Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 339: 339 | You Belong To Me [CASTLE BONUS]

Chloe’s mouth flattened into a line that could have been used to draw architectural blueprints. "That’s a thirteen-point gain from baseline in less than a week."

"Fourteen."

"Fourteen." She turned back to the sink and ran water over her bowl, her movements precise and unhurried. "She started at thirty-four percent after three weeks of zero contact. One study session where you didn’t look at her legs brought her to forty-three. A second study session where you left early brought her to forty-seven. At this rate she breaks fifty by Thursday."

"I know."

"Fifty means you break even on her. Every dollar past that generates profit."

"I know, Chloe."

"Good." She shut the water off and dried her hands on the dish towel that hung from the oven handle, the one Kumiko had bought yesterday with little strawberries printed on it. "Because I’m going to tell you something and you’re going to hear me say it once."

Jordan set the sponge down. The counter was clean enough. He leaned his hip against the island and crossed his arms, because when Chloe used that voice there was nothing to do except stand there and take whatever she was about to serve.

"You’re going to respond to her text at nine-oh-four. You’re going to send exactly one message. The message is going to be professional, short, and about the debate. You’re going to suggest meeting Thursday at the same time in the same room. That’s it."

"Okay."

"You’re not going to ask how she’s doing. You’re not going to acknowledge the apology she sent. You’re not going to use her first name."

"Copy."

"And when you see her Thursday, you’re going to wear a white t-shirt and jeans because white t-shirts make your arms look stupid and I’m not going to pretend that isn’t a factor."

"That’s—" He caught himself. "That’s a strategic wardrobe choice."

"That’s me dressing you to close a deal." Chloe leaned back against the counter opposite him and crossed her ankles. Her feet were bare on the cold concrete and the henley hung to mid-thigh, exposing her legs from the knee down, still slightly pink from the mineral bath the day before. "This girl took forty-five hundred dollars from you while kissing another man in a parking lot on Christmas. She watched you stand there for twenty minutes and didn’t come back out. She let Cameron call you a simp in front of her and she laughed."

Jordan’s jaw did the thing. He felt it happen and didn’t stop it.

"Now she’s sitting in a library in a tennis skirt with a push-up bra trying to get you to look at her, and she can’t figure out why the play that worked on the old Jordan doesn’t work on the new one." Chloe’s voice had dropped, not into cruelty but into the register she used when she was mapping a problem she’d already solved. "Her forty-seven percent isn’t about you, Jordan. It’s about the fact that you stopped being available. She wanted you weak because weak was useful. Now you’re not weak, and the absence of your weakness is the most attractive thing she’s ever experienced."

"That’s a bleak way to describe a human being."

"That’s an accurate way to describe a human being who spent two months training you to pay for the privilege of being ignored."

The shower had stopped running. Through the bathroom door came the sound of Kumiko wringing out her hair and muttering about conditioner ratios.

"I’m not going to tell you whether to sleep with her," Chloe said. "That’s the quest’s business, and if the System wants to pay you a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for it, that’s between you and whatever entity designed a magical phone app with a skill tree and an incest buff."

"Can we never say the words incest buff again."

"No. We can never stop saying the words incest buff because I intend to bring it up at every possible opportunity for the rest of your natural life." Something moved behind her eyes, warm underneath the frost. "Jordan."

"Yeah."

"I told you this morning that you belong to me. I meant it. Whatever happens in that study room on Thursday happens because I said it could happen, and when it’s done, you come home."

"Home" meant the apartment with the factory windows and the bare mattress and the girl in the bathroom singing about forests and the girl in the kitchen wearing his shirt and the pink notebook full of his freckle coordinates and the spreadsheet with a tab labeled NOVEMBER and the rubber duck named Gerald and the box that said DO NOT OPEN and the strawberry dish towels and all of it, every single piece of it, twelve feet from the door she used to slam in his face.

"Home," he said.

Chloe crossed the kitchen in three steps and put her mouth on his, not gently. Her hand found the back of his neck and pulled him down to her height, and the kiss tasted like bibimbap and cold water and the particular chemical signature of a woman who had just given her boyfriend permission to seduce his ex-girlfriend for profit while simultaneously being pregnant with his child and angry about a mattress. Jordan’s back hit the refrigerator and three magnets fell off and clattered on the concrete and neither of them moved to pick them up.

"Ahn—"

That wasn’t Chloe. That was the bathroom door, which had opened six inches, and Kumiko was standing in the gap wearing a towel and nothing else, her wet black hair plastered to her shoulders and her brown eyes enormous and her mouth forming a perfect pink circle.

Chloe pulled back from Jordan’s mouth without rushing. She turned her head toward the bathroom with the leisure of someone who owned the building and everything inside it.

"Enjoy the show?"

Kumiko made a sound that lived somewhere between a squeak and a moan, a "hyaaah" that her vocal cords produced entirely without permission. Her hands flew to her face, but her eyes stayed open between her fingers, tracking the saliva that still connected Jordan’s lip to Chloe’s before it broke.

"I didn’t— I wasn’t— the door was— I was checking the steam because the mirror fogs and I read that mold can—"

"Kumiko."

"YES."

"Come here."

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