Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 224: 225 | Don’t Say It

"Show me her channel," Chloe said to Kumiko.

Kumiko scooted across the couch and held her phone between them. The KhaosKitten Twitch page loaded with a custom banner featuring a cartoon cat with violet eyes perched on a mushroom, surrounded by gothic calligraphy. The offline screen showed the same cat sleeping on a gaming setup that looked expensive and meticulously clean despite the chaotic aesthetic of the brand. Recent VOD thumbnails displayed Lila in various angles, her sharp bob and purple streak vivid against dark backgrounds, her face always featuring the same deadpan expression that somehow read as both bored and magnetic.

Chloe scrolled through Lila’s past broadcasts. The content was exactly what Kumiko described. Cozy games played with sarcastic commentary. The chat moved at a healthy pace, full of regulars who called Lila by name and responded to her dry humor with a loyalty that suggested a tight community rather than a passing audience.

Professional lighting. Clean audio. Good camera angle. The equipment alone suggested someone who took their craft seriously despite the "I don’t care about anything" aesthetic.

"She’s good," Chloe said, and the admission tasted bitter.

"She’s really good," Kumiko confirmed. "Her retention is insane. I checked her social blade once because I was curious and her average watch time is like forty minutes per session, which is way above normal for Just Chatting adjacent content."

Chloe felt Jordan’s eyes on her from the kitchen. He’d stopped eating and now stood with his hip against the counter, his arms folded across his chest in a way that made the muscles in his forearms look like something from a fitness magazine. His expression held that particular quality Chloe had learned to identify over the past two weeks. The look of a man who had arrived at the same conclusion she had and was now waiting to see if she would voice it first.

The bastard.

He’d already thought about recruiting her. Chloe could see it in the way his jaw sat, relaxed but alert, the set of his shoulders, the direction of his gaze. Jordan McKnight had picked up a random girl in a parking garage, driven her home for ten dollars, and was now standing in Chloe’s kitchen wondering if his girlfriend would greenlight a business decision he’d already half-made.

The worst part was that his instinct was correct.

"Don’t say it," Chloe said.

Jordan raised his eyebrows. "I didn’t say anything."

"You’re thinking it so loud I can hear it from here."

"Thinking what?"

"That she’d be a good fit for Nova Network."

Jordan’s mouth did the thing it did when he was trying very hard not to smile and failing. The left corner lifted first, just barely, and then the right followed a half-second later. Chloe wanted to throw a salmon roll at his face.

"The thought crossed my mind," he said.

"It sprinted across your mind. It did laps."

"I wasn’t going to bring it up tonight. We have a rules meeting."

"We do have a rules meeting." Chloe stood from the couch and walked to the kitchen, planting herself directly in front of Jordan with her arms crossed in a mirror of his posture. The height difference between them meant she had to tilt her chin up to maintain eye contact, and even after two weeks of dating, the sheer size of him at six foot two still produced a physical response in her that she refused to dignify with acknowledgment. "But before we do the rules meeting, I need you to tell me something."

"Anything."

"Do you like her like that?"

Jordan held her gaze. His hazel eyes carried flecks of gold in the late afternoon light that filtered through the factory windows, and Chloe watched them for the micro-expressions she’d cataloged during weeks of studying his face. The tiny shift around his orbital muscles when he lied. The way his nostrils flared almost imperceptibly when he withheld information. The subtle movement of his Adam’s apple when he swallowed a truth he wasn’t ready to share.

None of those tells appeared.

"No," Jordan said. "It didn’t. I saw a girl with a dead car and I helped. That’s it."

Chloe studied him for three more seconds. Then she uncrossed her arms and reached past him to grab a salmon roll from the container, biting into it with the mechanical efficiency of someone fueling a body rather than enjoying food.

"Okay," she said through a mouthful of rice.

"Okay?"

"I believe you."

Something in Jordan’s posture released. Not a sigh, exactly, but a loosening across his shoulders and down through his spine that Chloe had learned to read as genuine relief rather than performed relaxation. He reached forward and tucked a strand of her black hair behind her ear, his thumb grazing the skin just below her earlobe. The touch was brief and warm, and Chloe’s stomach did something inconvenient that she blamed on the salmon.

"Thank you," he said.

"Don’t thank me. Thank the fact that you’re a terrible liar and I’ve been watching your face for two weeks."

"I’m not that terrible."

"Jordan, your lying skills are genuinely, objectively terrible, and the only reason I’m still here is because I find that quality endearing rather than concerning."

Kumiko appeared beside them like a ghost in platform sneakers, her phone still in her hand and her eyes bright with the particular intensity she got when her brain was operating at maximum capacity.

"I followed KhaosKitten," Kumiko announced. "And I DMed her from my KumiKumoCos account asking if she’d be interested in a collab."

Chloe turned slowly.

"You did what?"

"I DMed her! She’s really talented and her aesthetic would complement ours so well. Imagine a stream where she’s playing Stardew Valley and I’m doing a Stardew cosplay in the background while you do commentary. The chat would lose their minds."

"Kumiko."

"Yes?"

"We have not discussed whether Nova Network is recruiting. We have not established brand guidelines. We have not finalized the operating agreement. Brooke sent a thirty-four-page document that nobody except Brooke has read."

"I read it," Jordan said.

"You skimmed it."

"I read sections four through seven very carefully."

"Because Brooke told you those were the important parts."

"She was right."