Page 13

He walks out, and I forget what I was panicking about.

The jeans fit. Not perfectly—they’re a little loose in the waist—but they fit in all the ways that matter. The henley stretches across his chest and shoulders in a way that should be illegal, and the sleeves push up his forearms, and he’s standing in my hallway in real clothes looking like—

“Oh no,” I say quietly, to myself.

He looks like a person. He looks like an actual, real, devastatingly attractive man. He looks like the guy you’d see at a farmer’s market holding a coffee and a bag of produce and you’d think about him for a week. He looks like a dating app profile that’s too good to be real, which, technically, he is.

“Is this acceptable?” he asks.

“It’s—yeah. It’s fine.” It is the opposite of fine. “You…” I stop myself mid-sentence, shocked by the thought in my brain.

The buzzer rings.

Liv comes in first. She’s carrying two bottles of wine and wearing heeled boots, because Liv dresses for every occasion, including meeting synthetic humans on a Tuesday.

She makes it exactly four steps into my apartment before she sees Aiden. She stops. Her bag slides slowly down her arm. “Ruby.”

“Yeah?”

“Holy shit. You didn’t say he looked like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like—” She waves her hand at him, up and down, taking in the full picture. “Like someone put Henry Cavill and a Calvin Klein ad in a blender. That’s not a robot. That’s a man. That’s more man than most men.”

“He’s not a robot,” I say. “He’s—it’s complicated.”

“Hi,” Aiden says. “I’m Aiden.”

Liv stares at him. Then at me. Then back at him. “Your voice is like that too? Of course it is.” She pushes one of the wine bottles into my hands. “We’re going to need both of these.”

Gemma arrives two minutes later, carrying what appears to be a small toolkit and a notebook. She walks in, sees Aiden, and her reaction is the opposite of Liv’s—she goes quiet. Her eyes narrow. She moves toward him slowly, circling, taking in details with a focus I usually only see when she’s in her lab.

Aiden holds perfectly still while Gemma orbits him. He’s clocked that this is a situation requiring caution, and he’s responding the only way he knows how—by becoming a statue.

“Can I see your hands?” Gemma asks.

He holds them out. She examines his fingers, turns his wrists over, runs her thumb along his palm. Her face reveals nothing, which from Gemma means her brain is on fire.

“Remarkable,” she murmurs. “The tissue integration is seamless. I can’t find a transition point.” She looks up at him. “Can you feel this?”

“Yes.”

“What does it feel like?”

“Pressure. Warmth. Your hands are approximately two degrees cooler than Ruby’s.”

Gemma glances at me. I suddenly find the wine bottle very interesting.

Avery arrives last. She leans against the doorframe with her jacket still on, arms crossed, and takes in the full scene—Gemma examining Aiden’s hands, Liv pouring wine with aggressive enthusiasm, me standing in my own kitchen looking like a hostage. Which, I basically am.

Avery looks at Aiden. Doesn’t circle him, doesn’t exclaim, doesn’t analyze. Just looks. A long, steady, unhurried look.

“Damn,” she says.

“Hello,” Aiden says.

Avery holds the look for another beat, then pushes off the doorframe and walks past him to the kitchen. “I’m ordering Thai. Everyone good with Thai?”