Page 29 of Reckless Hate

But the guy didn’t seem to feel awkward by her silence. “I’m Rishi, by the way,” he introduced himself. “Rishab Mathur. I’m in third-year textile engineering too and we have a lot of common classes together. I wanted to talk to you, but you always leave as soon as the classes finish.”

Although the words could be assumed as flirty, strangely, she wasn’t getting the vibes.

“Can I take a look at the results?” he asked.

She paused another moment. And then, she took a step aside so the guy could check.

That’s when she noticed him properly. She was taken aback by how stunningly good-looking he was. He looked like a male model, almost close to near perfection. Every feature of his was symmetric.

Immediately, her mind compared the guy’s looks with that of her enemy. While the guy in front of her looked like an angel, Ved Simha looked like a fallen devil.

Ved had a chiseled face that could be considered as overly masculine. But it was his dimples that he inherited from his mother and other small imperfections with an eyebrow scar from a childhood injury and a twisted dark smile that made him appear like a bad boy, which attracted the female population.

Not me. I’m not attracted to him. I hate the jerk.

Even as she thought those words, she recalled the strange sizzle she felt whenever Ved was close. She shook her head.

She was annoyed that her enemy was occupying too much of her mind.

The guy in front of her looked up. “I’m impressed by the results. This is great.”

She nodded. “It is good but not great.” Not yet. “I’m still working on it. I want to push the tensile values a little higher.”

The guy nodded. “I’m working on a similar fabric too.”

He went to a different workstation and brought back a fabric. “This is the one I’ve been working on.”

She took it from him and used the prongs to stretch the fabric.

“This is good,” she said. She was impressed by the results as well, which were nearly as good as hers.

She was handing the fabric back to him when she saw the guy’s hands. Or rather a portion of his wrists. With perfect incision, the healed cuts appeared like pale lines across his left-hand wrist.

Looking at them for a moment, she looked up at him.

He had a dry smile. “Some have scars outside like me, and some carry them inside.”

She didn’t say anything to that personal remark.

The guy must be the same age as her, and like most students at Simha, he must come from a privileged background. But she knew money and privilege didn’t necessarily protect a person from tragedy or driving someone to the edge.

Seeing his stunning face that was at complete odds with his scars, she felt momentarily off-balance. And then, suddenly, it clicked. It was a wild guess, but it made sense.

Her eyes fell on his uniform that he wore with perfection and his hair was perfectly styled even when it was the end of a long day of classes.

His dry smile appeared once again. “You are quite smart.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I usually work solo,” he said. “But after having checked your work, I feel we would make a great team.”

She preferred to work solo too, but she was so close to achieving perfection with her fabric that she might need another set of eyes and brain to help her.

“I’ll think about it,” she replied.

“How about we meet for breakfast tomorrow?” the guy asked. “I can tell you about my work and what I think we should do together to accomplish the perfect material.”

Under normal circumstances, she would have immediately rejected the breakfast plan. But knowing what she did about the guy, she agreed.

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