Page 59 of The Friend Zone Experiment

Su Khoon snorted. “How would you know? You don’t have any normal siblings.”

That surprised a laugh out of Renee. “True.”

She let several moments pass in silence. Su Khoon was lost in thought, gazing at the ceiling as though the secrets of the universe were to be found there.

Renee had long given up on being pleasantly surprised by her family. But she’d already been proven wrong once, when Dad had rung her about the Chahaya opportunity. Maybe she should stay open to the possibility of being proven wrong again.

“So,” she said. “How about it?”

Su Khoon raised his wrist to check his watch, a handsome Omega Seamaster. If they had been friends, Renee would have asked if it was vintage.

“How long did you say I have?” he said. “Am I about to get swatted if I don’t say yes?”

Renee wasn’t sure if she was enjoying finding out her brother possessed a sense of humour. Was this a late-in-life development? Part of his midlife crisis, along with cheating on his wife with blonde twenty-year-olds? “Swatting is an American thing, isn’t it?”

“Fine,” said Su Khoon.

Renee waited. But her brother was getting to his feet, picking up his espresso cup.

“Fine?” said Renee. “That’s it?”

Su Khoon looked up, faintly surprised. “What else am I going to say? You’ve got me over a barrel. You know and I know you don’t need evidence to cause trouble for me.”

Renee frowned. “I said I’m not going to tell on you.”

Su Khoon waved this away. “Sure, sure. Let’s leave it at that.” He was even smiling.

Renee saw, with a surge of indignation, that he didn’t believe she’d never intended to blackmail him, and that had gone some way towards restoring his self-respect. He’d decided the fact she’d decided not to play dirty was a pretence, part of some deep-laid scheme of her devising. Which meant he didn’t need to be disquieted or confused, and he definitely didn’t need to reflect on how he’d treated her. It was all tactics, from Su Khoon’s point of view.

Before she could open her mouth to defend herself, he said:

“Maybe you’re right. I need to forget you’re my dumb little sister. Let’s start over. Clean slate. I’ll play nice on this deal, but that’s it. You don’t expect anything else from me. That’s the agreement, right?”

“Right,” said Renee.

Su Khoon held out his hand. “Shake on it, then.”

Renee reached out and took her brother’s hand. His palm was dry, his clasp firm, but not aggressively so. It was the first time she had touched him in years.

She was going to needsomuch therapy.

“No hard feelings?” said Su Khoon. He seemed to have cheered up, now he thought he’d seen through Renee’s game.

“No hard feelings,” said Renee.

This new, reformed version of Su Khoon suggested Renee could stay for dinner, but he didn’t press when she declined. There was a shared recognition that, even if a truce had been achieved, they shouldn’t push things too far.

Their goodbyes were civil. Su Khoon said his PA, Penny, would send her the documents for the Freshview pitch the next morning. Renee said she looked forward to reading them.

She took out her phone once she was on the pavement outside,checking the time. It was thirteen minutes past eight. She’d been in the house for just over two hours. It had felt longer.

She clocked the notification as she was about to put the phone away. A message from Ket Siong.

How are you doing?

The timestamp was precisely forty-five minutes after she had texted him.

It was hard not to read something into this. Renee had a vision of Ket Siong, his eye on the clock, waiting till it was no longer too early to check in.