The Dating Experiment (The Experiment, #2)(25)

Love was fucked up.

So was honesty.

Who wanted to risk a punch in the balls just to be a good person?

“Fuck.”

I let go of my cock and rested my forehead against the cold tiles of my shower.

Waking up with a boner and jerking off to the thought of my sister’s best friend wasn’t how I planned to start my Sunday.

It wasn’t how I planned to start any day if I was honest. I’d done it a few too many times over the past several years, to the point I was now standing here, wondering if I was in love with her or obsessed with her.

Were they one and the same? Interchangeable? Polar opposites?

Could they be mutually exclusive? Was there a healthy way to be obsessed with somebody?

I didn’t think there was, but if there was, I was living it. I didn’t stalk her, I didn’t hound her, and I did everything in my power to ignore how I felt about her.

All for her.

Because, fuck.

Getting over Chloe Collins was a mountain the size of Everest, and I wasn’t sure I was able to climb it.

The hot water beat down on my upper back, literally breaking down the stress I held in my shoulders. I rolled my shoulders back a couple times until the dull ache had gone.

Then slapped my hand against the tiles and pushed off them. Water smacked me in the face, and I rubbed my left hand over it before stepping out of the water to grab the sponge.

What the fuck was I doing with my life? Standing in the shower lamenting my lack of self-control like I was a teenage boy?

I needed to get a grip. I also needed a distraction. Work was the best possible one at my disposal, so that was how I’d spend my day.

I finished soaping off and got out of the shower. After quickly drying my hair, I wrapped the towel around my waist and headed for my room. Since it was Sunday, I knew Chloe wouldn’t be around the office.

I dried off quickly and tugged on some sweatpants. Droplets from my hair dripped down my back, and I smacked at the back of my neck to stop any more from falling as I made my way downstairs.

I stopped only to grab my phone and keys, then headed down to the office. It was dark and deathly quiet, almost eerie. The flick of the light switch echoed through the empty room as the bulb blinked to life.

Thank God for that.

I blew out a breath and walked over to my desk. While my laptop loaded, I went to make a coffee.

A search in the fridge said we were out of milk.

Fuck it.

I stared at the coffee being poured. I could drink it black, or I could not be damn lazy and go upstairs to my apartment to get the milk out of my own fridge.

I groaned, but ultimately, there was only one option. I wasn’t drinking fucking black coffee.

I took the stairs two at a time to my apartment, grabbed the milk from my fridge, and went back down. My coffee was done pouring, so I finished fixing it up and took a seat at my desk.

I had a list of matches as long as my arm to look at, so I signed into my laptop and pulled the first file from the pile of print-outs to my left.

Christine Smith. Twenty-eight. Bartender. Lived in Baton Rouge. Looking for a guy between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five who lived within one hour of her address, liked food and hiking, and didn’t watch sports all the time.

Trust me to pick up the hardest one first.

I huffed out a breath and opened the program. Entering her information and wants would log all the potential matches on our system, and I’d just have to go through them to weed out any that I didn’t think would work. The keyword software simply took the hardest part out of it.

Besides, there were thousands of applications on this website. There was no way one person—hell, even ten people—could get through this one by one.

I sat back, tapping my fingers against the arms of my chair as the software loaded through. Names appeared on a list at the side of my screen, and it quickly reached one hundred. I pulled more keywords from her profile and, when the software was done with the first round, I input those for it to match to the one hundred and thirty-one names it’d spat out minutes ago.

It narrowed it down to forty. Much easier to go through personally. I saved the search and downloaded all the profiles to my laptop to get ready to go through.

The office door clicked open.

I froze, my gaze darting upward.

“What are you doing here?” Chloe asked, standing in the doorway.

I relaxed. “Working. Why are you here?”

“Left my phone here last night.” She shut the door behind her and walked to her side of the room. She re-emerged seconds later, her phone tight in her hand. She waved it awkwardly. “What are you working on?”

“I’ve got some matches that have been sitting here a while,” I said, focused on the screen instead of her. She looked fucking gorgeous in her trademark leather jacket, white tank, and ripped jeans. The last thing I wanted was to be distracted by her when the whole reason for me being here was to focus on something else.

“Oh. Fair enough. How many do you have?”

I shrugged a shoulder and glanced at the pile. “I think there’s around six.”

“So, you’ll be here all day?”

I nodded.

“Dom…are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked, disregarding one of the matches the system had thrown out. He played sports, so there was no way he wouldn’t watch it all the time.