Chapter 2 HIS EYES ON ME

LIZA

Everyone thinks the beautiful ones have it easy. Like, that beauty is like armour or something. But it's not. Sometimes it's a target, a package and beautiful embroidery covering invisible scars while you wave through it all, smiling brazenly even while broken just to avoid anything tampering with the image of perfection the world has of you at all times.

I discovered that at a young age.

You walk down the corridor with hips that sashay too far, curves that refuse to fit neatly into polite bounds, and suddenly everyone has a name for you. Temptation. Distraction. Sin.

I never asked for that. I just wanted to be invisible and map my world in silence.

It failed.

Not then. Today.

And certainly not when Steel-Steel-looked at me like that.

Like I was something more or less than the name they called me.

As if I were a mermaid.

When he saved me that day, I was already hanging by a thread. That prof... I'd always known he creeped me out the first day. The way his gaze lingered on me too long, the way his hand rested on my back without reason. I should have spoken up about him. I didn't. Some part of me believed no one would ever listen to me. Or, worse, that they would blame me.

But Steel?

He came out of nowhere like a storm I was not expecting.

The look in his eyes when he knocked that thug out was not just anger. It was ownership. Like the idea of somebody laying hands on me without me wanting it provoked something deep in his very heart.

Nobody ever did that for me before.

Nobody's ever looked at me like this.

Then, later, I should have been frightened of him. He's a threat-I've heard the gossip. Tattoos, a leather jacket, riding a behemoth of a motorcycle and giving commands to the Vikings like royalty. But perched on the stairs with him as the sun dropped below the admin building, I did not feel threatened.

I felt safe.

And that terrified me more than anything.

"Angel Mark," he'd said deliberately, savouring my name after all those years of silence.

I hadn't heard that name in ages. It used to be soft and hopeful-sounding. But that version of me got lost a long time ago.

I reminded myself to leave. To suit up. But then he smiled at me.

Not the smug, arrogant smile that everyone describes him wearing like a mask. No, this was not like that. This was different. Sincerely, Almost shy. Like he was afraid to breathe too hard and ruin the moment.

And so, bit by bit, my defenses crumbled.

We started talking more. At first, I just lost things. He'd walk me to class, get me coffee with the wrong name written on the cup intentionally, and come to my art presentations even when I didn't ask him to.

He made me laugh.

He made me want to talk again.

I learnt about him too. Like how he grew up in an orphanage until the sheriff adopted him. How he never quite felt like he belonged, even when he was a soccer team captain. Loyalty was the one thing that mattered most to him because he never had any as a child.

I could see it in the way he gazed at me. Protective. Curious. Gentle, even when he didn't say a word.

One evening, I asked him why he kept showing up.

He rested against his bike, arms folded, wind blowing on his shirt, speaking in a low voice.

"Because I blew my chance once. I'm not going to do it again."

My heart missed a beat.

Because while we never spoke in high school, he paid attention to me. And I paid attention to him too.

The angry boy who fought against everyone.

The one who walked the halls as if defying someone to touch his boils.

And maybe that's what this is-two battered souls feeling something familiar in one another.

A beginning we never realised we needed.

Or maybe something we've always longed for.

They started coming for me in whispers first.

Catty comments down the hall, obligatory smiles twisted across lip-glossed lips.

"Enjoy it while it lasts," a girl snarled at the lockers. "Steel gets bored quickly."

"Did he tell you he was with Madison last semester? Or Ava the semester before that?"

I never replied. I never did. But the words burrowed into my skin like needles.

Steel wasn't just popular-he was in demand. Almost worshipped on campus. Soccer team captain, biker king, strolling Original Sin with a jawline that appeared chiselled by gods. I wasn't blind. I knew he was gawked at. I knew a decent half of the women on campus would crawl if he so much as looked at them.

So why me?

Even my best friend, Catalina, warned me.

"Liza", she said to me one night as we sat in the dorm courtyard. "I love you, but you need to be realistic. Guys like him don't settle. They experiment. And you're just the latest flavour."

I hoped she was wrong.

But that seed of doubt? It rooted itself deep.

Until Steel came along. Every time.

When he caught one of the girls "accidentally" pushing my sketchpad into the fountain, he wasted no time. Pulled her aside, voice firm but as cold as a blade.

"Touch her stuff again, and I'll see to it you never walk this campus feeling secure."

And when I ghosted him for a day, unaware, drowning in voices that were not my own, he hunted me down behind the studio building.

Sat beside me for a minute without uttering a word before speaking in a low voice, "If I scare you off, I'll leave. But if it's them causing you to question us... I'll spend every damn day proving them wrong."

I turned to face him then, my throat lodged in my chest.

"I don't know how to do this," I gasped.

Steel's calloused fingers wrapped around mine like a vow.

"Then we learn together. But I'm not going anywhere, Sin. Not unless you tell me to."

And with that, the cloudy mood dissipated.

The uncertainty dulled.

Because no matter how hard the world boomed, Steel was louder. Not with words-but with presence. Action. Complacency.

I was still learning how to trust.

But Steel?

He made me want to.