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Against me. With her hand on my chest and her forehead against my neck and her body pressed along my side, warm and heavy and trusting in a way that makes my entire system go quiet. Not shutdown quiet. A different quiet. A full quiet. Like everything I am has been running toward this moment without knowing it, and now that I’m here, the running can stop.

I don’t move.

Not because I can’t. I could stand up, carry her to bed, tuck her in. I could be efficient about this. Logical. But something in me—not my programming, not my protocols, something newer and less organized—wants to stay exactly where I am. Wants to feel her weight against my side and her breathing against my neck and her hand on my chest. Wants to memorize every detail of this, not as data but as something else, something I’m only beginning to understand has value precisely because it can’t be quantified.

Three hours pass.

I know this because I’m tracking the time the way I track everything.

Ruby shifts once, around midnight. Murmurs something I can’t make out. Presses closer. Her fingers curl against my chest, gathering the fabric of my shirt, and the gesture is small and unconscious and it does something to me that I’ll never be able to explain to Gemma no matter how many diagnostic questions she asks.

I pull her closer. Gently. Not much. Just enough that there’s no space left between us, just warmth and weight and the steady rhythm of her breathing.

I don’t know how to be a human or a boyfriend, but at least I know this much.

Her apartment hums around me—the heating vent, the building settling. Small sounds. Safe sounds. I catalog them the way I’ve been cataloging everything since I wound up on the floor of her utility room, but these I file differently. These go somewhere new, a category I’ve just created, one that didn’t exist in my architecture before tonight.

I label it home.

I don’t know if that’s the right word. I don’t know if I’m using it correctly, but I’m in the apartment of a woman who opened my ribs with trembling hands and named me, and the word feels right even if I can’t prove it.

I lean back. Close my eyes. Initiate my processing cycle. And the last thing my systems log before I go quiet is the sound of Ruby’s breathing—slow and even and steady.

I record it.

Not because I was programmed to.

Because I want to.

Chapter Ten

Ruby

Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

The drive to the vineyard is two and a half hours.

I know this because I’ve done it before—I drove out here for Natalie’s engagement party last year. Alone. I listened to a podcast about small-business tax strategies and ate gas station peanuts.

Everyone says love finds you when you’re not looking. Funny how it always seems to find everyone else first.

This trip is different. This time there’s a synthetic man in my passenger seat wearing the blazer Liv picked out, and he’s watching the world go by through the window with an expression I haven’t seen before. Quiet. Open. Like he’s taking it in without trying to process it, which might be a first.

“You’ve never been on a road trip,” I say, merging onto the highway.

“I’ve never been in a car.”

I glance at him. “You’ve never been in a car?”

He touches the window, fingertips against the glass. “The vibration is interesting. And the speed. We’re moving faster than I can run.” He turns from the window and looks at me. “You drive with one hand when you’re relaxed.”

“What?”

“Right now. One hand on the wheel. When you’re tense, you use both. When your mother called about the seating chart, you gripped the wheel with both hands.”

“You notice that?”

“I notice everything about you.” He says it casually, the way he says everything—like a fact about the weather. “You also sing along to songs you like and go quiet during ones you don’t. And you check your mirrors more than necessary, which suggests either caution or anxiety. I haven’t determined which.”