Chapter 10 If He’s Still Here
If He’s Still Here
The morning felt too quiet.
Maya stood in the doorway of her childhood kitchen, watching Felix at the stove. He was barefoot, wearing one of her dad’s old flannel shirts, sleeves rolled to the elbows. His hair was still sleep-mussed, and he hummed softly under his breath, off-key, aimless.
He didn’t look like a simulation; he looked real — the kind of real she could wake up next to for the rest of her life. And she hated how much she wanted that.
The eggs sizzled. The kettle hissed. Outside, frost coated the windows. Inside, everything smelled of butter and cinnamon.
Maya leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, pulse humming low under her skin.
Felix turned toward her and smiled, the sight of her rewiring his circuits.
She looked away.
* * *
Her phone rang just as she was folding the last of her clothes into a bag.
Blair.
She answered with a sigh. “Please tell me you didn’t accidentally summon a second demon. I can’t handle more weirdness.”
Blair’s voice was quieter than usual. “Ashar felt something.”
Maya froze, hands still on the zipper. “What do you mean, felt something?”
“He said the magic around Felix… it isn’t normal. It’s not just glitching. It’s warping. Growing.”
Maya glanced down the hall. Felix was in the guest room, folding towels with disturbing reverence. Smoothing corners as if it meant something.
Blair continued, “He’s not just getting more human. Ashar doesn’t think the magic that made him was AI. At least… not entirely.”
She swallowed. “Then what is it?”
“We don’t know yet. But Ashar wants to see him. Soon.”
They left her mom’s house that afternoon.
The driveway was half-melted snow and gravel. Felix loaded their bags with calm precision, offered her mother a polite goodbye, and a perfect handshake.
Of course he did. Maya gave her mom a half-hug and a brittle smile.
“We’ll be back for Christmas,” she said.
She didn’t say if he’s still here out loud.
But she thought it. Hard.
* * *
Maya didn’t get in the car right away.
She stood at the edge of the driveway, her boots crunching half-frozen gravel, watching the soft plume of her breath dissipate in the cold. Behind her, Felix loaded the last bag into the trunk, his movements precise but unhurried, like someone trying not to disturb the air.
She looked at the house. At the pale curtains in her childhood bedroom window. At the half-buried garden gnome by the porch. Her mom’s wreath tilted slightly askew on the door.
Something in her chest clenched. This place had always been a reset button, messy, loud, predictably intrusive, but now it felt like it was watching her leave; it knew something she didn’t, or worse, it knew something she refused to admit.
Felix stepped beside her, his hands in the pockets of this borrowed flannel. He didn’t speak. He just stood there, breathing in rhythm with her, eyes following her gaze.
“I used to think the worst thing would be being alone in that house,” she murmured.
He glanced at her, gentle, waiting.
“But now…” She exhaled slowly. “I think the worst thing would be coming back here next time and pretending none of this happened.”
Felix didn’t flinch; he didn’t move, but the air shifted between them again, softer, heavier.
“I won’t ask you to pretend,” he said.
“I know.”
Silence stretched out, long and transparent and honest. Then he opened the passenger door, not like a man offering a ride, but someone offering her a choice.
The drive back to her apartment was quiet, not tense. Just muted.
Felix didn’t fill the silence. He stared out the window, one hand resting on the gear shift out of a habit he shouldn’t have had time to form. Every now and then, he glanced at her like he wanted to say something. But he didn’t.
The radio played low, a jazz station. Soft trumpet over static. Maya’s thoughts looped like a skipping record.
He’s changing.
He’s not supposed to.
He kissed me like he was real.
He’s not.
Except… he is.
Her apartment felt smaller than she remembered. Not cluttered, just compressed. Like the walls had drawn in while she was gone.
She stepped inside first and flipped on the lights. The glow of the room was faint, with a yellowed hue, and something was off.
Felix followed, his presence filling the space like heat, but quiet. he was being so watchful. He didn’t smile. Didn’t speak.
He stood in the middle of the room, not poised.
Just still.
A figure carved from thought, aware, and waiting. As if he already sensed time thinning at the edges. The moment itself: sacred, fleeting.
Maya turned toward him, but she didn’t speak because she couldn’t. The words crowded her throat like smoke, hot, choking, but she swallowed them down.
