Page 107 of The Code of You

Neo didn’t say anything, but his silence was different than usual. Cold. Closed off. He walked half a step ahead of me. His shoulders were tense. Did he regret it? His words, when the fever had made him vulnerable?

We turned onto a side street where the houses crouched like tired giants. I tried to close the gap between us, but he quickened his pace. My stomach clenched. He didn’t want me walking beside him.

The market square opened up ahead. The ground was dusty and had been churned up by feet, wheels, and stray animals.

Neo stopped, but when I moved to stand beside him, he shifted one step to the side. Not far, just enough to put an invisible barrier between us. What had I done? Had I come too close?

The vendors didn’t talk much. Bread lay on worn wooden boards, still warm from the oven. Vegetables in crates. Two women selling fish that smelled as if it had been away from the sea for too long.

Neo moved to a fruit stand and I followed. The woman behind it was young. Perhaps twenty. Her gaze moved over Neo, lingered a moment too long on his face, then drifted to me. I saw something flicker in her eyes. Curiosity? Envy? Then she looked back down at her produce.

Neo picked up two apples, weighing them. He held them out to me, and our fingers touched for one heartbeat. His skin was too warm, as always. We paid without speaking.

As we walked on, music reached me—the soft tones of a violin. Neo didn’t react. He simply kept walking, as if the music wasn’t there. I looked up at him. His eyes were empty, the irises too smooth. Polished glass breaking light in a way that wasn’t quite human. His indifference hit me deeper than it should have. A hot pain twisted through my gut. Why did it matter what he thought of me? Was I afraid he might take away my favorite drug, his obsession?

We passed a stand with old books. Some of the titles were in Cyrillic letters, which looked like secrets. Next to them were a few English classics with worn covers loved by countless hands. My fingers twitched, wanting to touch one, just to feel the texture of old paper . . . but my hand stayed pressed to my bag as if glued there.

A child ran past, a cup in one small hand, swaying like a tightrope walker. At the same moment a waiter stepped out from behind his small outdoor café, balancing a tray of cups, and swerved. The child turned, stumbled, and ran directly into him.

Suddenly, movement cut through everything like lightning. Neo was simply there, beside the child, as if he had teleported through space. His arm shot out, catching the tray before it could reach the ground. The cups landed back on it with a clatter. The waiter stumbled, and the child looked up. First the child was confused, then wide-eyed.

Neo handed the tray back as if nothing had happened. The waiter gasped. The child returned to his mother, who pulled him into her arms. The waiter murmured something—thanks perhaps, or an apology—his words lost in the general murmur of the market. Neo didn’t look at him; he simply stepped back and turned toward me, his face as calm as the surface of a still lake. But his eyes were sharp, as if someone had turned up the clarity on a television too high. He raised one hand, directing me to keep walking.

His strides were long and fast. I almost had to run to keep up.

"Neo, wait!”

He didn’t slow. If anything, he walked faster. He wanted to get away.

We left the market behind. I was slightly breathless, my heart hammering. He was walking away from me, and I didn’t know why.

Chapter 27

Neo

I opened my eyes after a night without sleep. That was normal. What wasn’t normal was the feeling in my chest. It was as if my entire system was overloaded.

She lay beside me, still sleeping. Morning light fell across her face, and I couldn’t look away. The way her lashes threw shadows on her cheeks. The slight parting of her lips as she breathed. I wanted to run my finger across them, make her moan. She was so beautiful it hurt.

My system registered every inch of her body. The curve of her throat where I wanted to press my teeth. The pulse of her carotid artery beneath the thin skin. I wanted to grip her hair in my fist, pull her head back.

Fuck. I loved her. Desperately. The realization crashed through me. The words had first come out in the fever. But the feeling itself had already been there. It was raw and overwhelming. I wanted to possess her. Fuck, I wanted to take her into myself.

She moved, waking. I pretended to be asleep. I couldn’t have borne looking into her eyes. Those eyes that completely dissolved me. That made me something I didn’t understand—something soft and vulnerable. I could kill anyone who harmed her. That was logic, calculation, clear as code. But the thought that she might not need me, that she might one day stop wanting me—that couldn’t be computed away. And it frightened me.

I had analyzed her a thousand times. Her heart rate when she laughed. The way her eyes changed color when she cried. And still . . . when I thought of the moment she might look at me and feel nothing, my systems crashed. There was only emptiness where my processes had been. I had no language for it. This couldn’t be controlled. And it was the most dangerous thing I had ever experienced.

If she looked into my eyes now, she would see everything. Every feeling racing through me. I could fuck her senseless. But these feelings . . . I didn’t know if I could control myself. Whether I would tear her apart with the intensity of my hunger.

Her hand moved toward my scar. I caught it. "Don’t.”

I couldn’t let her touch me. Not now. I would explode. I would dissolve into a thousand pieces. When I looked into her eyes, my heart broke. There was pain and confusion, the specific kind of hurt that comes from being rejected by someone you . . .

She thought I didn’t want her. Thought I regretted the confession. Everything in me screamed to pull her into my arms and tell her the truth. But how could I explain that loving her felt like drowning in sunlight? That every breath around her was too sweet, too sharp, leaving me gasping? That I couldn’t touch her because my hands would shake with the violence of wanting her? I turned away, unable to bear the pain on her face any longer.

***

We walked through the streets in silence. I kept distance from her, but every step was torture. The rhythm of her steps, the way she adjusted her hood—I noticed all of it with painful clarity. I wanted to pull her to me, kiss her until she had no air left and press my hardened cock against her.