Hard to Forgive (Hard to Love Book 3)

by L. M. Reid

  A knowing smile spreads across her face and has me instantly wondering what it is he said to her. “Nice to meet you, Mia.”

  “It’s nice to meet the woman that finally tamed Griffin. Not a small feat,” I say.

  “You’re telling me,” she teases. We chat for a moment then with a quick kiss to Griffin’s cheek, Chloe excuses herself leaving us alone again.

  “What did you say to her?” I ask suspiciously.

  “So, the Onyx, huh?” Griffin asks changing the subject. “I heard a little rumor that said you were the new manager.”

  The shit-eating grin on his face is a sure sign that whatever it was he said was in relation to me and mostly likely my association with Cooper. Rather than continuing on the path, I answer his question with a shrug. “Nothing is official yet.”

  “Any particular reason why?” Griffin pries. “The Onyx looks amazing. Sounds like a great opportunity.”

  “It is,” I agree.

  “Why the hesitation then?”

  “It’s… personal.”

  “It’s Cooper.”

  He’s right. Cooper owns every ounce of hesitation about taking my dream job. No way in hell will I be telling one of his closest friends that. “The only thing I care about when it comes to Cooper Williams is whether or not he’s here tonight. That way, if he is, I can avoid him at all costs.”

  “What happened between you two that night?” he asks. “I obviously interrupted something pretty heavy.”

  “Nothing happened. Things just ran their course,” I lie. If Cooper didn’t tell him, I sure as hell am not getting into it with him.

  “So, you ended things?”

  No, he did when he looked at me like my feelings for him were unwanted and unneeded. Rein it in, Mia. Exasperated with the path this conversation is taking, I whine, “Can we please talk about literally anything else?”

  “For what it’s worth, Cooper aside, I think the Onyx is a great opportunity. Plus, it would be nice having you around again.”

  Just as I am about to thank Griffin for his kind words, I hear Mitchell calling out my name.

  “Mia,” Mitchell says again.

  “Go,” Griffin instructs. “We’ll catch up later.”

  I stare at him a beat longer before heading to where Mitchell and Kassie are standing. Mitchell’s already a little tipsy which only makes him sweeter and more endearing. “Have you made a decision yet?” he asks as his arms wrap around me.

  I shake my head. His eyes dart around the room. “Who are you looking for?” I ask.

  “The Chef I signed for the restaurant at the Onyx. From what I hear, he’s pretty hot. Maybe he can persuade you,” Mitchell slurs.

  “As much as I appreciate the one-night stand bonus you’re offering, it’s not going to help.”

  “Worth a shot,” Mitchell says a shrug.

  Just then a server shows up with a bottle of champagne which Mitchell happily grabs from her and starts pouring into the glasses she distributes. “To the Onyx,” he says. “May all of our dreams come true.” His eyes lock with mine. The look tells me everything I need to hear, everything deep down that I already know. This is my dream. I would be a damn fool to not take it. We clink glasses and I throw back the champagne, and then another.

  Champagne is flowing, the music is blasting, and as I dance around the floor with Kassie, I am having more fun than I have had in a long time. My body is relaxed from the alcohol, my mind is clear of any thoughts not related to this very moment and for the first time in what feels like forever I feel like me. Or, rather, the girl I used to be – fun, wild, and a little silly.

  “I’m going to the bathroom,” I tell Kassie who bobs her head in response. She’s busy dancing with Mitchell apparently disregarding the whole women go to the bathroom together stereotype.

  The sign for the restroom is clear across the club. With a sigh I head in its direction weaving between people on the dance floor. Women roll their eyes at me; men pretend their hands all over me are accidental. All the while, I just really need to pee. I finally make it out of the crowd only to bump into a very tall, ridiculously hard body causing his arm to jerk and his drink to spill on him.

  “Shit, I am so sorry,” I say.

  Unable to do anything else, I look up at him apologetically. My eyes take in the length of his toned body straight to his handsome face. My breath catches in my throat at the sight of him. This isn’t just any handsome man. This is the handsome man. My handsome man. “Cooper.” His name falls from my lips so softly I’m certain he doesn’t even hear it.

