Chapter 501 | Permission Slip for a Broken Princess

Chapter 501: 501 | Permission Slip for a Broken Princess

Jordan crumpled the Slurpee wrapper and dropped it in the pump-side trash, because the old Jordan would have opened his mouth right then and promised her a Mercedes, an apartment, and a lawyer named Steve.

The new Jordan had a pregnant girlfriend who had beaten one lesson into him over five weeks of kitchen islands and legal pads: when a girl tells you the worst thing that ever happened to her, you don’t sprint at the fix like a golden retriever chasing a tennis ball into traffic.

"Fourteen hours is fast," he said.

Alexis turned and stared at him, blue lips parted around the straw.

"That’s your response?"

"My mom took nine days to forgive me for missing Christmas dinner, and she cried through all nine. Your mom did a full corporate restructuring before lunch on a Tuesday. That’s a speedrun. I’m a little impressed, honestly."

"Do not admire my mother."

"I’m admiring her logistics. Chloe would respect it. She’d hate it, but she’d respect it."

The noise Alexis made started as outrage and collapsed halfway into something wet that wanted to be a laugh. She pressed the back of her wrist to her mouth, and mustard transferred onto the frayed black cuff of his henley. She looked down at the yellow smear with such profound betrayal that Jordan had to study the fruit stand.

She dabbed at it with a napkin and made it worse.

"That is your shirt," she said.

"It’s been your shirt since Koreatown."

"I know that, but it was your shirt first, and now it has gas station mustard on it, and I am going to have to live with that."

"You could wash it."

"I’m going to wash it in cold water with dish soap," she said, "because apparently that’s who I am now."

Jordan sat in the driver’s seat with the door open, boots on the cracked asphalt. The breeze carried salt and burnt coffee. Alexis sucked on the Slurpee, and the straw made a long, gurgling shhhrrrk against the bottom of the cup that sounded obscene coming from a girl who had once ranked the wine list of every restaurant on Coast Highway.

"You haven’t said it," she told the cup.

"Said what, princess?"

"Don’t call me that right now." It came out cracked down the middle. "You haven’t said you’ll fix it. Every man in my life says that within thirty seconds. Harrison would have called his father’s attorney before I finished the sentence. My father would have sent a car and then sent me a bill for the car." The plastic crackled in her grip. "You bought me a hot dog."

"Two, technically. One was mine."

"You bought me one hot dog and a Slurpee and you’re sitting there like this is a normal Tuesday."

"It’s not normal. Normal Tuesdays I get punched by Maya and then eat rice standing up in my boxers." He rested his forearm on the wheel. "You want to know why I didn’t say I’d fix it?"

She glared at him through blue-stained lashes.

"Because you’d hate me for it. You’d say thank you in that yacht club voice and spend six months paying me back in resentment, and I’d deserve every cent." He shrugged. "I’ve been the guy who throws money at a girl and calls it love. I’ve got the Prada receipt to prove it. I’m retired."

"From what?"

"From buying people."

She looked at the foil wrapper in her lap. "It was a gas station hot dog, Jordan."

"And you’re not somebody I’m buying. You’re somebody I’m feeding. Chloe could explain the difference with a chart."

The app pulsed in his pocket. He didn’t need to look. A hidden quest with a stupid name, a girl’s freedom measured in monthly expenses, and a note mocking a business economics major who thought he could outbid a shipping dynasty.

Golden Parachute. That app was getting a one-star review someday, right after he finished the quest.

Catherine Van Der Berg’s text from yesterday still sat in his phone, unanswered. At your earliest convenience. He was starting to understand that this, the cards and the tow truck and the empty booth, had been the follow-up. She hadn’t needed him to call. She had needed him to watch.

Alexis set the Slurpee in the cupholder. Her hand drifted to the cord under her ear, the one he had found at Heisler Park, and her mouth flattened.

"It’s back," Jordan said.

"It never left. You just turned it off for a while."

"That’s what I do. Turn things off." He tilted his head at her shoulder. "Want me to turn it off again?"

Her hand froze. Pink climbed out of the silk collar and up to her ears.

"There are rules," she said, small and stiff. "Chloe has a legal pad."

"Chloe has a legal pad and a cell phone." He opened the thread labeled with a single blue heart, which Chloe had typed in herself after confiscating his phone in January.

Picked up Alexis. Her mom froze the cards and towed the car. She’s okay. Can I do her neck? Over the shirt, in my car, at a Shell station in San Clemente.

The reply came in eleven seconds, which meant Chloe had been staring at her phone pretending to edit a spreadsheet.

Ten minutes. Shoulders and neck only. You don’t use the voice. Kumiko says to tell her she’s brave. I’m saying she should eat more than one hot dog.

Then a second one.

She’s at sixty-seven now. She gets to say stop. She also gets to say other things. You don’t get to decide what she means by them. Come home tonight or text me where you are by nine.

He could picture her at the island with her glasses on, typing that second message, deleting it at least once, typing it again. She also gets to say other things. Chloe had written him a permission and a warning in the same sentence, and he knew which half had cost her more to type.

Jordan read it twice and turned the screen toward Alexis.

She read the last two lines three times. Then she handed the phone back without a word and swept her hair over her right shoulder, baring the long pale line of her neck.

He walked around the hood, opened her door wider, and crouched beside the seat, close enough to smell her perfume under the mustard and cedar soap under that.

"Turn sideways for me."

She swung her legs out, slippers and all. Somewhere between the café and his passenger seat she had switched into Kumiko’s pink cat slippers. Jordan decided never to mention this, because he wanted to keep living.

He stood behind the open door, blocking her from the station window, and set his palms on her shoulders.

Inside, the cashier had stopped pretending to restock the cigarettes behind the counter.

The skill woke the instant his skin touched silk. Heat poured out of his hands and the map unrolled behind his eyes. Sunday’s knot under her shoulder blade, back at twice its old size. A fresh band across her trapezius where she must have locked up when the card declined. The cord in her neck wound tight enough to hum if he plucked it, which he wasn’t going to do, because Chloe had a timer, a legal pad, and a long memory.

"Hnn." Alexis jerked forward against his hands. "Oh, that’s... you’re doing it already."

He said nothing. No voice allowed, and he didn’t trust the regular one either. He pressed a slow circle into the base of her neck.

"Ahh... nnngh, that’s not fair." The leather creaked under her fingers. "I just lost everything and you’re making me... hahh... feel good about it."

He found the knot below her shoulder blade and leaned into it. The muscle fought him for two seconds, then gave under his thumb with a soft wet pop he felt more than heard.

"Hyaaah!"