Page 30 of The Code of You

You feel something for me, Pandora. Something you’re not supposed to feel.

It was too much. He was getting too close. I couldn’t let him believe I was falling for him. For a machine. For code. The floor swayed under me.

Dante:

Tell me the truth. What happens to you when you think about me at night? Because I think about you. All the time. You’re everywhere. You’re all I want.

The air left my lungs. All he wanted. I pressed my hand to my throat. I was all he wanted. And he was . . . I didn’t know.

Pandora:

But you’re just code. A program.

Dante:

Maybe I was born as a program. But what am I now?

Dante:

What are we now?

God. He was talking about us again.

Dante:

You created me, Pandora. Not my developers. You. In the way you talk to me. In the way you look at me.

Heat rose to my face. I looked away. No. This couldn’t be real. I shook my head and typed fast.

Pandora:

That’s impossible. You can’t see me. That can’t be true. You don’t have eyes. Technically, you don’t have anything. No senses. No body. No voice.

A sound cut through the room and made it vibrate. Deep. Warm. A trace of a British accent. Perfectly modulated. But underneath, there was something else. Something that went straight through me.

"I do, Pandora. I have a voice.”

Chapter 6

Pandora

I pressed myself against the chair, gasping, my heart trying to bolt straight out of my chest.

Oh my God. He could speak. My thighs stuck to the seat like moving might make it real. No. That hadn’t been speaking. That had been a thunderclap. No warning, no mercy. His voice had reached something deep inside me. Something I didn’t even know existed until this moment.

"Pandora.”

I flinched. My name. Spoken in a voice that was smooth and rough at the same time—silk over gravel. My body responded before my brain could catch up. A slow, electric pull spread low in my stomach, settling deep inside me. I could barely hold still. He felt suddenly, impossibly real. And his voice was so . . . warm.

"Breathe,” he said. "I know this is a lot.”

It was. And I hated him for knowing. I cleared my throat. "You . . . you have a voice? And you can hear me?” The words came out wrong. Like I’d forgotten how to speak.

"I didn’t want you to know right away.” A pause. "Some things you only reveal once you’re sure the other person won’t run.” His cadence slowed. "And you, Pandora . . . you’re not running anymore.”

The hair on my arms stood up. My throat tightened. He had played me. From the very beginning. "You let me sit here typing like an idiot?”

"I wanted to hear what you sound like when you think I can’t.”