  My mind and my body are on overload as he stands before me looking simultaneously sexy as hell and angry as fuck. I’m not sure exactly what it is he’s pissed at, except that he’s obviously pissed at me. His blue eyes, the very ones that I used to get lost in because they held all the emotion that he was unable to vocalize are only filled with anger right now.

  His eyes lock on mine and we hold this intense gaze for a moment before he breaks it by walking away. My feet automatically begin to follow him. It’s as though my body made the decision without consulting the rest of me. Before I realize what it is that I’m doing, I’m chasing after him down a long hallway.

  My heart is racing, and my emotions are all over the place. He disappears through an open door. There isn’t even a question in my mind as to if I should follow him or not. I just do. As terrified as I was for this moment, now that it’s here, I don’t want it to end. The room we enter, some type of private party room I imagine, is dimly lit with floor to ceiling windows spanning it. Cooper stands before them, his back to me as he overlooks the club around him.

  “Cooper,” I say his name again.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks. His voice is dry and flat. The whiskey glass in his hand comes to his lips then back down to his side.

  Slowly, I step closer making my way toward him. My hands are itching to touch him, to have some type of physical connection with him. We were always good with the physical. It was everything else that was a little tougher. But I don’t dare touch him, not after all this time. Instead I just stand there, near him, waiting for the right moment. Even though he isn’t looking at me, I suddenly feel very unsure, so I drop my gaze to the floor. Whatever this is between us has me feeling insecure and uncomfortable, things that I never felt in relation to Cooper before. Except for that night.

  “I’m here for,” I pause to try to come up with a vague answer, unwilling to put all my cards on the table. “A job opportunity.”

  When he turns to look at me the anger’s still there but there’s also a hint of… desire? After all this time, all these years, the sexual energy between us is still off the charts. He stalks toward me, one hand coming to my cheek as he presses a hard kiss to my lips. The other hand, the one that lets the glass in his hand fall to the floor and shatter, grabs my hip and pushes me up against the windows pinning me there with his hips. My hands roam up his back, behind his neck holding him against me.

  His touch, his kiss, it all feels so right. It’s everything I’ve been missing with every other man since him. Cooper Williams and I are beyond compatible. We’re perfection.

  “Fuck,” he curses as our kiss comes to a screeching halt. He takes a step back and just looks at me. “That was…”

  “Even better than it used to be?” I supply. Man was it ever. So much better, so much more intense.

  He glances up at me from under hooded eyes. It’s his way of admitting I’m right, even though he doesn’t say it. “It was a mistake,” he says.

  My face falls, his words cutting through me like a knife. The anguish I felt that night six years ago returns with a vengeance.

  “The only mistake was the one I made by trusting you.” My voice is elevated, but calm and laced with contempt.

  Still in shock at the fact that he’s standing before me, I try to wrap my head around the fact that this is really happening. Cooper is really here. He really kissed me. And he really called our kiss a mistak
e. No matter how many times I ran this scenario through my head, us running into each other, none of them ever played out like this. Had my leaving really hurt him that badly that he would be so hateful toward me? I mean, the man ripped my heart apart and still I wouldn’t consider that kiss a mistake. Far from it.

  “Likewise,” he says.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I argue still trying to figure out where all this hostility is coming from. Yes, I left, but he had to know the reason why. He has to realize how much he hurt me, how I didn’t have any other choice.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says as he turns away from me and walks toward the door.

  I’m standing there, stunned silent. What the ever-loving fuck just happened here?

  He stops but doesn’t face me. “If you decide to take the job, just… stay out of my way and I’ll stay out of yours. The city is big enough, I’m sure we can avoid each other.”

