The Dating Experiment (The Experiment, #2)(47)

I was going to throw up.

He shook his head.

“You set me up with Warren.” I rested my cheek on my knee. “I told myself that if you set me up with him without question, I was right. Nothing would ever happen between us, and you did it.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “But I didn’t—”

“It didn’t matter that you didn’t know. How was I supposed to tell you? You’re Peyton’s brother. As far as I was concerned, I was just your little sister’s best friend, and I always had been. I had no way of knowing you ever felt anything differently about me.”

“Why would you?” he asked with a wry smile. “I was your best friend’s annoying brother. Like I could tell you.”

“So why did you finally do it?”

“You pushed me. You kept demanding to know who my perfect girl was without knowing that I was looking right at her. So…I kissed you.” He shrugged, looking at the floor. “Probably should have just used a thing called words, in hindsight, but never mind.”

The lump in my throat was almost painful. I couldn’t swallow it to save my life. “Do you regret it?”

He jerked his head up, his gaze slamming into mine. “No. I told you yesterday. I could never regret you, Chlo. And even if you don’t want to do this, I’ll only regret that I never had the balls to tell you sooner.”

“I don’t know what to do,” I said softly. “We fight. All the time. About everything. This is the only conversation I feel like we’ve had in two weeks where we haven’t been fighting with each other. That’s not healthy. No matter how many times you switch my pens or check the printer ink or do all those other things. All I ever do for you is save you the last slice of pizza.”

His lips twitched to one side. “You save me the last slice of pizza?”

I shrugged, sitting up straight, but still hugging my knee. “Yeah. You used to steal it all the time, and I guess, at some point, I just started leaving it. Doesn’t matter if it were fresh or twelve hours old and been sitting there all night. I know you’ll check the box, so…I leave it.”

Dom titled his head to the side. “I dunno. Saving someone pizza is about as close to true love as a person can get.”

Quietly, I laughed, dipping my chin to my chest. That was true. Pizza and bacon were the foods of love. Screw chocolate. I wanted someone to bring me a plate of bacon for Valentine’s Day.

My laugh petered out, and when I looked back up, he was still smiling. “Why are you smiling at me like that?”

“Can’t a guy smile at the person he’s in love with?”

“I guess he can.”

His smile turned into a smirk before it dropped, and he walked over to me. He swung my chair around, so I faced him, then brushed hair from my face. “Come on, Chlo. Let’s try. What do we have to lose?”

“Everything.” I wheeled my chair back and stood up, wrapping one arm around my waist. “If it doesn’t work, we don’t just lose each other; we potentially lose all of this.” I waved my hand around my office. “We won’t be able to go back to how it was.”

“How it was isn’t gonna change.” He stood, hands out. “What, you think I’m suddenly gonna stop losing my keys, and you’re gonna stop yelling at me about them? Or you’re gonna stop getting annoyed because I didn’t pay the internet company on time? Or you’re going to stop passively aggressively muttering to yourself in the kitchen because I didn’t take the used coffee pod out of the coffee machine?”

“I do not do that.”

“I have literally stood next to the door to listen to you do it.”

“Fine. I did it once.”

“I did it three times.”

“I don’t know what point you’re trying to make here, but it’s starting to annoy me.”

Dom grinned. “See? It’ll never stop. I don’t want it to stop. It’s who we are. We bicker over stupid stuff, but has any of those fights ever changed the way you feel about me?”

I opened my mouth and—nothing. Nothing came out.

Because no. No, it hadn’t. Not once.

Smugness took over his smile. “See? You yelling at me and calling me all the names under the sun on a weekly basis never changed how I wanted you or how I loved it. And you’re missing the big picture.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“I don’t want to stop fighting with you, Chlo. If we stop fighting, it means we’ve stopped caring. Even about the little things.”

I took a deep breath. It escaped with a shudder because I knew he was right. All the things we fought about, even the ridiculously stupid stuff, was because we cared.

“And, listen to me.” He walked toward me, stopping right in front of me, and raised one hand to my face. His palm was soft and warm against my cheek, and I bit the inside of my lip. “You don’t have to be afraid of us not working. There’s not a chance in hell that would ever happen. You’d kill me before we ever broke up.”

“Eh.” I shrugged. “Probably true.”

“Besides. I don’t even like you most of the time—”

“Gee, thanks, Romeo.”

“—But that doesn’t change the fact I can’t see myself spending the rest of my life with anyone other than you.”