Page 94 of The CEO I Hate

I shoved those thoughts aside. What did it matter now? We were done. “Guess this is just another entry to add to my list of hilariously bad dating history.”

“I didn’t want you to have to add Liam to that list,” Jake muttered. “I’ll kill him the next time I see him.”

“Jake,” I said softly. “I appreciate the protective big brother routine, but I don’t need you to fight my battles for me. I’m a big girl capable of making my own choices.”

“It’s my job to look out for you. Always.”

I swallowed hard, suddenly missing being a little girl who knew that her big brother could always make everything right. But I was an adult now, and while Jake was just as amazing and wonderful as he’d always been, I knew there were problems he couldn’t solve.

“I get that you want to protect me, Jake,” I said softly, my voice quieter now. “But you can’t fix this. Not for me. Not this time. Plus, I don’t want to make things harder between you and Liam. I don’t want to ruin your friendship.”

“Think that ship has already sailed,” Jake muttered. “I can’t sit here and pretend like this is okay. Liam wasn’t just some guy that broke your heart. He was my best friend. Itrustedhim. I mean, yeah, it was gross to think of my best friend with my baby sister, but at least I knew he was a good guy who’d appreciate you like you deserve. Except he didn’t. If he was going to break your heart like a moron, he should have kept his damn hands to himself in the first place.”

“To Liam’s credit, hedidpush me away multiple times,” I said.

“Obviously not hard enough,” Jake growled.

“You know how persistent I can be when I want something. And when we finally agreed to give things a try, it wasreallygood between us at first,” I admitted. “I actually thought I’d finally found the right one, you know?”

“So what went wrong?”

I sighed, trying to figure out how to explain it. That was one advantage of my asshole boyfriends in the past. When your boyfriend gets caught with his pants down with another girl at prom, it’s super quickto explain why you broke up. With Liam, things were more complicated.

“I just…felt less and less like I really mattered to him. When we were together and it was just the two of us, things were good. But then something else would come up, and he’d be out the door without even looking back. If something happened with the show, he’d be on it right away. If something happened withyou,he’d be on it right away. But if something happened with me…Well, when somethingdidhappen with me, it took him weeks to even notice.”

I explained what had happened with Damien—and then had to talk Jake down from finding Damien and punching him in the nose.

“But anyway,” I finished, “when we were finally alone in his office, the first thing he did was go afterme.”

Jake looked appalled. “He blamedyoufor that asshole being an asshole?”

“He blamed me for not telling him. Here I was, trying so hard not to rock the boat and make anything harder for him, and he got mad at me for it. But the truth is, at some point Liam started to take that for granted and stopped focusing on me and what I needed. Everything else took priority. The show, the studio, you, his family…anything except me. It just felt like I’d never come first. Ever.”

He’d confirmed that to me yesterday when he’d pointed me toward the door. All the while, I was praying he’d stop me, tell me not to go, that he was willing to put in the work to make things better between us. I wanted him to fight for us, but it looked like I was the only one who thought what we had might be worth fighting for.

Jake’s jaw tensed. “I didn’t mean to be an added stress on your relationship.”

“God, no, Jake! It’s not your fault,” I hurried to assure him.

“But the fact that Liam was more worried about upsetting me than making you feel valued in the relationship?—”

“Look, Liam’s choices aren’t your fault.”

“He screwed up,” Jake said. “Big time. And I’m gonna make sure he knows that.”

“I just want to forget he exists. Not that that’ll be easy to do when I still work for him. Wish I could go back in time and give my past self a heads-up.”

Jake let out a harsh laugh. “If you find a time machine, let me know and I’ll hitch a ride. Maybe I could go back to a time when life still made sense to me.”

I scooted over next to him and rested my head on his shoulder. “Does it still feel that way?” I asked. It was a question I usually wasn’t brave enough to ask. I never wanted to bring up Jake’s depression for fear of making him sink further into it, but maybe it was time for hard truths all around.

“It scares me, you know. I have these dreams where we’re at the beach, like when we used to go as kids, remember? And we’re out in the water…but you’re floating away from me. And no matter what I do, I can’t seem to get to you,” I told him.

Jake swallowed hard. “That’s how it feels, sometimes. Like I’m just adrift. For the past year, I’ve been in a holding pattern, waiting to reach the point where I was healed enough to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Now I’m finally getting to that point, and I have no idea what comes next.”

“What do you want?” I asked. “More than anything?”

He opened his mouth, closed it. He laid his head back against the couch.

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