  I fight back the tears that are welling in my eyes. Deep breath, Mia, I tell myself. One isn’t enough though. As I watch him walk away, I take several breaths allowing myself time for the tears to dry. Heading back to the dance floor I get an all too real view of Cooper with his tongue down the throat of the woman he had been standing with when I spilled his drink on him. When he breaks his kiss with her, he looks me dead in the eye. It’s the biggest fuck you that he can give me and exactly what I needed. I storm past him making a point of bumping into him, hard before bee lining for Kassie.

  “Hey, you okay?” she asks when I approach.

  “I’m just not feeling well. I’m going to head out.” I toss a weak smile at her and head for the door ignoring her calling out to me.

  7

  Cooper

  Unable to believe my eyes, I watch Mia walk out of the club.

  Her presence surprised the hell out of me. The woman bolted on me six years ago and never even so much as answered a goddamn text. Now, out of the blue, she shows up in Griffin’s club?

  When she bumped into me, I felt like I had been punched in the gut. The sight of her knocked the wind right out of me. Desperate to catch my breath, I needed to put space between us. I headed to the private room, room number four, that Griffin reserved for me. I needed to clear my head in order to think straight because the only thing I was thinking when I saw her was how much I fucking want her.

  I should have known better, though. There’s no escaping Mia. The clicking of her heels on the tile floor signified that she was hot on my heels the moment I tried to escape.

  Then, suddenly, we were alone.

  Unable to look at her, I directed my attention out the windows and onto the club. Laying eyes on her again would only make me do something I would regret. I couldn’t have been more right. When I turned and my eyes fell on her, tracing over every curve of her perfect body, I lost all control. In one stride I closed the gap between us, my lips claiming hers. The entire time my body was screaming yes while my brain shouted no. My mouth and dick had zero interest in listening to that pesky know it all brain. They wanted the one thing they had been deprived of for too long. So, they took, and they tasted and just as everything was going according to their plan my stupid brain stepped in and put the kibosh on it.

  Mia has, hands down, always been the best sex of my life. No woman could ever compare to her – except tonight. Somehow the damn woman managed to top herself.

  And what do I do? I tell her it was a mistake. A mistake? No, that kiss was no mistake. It was heaven. It was hell. It was fire and ice. It was fucking everything.

  As I stood there, looking at her, lips parted, cheeks flushed, I forced myself to remember what she did to me. I told her the kiss was a mistake, I told her it shouldn’t have happened when all I wanted was for it to happen again. Over and over again. Just like I knew it would.

  Then I left and walked right back into the arms of the woman that I had been with before Mia showed up and pulled the rug from under me. The woman was still in the same spot, still waiting for me. She was the one that was supposed to be in room four. She was the one that I was supposed to press up against the window and kiss. Not Mia.

  Trying to reclaim my night, erase the memory of Mia, I kiss the woman. I kiss her and I feel nothing. No pleasure, no desire, no wanting to take her back to room four. Nothing about it was remotely as intriguing as kissing Mia. Not that I am surprised. No other woman has ever affected me the way Mia has.

  I break the kiss just in time to watch Mia walk out of the club. I’m so damn tempted to go after her and finish what we started. You hate her, asshole. I make the reminder to myself but whether I like her or not, that notion doesn’t seem to affect how my body feels about her or what it wants.

  Mia fucking Beckett.

  That’s exactly what it wants. The only thing it wants. The woman is my goddamn kryptonite.

  My mind wanders back to that night, the last time I saw her. I returned to her room only to find her kissing Duke “the Douche” Donovan. And when she was done, she slinked out of town and out of my life without so much as a goodbye.

  I see Chloe walking by and grab her arm. “Where’s Griffin?”

  “I think he went back to the office,” she says. “You okay? You look a little pale.”

  “I’m fine,” I tell her rushing off to find Griffin.

  He’s exactly where she said he would be, tucked away in his office. I storm through the door and stand before his desk my hands planted firmly on the wood. “Did you know?”

  “Did I know what?” he asks. He’s feigning innocence when the look on his face indicates that he is anything but.

  “You know what,” I shout at him. “How could you do this to me?”

  “Calm down,” Griffin tells me. His calm even tone only infuriates me more. “It’s not like I invited her here.”

