The Dating Experiment (The Experiment, #2)(9)

Plot twist: I fucked up.

How the fuck did I match her with someone perfect for her?

My fist fell down on my desk at the same time I clicked off yet another profile.

I felt as though I’d seen everyone that Stupid Cupid had to offer. Like I’d gone through every match and then some. None of them seemed to be good enough for her.

Shit. I was the authority on not being good enough for her.

Either that or I subconsciously didn’t want to do this. Hell, it wasn’t even subconscious. It didn’t matter that I’d told my sister I was going to ask Chloe to set me up with someone—I never dreamed she’d actually fucking suggest it.

I dropped my head forward and buried my fingers in my hair. Fuck. The woman riled me like no other, but that was only because I couldn’t have her.

I wanted her, but I couldn’t have her. She tolerated me on the best days.

Was that because she’d once crushed on me and I hadn’t known?

When had she crushed on me? Was she thirteen or twenty-three? How could Peyton not have told me when she knew I’d been harboring feelings for that little blonde pain in my ass?

Sisters. Women. They’d kill me one day, of that I was sure. Especially when they coordinated their attacks.

I blew out a long breath and leaned right back in my chair. Fighting with Chloe was a weird kind of pleasure—almost an addiction I couldn’t break. There was something ridiculously hot about the way her cheeks flushed and her eyes lit up with emotion.

There was a fire in her. A wildfire. The kind of wildfire that would take forever and a day to put out.

And I wanted to stoke it.

But, I couldn’t. I had no business stoking her, which is why I clicked on the profile of a pretty decent guy I’d be happy to match with anybody except Chloe.

He was really that—a decent guy. He had a good, steady job as a data analyzer for a national company. He was into sports, but only football and baseball—something I knew she had a soft spot for because of the tight pants—and chilled out by watching real-life crime mysteries on the ID channels. He listed Joe Kenda as a favorite, and I knew Chloe had, at one point, her entire DVR filled with Kenda episodes that she binged on.

Aside from that, he worked nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday. He was close to his family who lived in Baton Rouge, but not so close he saw them every day. He was thirty, so in her desired age-range, and owned both his house and his car outright thanks to his high-flying career.

Yeah. No doubt about it. He was the kind of stable, dependable person she needed. Someone who was as equally organized as she was. Someone who was as put together as Chloe was on a regular basis.

Because that was Chloe.

Where Mellie was a clumsy, hot mess and Peyton was a bluntly-spoken clean-freak, Chloe was the strong, dependable, steady figure in their friendship of three.

She needed someone to be to her what she was to them.

She needed that. She needed someone just as strong as she was. She needed this Warren guy.

She didn’t need someone like me. I couldn’t remember a thing to save my life. Losing things was my modus operandi at this point. I was almost thirty and lost my key almost on a weekly basis. I couldn’t remember an internet password to save my goddamn life, and as for the milk in my apartment?

I threw it out this morning. I take my coffee black, so let’s say I’d forgotten it was either in my fridge.

I was the fucking male Mellie, except forgetful in place of clumsy.

There was a reason my thirtieth birthday was this year and I was completely single. My feelings for Chloe tossed aside—I hated to admit it, but I almost needed a lesson from my fucking sister on how to keep my shit together.

Setting Chloe up with another guy was the first step to that. Getting over that blonde wildcat I worked with and had obsessed over for years was the only way I’d even begin to get my shit together.

I needed to see her with someone else. I needed to see her happy with someone.

I didn’t want to, but I needed to.

I cracked my neck by rocking it side to side and copied his email from his application. Bile rose in my throat as I hit the ‘new message’ button on the email server and pasted his email into the “To” box.



To: Warren Jones [email protected]

From: Dominic Austin [email protected]

Subject: Date



Hi, Warren,

Dom from Stupid Cupid here. Are you still interested in being matched by our service? I noticed your profile hasn’t been active lately, but I think I have you a potential match.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Dom



I hit “send” before I could change my damn mind about it. The worst part about this was now having to create Chloe a profile. That was the one thing we hadn’t spoken about, and since we’d only discussed this yesterday, I didn’t want to message her yet for it.

How the fuck would a woman fill in a dating profile? How did they fill in ours? I wasn’t ashamed to admit I typically dealt with the guys. I matched them to the girls without thinking about they filled out their applications.

I opened one of the forms. How did I fill this out for her? Did I? Or did I sell her in the way only I knew how?

And I didn’t mean the prickly, antagonistic, infuriating woman I came across on a daily basis.

I meant the woman I knew that she hated being shared with anyone.