Miami

People say you know when you're falling in love. The fluttering stomach, the racing heart, the way time stretches and collapses around a single person’s presence. I always thought those were just metaphors—neurochemical reactions wrapped in poetic nonsense. But then Evellyn happened.

She was meant to be just another presence in the sterile hum of fluorescent-lit labs, another expert among many in the rotation of death. A forensic pathologist. Precise, composed, often too focused to notice the way others orbit her. But I noticed. And before I understood why, I was... involved. Somehow. With her.

We’re a couple now—boyfriend and girlfriend, as the normal world calls it. It still feels strange on my tongue. Strange but... not unpleasant. She texts me in the middle of her shifts with half-finished thoughts. Sometimes it’s a joke about a badly preserved liver, sometimes just: “thinking of you.” I’ve never been someone’s “you.”

She knows something’s off about me. I think she’s known from the start. She’s too intelligent, too observant not to. But she doesn’t press. She never demands to know more than I can offer. Instead, she gives me silence when I need it and presence when I don't know I do. Evellyn doesn’t try to fix me. That might be the most dangerous part.

I watch her work sometimes—when the case overlaps, or when I invent an excuse to be near her. She handles the dead with care, not sentimentality. Her hands are steady, even when her voice isn’t. We don’t talk much about emotions. That suits me. But there are nights she comes over and curls up beside me on the couch, and I find myself memorizing the rhythm of her breath more than the sound of my own heartbeat.

She touches me like she’s not afraid. I don't understand it. But I let her.

The other day, she found a photo strip tucked inside a book in my place—one I forgot we’d taken. We looked... happy. Like people who belong to daylight. She showed it to me, asked if I remembered that day at the pier. I nodded, but I was staring at her. At the way her eyes curved when she smiled, the way she laughed at my awkwardness. Evellyn makes me feel almost real. And that terrifies me.

When she falls asleep in my bed, sometimes I just lie there, still and silent, watching her. Not in a predator’s way. Not like the monster I keep hidden beneath my skin. Just... trying to understand how something so peaceful found its way into my life.

I’ve spent years perfecting the mask. With Evellyn, it’s like I don’t want to wear it. Or worse, like she already sees through it—and stays anyway.

Whatever this is... it’s not part of the code. But I can’t help it. I think I’d kill for her.

Or maybe, just maybe, I’d try not to.