Page 40 of The CEO I Hate (The Lockhart Brothers #1)

LIAM

I wasn’t in the mood for tacos or brothers or weekly meetings—but I didn’t exactly have a choice, so here I was. I stared down at the menu, unable to read more than a few lines before losing interest. It felt like most things didn’t hold my interest these days.

That was until someone threw the door to the restaurant open and stormed through the dining room.

“The hell’s his problem?” Finn muttered as I looked up to find Connor stalking toward us. “Uh-oh, what’d you do?”

“I’ll tell you what he fucking did,” Connor growled as he got right in my face, hovering over me like a raging storm. I glanced around the—thankfully empty—restaurant while I tried to figure out why Connor was steaming mad.

The last thing I needed was for us to make a scene in public. Our family name had been splashed around in enough tabloids, thanks to Finn. “Where were you last night?” he demanded.

I blinked at Connor in confusion. “Last night? I was home.”

Finn pursed his lips, clearly remembering something I hadn’t. And that was fair. Concentration wasn’t the only thing I’d been struggling with. It sort of felt like I’d been sleepwalking through life this past week. The only thing on my mind was the breakup and Mia. Mia, Mia, Mia .

Or more like the absence of Mia from my life.

She wasn’t gone, exactly. She was still coming to work, still in the writers’ room. But her smile, her laughter, her warmth in my bed at night, her silly little jokes over coffee in the morning, shooting me flirty glances, her rambling excitement for Heart and Hustle . It was all just…gone.

And I obviously wasn’t taking it well. It was all I could do to get myself from work to home and back again every day while combating the endlessness of my inbox and Carl’s four hundred inquiries and whatever other studio-related issues demanded my attention.

Even Ash sensed something was off. He hadn’t followed me home once this week, just stayed curled up at the lot, like he was waiting for things to go back to normal.

“And where were you supposed to be?” Connor shouted. A mixture of frustration and annoyance flared inside me. I had no idea what he was talking about, and I was in no mood to be playing twenty questions right now.

“I don’t know what you’re going on about,” I grumbled, rubbing at my temple. “Just spit it out already!”

“You were supposed to be taking Mom out to dinner!” Connor said.

“You bailed on dinner?” Finn cut in, shaking his head. “Man, c’mon.”

I glowered between them. Yes, it had been on my calendar that Mom and I had dinner plans, but when the reminder had popped up, I just hadn’t had it in me to head up to San Francisco for a visit.

“It had been a long day, and I knew I wouldn’t be good company, so I texted Mom to reschedule, ordered an elaborate dinner, and had it sent to her place instead. What’s the big deal? I’ll see her in a couple weeks.”

“The ‘big deal,’ you piece of shit,” Connor said. For a second it looked like he wanted to clock me in the jaw. “Is that yesterday was Mom’s wedding anniversary!”

I flipped my phone out to check the date. No . No, it couldn’t be. I’d only written DINNER WITH MOM on my schedule. Nothing about it being the anniversary dinner. Shit .

I hadn’t fucked up that badly, had I?

“We talked about this weeks ago!” Connor continued, his tone sharp. “Literally planned out who would be with her so she wouldn’t end up alone on the anniversary. You said you had it covered!”

“I did!” At least, I’d thought I did.

“Then what the fuck happened?”

I dropped my head into my hand. He was right. I’d totally forgotten that was why Mom and I had dinner plans. I’d bailed on her with zero excuses.

“You screwed up,” Finn said. “Majorly.”

“Did she take it badly?” I asked weakly.

Connor finally threw himself down into a chair. “If by ‘take it badly’ you mean did she call me in tears begging me to tell her we’re not going to leave her behind too, then yeah, I’d say she took it pretty fucking badly.”

“Man, if you were going to bail,” Finn said, “you should have called one of us to cover.”

