The Dating Experiment (The Experiment, #2)(40)

I shook my head slowly. Two minutes ago, she was yelling at me; now she was grinning. What the fuck was in her coffee? Did she drug herself on the sly? No random bean was that magic. This wasn’t Jack and the fucking Beanstalk.

I finished making my coffee and joined her in the living room. She’d wasted no time putting her stupid show back on again, and I bit back a sigh as I took my seat on the sofa.

“So,” she said, blowing on her coffee with her eyes trained on the TV. “What do we do now?”

“We can do it again if you really want. I won’t object.”

“Dom. I’m being serious.” Chloe rested the mug on the arm of the chair and turned to look at me. Vulnerability flashed in her eyes, and it was clear that the niggling feeling I’d had was right.

I wasn’t the only one feeling something they shouldn’t be feeling.

She swallowed, looking down at her legs. She picked a piece of thread off her leg, twisting it around her finger until it snapped when she dropped it on the floor.

“It’s not a joke. I know that, Chlo,” I said quietly, keeping my eyes on her. “It’s not even close to being funny.”

“Why did you do it?” She lifted her gaze. “Why did you kiss me, then come here, and…” She trailed off, instead choosing to wave her arm in the direction of the stairs.

“Because I wanted to,” I said. “Because I wanted you.”

“Wanted?”

“You say that like I’m telling you that’s changed.”

“Your use of the past tense suggests it has.”

I put the mug down, getting up and walking over to her. I sat on the edge of the coffee table, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees, and looked right at her. “It doesn’t change anything. I still want you as much as I did when I walked in that door a few hours ago.”

She didn’t say anything. She simply looked back down at her legs.

“Whether or not I want you isn’t the question. The question is do you want me?”

She glanced up, lips parted, before she looked back down.

“Chloe…”

She nodded. That was it—her answer. Three little jerks of her head where she couldn’t even look at me.

“Then—”

“Argh!” Chloe stood up, diving her fingers into her hair. She fisted the already messy curls, tugging at them as she turned her back to me.

That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting.

“You can’t expect this would work.” She turned, piercing me with her bright eyes. “Me and you. The idea is just…insane.”

My eyebrows shot up. “You didn’t think it was so insane when you told me that I’d never have another chance with you if I left.”

“I didn’t think you’d stay,” she admitted. “I wanted you to, but I didn’t think you would.”

“You can’t think I would have left.”

“You’d kissed me two days before. I didn’t know what to think. I still don’t.” She ran her fingers back through her hair again and turned to face me. “We fight all the time, Dom. That doesn’t make for a successful anything, and I’m not going to be your fuck buddy.”

I got up and walked over to her. “Peyton and Elliott fight all the time. So do Mellie and Jake. Besides, it’s more bickering.”

“Three weeks ago, I threw a water bottle at you.”

“Eh. I deserved it. I had actually eaten your last Sour Patch Kids.”

Her jaw dropped. “So, you lied to me?”

I held up my hands. “Hey. You threw it at me when you thought it was Peyton. Like I was gonna tell you it was really me.”

“Oh, you—”

I grabbed her wrists before she could hit me. “It doesn’t matter that we fight. I don’t fucking care.”

“Well, I do. I want to be with the cream to my strawberries, not the oil to my water.”

“Oh, please. You’d be bored out of your mind if you ever dated someone who was the cream to your strawberries. They wouldn’t fight you nearly as much as you need to be fought.”

“What if I found the cream to my strawberries?”

I stepped back and let go of her hands. “Then everything you’ve said to me today has been nothing but a big waste of time, and I have somewhere else to be.” I picked my phone up from the sofa and shoved it into my pocket.

“Dom.”

I stopped in the doorway and looked back at her.

“This is why,” she said quietly, wrapping her arms around her waist. “This is why we would never work.”

“No, Chloe. We’ll never work because you’re not willing to try. There’s the difference. I’d go to the ends of the Earth to try. Yet, you tell me you want me, then tell me there’s someone better out there for you than me.” I shrugged. “Fine. I might lose my keys or do things that annoy you or fight with you, but if you think someone else is better for you, go get him. But I can bet my life savings he’ll never see that the office kitchen is out of coffee and get the last pods from his own kitchen just so you can have yours. He’ll never swap your sellotape rolls when yours is getting low just so you don’t run out, even though he knows you’ll get annoyed that he’s run out. He’ll never buy your favorite flavored water in his own grocery shop just to make sure you always have it in the fridge when you get thirsty at work.”