Page 28 of The Stuffing Situation

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “But if he does… he’ll have to choose it.”

The candle on Blair’s windowsill flickered once, then again, like it had heard something none of them could.

Ashar’s tone darkened. “Magic wasn’t built to hold something this complicated,” he said quietly. “If he keeps evolving, thinking, choosing, the spell could tear.”

Felix looked up, pale. “And if it does?”

Ashar didn’t blink. “You go with it.”

Felix looked down at his hand, his knuckles flexed under the blood-stained cloth, then he stood.

And for the first time since he arrived, he felt something that didn’t belong to her, or the algorithm, or the app that birthed him in a stall behind a jalapeño popper.

He felt hunger, not the kind of hunger you feel for food or sex, but for the future. A future with Maya, and their life together.

“Can I have a minute with Maya?” he asked.

Ashar nodded, already moving to the kitchen. Blair followed, muttering, “Not listening, just casually cleansing the vibes,” before disappearing with her tea.

They sat again on Blair’s couch, but this time, Maya didn’t look away.

Felix’s eyes were darker now; they looked like they were stormy, compared to his normal light eyes.

“What happens,” he asked quietly, “if I choose to stay, and something breaks again? If I change again? If I forget how to love you the way you need to be loved? The way you deserve?”

Maya shook her head. “That’s not how love works.”

He reached for her hand. Their fingers threaded like muscle memory.

“But I wasn’t built for forever,” he said. “I wasn’t built for uncertainty. That’s what makes me, me. I was designed to be exactly what you needed for a period of time.”

“You are what I need,” she said, voice breaking.

“For now,” he said gently.

She stared at their hands. Her thumb brushed the edge of the bandage. The faint warmth still radiating through the fabric made her heart twist.

“So what do we do?”

Felix exhaled slowly. “I don’t know. But I want to keep choosing you. If I get that choice.”

A silence stretched between them, soft but electric. The candlelight pulsed faintly, as if it were breathing with them.

Maya studied his face, the tilt of his jaw, the worry etched just beneath his eyes. He looked more human now than ever. Not because he bled.

But because he feared.

Because he asked if he’d still be enough, even as he changed.

She thought of all the people who never asked. Who took and took and never paused to wonder if they could break her by accident.

And here he was, a maybe-man made of wishes and magic, asking if he could stay.

That’s what made him real.

Maya blinked back tears. “Then stay. For now. With me.”

He nodded once and kissed her, soft and slow.