Instead, she stepped into him. Wrapped her arms around his waist. Pressed her face to his chest.
His shirt smelled like skin, ozone, and faint electricity. An echo of what he was beneath the surface.
“Just in case,” she whispered.
He didn’t ask in case of what. He didn’t need to.
The air between them had already shifted. It hung heavy with unspoken endings. With the kind of weight you feel in your sternum, but can’t name.
* * *
He kissed her.
Slowly, not tentative, but devout.
His lips moved against hers, as if he were memorizing the shape of her, the warmth, the way her breath caught between them, like a secret trying to escape.
They undressed without words. Not in a way that was rushed or playful.
Her shirt fell to the floor, reminiscent of petals from a dying flower. His jeans slid down his legs with the quiet sigh of denim giving way to skin. They peeled each other open like pages from a worn book, afraid the story might vanish if they weren’t careful. There was no music.
Only the hush of bare feet on hardwood. The breath between gasps. The soft clink of a belt buckle falling from trembling fingers.
The air warmed around them. Candle wax melted somewhere unseen, slow, fragrant, carrying the ghost of sandalwood and citrus.
Felix’s hands trembled as they moved over her body. Not with uncertainty, with reverence.
His fingers ghosted over her ribs as if he were counting them. Memorizing the curve of her hips. The small scar on her shoulder. The hollow beneath her throat.
Like she was temporary, like this was goodbye.
Maya said nothing; no, she let her body speak. Her hands buried in his hair, then slid down his back, nails raking lightly along his spine, trying to draw something out of him. Something more than synthetic heat.
Something true.
He hovered above her as they reached the bed. Naked now. Skin to skin. A thousand electric signals passed between them, no wires, no code.
“Maya,” he breathed.
She touched his cheek.
His face looked so human in that moment, creased with longing. Eyes raw with something dangerously close to sorrow.
“Don’t say anything,” she whispered, her voice nearly breaking.
He nodded once, then entered slowly, so slowly it hurt.
Not from pain, but from feeling and meaning.
It wasn’t about the climax or urgency.
It was everything they hadn’t said, taking shape through motion.
He filled her inch by inch, his breath stuttering against her neck. Her chest rose to meet his. She wrapped her legs around him, not to pull him deeper.
To keep him there.
To anchor him.
They moved as if the world were coming to an end. Like every shift of his hips was a plea to stay. Like every roll of hers was a whispered I love you, she didn’t know how to say.
Her hands clutched his shoulders; she didnt need to guide him, just to feel.
To prove he was solid. Real. Still hers.
Her palms memorized the slope of his back. The warmth of his skin. Her thumbs found the fast stutter of his pulse, real or not.
His forehead pressed to hers, breath mingling. Eyes locked.
They stayed that way, unmoving, for a moment too long.
As if they didn’t want to risk the future from happening.
And when they moved again, it wasn’t sex.
It was grief, given rhythm.
Love on borrowed time.
Every thrust carried the weight of a thousand possibilities already slipping away.
Every kiss was a surrender. A question:
Can I keep you?
She gasped when he hit the deepest part of her. Her body tensed. Her legs shook.
“I don’t want this to be the last,” she whispered, voice cracking under the truth of it.
He kissed her as if it were.
As if he knew better.
“Then let it be forever,” he murmured into her mouth, a breathless benediction.
And they let the lie wrap around them, a second skin.
Her orgasm came in a sob, silent, shaking. Her whole body clenched around him, as though she could stop time with muscle memory alone.
Tears slid from her eyes, soaking the pillow.
He didn’t speak; he just held her through it.
Then came after, silent, reverent, his face buried in her neck, whispering her name as if it was the only code he’d ever known.
Afterward, they lay tangled, his body curved around hers. The room smelled faintly of old wax and ozone, warmth still trapped between the sheets. The world outside moved on, but in here, everything was still.
Her hand rested on his chest, not checking for a heartbeat, just needing a sign he was still here. Beneath her palm, the faint hum that used to sound mechanical now felt deeper, softer, almost human.
The silence wasn’t empty; no, it was earned.
Traffic passed outside. Life carried on, indifferent, but in that apartment, time had stopped, just long enough for two people to pretend endings didn’t exist.
That goodbye could be postponed.
Just one more night.