Now, on the third morning, waking up beside her felt inevitable.
She was still murmuring. He caught fragments—“tell all the truth but tell it slant”—and recognized another Dickinson poem woven through her dreams. Even in sleep, her mind reached for poetry the way his reached for code. Self-soothing. Pattern recognition. The comfort of familiar rhythms when everything else had gone sideways.
He lay still, not wanting to wake her. She slept curled tight against him, her body a question mark pressed into his side, but he’d noticed she startled at sudden movements. She leaned into him when she was calm, sought his warmth like something she’d been denied too long, but any unexpected shift made her flinch before she could stop herself.
Lincoln understood wanting something and being afraid of it at the same time.
He wasn’t inexperienced with women. That wasn’t the issue. He’d had relationships—if you could call them that. Brief entanglements with women who found his intensity intriguing at first and exhausting shortly after.
Women who wanted him to remember their birthdays and ask about their days and perform the small social rituals that had always felt like speaking a language he’d learned from textbooks. He could do it, technically. He just couldn’t make it feel natural, and eventually, they noticed.
Casual encounters held no appeal. The mathematics of one-night stands seemed inefficient—high energy expenditure for minimal return. He’d tried it in his twenties, mostly because Bear had insisted it was a normal thing to do andfound the whole experience more confusing than satisfying. Too many unspoken expectations. Too many variables he couldn’t predict or control.
What he’d wanted, always, was someone whose brain worked like his. Someone who wouldn’t need the social translation. Someone who found his quirks interesting rather than exhausting.
He’d stopped believing that person existed.
Then Mercury had appeared online and broken an unbreakable encryption as if it were child’s play.
Now she was here. Real. Beautiful. Warm against his side, her fingers curled into his shirt like she was afraid he’d disappear.
Her eyes opened.
For a moment, she just looked at him, her green-hazel gaze hazy with sleep. Recognition settled over her features slowly. Then something softer.
“You stayed.”
“You asked me to.”
“I know. I just…” Her fingers loosened their grip on his shirt but didn’t let go entirely. “I’m not used to people staying.”
He had questions—hundreds of them—but he was learning to let her offer information rather than extracting it. She’d tell him things when she was ready. Pushing would only make her retreat.
“Are you hungry?” he asked instead. “I can make breakfast.”
“You cook?”
“I can follow a recipe. Recipes are just algorithms with ingredients.”
Her mouth curved—not quite a smile, but close. “I’d like that.”
She sat up slowly, and Lincoln noticed the way shecataloged the room as she did—her eyes moving in a systematic sweep that reminded him of his own security protocols. Taking in details. Recording everything.
“I think,” she said, her voice careful, “I’d like to see more than just this room today.”
Lincoln sat up beside her. “You’re ready?”
“I don’t know if ready is the right word. But I can’t stay in here forever.” Her fingers started their unconscious rhythm against her thigh—da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM. Iambic pentameter. He recognized it from her typing patterns, all those late-night exchanges when her keystrokes had shifted into waltz time. “I want to see where Binary lives.”
“Lincoln,” he said. “You can call me Lincoln.”
“I know.” She met his eyes. “But you’ll always be Binary to me too. Both things can be true.”
Both things can be true. Lincoln turned that over in his mind and found it surprisingly logical.
The house was too large for one person. Lincoln had known that when he built it, had calculated the square footage against his actual needs and come up significantly over budget in every category. Money hadn’t been a problem—after the hardware and software he’d designed and sold over the years, money would never be a problem—so he hadn’t worried about it.
This space served purposes beyond habitation. Room for servers. Room for security infrastructure. Room to pace when his brain wouldn’t quiet down at three a.m.
