Chapter 449 | Desk Hair

Chapter 449: 449 | Desk Hair

"Six minutes," Jordan agreed. "You want me to help you look like you didn’t just get taken apart on a desk, or you want Brooke to draw her own conclusions?"

"Brooke draws conclusions from spreadsheets, not faces." Chloe unhooked her legs and slid off the desk, and her knees held this time, barely. She smoothed the turtleneck down over her hips and reached up to fix the choker, sliding it back over the mark on her throat. "But if my voice does the thing, she’ll know."

"What thing?"

"The thing where I sound like I’ve had a stroke." She picked up the keyboard off the floor, checked it, set it back on the desk. Her hair was a disaster on one side and she hadn’t noticed yet. "I need water. And a face that doesn’t look like this."

Jordan grabbed his henley off the floor near the ring light and pulled it back on. It smelled like her now, like whatever she’d been wearing, and he decided he wasn’t going to point that out because she’d stolen enough of his shirts that the ownership question had become philosophical.

He watched her walk to the kitchen on legs that still weren’t fully committed to the project. The blue streak had come completely loose. Her ears were pink.

Six weeks ago this same girl had slammed a door in his face hard enough to rattle the frame. Had worn a mask and sunglasses and charged him three thousand dollars to sit across from him at The Ivy and pretend she didn’t hate every second of it. Now she was in his building drinking his water in a shirt that used to be his, and she’d let him see the part of her that nobody got to see, and she was doing it on purpose.

He wanted to say something about that. He knew if he did she’d tell him to shut up.

"You’re staring," she said, not turning around.

"You’ve got sex hair."

"I have desk hair." She filled a glass from the Brita and drank half of it standing at the counter. "There’s a difference and you know it."

"Do I?"

"You should." She set the glass down and finally caught sight of herself in the black mirror of the powered-down monitor, and her expression flattened. "Oh. Okay. That’s. Yeah. That’s a face."

"It’s a good face."

"It’s a face that’s about to be on a professional call with the woman who’s incorporating our business." She pulled a hair tie off her wrist and started dragging her hair back into something that wasn’t evidence. "You have exactly no idea how close you came to me taking that call in a state that would have ended my ability to make eye contact with Brooke ever again."

"I have a rough idea."

"You have zero idea." She got the hair up, checked the mirror again, swiped a thumb under each eye. "Brooke doesn’t do faces. But she does do voices. She told me last week that my vocal fry increased by forty percent when I’m quote emotionally activated end quote. She has a baseline recording. She compares against it. She doesn’t even know she’s doing it."

Jordan sat down on the edge of the streaming desk, careful of the keyboard this time. "That’s either the most impressive or the most terrifying thing you’ve ever told me about her."

"It’s both. Everything about Brooke is both." Chloe pulled out her phone and checked the time. "Four minutes. Sit somewhere that isn’t in frame and don’t talk. If she hears a second voice she’ll ask who it is and then she’ll figure out it’s you and then she’ll know exactly what we were doing because I’ll sound like I inhaled helium."

He moved to the far corner, past the acoustic panels, and dropped into the folding chair Kumiko had bought off Amazon for exactly this purpose. From here he could see Chloe and the camera couldn’t see him. It was the same geometry she’d asked for on Friday. Present but invisible. There but not in the shot.

He thought about that while she pulled up the call software and adjusted the ring light one more degree so it caught her cheekbone instead of her jaw.

She’d figured out something he was still working through. That she wanted him around didn’t mean she needed him to function. Two different things. She’d tested it. Recorded herself with him in the room and without, listened eleven times, and decided the version of her that was strong came out when he wasn’t hovering, and the version that was warm came out when he was. And then she’d asked for both, on her terms, because she was the kind of person who ran the numbers before she let herself want something.

He hadn’t done that with anybody. Ever. He’d just wanted, all the time, at full volume, and thrown money at it until it looked back.

The call connected. Chloe’s whole face changed, sliding into something clear and unhurried, the version of her that had opinions about interior design and delivered them like closing arguments.

"Brooke," she said. "Hi. Thanks for making the time."

The voice that came back through the laptop speakers was flat and even, each word placed down like it had a designated slot. "It’s eight forty-one. I said eight forty. You’re one minute late."

"I was hydrating."

"That’s not on the agenda." A pause. Papers, maybe, or the sound of Brooke moving something. "I have the operating agreement open. There are four sections that need talent sign-off before I file the amendment. I flagged them in yellow. Did you read the version I sent Tuesday."

"Twice."

"Jordan didn’t."

Jordan, in the corner, mouthed a silent objection to nobody.

"Jordan reads the sections you tell him to read," Chloe said. "You’ve trained him. It’s working."

"That’s operant conditioning," Brooke said. "It’s not the same as comprehension. But it produces the desired behavioral outcome, so I’ve decided not to correct it." Another pause. "Section four point two. The revenue split. I restructured it based on the streaming projections. If StellarNote hits a thousand followers Friday, your tier changes, which changes the percentage of the collective fund that comes out of your side. I need you to understand the number before you agree to it, because I don’t want you agreeing to numbers you haven’t understood. That’s how people get resentful in eighteen months."

"Walk me through it."