Chapter 40 | I Lied, I Wanted You Here

Jordan’s brain stuttered. "What."

"The character Akeno. I kind of based my OnlyFans thing off her. The whole ara ara energy." Chloe wouldn’t look at him now. Just stared at the TV screen with her face burning. "It felt easier to perform as someone else, you know? Like wearing a costume."

Holy shit.

Jordan knew exactly who Akeno was. Every guy who’d watched DxD knew Akeno. The vice-president with the sadistic streak and the sultry voice and the ability to make viewers forget how to breathe.

And Chloe had studied that character. Had absorbed her mannerisms. Had built her entire online persona around the confident, teasing, dangerous energy that Akeno radiated in every scene.

"Wow." Jordan leaned back against the couch. "So I had no way of not falling for that."

The words came out before his brain could stop them.

Chloe’s head snapped toward him. "What?"

Fuck.

"I just mean. Like. The character is designed to be impossible to resist. So obviously the algorithm worked." Jordan scrambled. "Marketing strategy. You know. Smart business decision."

"Uh huh." Chloe narrowed her eyes. "That’s what you meant."

"Yeah."

"You’re a terrible liar."

"I’m aware."

She stared at him. He stared back. The Netflix menu kept playing its background music. Some upbeat tune that didn’t match the tension in the room.

"Do you want to watch DxD?" Chloe asked.

"Do you want to watch DxD?"

"I asked you first."

"I asked you second."

Chloe threw a pillow at his face. Jordan caught it one-handed and tossed it back. It hit her shoulder and she laughed. Actually laughed. The sound filled the apartment like sunlight.

"Fine. We can watch Fairy Tail." She selected an episode from season one. "But if you make fun of the fan service I’m kicking you out."

The episode started. Opening theme played. Chloe sang along under her breath. Jordan noticed she knew all the words.

They settled into the couch together. Her shoulder pressed against his arm. The blanket covered both their legs now. Shared warmth. Shared space.

The episode played. Lucy argued with Natsu. Gray stripped his shirt off for no reason. Erza scared everyone into submission. Standard Fairy Tail chaos.

"This is so dumb," Chloe said. But she was smiling.

"Extremely dumb."

"I love it."

"Me too."

Her head drifted to his shoulder again. Same position as during the movies. Except this time she didn’t have fear as an excuse.

She just wanted to be close to him.

Jordan’s heart hammered. The episode continued but he couldn’t focus. All his awareness narrowed to the spot where her temple pressed against his shoulder. The smell of her shampoo. Vanilla and something floral he couldn’t name. The warmth of her body through his shirt.

"Jordan?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for coming back over." Her voice was soft, almost tentative, like she was testing the words before committing to them.

"You texted me. Said you were scared." He kept his tone neutral, matter-of-fact, even as his pulse kicked up another notch.

"I lied." The confession came out barely above a whisper, so quiet he almost missed it over the sound effects from the TV. "I wasn’t scared. I just..." She paused. Drew a breath. "I wanted you here."

Jordan’s lungs seized. Forgot how to process oxygen. The episode continued playing on the screen in front of them—someone was fighting someone else, colorful magic effects exploding across animated backgrounds, dramatic music swelling—but none of it penetrated the sudden rushing sound in his ears.

"Oh," he managed.

"Is that okay?" Chloe’s voice carried a tremor he’d never heard before.

"Is what okay?"

"That I wanted you here." She lifted her head from his shoulder. The loss of contact felt like a physical thing, but then she was turning to face him and suddenly her face was right there, inches away, close enough that he could see the exact pattern of her eyelashes. Those dark eyes searched his with an intensity that made his stomach flip. "That I lied to get you back."

"Chloe." Her name came out rougher than he intended.

"Because I know what we are. What we were. You paid me three thousand dollars to sit in a restaurant and pretend we were strangers. You spent months subscribing to content I made for hundreds of other guys. And now I’m sitting here in my apartment wearing basically nothing and asking you to watch anime with me like we’re normal people with a normal connection."

"We are normal people."

"Are we?"

Jordan reached up slow, giving her enough time to pull back if she wanted to. She didn’t move. Not even a little.

His hand settled against her cheek. Her skin was warm, softer than he’d let himself think about in all those months of knowing exactly who she was and pretending he didn’t. He could feel the faint tension in her jaw, the way she was holding herself very still like she was trying to decide something and running out of time to decide it.

"You’re the most real person I’ve met since I got here," he said. "Since any of this started."

Something in her face shifted. Her eyes dropped to his mouth, came back up, then dropped again like she couldn’t help the pattern.

"Jordan." Her voice had gone unsteady in a way he’d never heard from Calypso, never heard from the Chloe who sat three rows over in Econ and kept her expression perfectly neutral during cold calls.

"Yeah?"

"I think I’m in serious trouble here."

She brought her hand up and pressed her palm flat against his chest, right over his sternum. She had to feel it. His pulse was not doing anything remotely calm, and the hand against him made it worse, and she was close enough that he could see her trying to figure out if she was about to make a mistake.

"Chloe."

"Tell me this is stupid." Her voice shook on the last word. "Tell me we should stop, that you should go back next door, that I should go back to my rules and you should go back to yours, and we should go back to being two people who happened to share a meal once and didn’t make it weird. Tell me that."

His thumb moved across her cheekbone. Slow. "Is that what you want?"

"No."

"Then I’m not going anywhere."

She kissed him.