The Dating Experiment (The Experiment, #2)(45)

Elliott shook his head. “Women. Fucking women.”

Never was a truer statement spoken.

“But…I want everything she wants,” I said to Peyton. “Why is that so hard for her to accept?”

“Because! Ugh, you absolute lumphead.” She smacked her hand against her forehead. “She accepted it would never happen. It was done. Finito. Never. Gonna. Happen.”

“Well, if she’d told me how she felt, it would have happened.”

“You could have told her. You had plenty of opportunities before you started to work together and verbally kill each other on a daily basis. It’s not her fault you never noticed all the times she was mega-bitch on the jealousy scale or—”

“When the hell did that happen?”

“Well, most recently? Ruby.”

I stared at her. “I thought she just hated Ruby.”

“She did. She looked like a fifty-cent hooker stuffed into a five-hundred-dollar wrapper,” Peyton said, matter-of-factly. “The point remains, she’s spent years watching you be with other people and being jealous. Treating you differently. Dropping hints. Just being someone who’s in love with you, while you’ve literally kept it all locked up and not even given a hint of knowledge that you were interested in her. It’s not her fault you were too dense to see it.”

“Wait—are you blaming me for all this?”

“Your timing was pretty bad, dude,” Elliott said.

Peyton nodded. “I am. I have to blame somebody, and you’re the logical target right now.”

“I’m your brother. What happened to sibling loyalty?”

Hitting me with a scathing glare, she said, “Sibling loyalty went out the window the day you made all my Barbies punk rockers.”

I shook my head. “I should have known that would come back to bite me.”

“Hindsight is a wonderful thing, bro.” She grinned and stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

I sighed when she left the room. “You agree with her?” I asked Elliott.

He shrugged a shoulder. “Dunno. I’m not as involved in this as she is, you know?”

“What would you do if you were me?”

“If I was in this situation with Peyton?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d take out any motherfucker in the path between me and her,” he said honestly, looking me dead in the eye. “You’ve been in love with her for, what? Ten years? And now the chance is finally here? Fuck, Dom. You can’t let it go. Even if she tells you no in the end, you have to fight for her. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

“She doesn’t think it’ll work.”

“Neither did Peyton and now I think she spends more time with Briony than I do.” His lips twitched to one side. “She picked her up from preschool and took her to the movies last week. You just have to prove to Chloe that you’re willing to do whatever it takes to convince her it’ll work. No matter what it takes.”

“Easier said than done,” I muttered.

A happy sigh sounded from the doorway as Peyton walked back in. “What are we talking about?”

“The draft,” Elliott said without batting an eyelid.

“Is a window open?” she asked.

“The football draft.”

“Oh. I don’t care about that. Carry on.” She picked up her phone and scrolled.

“Did you talk to Chloe?” I sat up straight.

She peered over at me. “No. I had a pee. Why would I talk to her while I pee unless she’s here and can bring me more toilet paper?”

I wanted to believe her, but the sparkle in her eye said she knew a lot of things I didn’t.

And, unfortunately for me, I had the feeling my sister had spilled enough secrets for one night.





Chapter Seventeen – Chloe


Sometimes, you just have to be honest.

Maybe not so blunt, though.

I had a plan.

After too much ice-cream and pizza culminating in a trip to a drive-thru cocktail place, Mellie stayed the night. We watched endless episodes of Friends, mostly the ones that consisted of Ross and Rachel’s relationship, and formed a plan.

I was going to go to work today, pull up my big girl panties, and come clean.

Honesty, I felt like I was surrendering to the cops, and I hadn’t even done anything wrong.

No. We’d come to the conclusion that the only way I could be remotely successful at moving on was if I bit the bullet and was completely honest. If I decided to move on from my feelings toward Dom, I had to clear the air and let them all out.

So. I was going to walk into the office, put my foot down, and admit to him that I was in love with him and had been for a long time.

At least, that was my plan.

Like I said. I had one. Whether or not I was coherent enough to execute it was a whole other story.

I sipped on my iced Starbucks coffee and bumped the main door open with my hip. It swung open easily, and my stomach skipped at the thought that Dom was already inside.

Luckily, the locked door to the office brought me some time. I dug my keys out of my purse and unlocked it. It was eerily silent, but I was thankful for it.

Actually, no. I wasn’t. Silence meant one thing; overthinking.