My mind raced through thoughts of her, wondering what she was doing, wondering how she was feeling. Was I on her mind like she had been on mine? Did she torture herself every day wondering what she could’ve done differently? Or had she completely forgotten about me and moved on? Even with my business doing so fantastically, I felt like everything was spiraling around and I had no grasp on anything. Mia grounded me. She held me down and I didn’t even realize it until she was gone.
The truth of it, the bare-bones facts, was really simple but I hadn’t been able to put it together until that moment. I wasn’t angry because she was gone. I was frustrated because I knew that I needed her. I knew that I needed her in my life on a regular basis. It wasn’t for business, it was for me. It was for my life. The life that I wanted to share with her. I hadn’t even gotten to spend that much time with her, but there was no doubt in my mind that she was the person I needed next to me. I had screwed it up so badly that I didn’t have the faintest clue of how to correct it.
What I did know, was that I had to give it a try one way or another. I couldn’t sit there another day hoping she would call me. I couldn’t sit there wondering if I had just done one thing differently. If I had just been stronger when talking to my father. I closed my eyes and listened to the birds, trying to relax my shoulders. I was a walking ball of tension, and I had been ever since she left.
Reaching in my pocket, I pulled out my phone and scanned through the numbers. Sitting there, I let my finger hover over the call button, terrified to call her. I knew that I had to talk to her though, I had to try anything I could to get through to her. I pressed send on the cell phone and it rang and rang, finally going to voicemail. I stopped the call without leaving a message, knowing there was no way she would return it.
I wasn’t going to give up though. I flipped back through my contacts and called my own office. My secretary answered the phone. “Where are you? You were in a meeting with your father and then suddenly you’re missing and he went stomping out of the building, grumbling to himself.”
I grimaced at the thought of it. “I’m sorry. I had to get out of there. I need you to do me a favor. I need you to look up Mia’s information and give me her address.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “Actually, I still have her file right here on my desk from when your father made a copy of it. I’ll text the address over to you. Just give me a couple minutes.”
I hung up the phone and waited for the text, hailing a cab as it came through. Pulling up in front of their building, I was pretty shocked at how nice it was. Then again, her father had probably been the one to put it all together for her. Not that I blamed her, I did the same thing with my father growing up.
With a little finagling, the desk clerk let me in the elevator and sent me to the top floor. My nerves began to race through me as I stood in front of her door, my hand perched to knock. I couldn’t chicken out now, I was right there, so close. With a jolt of courage, I knocked on the door and took a step back. I could hear the footsteps walking across the floor and I straightened out my jacket as the doorknob turned.
“You,” Lily said standing in front of me. “What are you doing here?”
I put my hands up in surrender. “I know I’m the last person that either of you want to see, but I have to talk to Mia. I have to apologize to her, to explain why my actions happened the way they did.”
Lily looked unenthused, and I wasn’t sure whether she was going to invite me in or punch me in the stomach. Thankfully, she invited me into the condo. She was being that protective best friend, watching with close eyes as I began to pace. “I know I’m the last person that you want to see. And I know you’re being protective of Mia but I need to talk to her. Even if she laughs in my face, I need to be able to tell her everything that I want her to know. I love her, and I may not have noticed when I should have, but I know it now. And I’m no longer going to let my father dictate who I can and cannot have in my life because he made a mistake two decades ago.”
Lily stood there with her arms crossed in front of her listening to me talk. As each moment went by her face softened a bit, and I hoped that was a good sign. I said everything that I felt I needed to put out there. And since Lily was Mia’s best friend, I made sure to touch on all the emotions. It was as important to me that Lily understood how I felt as it was for Mia to know it too.
Lily scratched her chin, staring at me as I stood there vulnerable, spilling my guts to her. “I can’t believe I’m saying this. I actually think that deep down you’re a good guy. But if you’re asking me to help you, I can’t do that. Mia trusts me and she always has. You’re going to have to think of another way.”
It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but if another way was where I needed to go, that’s exactly what I would do.
22
Mia
“So, when you’re drawing it out, you want to make sure that you connect the vectors,” one of my coworkers explained after going through my trial run for a project. “Overall, you did an excellent job. If you turned in something like this for project, no one would complain about your lines.”
I smiled, making notes as they talked. “No, this is great. When I turn something in, I want to make sure that I do it with as high an accuracy rating as I possibly can. Anybody who can give me critique on my work is valuable to me.”
We finished up the conversation and I was left to my own work, sitting at my desk. At first, I was nervous. It had been a couple weeks at the company and I was loving every single thing about it. I was starting to think that maybe I was just overlooking the negatives, and they were going to come back and bite me in the ass later on. But no matter how many times I looked at the processes, the people, and the business in general, the better I felt about the decision that I had made.
Even the projects that I was given at that small company were better than the ones that I had worked on at Evan’s company. Hudson Technologies was a small business, and that small business received clients that were requesting technical solutions to a variety of problems. It was a real opportunity for me to let my creative side show and implement the technical skills that I had spent so much time working on.