“I didn’t mean to bail on this!” I growled. Shit . Fuck . “Everything’s a goddamn mess. ”

Connor’s expression shifted slightly, maybe at the utter defeat on my face. He exchanged a look with Finn, then kicked at my foot under the table to get my attention. “Don’t go all melodramatic on us.”

I knew it was a peace offering of sorts, but I just shook my head, feeling like an utter failure. I’d failed as a boyfriend, and now I was apparently failing as a son.

“Look,” Connor said, the hard edge of his tone softened. “I was able to talk her around and got her on the phone with Grace for a while, and when I called to check on her this morning, she sounded a lot better.”

“Did she?” I asked, skeptical.

He nodded. “She also said she’d gotten her therapist to squeeze in an appointment for her this afternoon, which is a good sign.”

“At least she’s got better coping strategies now than she did back in the day,” Finn muttered.

Connor nodded. “I don’t think we need to worry about her going blank on us.”

Ever since we were kids, we’d called it going blank when Mom fell into a full-on depressive episode. To think that could have happened yesterday all because I was too out of it to remember how important the date was…I needed to get a grip.

“Okay, so Mom’s status is stable for now,” Finn said. “That’s good. But that doesn’t explain what the hell your problem is,” he continued, eyeing me. He didn’t even sound angry—just worried. “It’s not like you to just cancel on her.”

“I know,” I said, still beating myself up. I was the one who fixed things. Who saw a problem and found a solution. I was the one who stepped up to be with her yesterday, and I’d let her down. “I seriously didn’t mean to bail. There’s just been…so much on my mind recently.”

“Like what?” Finn said. “You and Mia break up or something?” He’d meant it as a joke. I could tell by that little half smile he flashed me, but his face fell when I didn’t correct him. “Oh, shit , man. I didn’t mean…For real?”

I swallowed hard and nodded. It was all I could do.

Connor sighed heavily. “I’m sorry. That’s rough.”

He more than anyone knew just how horrible it was to have a relationship break down. All I’d wanted to do was take care of Mia, to protect her, but she hadn’t let me. Hadn’t trusted me. Because, apparently, I’d been doing a shit job of being there for her.

“What happened?” Finn asked.

I lifted my shoulder. “We just…Yeah, things ended pretty badly. There was a problem at work, and Mia didn’t feel like I’d supported her—at work or in other ways. And she just…wasn’t sure about us anymore. So I said there’s the door, and she walked through it.”

“You said ‘there’s the door’?” Finn repeated. “Dude, why?”

“What was I supposed to do, force her to stay with someone she doesn’t want? Someone she doesn’t trust?” I tried to shrug off the horrible tension that surged through me as I remembered her walking out of my office.

“So what, are you just going to avoid her now? How can you even pull that off? She works in the same building as you, she lives down the hall from your best friend who you visit all the time, and she’s said-best-friend’s sister.”

“Well, Jake slammed the door in my face the last time I tried to visit, and every time I call, he only answers so he can yell at me, so that ‘ best friend’ title is a little up in the air at the moment.”

I sighed. “And that sucks especially hard since it turned out that Jake broke up with Gabrielle while they were away on the cruise. I want to be there for Jake, but he’s not letting me because he’s too furious at me for my breakup.”

“And for dating his sister in the first place?” Finn said.

“Who knows?” I growled. “Plus, I’m still trying to babysit the writers’ room to get the finale of End in Fire written, only now there’s all this silent resentment and hostility there too.”

“Because of the breakup? I thought they didn’t know the two of you were together. Do you think Mia told them what happened?”

I thought about it for a minute, but shook my head. “It doesn’t sound like her. She’s not the scorched-earth type. But maybe they figured something out on their own? All I know is that Jerome has been shooting me dagger eyes any time I walk past the door.”

“So, to sum up,” Finn said, interrupting my spiraling thoughts. “Mr. Fix-It is surrounded by problems, most of which are his fault, and no one will let him fix them. Is that about right?”

I opened my mouth to argue, but what could I say?

I was surrounded 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, Jake would 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 Jake and the 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.