Chapter 408 | Hairline Fracture

Chapter 408: 408 | Hairline Fracture

She stood at the counter and processed it with the specific stillness she got right before she started using words like closed loop.

"It amplifies passive attraction with registered family," she said. Not a question. She’d already read the shape of it off his face. "And you haven’t registered them."

"Can’t register someone I don’t touch. No contact, no slot, no meter." He said it flat, the way he’d been saying it to himself for two weeks. "So I don’t touch them. I stay away, the thing stays asleep, everybody’s fine and nobody has to think about it."

"That’s why you’ve been paranoid."

"I’m not being paranoid. Paranoid is when the threat’s imaginary." He picked the fork back up because his hands needed a job. "The threat’s a line of text I can read whenever I open the app. That’s not paranoia. That’s just reading."

Chloe was quiet for a long moment. The apartment hummed around them, the fridge cycling on with its low drone, the harbor light doing whatever it did to the factory windows in the middle of a Monday.

"So you’re going to avoid your family," she said, "for the rest of your life. Through a pregnancy, a baby, holidays, Cassie’s Thanksgiving, all of it. You’re going to keep dodging FaceTimes and inventing midterms so that a slot you refuse to fill stays empty."

When she said it like that it sounded stupid. It was stupid. That was the problem with saying things out loud to Chloe, she took the thing you’d been carrying in the dark and set it under a light and it turned out to be a much smaller and dumber object than it had felt in your hands.

"I don’t have a better plan," he admitted.

"You never have a better plan. That’s what I’m for." She pushed off the counter and came around the island, close enough that he could smell the lemon and the eggs and underneath it just her. She reached up and set her palm flat against his jaw, thumb along the muscle that had been doing the sideways thing, pressing until it let go. "The trait affects attraction. It doesn’t rewire you. You still have a functioning brain and eighteen years of not wanting to make out with your sister. A buff that turns a zero into a five doesn’t make the five happen. It just makes the room warmer."

"You don’t know that."

"Neither do you. You’ve been assuming worst case for two weeks based on one line of corporate copy from an app that also gave you the power to make tumbleweeds appear." Her thumb moved once along his jaw, slow. "You want to know what I think."

"Not really."

"I think you’re scared of a version of yourself that doesn’t exist yet, which is the most on-brand thing you’ve ever done." She said it gentle, which was worse than if she’d said it mean. "You spent a whole night convinced you didn’t deserve any of this. You posted a thirst trap to make Eliza jealous and then spiraled about whether the universe was going to take everything back. This is the same thing. You found a new reason to believe you’re one wrong move away from ruining it."

His chest did something complicated. He wanted to make a joke. The joke was right there, something about how at least this reason came with legal documentation, and he opened his mouth to say it and the joke didn’t come out. Just the breath before it, and then nothing, and then Chloe’s hand still warm on his jaw and her brown eyes steady behind the glasses.

"I don’t want to test it," he said finally. "That’s all. I don’t want to hug my mom and find out."

"Then don’t test it yet." She dropped her hand. "But you don’t get to disappear on your family through a pregnancy because of a hypothetical. We tell your parents. We tell my mother. You stay across the room from Cassie if you have to, you sit at the far end of the table, you send the buff a memo that it’s not invited. But you show up. Kids need people who show up." Her voice caught on the last part, just slightly, a hairline fracture she smoothed over before it could spread. "I know that better than you do."

Her father. Twelve-hour shifts and chemical fumes and coming home to help with homework anyway. The past tense she used without meaning to.

That was the thing that got him, every time. Not the logic. Chloe could out-logic anyone, that wasn’t a fair fight. It was the crack in the sentence, the place where the girl who ran spreadsheets and monetized bathtubs let something real slip through, and it always landed harder than any argument because she never meant to let it land at all.

His phone buzzed on the counter.

He knew before he looked. The pattern. Kumiko sent in bursts, three and four at a time, a whole thought delivered in pieces. This was one buzz. One message. The single-shot pattern belonged to someone who typed a thing and then panicked and then sent it anyway before the panic won.

He looked.

Cassie. His sister.

mom says you keep dodging her. you good? you sounded weird on the phone last time. also she wants to do dinner again and i’m coming down for it so don’t try to wiggle out. we need to talk about you being a whole different person now. i want the full story and i want it in person.

The eggs went cold on the counter.

Chloe watched his face do the thing it had been doing all afternoon, the jaw, the stillness, the specific frozen quality of a man reading a text he’d been dreading for two weeks show up on his screen with a date attached.

"It’s her," Chloe said. Not a question.

"She’s coming down. For the dinner. She wants the full story in person." Jordan set the phone face down like that would make it less true, which it did not, because nothing made things less true, that was the entire problem with things. "In person. She said in person twice."

Chloe crossed her arms.

"Well," she said. "Guess you’re finding out about the trait sooner than you wanted."