His Affection Meter Hit 100% novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Three Rules

Ainsley sets her rules in Heath's penthouse, takes his card and lets him kiss her on the kitchen counter until he mocks her with Frankie's name. Then a video of the kiss lands in the group chat.

I woke up in Heath's penthouse with his arm across my ribs and the gray panel hanging at the edge of my sight.

*AFFECTION: 38%.*

All night I had heard Frankie say it. *Because it moved.*

I had looked for her after that, to ask what she meant, and found only her empty chair and her truck gone from the drive.

Nobody else could see the panel, and she had stared straight at it.

I had no answer yet, and I put the question away to pick up later.

He had driven me home from the party last night and held on to me all the way up to bed.

Now he was awake, staring at the ceiling, and he was not saying anything.

"You're thinking too loud," I said.

"I'm thinking you should be throwing things at my head."

"I'm not going to throw things."

"Ains." He turned to face me. "Any other week, you'd have my phone in your hand by now, checking where I was."

"That was before."

His forehead creased.

He thought I meant the four months apart, and I let him think it.

"I have three rules," I said, and sat up against the headboard. "I'm only saying them once."

"Okay."

"No location sharing. Yours or mine."

"Okay."

"No going through each other's phones."

"Okay."

"And no scenes. Not at parties, not at dinner, not in front of your friends. If I'm upset, I'll tell you in private, like an adult."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"That's it? Those are your rules?"

"That's it."

"You hate that I'm friends with Frankie. You've hated it for three years."

"I know," I said. "I'm tired of it."

That was the truth.

I had spent three years hating her and nine months afterward with a mop, and the hate had not paid for one meal.

He pulled me against his chest and held on harder than he needed to.

*AFFECTION: 41%.*

I closed my eyes and waited for the guilt to arrive.

It came, but smaller than I expected.

"Come on," he said into my hair. "I'll make you breakfast. Then you're taking my card."

"I don't need your card."

"You do. You've been paying for things on your own for a year. It's stupid."

He pulled open a kitchen drawer and slid a black card across the counter to me.

The panel opened in my sight.

*ACQUIRED: Credit card, limit $20,000. Return pool: $20,000.*

I put the card in my pocket.

My hands did not shake.

The kitchen had a long marble counter and a window over the lake.

I stood at the coffee machine in his shirt, waiting for it to finish, and he came up behind me.

He put both hands on my waist and his mouth against the side of my neck.

"You smell like my place," he said.

The coffee machine hissed.

His hands moved up under the shirt, slow and warm, over my ribs.

I leaned back into him and let my head fall against his shoulder.

*AFFECTION: 44%.*

He turned me around, lifted me onto the counter, and kissed me hard enough that the cup next to me rattled.

His hand slid up my thigh and stopped at the edge of the shirt.

I pulled him in by his belt and he groaned against my mouth.

"God, Ains."

My legs locked around him.

For one whole minute I forgot the panel.

*AFFECTION: 47%.*

Then he put his forehead against mine, laughing a little, out of breath.

"Careful," he said. "I'm starting to think you've stopped caring."

"Why would you think that?"

"Frankie said you'd finally grow up if I gave you room. I owe her twenty bucks."

He said it as a joke, with his hands still on my hips.

I put my palm flat against his chest and pushed him back one step.

"Then you'd better go pay her," I said.

"Ains, that's not..."

"Tell her hi from me."

I picked up my coffee and walked out of the kitchen.

Behind me he swore at himself and kept swearing.

I stood in the hallway and drank the coffee.

*AFFECTION: 49%.*

It had gone up again, even though I had walked away.

I did not understand why, and the System did not offer to explain.

His phone buzzed on the counter.

Then it buzzed again, and again.

Heath picked it up and laughed at the first one.

Then his face changed.

"What is it?"

He didn't answer.

I came back into the kitchen and looked over his arm.

It was a video, sent to the whole group chat from a number that was not saved.

The camera sat in the doorway of an upstairs room, looking in.

Heath had his hands in Frankie's hair.

She had her back against the window and her fists in his shirt, and neither of them was pushing the other away.

The timestamp was last night, twenty minutes before I walked in.

The caption said: *Some accident.*

Forty people were in that chat.

Heath's thumb hung over the screen, white at the nail.

"Ains," he said. "I swear to God. I don't..."

"How many people have it?" I said.

He scrolled.

"All of them," he said. "Everybody has it."

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