Chapter 473 | He Let It Glow

Chapter 473: 473 | He Let It Glow

The app had roasted him more times than his own sister, and it was usually right, which stung worse. He locked the screen and put it face down on his knee. Credit could go to the girl who had earned it, and he had zero interest in arguing with a phone.

The stream ran until 10:02. Chloe ended it with 1,912 followers and Lila’s community camped in her chat like they had moved in and brought furniture. She looked straight into the lens one more time.

"Thank you for staying, everybody. Go drink some water, and I’ll see you Monday."

She clicked End Stream, and the red dot died.

The quiet in the room had weight. Kumiko sat on the floor next to her chair with her Sally skirt around her like a puddle of patchwork. Chloe stood on her mark and stared at the dark preview window. Then she turned and looked at the panel.

"You can come out now. You’re allowed to stop being furniture."

Jordan stood, and his right leg informed him it had been asleep since the second song. He walked it off in three ugly steps. Chloe met him halfway and pressed her forehead into his chest, and her whole body was shaking under his hands. He kept his palms on her back and gave her nothing but weight, no skill and no voice.

"I did it," she told his shirt.

"You did it, and you did it in two languages. Show-off."

She hit his ribs with a fist that had no force behind it. Then Kumiko crashed into both of them from the side. Red yarn went into Jordan’s mouth, and painted stitches smeared onto Chloe’s shoulder.

"I have to call my mom," Kumiko wailed. "I have to call her right now and tell her my best friend is a star. I also have to throw up, and I don’t know which one comes first."

"Call first," Chloe said into Jordan’s chest. "The bathroom’s eight feet away, and you’ve got time."

Kumiko kissed Chloe on the cheek, and then she went up on her toes and kissed Jordan’s jaw. She fled into her bedroom with her phone already at her ear. Through the door they heard her say okaasan in a voice that broke on the second syllable. Then the door shut, and a muffled shriek went into what Jordan assumed was a pillow.

Chloe lifted her head. Her eyes were wet, and her face had the look she only wore behind closed doors, open and greedy.

"Take me home," she said.

"Home is twelve feet away, babe."

"Then you have twelve feet to stop talking."

The plate on Miss Valentine’s door had fresh snickerdoodles under plastic wrap. The card said FOR THE SINGER in shaky blue ballpoint. Chloe took one, bit it, and fed Jordan the other half before he got his key in the lock.

She didn’t let him reach the stairs. She shoved him against the inside of the door, and the knob dug into his back. She kissed him with her teeth, cinnamon and sugar and something sharper underneath. Her hands went under his henley and dragged it up. He let her, because the alternative was arguing with a woman who had just made two thousand strangers cry.

"Upstairs," he got out.

"I sang already." She bit his lower lip hard enough to sting. "I’m allowed to be hoarse tomorrow, so I want the voice."

Jordan picked her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and the black knit rode up so her stomach pressed warm against his. He took the stairs two at a time. The fourth step creaked, and she laughed into his neck, high and helpless, a sound she never made on camera.

He put her down on the grey sheets. She yanked the knit over her head and threw it at the dresser. Underneath she wore a black bra with a front clasp, and the gold chain sat in the hollow of her throat over a bruise he’d left on Wednesday. Her jeans went next. She kicked them off the end of the bed, and he heard a phone fall out of a pocket and clatter on the floor.

Jordan knelt over her and leaned down until his mouth touched her ear. Then he gave her the full register, the one she’d banned in public, low enough that it rattled in his own ribs.

"You were perfect tonight, Chloe."

Her back came off the mattress. "Ah, hah, ahh, Jordan, that’s so unfair."

"You asked for it."

"I asked for it, and I hate you, so do it again."

He did. He told her she had sung her dad’s note twice, and he told her that she belonged to him. She grabbed his hair and dragged his mouth down to hers. He unhooked the clasp, and the bra fell open. He put his palm flat on her sternum and let the warmth run, and she made a sound like a door with no hinges left. Hnngh, ahh, ah.

Her underwear was soaked through. He peeled it down her thighs, and she kicked it somewhere in the dark. When he pushed into her, she was so wet that the slide made a slick sound that filled the loft, and she clawed his back.

"Ahh, ah, fuck, so deep, Jordan."

He set a slow pace for exactly four strokes. Then she dug her heels into the back of his thighs and pulled him in hard, and the slow pace went off the bed with her jeans. The headboard hit the brick. Thud, thud, thud, wet slap underneath, her voice climbing over all of it.

"Harder, don’t you dare be careful with me."

"You’ve got finals in two months."

"I have a voice that two thousand people follow now, so shut up and make me use it."

He laughed and gave her what she wanted. He hooked one of her knees over his shoulder and drove in, and the new angle pulled a scream out of her that bounced off the factory windows. Ahh, ahhh, there, right there. Her hand flew to her lower stomach and pressed down, and her eyes rolled back.

"I can feel you," she gasped. "Right here, oh god, I can feel you here."

Jordan put his hand over hers and pushed heat through both of their palms. She came apart under it. Her whole body locked around him, and she sobbed his name twice, once in English and once in something lower that he didn’t need translated. Her walls clamped down in hard pulses, and that dragged him over the edge with her.

Ceaseless Discharge did what it always did, which was ignore every reasonable limit. He spilled into her in long hot pulses, and she shuddered with each one. She kept her hand on her stomach the entire time. When it finally slowed, he felt it leak out around him onto the forty-two-dollar mattress protector, and Chloe made a noise that was half moan and half disgust.

"That’s so much. Why is it always so much."

"You asked for it, so blame yourself."

"I will blame you in a spreadsheet later." She pulled him down onto her chest and wouldn’t let him move. "Stay inside me for a minute and don’t talk."

He stayed. Harbor light came through the factory windows in orange bars across her ribs. Her heart thumped against his cheek, fast and then slower. Through the wall, faint and wet, Kumiko was still on the phone with her mother, laughing and crying at the same volume.

Chloe ran her fingers through his hair, slow, with her nails lightly on his scalp.

"He would’ve hated you for the first ten minutes," she said to the ceiling.

"Your dad, you mean?"

"Who else would I mean, idiot." Her thumb found the back of his neck. "After ten minutes, he would’ve made you carry the amp out to the car, and he wouldn’t have said thank you."

Jordan turned his face into her sternum and breathed. His phone sat downstairs on the floor of Unit 403 where it had fallen out of his pocket, probably glowing gold, probably smug. He let it glow.

"I’ll carry anything," he told her skin.