Page 56 of The CEO I Hate

“I’d never joke about toilets,” I teased, even as my shoulders slumped.

“Why don’t you bring someone to dinner with you for backup?” Liam suggested. “Then at least you wouldn’t be on your own, fending off your parents’ terrible suitors.”

“Tried that. Jake refuses to go.”

“I was talking about me,” he said.

“What?” I blinked at him in shock. “If you come with me on Friday, my parents will assume we’re dating.”

He shrugged. “Good. If they think that, then they’ll lay off you.”

He’d do that for me? I narrowed my eyes. “Again, who are you and what have you done with the real Liam?”

He slurped his noodles. “You shouldn’t have to put up with being ambushed every time you show up to dinner with your family. Besides, I need my head writer focused. Not stressed about toilet salesmen.”

I snorted.Right. The show. For a moment, I thought he might actually give a damn about me. Then again, the fact that he’d considerfakedating me to throw off my parents was in stark contrast from the man who’d uttered “never gonna happen” when I’d crawled into his lap at Sophie’s club.

Or was it? Yeah, he’d made it clear sex wasn’t going to happen. But him showing up for me in other ways…that wasn’t out of character. He’d always been the kind of guy to go above and beyond to fix things for the people in his life—look at everything he’d done for Jake since the accident.

So no big deal. I’d told him my problem, and he’d come up with a solution to fix it. That was just how Liam rolled.

“Unless you’d rather become the Potty Princess,” he said. “Would you get a plunger with your toilet throne?”

“Don’t make me throw this soft-boiled egg at you,” I threatened.

Liam huffed a laugh. “I will be demanding payment for my services, of course.”

“In what form?”

A slow, evil grin spread across his face. He pointed at my bag.

“No.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “That grumpy cat drawing? I want it.”

I grimaced. “You jerk.”

“No substitutions will be accepted.”

Asshole,I thought, unsure whether I felt more annoyed…or fond.

19

LIAM

“Who’s the best?” I said, holding out the advanced copy of BladeBound Legacy I’d gotten from Connor as Jake swung his apartment door open. He looked up at the game.

“Nice,” he said with a weak half smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Okay, I’d wanted alittlemore enthusiasm than that, but the fact Jake reached for the game felt like a small win. He wheeled himself into the living room, sliding the disc into his game console and tossing me a controller.

I flopped down on the couch as he wheeled his chair back next to me. “Remember when we skipped school the Monday GTA III came out and snuck back to your parents’ place to play it all day?”

We’d been fifteen at the time and weren’t even legally allowed to purchase the game ourselves. We’d paid some stoner dude all our lawn mowing money to go into the store and buy it for us.

“You forgot to erase the voicemail when the school called to say you were absent, and your mom realized we’d skipped.”

Jake snorted at the memory. “Then she came upstairs and ripped the console right out of the wall. You know how many chores I had to do to earn it back?”

---