not intend to show me. It vanished almost as quickly as it appeared.

I wondered what had put it there. Before I could ask, he looked back down at the folder on his desk. “Tomorrow. Nine o’clock.”

I nodded and walked toward the door. Halfway there, I glanced back. He was still watching me. This time, when our eyes met, he did not look away, and neither did I.

The meeting was worse than I expected, and I had expected it to be terrible. The first executive interrupted my introduction before I finished a single sentence. The second one questioned every figure on the page like I had invented them out of thin air. The third leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and asked with a smirk I wanted to slap right off his face, “Are these your numbers, Miss Black, or did your grandfather prepare them for you?”

My face burned. Normally I would have destroyed him with my surname alone and enjoyed doing it. Instead, Alexander’s voice surfaced in my mind. “Do not try to impress them. Know what you are talking about.”

I opened the report. “These are my numbers,” I said, and turned the page with a steadiness I did not entirely feel. “And I can explain every one of them.”

The meeting dragged on for forty minutes. I did not win everyone over, not even close. But I answered every question they threw at me. When I did not know something, I said so instead of bluffing my way through it. When they challenged me, I defended my position without dragging my grandfather’s name into a single sentence.

By the time it ended, I walked into the hallway feeling wrung out completely. Alexander was waiting near the window, arms crossed, watching me approach.

“You were watching me, Professor,” I said. “I was evaluating your performance there, Claire,” he replied.

“That is a very convenient word,” I said, raising an eyebrow. His lips curved slightly, before giving off a little smile. “You did well.”

I stared at him, my heart doing something ridiculous. “Was that a compliment?”

“Yes,” he replied. I stepped closer, mostly to see what he would do. “Say it again.”

His eyebrows lifted, but he did not step back. “You did well,” he repeated. I smiled. “There. That was not difficult.”

His smile deepened, and something in my chest tightened without my permission. When Alexander genuinely smiled, the severe lines around his eyes softened completely, and for one unfair second, he looked younger, warmer, almost boyish. I found myself staring far longer than I should have, my pulse picking up speed like it had somewhere urgent to be.

His smile slowly faded. “What?” he asked. “Nothing,” I said quickly. “You are staring,” he said.

“I was not.”

“You were.”

I looked away, my cheeks warming despite my best efforts. “Maybe I was thinking.”

“About?” he asked. I looked back at him, and the words came out before I could stop them. “You.”

His expression shifted. The amusement disappeared for half a second, replaced by something warmer, something that made my breath catch in my throat. Then he straightened, composing himself again like a man closing a door quietly. “You are learning,” he said.

“So are you,” I said. He gave me a questioning look. “How?”

“You smiled,” I answered him.

He actually laughed. It was quiet, brief, but completely real, and I realized I had never heard him laugh before in my life. My stomach flipped in a way that had nothing to do with the meeting I had just survived, and I found myself wanting, embarrassingly, to hear it again.

That evening, I found him in the library. I stopped in the doorway and simply looked at him for a moment before he noticed me. He sat alone, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened, jacket draped carelessly over the back of his chair, buried under a stack of documents. He looked different outside the classroom. Less like my professor. More like a man carrying far too many responsibilities on shoulders that never seemed to complain about the weight.

I should have turned around and left. Instead, my feet carried me straight in. “You work too much,” I said. He looked up. “And you do not work enough.”

That actually made me smile. “I am improving.”

“I noticed,” he said.

I sat across from him. Neither of us spoke for several seconds, and the silence should have felt awkward. It did not. Usually I felt this desperate need to fill every quiet moment with something clever, but with Alexander, the silence felt almost comfortable, like sitting beside a fire that did not need tending.

He closed the document in front of him. “You did well today.”

“You already said that,” I said. “I meant it,” he said, and something in his voice made my chest ache in a way I did not have a name for yet.

I looked down at my hands. “Do you really think I can become my grandfather’s successor?”

He did not answer right away. When I finally looked up, his expression had turned serious. “I think you want his approval more than you want the company,” he said. My chest tightened painfully. “You do not know me that well.”

“Maybe not,” he said, his eyes staying steady on mine. “But I have noticed how you look at him whenever he walks into a room.”

I swallowed hard. I had not expected him to notice that, of all things. “You are wrong,” I said, though my voice betrayed me halfway through.

“Am I?” he asked, quiet and unbothered. I looked away. He did not push. Somehow, that made it worse than if he had.

After a moment, I whispered, “I just want him to be proud of me.”

When I looked back up, Alexander’s expression had changed completely. There was no teasing in his eyes now, no professor’s authority standing between us. Just something gentle, something that made my throat tighten. “I think he already is,” he said.

My heart gave a painful little twist. “You do not know that.”

“No,” he said, his voice softening further. “But I know what it looks like when someone expects more from a person because they believe that person is capable of it.”

I stared at him, and for once in my life, I had absolutely nothing clever to say back.

Then he reached across the table and slid my evaluation toward me. His fingers brushed mine. This time, neither of us moved away immediately. His eyes dropped to our hands, then slowly lifted back to mine, and the room suddenly felt far too quiet, far too small. I could feel the warmth of his fingers against mine, and my breath caught somewhere behind my ribs and refused to move.

He withdrew first. Not abruptly. Carefully. Almost reluctantly, like it cost him something.

I looked down at my own hand, still tingling where his had been, and wondered why something so small could feel like it meant absolutely everything. I stood up quickly, before I could embarrass myself any further.

“I should go,” I said. He nodded. “Goodnight, Claire.”

I reached the door, then stopped and looked back. Alexander was watching me, and it was not the way a professor watches his student, and it definitely was certainly not the way a man tolerates an irritating heiress he has been forced to tutor. It was something else entirely. Something I could not name yet, though my racing heart seemed determined to figure it out without my permission.

I smiled. “Goodnight.”

I walked away with my pulse hammering far too fast for a simple goodnight, and for the first time since making that ridiculous bet, I wondered whether my original plan had a serious flaw in it.

I had wanted Alexander to notice me. I had never once considered what would happen if I started noticing him too.