Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 321: 321 | Vertical Integration [GT BONUS]

Jordan rubbed the back of his neck. The muscles were still loose from Ayaka’s massage two days earlier, which felt like a detail from somebody else’s life. "I accepted the quest. The restrictions mean I can’t chase her. She has to come to me. I just have to be myself and let whatever happens happen."

Chloe opened her eyes. She looked at Jordan for a long time, and the thing about Chloe in these moments was that she didn’t perform her thinking. She didn’t furrow her brow or tap her chin or make any of the theatrical gestures people used to signal deep thought. She just went still, her face a flat panel of nothing, and behind the panel the entire machine of her processed data at a speed that would have made Brooke jealous.

"You’re going to sleep with Eliza Hartwell," she said.

The sentence landed on the apartment floor like a bowling ball.

"The quest doesn’t require me to do anything," Jordan said. "She has to initiate."

"She’s already initiating. She wore a visible garter to your study session and brought you a Powerade you’ve never ordered in your life. She’s three moves into a chess game and you’re the board."

Jordan didn’t have a response to that. Chloe was right, and they both knew she was right, and the particular flavor of quiet that followed was the kind where two people who love each other sit in the same room and stare at different walls while their individual math converges on the same answer from opposite directions.

"I’m not going to chase her," Jordan said.

"I know."

"And I’m not going to lie to you about it."

"I know that too." Chloe set the pink charm down on the coffee table. "That’s why I’m going to tell you something that’s going to sound insane, and I need you to listen to the whole thing before your face does the jaw clench."

"My face doesn’t clench."

"Your face is clenching right now."

"That’s just my face."

Chloe pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, the henley tenting over her thighs, and her expression shifted from analytical to something softer and more dangerous. She pressed her chin against her kneecaps and looked up at him from under her hair, the blue streak falling across one eye in a way that Jordan knew she hadn’t arranged on purpose but which punched through his ribs anyway.

"Eliza used you," Chloe said. "She took your money, your time, and your self-respect, and she traded all of it for Cameron Mitchell’s BMW and a spot at the right table. And the System is now offering you the chance to make her feel what that felt like."

"Yes."

"And you accepted the quest."

"Yes."

Chloe nodded once, slowly, and her next words came out in the voice she used when she had made a decision and the decision was final and the conversation existed only so the other person could catch up.

"Good."

Jordan’s brain hiccuped. "What."

"Eliza Hartwell destroyed you." Chloe’s eyes were dark and steady. "She took the softest, most trusting part of you and she stepped on it because it was convenient. Because you were convenient. Because you would have walked through fire for her and she knew it and she used that knowledge to extract forty-five hundred dollars and then she walked into a love hotel with another man while you watched."

The memory rose like bile. Sunset Love Hotel. Cameron’s BMW. Eliza’s face, not guilty, not sorry, just annoyed. Just some guy from class.

"I know what she did," Jordan said.

"I’m not finished." Chloe’s voice stayed level. "If the System wants Eliza to experience what she did to you, I’m not going to stop it. Because what she did to you was wrong. And because the only restriction is that you can’t pursue her, which means if she comes to you, that’s her choice. Her agency. The same agency she exercised when she chose Cameron over you in that parking lot."

Jordan stared at Chloe. Her expression held no vindictiveness, no jealousy, no possessive fury. It was the face she wore when she reviewed profit and loss statements and the numbers told a clean story.

"You’re giving me permission to sleep with my ex-girlfriend," he said.

"I’m giving you permission to let your ex-girlfriend possibly sleep with you. There’s a difference." Chloe tapped one finger against her knee. "And I have conditions."

"Of course you do."

"One. You tell me before it happens, not after. I don’t care if it’s a text, I don’t care if it’s three words, but I am not finding out from Kumiko or the group chat or, God help us, Instagram."

"Done."

"Two. You do not register Eliza. She does not go into a slot. She is not part of this." Chloe’s finger tapped harder. "Whatever happens between you and Eliza is a closed loop. It starts and it ends and when it’s over, it’s over."

"The quest doesn’t require registration."

"Good. Three." Chloe held up three fingers and then folded the third one down, leaving two. "Actually, two conditions. The third one is that you bring me the hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

Jordan laughed. It came out rough and genuine, the kind that started in his gut and cracked his composure open, and Chloe’s mouth twitched at the corner in the way it did when she was trying not to smile and losing.

"You just monetized my revenge arc," he said.

"Someone had to." She stretched her legs out and placed her feet on his thigh. Her toenails were painted dark blue, the same shade as her hair streak, and her calves were smooth and warm through the fabric of his sweatpants. "If the System is going to gamify your relationships, then I’m going to gamify the gamification. That’s called vertical integration."

Jordan placed his hand on her ankle. His thumb found the knob of her ankle bone and traced a circle around it, and Chloe’s foot flexed once against his leg and then relaxed.

"You’re not jealous," he said. The observation arrived flat and factual.

"I’m extremely jealous," Chloe corrected. "I want to put Eliza Hartwell into a cannon and fire her into the Pacific Ocean. But jealousy is an emotion and emotions are data points and data points inform strategy. They don’t replace it." Her eyes found his. "You are mine, Jordan McKnight. You were mine when you knocked on my door asking for sugar you didn’t need, and you were mine when you sat on my couch watching a horror movie you’d already seen, and you were mine when you told me the truth about the System last night while I was still wearing your henley and nothing else."

"Mmmm," Jordan said, which wasn’t a word.

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