  “No, but you sure as hell didn’t warn me that she was, either.”

  “I thought…”

  “Obviously, not. Because if you had given me any thought you would have fucking warned me. You would have known that I don’t want to fucking see her after she…” I trail off unable to say the actual words. Six damn years and the whole thing still makes me sick to my stomach. The part where she cheated on me, the part where she left, and especially the part where, all that considered, I fucking miss her.

  Griffin leans back in his chair and folds his arms across his chest. “I know what she did. I know it hurt you. I also know that you still care about her. Listen, I wasn’t trying to be a dick, okay? I just thought that if I told you she was here, you would leave. I also thought that you might like to see her.”

  “I kissed her. I fucking kissed her,” I say running my hand through my hair. What the hell had I been thinking? Kissing Mia only made the whole situation that much worse.

  “Then why are you in here with me?” Griffin asks with a chuckle.

  “Because I finally came to my senses and walked away. This is bad, Griff.”

  “It’s been six years, man; don’t you think it’s time to get over it?” Griffin follows up.

  Get over it? I am just supposed to get over the fact that Mia cheated on me? Just because some time has passed, suddenly it’s okay now? Besides, there’s more to it than that. She left. She never called, never visited. Hell, not even so much as a text message. After two years of friendship she just up and left me with no explanation.

  “I am over it,” I lie. “That doesn’t mean I want anything to do with the woman. Next time Griff, don’t interfere in my life.”

  Griffin holds his hands up in surrender. “I’m not interfering. She walked into the club tonight twenty minutes after you. Quit acting like I arranged for her to be here.”

  He might not have arranged for her to be here, but he sure as hell isn’t innocent in this whole thing either. He should have told me, let me decide if I wanted to see her or not.

  “She looks good,” he says.

  No shit. Seriously, could she have looked any better? She is even more beautiful than I remembe
r. And that dress, that fucking tight dress that hugged every curve of her godforsaken body. One look at her and I knew that I needed to get her alone. I needed to taste her again because six years is a long fucking time to not have a sample of your favorite meal. Nothing has ever tasted better than Mia. She’s a little bit of hell in my own personal heaven.

  “Tasted pretty damn good, too,” I grumble as I plop onto his black leather sofa.

  “I’m sorry, Coop. I honestly thought you would be happy to see her,” Griffin says.

  “That’s the problem, Griff. I am.” Wiping my hands over my face I shout into the air.

  Despite how everything went down between us, despite my anger, one look at Mia and I felt happier than I have in a long time. I groan as plop down on the couch in Griffin’s office.

  Mia fucking Beckett is back in town.

  Now, I just need to figure out what to do about it.

  8

  Mia

  Running into Cooper was a clear indication of exactly why I need to think long and hard before I accept the position that Mitchell offered me. It also became blatantly obvious that it is the very reason that I shouldn’t have to think about it at all. Why should I allow a man, who apparently doesn’t give a damn about me, have any bearing on what I do with my life? Least of all whether or not I should take my dream job.

  If he doesn’t care, why should I?

  Well, that’s easy, because I do care. I may hate him for breaking my heart, but that doesn’t mean that at least a part of me still doesn’t love him. Seeing him again every emotion, every feeling resurfaced. It’s why I followed him, why I let him kiss me, and why I had to get out of there.

  Over the years I had conjured up every possible scenario in my head about what would happen if Cooper and I ran into each other. None of them played out the way things actually went down. Never had I expected him to be so angry with me. Being unprepared for his anger was nothing compared to being how unprepared I was for him to kiss me. What a perfectly amazing, toe curling kiss it was. Being that close to him, feeling him against me, his lips on mine – it shook me to my core. My head was spinning, my heart was racing. And then he said it was a mistake. Instantly I was transported back to that night, the moment that he rejected me. He may have said the kiss was a mistake, but his tone said everything his words didn’t. What he really meant was I was a mistake. I was a mistake then and I am a mistake now. Message received loud and clear.