Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(37)

He looks so lost.

He feels like home.

And he gathers me up in his arms and buries his face in my hair. I can feel the impossible strength in him, but oh, he’s so gentle. Holding himself back for fear of crushing me. I can feel the muscle underneath his shirt, like warm iron beneath my hands. And I don’t want him to hold himself back anymore.

I pull away so I can look at him. His eyes are closed, that perfect brow marred by a perfect frown. Tears spill from his lashes, coursing down his cheeks. And I close my eyes and lean in close and kiss them away.

I can’t help myself. I don’t even want to try.

“Don’t cry,” I whisper, my lips brushing his skin. “Don’t cry.”

He opens his eyes and I see myself reflected in the color of our long-lost sky. And for the first time in my life, I feel like someone actually sees me. Drowning in those pools of a beautiful blue that only exists in old pictures. He feels so warm, but goose bumps are rising on my skin, my stomach thrilling as I sense something in him shift. He glances down to my lips, his breath coming quicker as he leans closer. Hovering like a moth at the flame.

And then his mouth is on mine and his hands on my body, and though I’ve never kissed a boy before and though he’s nothing close to a boy at all, he feels every bit as real as I dreamed he would. His lips are soft and his touch is gentle, pressed to my cheeks and running through my hair. Our lips melt together and it’s all I can do to remember to breathe. His mouth roams lower, down along my jaw to my throat, faint stubble tickling my skin and weakening my knees. I hold him tight so I don’t fall, aching and sighing, his teeth nipping my neck as my hands roam his back. I hold him as if all the world were a storm and I’m sinking, drowning, and it’s only him keeping me alive.

And I know this isn’t real, but I’ve never known anything more real in my life.

And I know it’s wrong to want him, but that just makes me want him more.

And I cup his cheeks and draw him back up to look at me, and as we sink toward another long, aching kiss, just before our lips meet, he whispers it.

He whispers my name.

“Ana …”

My name is Ana.

My name is Ana.



Afterward, we lie on my bed, the scent of old roses and sweat in the air. His arm is around my shoulder and my head is resting on his bare chest, and though he’s not a real boy, I can still feel his heart beating. Still taste him on my lips. Every part of him is real, and every part of him is mine.

“No one can know about this,” I whisper.

“No,” he sighs.

“My mother. My father. They’d never understand.”

“I know.”

“A part of him would be flattered, I think.” I smile, run my fingertips along Ezekiel’s skin and watch it prickle. “To know he’d made something so perfect.”

“You’re the perfect one, Ana.”

I scoff and give him a playful slap. “My beautiful liar.”

The flattery is appreciated, but we’re only pale shadows beside them. We’re only human, and the lifelikes are so much more. But my Ezekiel rolls me onto my back and stares down at me, and I see my reflection in his eyes.

“I mean it,” he whispers. “No matter how perfect they make us, they can’t make us human. It’s your flaws that make you beautiful, Ana. It’s the imperfections that make you perfect. Being what I am, I can’t help but see them. Or love them.”

I open my mouth to speak, but he silences me with a kiss that I feel all the way to my fingertips. I lie back on the sheets and let him adore me, and when I open my eyes, he’s looking at me in a way no one ever has or will again.

“I used to wonder sometimes why they made us,” he says. “If there could ever be a reason for something like me to exist. But now I know.” He runs his fingers down my cheek, over my lips. “I was made for you. All I am. All I do, I do for you.”

The words take most of my breath away, and his kiss steals the rest. And as we lie entwined in the dark, he holds me close and breathes the words I’ve waited so long to hear.

“I love you, Ana.”



It’s been four days since Raphael … since he did what he did.

Three days since Ezekiel and I …

Mother thinks we’ve all been cooped up in Babel too long. Father, especially. She’s organized one of our rare trips to Megopolis, a visit to WarDome. GnosisLabs’ finest logika, the Quixote, is fighting for a championship title there tonight. The logika and machina bouts are a violent spectacle to keep the mob entertained. Gnosis and Daedalus creations and the great living constructs of BioMaas brawl and bash at each other, and everyone goes home feeling a little less like fighting the real war we all know is coming.

My little brother loves the bouts. Alex wants to be a Domefighter when he grows up. Father says he should use his gifts to build, not to destroy, but Mother indulges him. He’s beside me now as we walk to the shuttle, skipping with excitement. The R & D bay is vast, nestled at the foot of the tower, lined with flex-wings and grav-tanks and the hulking figures of our logika army. In Alex’s free hand he holds a tiny replica of Quixote that he built himself. He made me mechanical butterflies for my fifteenth birthday.

Alex is his father’s son.

The real Quixote is on the other side of the bay, being loaded for transport. The logika is enormous, its fists like wrecking balls. It frightens me a little—this thing created only to destroy. But Alex whoops when he sees it, dancing with his toy in his hand.