Infinite Cashback System

Jordan wrapped both arms around her and pulled her tighter. His chin rested on top of her head. Her hair smelled like vanilla shampoo and chamomile and new electronics, the same combination that had been slowly becoming his favorite scent on the planet.

"You’re not sharing me right now."

"You gave her a headpat and she literally shut down like a laptop running out of battery."

"That’s... a fair description, yeah."

"And she kissed your cheek and said ’bye, boyfriend’ and did a teehee."

"She did do a teehee."

"A teehee, Jordan. She teehee’d at you."

"I heard it. I was there."

Chloe pulled back just enough to look up at him. Her blue contact lenses were out. Her natural dark brown eyes stared up at him with an expression that was nine parts affection and one part something feral and possessive that she kept leashed during business hours.

"You’re mine first."

The word first did heavy lifting in that sentence. It acknowledged Kumiko’s existence. It accepted the arrangement. And it drew a line so clear that Jordan could feel it under his feet.

"Always." Jordan kissed her forehead. Then her nose. Then her mouth, soft and quick, just enough to feel her lips relax against his. "First, last, and every spot in between."

Chloe made a sound against his chest that fell somewhere between a grumble and a purr. Her arms tightened around his waist for another ten seconds before she finally released him and stepped back. The pout had softened into something more neutral. Not gone, exactly. Stored. Filed away for future reference under a tab labeled "things I’m dealing with but don’t want to talk about right this second."

Jordan understood that filing system. He had one of his own, and the tab labeled "lies I’ve told both of these girls about a fake inheritance" was getting thick enough to qualify as a novella.

He pushed that thought down. Not now. Later. Always later.

"So." Jordan dropped onto the sectional and stretched his legs out, his arms spreading across the back of the cushions. "Your setup is done. Kumiko’s channel already has an audience. My brain has been doing math since Tuesday."

Chloe settled beside him, her body fitting into the familiar groove at his side. Her legs folded beneath her. "Math about what?"

"About how two girls with streaming talent and a guy with way too much time on his hands add up to something bigger than individual channels."

Chloe’s eyes narrowed. Not in suspicion. In interest. The same look she got when her spreadsheet columns lined up and the monthly projection exceeded her targets.

"I want to start a streamer group," Jordan said. "A brand. You and Kumiko as the founding members. Shared production, cross-promotion, collaborative content. One audience feeds the other. You raid her channel when you go offline, she raids yours. Viewers who find one of you discover the other. The brand identity ties everything together and makes sponsorship deals easier to negotiate because companies pay more for a package than for individual creators."

Chloe was quiet for a moment. The purple light painted shadows across her cheekbones.

"That’s actually smart."

"Don’t sound so surprised."

"I’m not surprised you had an idea. I’m surprised it’s a good one." The corner of her mouth twitched upward. "You’ve been thinking about this for a while."

"Since Management 1A on Tuesday. Dr. Ashford was talking about business entities and the lightbulb just went on."

Chloe pulled her legs tighter beneath her, her posture shifting from relaxed to engaged. Jordan recognized the transition. This was the girl who maintained color-coded spreadsheets and tracked subscriber demographics and knew her monthly revenue down to the cent. The businesswoman behind the beautiful face.

"Okay. But there’s a problem." Chloe held up a finger. "I have zero followers. My Twitch account is brand new. Kumiko has ten thousand on Instagram for cosplay and maybe... what, two thousand consistent Twitch viewers? That’s a start, not an empire."

"I know."

"So how do two tiny streamers become big streamers?" Chloe raised an eyebrow. "Because I’ve been on the creator side of this equation for six months and I can tell you the algorithm does not care about your business plan."

Jordan leaned forward. His elbows rested on his knees. A grin spread across his face that he couldn’t have stopped if he wanted to, the kind of grin that belonged on someone holding a hand full of aces and knowing every other player at the table was drawing dead.

"Leave that to me."

"That’s not an answer."

"It’s the only answer you’re getting tonight."

"Jordan."

"Chloe."

She stared at him. He stared back. The purple LEDs cycled through their color pattern. The PC hummed. Somewhere outside, a car alarm went off briefly and stopped.

"Heh." Jordan leaned back into the cushions. His phone sat heavy in his pocket, the System already tallying the day’s transactions and relationships and percentage points. The Streaming Empire quest glowed in the back of his mind with its ninety-day timer and its promise of two hundred and fifty tickets and twenty-five thousand dollars in startup capital.

Two members recruited. One brand identity to build. Revenue to generate. And a System that paid him to do exactly what he was already planning to do anyway.

Chloe watched his expression and something shifted in her face, recognition settling in as she realized Jordan wasn’t bluffing and wasn’t guessing and wasn’t making this up as he went along. He had a plan. A real one. With moving parts and contingencies and a profit model that she couldn’t see yet but that he’d clearly been engineering in the background of every conversation and purchase and interaction for the past three days.

"You’re serious about this."

"Dead serious."

"And you’re not going to tell me the plan tonight."

"Nope."

"Because?"

"Because you’ll try to optimize it before I finish explaining it, and I need you to trust me for twenty-four hours while I put the last pieces together."

Chloe’s jaw worked. The request to trust without verification ran contrary to every survival instinct she’d developed over eighteen years of protecting herself and her family. But she’d trusted Jordan with her identity, her body, her secret, and the nomination of her best friend as his second girlfriend. One more day of faith shouldn’t have been the hard part.

"Twenty-four hours."

"That’s all I need."