Page 97 of The CEO I Hate

I opened my mouth to argue, but what could I say? Iwassurrounded by problems. And sure, not all of them were my fault, but my relationship with Mia was beyond repair, and I had no idea how to even begin repairing things with Jake. So, yeah, what Finn said was pretty accurate. I huffed instead, rolling my eyes at Finn’s smug expression.

“The real question is, what have you learned from all this?” Connor said, sounding like a kindergarten teacher trying to coax a student into reciting the alphabet.

I glared at him. “That I never should have gotten involved with Mia in the first place. I get it. Lesson learned.” If I’d just kept my hands and my feelings to myself, the writers’ room wouldn’t be mad at me, Jakewould still be willing to talk to me, and I wouldn’t have had any reason to flake out on Mom.

Connor and Finn exchanged a long look.

“Eh!” Finn said, making a sound like a buzzer. “Wrong answer.”

Connor snorted. “He’s clearly learned nothing.”

“What are you talking about?” I grumbled. I hated when they talked about me like I wasn’t there.

“The answer we were looking for was ‘I should make things right with Mia,’” Connor explained.

“No, I need to stay the hell away from her.”

Finn shook his head. “If you make things right with Mia, it would fix things with Jakeandthe writers’ room, and more than that, it would make you happy.”

“And if you had been happy last night, you wouldn’t have ditched Mom, and you wouldn’t be sitting here looking like you haven’t slept in a week,” Connor said. “Do you see how it’s all related to that one thing?”

I snorted. “It’s not that easy.”

“It could be,” Connor said. “Apologize. Go make things right.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because Mia made it clear what she wanted when she walked out my office door.”

“And what do you want, man?” Finn said.

“I want to go back to before I ever let my feelings for her get this far.” Back to before I knew what it was to love her. And lose her.

33

MIA

Iheld my breath. The tension in the room throbbed like a heartbeat, all eyes on Lyle as he read through the final script of season two. I’d just turned in the last of the edits after a hasty dinner.

Kait’s eyes were closed, her hands pressed to her mouth like she was sending up a silent prayer, while Tanya was curled up on her chair like a spring under pressure. If Lyle didn’t say something soon, she was likely to shoot off into space. Ash, meanwhile, was snoring gently under the conference table, completely unbothered by the career-level decisions unfolding above his head. I envied him for it.

“Well?” I said when I reached the point where I couldn’t take it anymore.

Lyle threw his hand up and hushed me.

It took every ounce of my self-control not to roll my eyes. I needed him to say something. Were we spending an all-nighter here to get this done?

My eyes lifted to Paula’s. She gave me a shrug, her lips twitching. In the end, Paula technically had final say on the script as showrunner,but we all knew the real approval we needed was Lyle’s if we wanted to keep production on track. It was a screwed-up little hierarchy we were dealing with, but we’d made the best of it so far, and we were almost to the finish line.

Jerome paced behind Paula, too wound up to keep to his seat. The only person who was anywhere near calm was James Singh. Though, I didn’t expect him to care that much. He didn’t have as much invested in this show, in this season, in the storytelling, as we did.

“Lyle, we need to know if we’re working late tonight,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice light. “You have to say something. Good or bad, I don’t even care at this point. Just tell us what we’re doing.”

Lyle looked up from his laptop screen, his gaze shifting around the room, from one writer to the next, as the tension threatened to strangle me.

“It’s good,” he said after a beat.