Chapter 454 | She Found Brooke

Chapter 454: 454 | She Found Brooke

He let her feel it. Twelve seconds again, same as before, like the trait had a factory setting. By the end she was limp across his chest, both of them slick with sweat and worse, and her breath came in short shivery pants against his throat.

Jordan stared at the exposed beams of his ceiling and did some math of his own. Three months ago he had cried on this exact mattress over a girl who called him "just some guy from class," and the most intimate thing happening in this loft had been a sock under the bed. Now the most gorgeous woman on campus was lying on top of him with his come running out of her, and she had called him an idiot in a tone that meant she loved him.

Growth, basically. The therapists should study him.

Chloe lifted her head and blinked at the clock on the nightstand.

"Two minutes left," she said, sounding personally offended. "We finished early."

"Is that bad? That feels like a win."

"It’s a scheduling error, Jordan. I budgeted for the full eighteen."

"You want me to go again? Because I can go again."

She looked at him for a long moment with an expression he recognized from every spreadsheet and transaction review she’d ever conducted in his presence. Then she pushed herself upright and slid off him. The sound was so wet and obscene that they both went completely still. A thick stream of white followed immediately, dripping onto his stomach in heavy ropes, and Chloe sat there staring down at the mess with her mouth open like she’d discovered evidence of a crime.

"That is disgusting," she said. "That is the single grossest thing I have ever witnessed, and I have edited three hundred hours of content in a walk-in closet."

"You asked for it inside," Jordan pointed out. "Twice. I have a witness upstairs who will testify."

"Kumiko doesn’t count. She’s a biased party with an agenda."

"She literally cheered."

"Which proves my point."

Chloe climbed off the bed on legs that buckled the second they took her weight. She got two steps toward the stairs before her hand shot out to catch the dresser, her knees wobbling like a newborn deer. Jordan propped himself up on his elbows and watched her make the journey, his come running down the inside of her thigh in a slow, shiny trail that caught the afternoon light. She spotted him looking in the mirror above the dresser and pointed one warning finger back at him without turning around.

"If you make a baby deer joke, I will end you."

"I would never mock a pregnant woman’s gait," Jordan said, and then ruined it by grinning.

She threw his own boxers at his face.

The shower took ten minutes because Chloe insisted on washing her hair and then insisted that Jordan do the washing, since his hands were apparently licensed now. He worked shampoo into her scalp and let the skill trickle in at the lowest setting, and she leaned back against his chest under the spray making small helpless noises. Gerald the rubber duck watched from his shelf. Jordan felt judged by a toy.

"If you do this every night, I’ll never leave the building," Chloe mumbled.

"That sounds like a threat you want me to call."

"It’s a confession, and I’ll deny it in court."

When they came out, the loft smelled like sex and lemon cleaner, which Jordan was starting to think of as home. He stripped the sheets while Chloe sat wrapped in his towel on the top stair and supervised. The mattress protector had survived, barely. She informed him that the protector was the best forty-two dollars he had ever spent, and that her phone had a note titled "Mattress Replacement Fund" if he wanted to see it.

"I don’t want to see it, babe."

"You’re going to see it anyway, because it has a line item with your name on it."

His phone had been going off on the concrete floor this whole time. He picked it up and found the screen crowded with notifications, and he read them standing there in nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants, since modesty had died sometime around the second round.

Kumiko had sent four messages, all timestamped from the last twenty minutes.

"jordan-kun i am not asleep. i was asleep but i am not anymore."

"the wall is very thin. i knew this. i documented this on page 12. i did not document THIS."

"chloe-chan said something in korean that my brain translated as a war crime and i need you both to know i am putting on headphones."

"i love you both. goodnight. i am drawing hearts on page 32 and none of them are about you. that is a lie. all of them are about you."

Jordan showed the phone to Chloe, who read it without a flicker on her face and handed it back.

"Tell her it was a lullaby," Chloe said.

"It was not a lullaby, you called me a monster in two languages."

"Then tell her it was a love song and she should take notes for Friday."

Below the Kumiko messages sat a text from Alexis, sent at seven forty-one, nine words long and very Alexis about it.

"Thursday is fine. Don’t be late, and wear something decent."

He read it once and felt the familiar tug under his ribs. He did not reply, since Chloe was watching him from the stairs and he had learned that the correct response to that expression was patience. She did not say anything either. She just tilted her head a single degree, and that was the entire lecture.

The last notification was from Cassie, and it was a picture instead of words. It showed a printout of a Delaware business filing with one line highlighted in yellow, under the heading for the registered agent. Jordan did not need to zoom in to recognize the name, because he paid its owner fifteen percent of management.

"She found Brooke," he said.