Eyes on You

Chapter:8 His Pov

The week following "The Worksheet Incident" had been a slow-motion car crash of distracted thoughts and missed cues.

I was officially a mess. My friends in the second row—the guys I usually led with a lazy laugh or a shrug—were starting to look at me sideways. They’d c***k a joke about the upcoming football match or a new game, and I’d just nod vaguely, my eyes already drifting toward the middle of the room before I could even catch myself. My focus was fraying at the edges. The "Second Row Mafia" was losing its leader to a girl who hadn’t even spoken more than a single word to me, and the worst part was, I couldn't even explain the pull she had on me.

Thursday arrived with a clarity that felt almost aggressive. The rain had finally cleared, leaving the classroom flooded with sharp, unforgiving sunlight that streamed through the tall windows. Every mote of dust dancing in the air, every deep scratch on the old wooden desks, and every nervous twitch of my hands was illuminated in high definition. There was nowhere to hide.

The teacher had set us a translation task—ten minutes of absolute, pin-drop silence. It was the kind of quiet that usually made me restless, the kind of quiet where I’d normally be whispering something to the guy next to me just to break the tension. But today, I was leaning back, my pen tapping a mindless, frantic rhythm against my chin.

I told myself I was just thinking about the French verbs. I told myself I was focused on the chalkboard. But my internal magnet was pulling my head to the right, and the pull was getting impossible to ignore. It was like there was a wire connecting my eyes to her desk, and someone was slowly cranking the tension.

I decided to take the risk. I needed to know. I wanted to see if she was looking. I wanted to see if that spark from the worksheet—that literal electric shock when our fingers brushed—was just some desperate invention of my own head.

I shifted my weight, pivoted my chair with a soft, agonizing creak, and turned my entire upper body around.

I expected to catch her looking at her book. I expected to have to wait for her to look up so I could offer a quick, practiced smirk and turn away before things got weird.

Instead, I crashed head-first into her gaze.

She wasn't just looking. She was staring. She was leaned forward, her chin resting in her hand, her eyes locked onto me with an intensity so raw it made the air in my lungs simply vanish. I was caught. For the first time in my life, I had no backup plan. No joke, no cool remark, no easy way to slide out of the moment. My "coasting strategy" had just hit a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour.

I froze. My brain sent a frantic Aborted Mission signal to my muscles, but nothing moved. I just stared back, trapped in the crossfire of her eyes. For two agonizingly long seconds, the entire world—the ticking of the wall clock, the rustle of paper, the sunlight—simply ceased to exist. It was just us, suspended in this high-voltage silence that felt like it was humming in my ears.

And then, the heat hit.

It started at the base of my spine and surged upward like a wildfire, a violent, hot flush that I knew was turning my neck and the tips of my ears a deep, traitorous crimson. I felt exposed. I felt like the sunlight was a spotlight and she could see every single thought I’d had about her since the first day of school. I felt like she could see the song lyrics I’d never admit to thinking about.

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. I swallowed hard, my throat feeling like it was suddenly full of dry sand. I saw her eyes widen, mirroring my own sudden panic, and that was the final blow to my ego. I realized I wasn't the only one who felt the gravity in the room shift.

I snapped my head back around so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash.

I gripped my pen until my knuckles turned white, staring down at my notebook as if the blank pages held the secrets to the universe. My chest was heaving, and I was desperately trying to regulate my breathing so the guy next to me wouldn't ask if I was having a heart attack. I felt like I had just been caught committing a crime.

She was looking. She was actually, undeniably looking at me.

But as the adrenaline began to cool, a dark, cold realization started to settle in the pit of my stomach, turning the heat into ice. I remembered why I’d been looking back there in the first place at the start of the year. I remembered the rumors about Ritika. I remembered that Ritika was sitting right behind her, in the exact same line of sight.

A wave of doubt hit me harder than the flush had. Was she staring at me because she liked me? Or was she staring at me because she’d caught me trying to look at her friend for the last three weeks? Did she think I was a creep? Did she think I was using her as a human shield just to get a glimpse of Ritika?

The thought was nauseating. I sat there, the supposed "cool guy" of the second row, feeling smaller and more confused than I ever had. I had finally gotten the attention I wanted, but now I was terrified that I’d earned it for all the wrong reasons. I wanted to turn around and explain, but the silence of the classroom felt like a physical barrier I couldn't break.

I wasn't coasting anymore. I was drowning.