Page 100 of The CEO I Hate

“Other than all these great revenge schemes,” Sophie said. “Whatisyour plan now that you’ll have all this free time?”

I sighed. I’d barely had a second to think these past few months. Now that I was done withEnd in Fire, I could put all my focus onHeart and Hustle.

“I’ve got some more book promo stuff to do.” The release date for the print run was right around the corner. “I still haven’t arranged any sort of release day event. I was hoping to reach out to a couple of indie bookshops to see if any of them are willing to host.”

“You know I’d totally let you do it here,” Sophie said. “We definitely have the space. You could do a little Q&A on the stage. Though I’m not sure it’s an appropriate venue for your target audience.”

I laughed into my glass. “Can you imagine the looks of horror on parents’ faces when they rock up with their teens here?”

Sophie smirked. “Feels like an untapped market.”

“What? Indie bookstore by day and burlesque club by night?”

Sophie shrugged. “I’m a businesswoman. I could make it work.”

I shook my head, smiling. “While you’re doing that, I’ll also be helping Jake out with his PT.”

“Oh, is physical therapy a go?”

“Yeah, he’s healed enough from the last procedure that the surgeon didn’t think there was any reason to put it off.”

“Even with the fall on his birthday?”

I nodded. “He’s been cleared to go ahead with everything, so now that Gabrielle isn’t around, I’ll be on PT duty. You know, driving him to his appointments, making sure he’s actually doing the at-home exercises.” He was always lazier about those. “I’ve also been poking around with some ideas for a new speculative script. So I foresee many late writing nights in my future.”

Sophie sipped her drink. “And that all sounds great,” she said. “Really. But what are you doing aboutyourself?”

I frowned, my next sip going down hard. “I don’t understand the question.”

“About your broken heart?”

“Oh,that.”

“Yeah, that pesky old thing,” Sophie said, tapping me on the nose.

“I don’t know,” I muttered. “Wait for it to heal, I guess.” What else was there to do? I’d been broken up with before. I knew how this process went. But for some reason, this pain felt deeper. Liam had carved out a space for himself in my heart, and patching that up again was going to take time. “And keep hustling in the meantime. Until my heart can catch up.”

“Sounds like the story of my life,” Sophie said, clinking her glass against mine.

I sighed. “It’s certainly the story of my webcomic.”

“At least you’ll never run out of content,” Sophie said.

I laughed. It was humorless and sad. “God, life sucks sometimes.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Sophie said, and together we toasted.

34

LIAM

“You have a lot of nerve showing up here after the way you treated my sister,” Jake said, swinging his apartment door open. Ash sniffed at the doorway, recognized Jake’s scent, and wagged his tail. I hadn’t planned to bring him along, but he had refused to leave my side all damn day.

“Well…you answered the door this time,” I pointed out. “So you can’t hate me that much.”

Jake huffed, glaring at me the way he reserved for all Mia’s loser ex-boyfriends. “Maybe I only answered it so I could slam it in your face again.”

His stare was brutal, but I didn’t move. I knew if I left now, that if I left this wound festering between us, it would be the end of our friendship. I didn’t know if there was any way back from where we were currently, from the hurt I’d already caused him, but I had to try.