Reaching across my desk, I pulled up the project I’d been assigned and took the client sheet out of the file. My phone buzzed on the table in front of me and I glanced over once, and then, giving it a double take, I froze. My hand began to shake, but my eyes were glued to the screen. It was Evan. He was calling me for some reason. He hadn’t made any effort to contact me since I left.
I reached for the phone but stopped myself. At first, I wondered if he was calling because of questions on the project I’d created. But then I realized that, regardless of why he was calling, I was not obligated to answer. Answering would only do one thing to me, send me back several steps in the process of healing my broken heart. Shaking my head, I took my phone and set it in my desk drawer, shutting it tightly.
“Mia, you coming to lunch with us today?” One of my other coworkers asked.
I shook my head with a smile. “Not today. My best friend is going to kill me if I don’t make time for her.”
It was so refreshing to have so many people on my new team that were just normal, or normal for that field. That tech geek kind of normal. I had some really great responsibilities, but nothing was as cool as still having the opportunity to work on mockups whenever I had an idea. Granted, I had to get my own work done first, I was never stopped and told not to create something.
My mother and father really didn’t understand why I would go from the type of high-paying job that I had at Evan’s company to a small no-name company with a salary less than half of what I made before. Of course, they were livid about the fact that Evan owned the company, not mad at me, but still angry. Their judgment still didn’t persuade me to leave Hudson Technologies for a higher paycheck. Hudson fit me perfectly. It was exactly the type of place that a recent college graduate needed to start out. When I didn’t understand something, th
ey almost immediately would help me figure it out.
We were all constantly learning from each other, and when nobody knew the answer, we reached outside to find it. It was teamwork, 100%, all the time. Even when we were working on mockups of our own ideas, if someone needed help, we helped each other. No one was trying to one-up the other person or get a promotion based on how much they had stepped on other people to get where they were. We built projects as a team from the ground up, and then we either celebrated or paid for the results as a team.
My watch beeped, reminding me that I needed to get going if I was going to meet Lily for lunch. I had been so busy with the company that her and I had barely gotten to spend any time together. She didn’t complain though, busy and excited was a lot better than heartbroken and upset. Not that I wasn’t still heartbroken, but there was enough excitement in my life to help me get through that. Of course, seeing Evan’s name on my phone that morning brought back a lot of those pent-up emotions. It had only been a couple weeks after all.
I took a cab to the restaurant since there wasn’t anything on my side of town that Lily wanted to eat. She was pretty particular when it came to food. The car pulled up in front of her favorite low-key restaurant and I jumped out, greeting Lily with a big hug. She laughed patting me on the back. “Wow. Are you okay?”
I pulled away and nodded with a smile. “Sure. I just figured I would greet my best friend with a hug.”
She was acting weird. I could see it in her eyes, something was up. I waited until we were inside and seated before I said anything about it. “Okay, you haven’t been talking much, and you keep looking at me like you’re about to tell me that you’ve got six weeks to live.”
Chuckling, she ordered her food from the waitress and handed her the menu. When the server had walked away, I stared at Lily waiting for her to answer. “I don’t want you to freak out when I tell you this.”
I rolled my eyes. “How often do you actually see me freak out? I think I’m pretty level-headed when it comes to things.”
Letting out a deep sigh, she nodded her head, knowing it was true. “I know. I just… I guess I think about it as if you were telling me this news. Of course, I’m one of the most dramatic people on earth.”
I took a sip of my drink and gave her wide eyes, followed by a giggle. “Just tell me. I’m pretty sure I’ve been through so much in the last couple months nothing at this point is going to shock me.”
She blotted her lips with her napkin and leaned forward slightly, lowering her voice. “At home this morning, there was a knock on the door. When I opened it… Evan was standing there.”
She paused, looking for my reaction but I kept a straight face. Inside though, I was not nearly as calm. It felt like a boulder had been dropped into my stomach. It was one thing to call me, it was another thing to randomly show up at my house. “Did he say why he was there?”
Lily nodded. “I let him come in and talk. He was there looking for you but I told him you weren’t there. I didn’t tell him where you were but I told him you weren’t there. He looked terrible, like he hadn’t slept in weeks. At one point I thought he was gonna burst into tears. He told me that, basically, he made a huge mistake. He let himself be trapped under his father’s thumb with this stupid feud, and he loved you. He said he just had to tell you how he felt so that at least you would know.”
I cracked my neck right and left, feeling the butterflies begin to melt into anger. “I don’t need to hear anymore. I know he has a sob story. And I know that he is caught up in what his father thinks. But does it really matter? I was able to take myself out of it. I was able to step back and not allow that into my life anymore. He had the same opportunity. If he really cared about me, he would have stood up for me to his father. He wouldn’t have lied to him. He wouldn’t have lied to me either. How am I supposed to know if he’s actually telling the truth or not? If he really was lying to his father, I would understand why he wanted to talk to me. Unfortunately for him, there’s no actual evidence he can muster up to prove to me that he didn’t want to lie about it.”
