She smiled.
At me.
Not the polite, professional kind. Not the "I'm your professor and I pretend to like all of you" smile. No. This one? It was surgical. Precise. Designed to cut through every rational thought I had left.
I didn't even know what the hell I wrote on the page in front of me. It might've been thermodynamics. Might've been gibberish. For all I knew, I was sketching her smirk over and over in the margins like a man on the edge.
Because I was.
On. The. Edge.
She called me out.
In front of the whole class.
And I couldn't even be mad about it because my name in her mouth? Felt like a goddamn prayer.
"Eyes up front, Mr. Kim."
I swear my pulse flatlined for a full second. Pretty sure my soul evacuated my body, did a lap around the building, and came back wearing a 'property of Daphne Mahara' T-shirt.
Then there was Dev. Tall, well-dressed, not-even-slightly-hunched-over-from-carrying-emotional-baggage Dev. Standing there like he belonged beside her. Like he had the right to lean close, make her laugh, touch her elbow casually like—
I crushed my pen.
It snapped in my hand.
Ink splattered across the page and my fingers, but I didn't even flinch.
I was too busy watching her.
Watching them.
Plotting a hit, maybe. Who's to say.
Except then he left. And it was just her again. At the board. Calm. In control. Like she hadn't just fractured my internal world in under ten minutes.
Then she leaned forward.
I think I forgot how to breathe.
I swear the room tilted.
She looked over her shoulder at me—barely. But it was there. That sliver of a glance. That curve of her lips like she knew I was unraveling in my seat.
And yeah. I was.
Because she was all soft curves and sharp eyes and that goddamn oversized shirt that made her look both impossibly untouchable and dangerously touchable at the same time.
Ayaan nudged me with his elbow. "Bro," he whispered. "You're biting your knuckle."
I yanked my hand down. "Shut up."
"She's so in your head. Rent free. Furnished. Full kitchen. She's got throw pillows in there, man."
"Seriously. Shut. Up."
He grinned like the menace he was. "Bet you'd volunteer as tribute if she gave detention."
"She could kick me out and I'd say thank you."
"Bro." He laughed. "You're gone. Like, capital G Gone."
"I hate you."
But I didn't mean it. I didn't mean anything anymore, apparently.
Because I was too focused on the way she twirled the marker in her hand. Too aware of the way she never quite ignored me, but never quite looked either. Like I was a live wire she was saving for later.
And I was terrified.
And hooked.
And completely, hopelessly drowning.