“I feel really bad for even telling you,” Lily said, tearing apart a piece of bread. “I should’ve just let it lie and never brought it up to you. But you’re my best friend and we never lie to each other. I didn’t want you to one day run into him and be taken off guard because he tells you that he came by the apartment. It’s also not my place to decide what’s best for you. I think it’s important that you know he came to find you.”
“It definitely feels good knowing that he hasn’t forgotten about me,” I replied looking down at my glass. “It feels good that he has some sort of remorse, enough to search me out at my own house. But I don’t know what he expects of me. Did he expect me to come running out of my room and jump into his arms? All because he says that he didn’t mean something, or says he has emotions towards me. When I was there, ready to take his emotions and his feelings, he trampled all over my heart.”
Lily leaned her head into her left hand, propped up by her elbow on the table. “I get it. I’m really proud of you for making that kind of decision. I think though, if you had been standing in front of him it would’ve been a lot more difficult for you.”
I chuckled. “Of course, it would have. He’s a beautiful man, with big puppy dog eyes, and a smile that can melt you. But the reality of the situation is, I have to move on. I don’t know if I can trust him or anything that he says. I wish I could. But one random day of him knocking on my front door does not make up for the weeks that my phone has sat absolutely silent.”
Lily was proud of me, and I was proud of myself too. The problem was, underneath that calm façade, all I wanted to do was jump back into his arms. She was right, I was glad that I wasn’t there. I just had to remember that one visit did not mean that he would be there for me. It didn’t mean that anything had changed.
23
Evan
I don’t know what I was thinking. I had gone to Mia’s apartment the day before, but Lily made it very obvious that she wasn’t willing to help me talk to Mia. I wasn’t upset with her, I understood. She was probably the person that had to be there for Mia when she came back from California. She wasn’t going to put her neck on the line for somebody that had already broken her best friend’s heart. That didn’t mean that I was going to give up. I had to figure out a way to make it right, even if in the end, she still didn’t want to have anything to do with me.
Waking up that morning, I already had a plan, but for some reason it felt like a much better plan three beers in, sitting in my living room, than it did sober getting dressed. Nonetheless, my choices had dwindled down to either going and speaking to Mia’s father, or camping out on the front steps of her apartment waiting for her to come home. Both were equally volatile but at least I had a chance of not getting arrested when I went to Mia’s father’s house.
I was surprised at how familiar the drive to their house was. It had been twenty years since I’d gone there with my parents. Driving up that long driveway toward the enormous house on the hill brought back all kinds of memories from my childhood. They were memories that I didn’t even know I had. Playing out in the field with Mia. Running around the stables and feeding the horses. From the looks of it, the stables had long been forgotten and the horses were no longer there.
The house wasn’t Mia’s mom’s house, the main house that they lived in. It was their getaway house, just twenty minutes away from their main house, but out in the country where everything was quiet and the hustle and bustle of the city suddenly stopped. From what I could remember from my parents’ discussions in the kitchen, Mia’s father had been able to keep the getaway house in the divorce and that’s where he set up his primary residence.
Of course, being the businessman he was, I had to make a couple phone calls to find out where he would be. It was just my luck that he had gotten back from London earlier that week and was going to spend some time home relaxing. Twenty years before, the concept of relaxing
to men like Mia’s father and my own, was an afternoon of golf before going back to the office. Everyone had grown older though, and the companies were pretty much run by other people.
I parked out front of the house next to the large fountain and slowly climbed the steps to the front doors. I rung out my hands, feeling extremely nervous. I must’ve walked up to the door and raised my fist to knock at least three different times before finally just giving in and pounding on it. A few seconds later the door opened and the butler stood staring at me.
“Can I help you?” He asked.
“Yes, I’m here to see Mr Cuthbert,” I said in the most professional voice possible.
His eyes shifted up and down as if he were studying me. “Is he expecting you?”
Nervously, I cleared my throat and shook my head. “No, I’m pretty sure he was never expecting to see me again. My name is Evan and I have something I want to talk to him about concerning his daughter.”
The Butler stepped to the side allowing me to walk into the large marble foyer. It had been redone since I was there as a child, but it was still as ornate and over-the-top as ever. The butler hurried across the entryway and disappeared into what I could only assume was either the study or the living room. Putting my hands behind my back I began to walk leisurely around, studying the different paintings hanging on the walls. They had always been so curious, their taste in art more than a little bit odd.
The sound of two sets of feet coming toward me brought my attention back to the doorway into the rest of the house. The butler appeared with Mr Cuthbert following close behind, aged far more than I expected. I still had a vision of him as this young entrepreneur that I’d been around when I was six. When he saw me, he stopped, turning his head to the side and studying me as if he didn’t believe that I was who I was.
Hating Him Wanting Him : A Contemporary Romance Collection Page 13
