by Ana Huang
That was the thing about best friends/roommates, especially one as detail-oriented as Olivia—they could read you like a large-print book.
“What’s going on?” Courtney tilted her head. Her mass of thick brown curls cascaded past her shoulder and over her arm.
“Judging by Farrah’s blush and Olivia’s glare, our girl has boned Blake Ryan recently.” Kris yawned and examined her flawless manicure.
“Wow.” Courtney mulled the revelation over. “This is like FEA 2.0.”
“No, it’s not.” The color of Farrah’s cheeks matched her friend’s merlot. “We had sex once. It’s not like I’m in love with him.”
Olivia and Courtney gasped at the admission; Kris sipped her wine with a smirk.
“I don’t blame you. I saw him in Forbes.” Kris yawned again. “He’s still looking mighty fine.”
“Excuse me, but have we forgotten what he did to her in Shanghai?” Olivia huffed.
The Filipina waved off the concern with a dismissive hand. Her Wollman-rink-sized engagement ring glittered in the dim lighting. “That was years ago.”
“Love has made you soft,” Courtney teased. “There was a time when you would’ve been first in line to pin Blake’s balls to the wall.”
Kris shrugged, not bothering to deny it.
It had come as a shock to all of them when Kris announced her engagement to Nate. She was the last person they’d expected to marry first. Kris—who’d deemed the male species uninteresting, unprincipled, and unworthy of her time—hadn’t dated or hooked up with anyone during their year in Shanghai.
Then again, Farrah would break her rules for Nate Reynolds too. The action star looked like a taller, better-looking hybrid of Liam Hemsworth and Theo James, and from what she could tell, he treated Kris like a queen. Which was good, because Kris considered herself a queen, and not in the modern empowerment kind of way. More like a Harry-Winston-crown-wearing, everyone-bow-before-me kind of way.
Besides, Kris and Nate met the summer Kris returned from China. Five years of dating and jet-setting around the world together. They were already practically married, and their upcoming nuptials were just a formality.
“So.” Courtney’s blue eyes glittered with mischief. “How’s Blake in bed? Has he learned any new tricks?”
Australia-sized red blotches blossomed on Farrah’s face and chest. That was her cue.
“As much as I would love to discuss my sex life, I’m afraid I have to cut the night short. There’s have something I have to do,” she announced. “You guys will be in town until next weekend, right?”
“Yes,” Kris said at the same time Courtney asked, “Something or someone?”
“We’ll hang out during the week.” Farrah ignored Courtney’s question and Olivia’s disapproving stare. “Liv, see you at home later. Try not to blow a gasket before then.”
“That’s going to be tough considering my best friend insists on tangoing with the devil.” Olivia’s brows knotted together. “Be careful, okay?”
“I will.” Farrah slung her purse over her shoulder. “Love you guys. Venmo me the bill.”
“She’s totally going to bang Blake,” she heard Courtney say as she left. “Speaking of bang-worthy guys, we should invite Sammy out. I miss him.”
Olivia hissed. “Over my dead body.”
“Hey, whatever you’re into…”
Farrah’s friends’ voices faded. The door to Elysian jangled closed behind her as she poured herself into the sticky summer heat of late June New York. By the time she arrived at Blake’s building, a thin sheen of sweat coated her skin, and her orange sundress clung to her chest and thighs.
The concierge recognized her on sight and waved her up without calling Blake, even though it was well past business hours.
Farrah was grateful for the extra time to change her mind, though it didn’t say much about building security.
You’re already here. Might as well go through with it.
She got off the elevator, heart pounding, and knocked on Blake’s door before she lost her nerve.
Silence.
Maybe he wasn’t here. It was, after all, Friday night.
Relief and disappointment fizzled in Farrah’s veins. This was stupid. She should—
She heard low voices, then footsteps. A second later, Blake opened the door, his eyes brightening with surprise when he saw who was on the other side. His hair was damp, and he wore a soft gray T-shirt that molded to his sculpted shoulders and well-defined arms.
“Farrah? What are you doing here?”
Farrah’s response died in her throat when another set of footsteps approached and a willowy, auburn-haired beauty appeared by Blake’s side. She wore an oversized black Southeastern Texas sweatshirt.
Blake’s sweatshirt.
One of his favorites, if Farrah remembered correctly.
“Who’s this?” The woman cocked her head and eyed Farrah curiously. With her high cheekbones, creamy skin, and golden-brown eyes, she should be on a Times Square billboard, showing off the latest designer fragrance or expensive lingerie line.
Say something.
Except, she couldn’t. All Farrah could do was stand there and try not to drown beneath the wave of jealousy that consumed her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Why don’t you head out for the night?” Blake suggested to his chief of staff. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Of course.” Patricia tucked a strand of hair behind her ears. “Have a good night.”
“You too.”
Patricia shot one last quizzical look at Farrah, who remained unmoving in the doorway, before she brushed past her and swayed down the hall.
Patricia had been here all night, helping Blake sort through their shitshow of an opening. They’d settled on a new restaurant manager, but they still had issues with the plumbing and now their liquor distributor said their alcohol deliveries were going to be delayed. Something about the company consolidating two facilities into one and a backlog.
Blake would be more sympathetic if he weren’t so pissed off.
You couldn’t have a bar without alcohol. Period. That was the whole fucking point of a bar.
He and Patricia spent all afternoon scrambling to find another distributor who could deliver the quantities they needed on time for a reasonable price. They’d only stopped for a quick dinner break, during which he’d spilled wine all over her white shirt. He’d lent her the first top he could find—his favorite STU sweatshirt—to cover up the stain until she could change.
They’d been wrapping up when he heard a knock.
He didn’t know who he’d expected when he opened the door, but he most definitely hadn’t expected Farrah.
Blake leaned against the doorframe, drinking her in. She wore a little orange dress that bared her shapely legs and made her look tanner than usual. Her cheeks glowed pink, a sure sign she’d been drinking. Or maybe the pink had something to do with the anger flashing in her eyes.
“Sorry for showing up unannounced,” Farrah said stiffly. “I didn’t realize you had company.”
“She was leaving anyway. Come in.” Blake eyed the thin line of her lips and the tense set of her shoulders. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes.” Farrah surveyed his apartment. She paused on the two half-empty glasses of wine on his kitchen counter, and her scowl deepened.
“You look upset.”
“I’m not upset.”
“If you say so,” Blake drawled, not believing her for a second. “What brings you here tonight?”
By now, he knew better than to hope for a love confession. With his luck, Farrah was here to tell him something went wrong with the bank and that she hadn’t received the final payment for her design services.
Blake tensed his jaw and cleaned the wine glasses while he waited for Farrah to answer.
“I, uh, came by to see how you’re liking your new apartment.” Farrah twisted her necklace chain around her finger until the surrounding skin turn
ed white.
He dried the glasses and placed them upside down on a towel before facing Farrah with raised eyebrows. “You came here on a Friday night to check on the apartment you designed?”
“Yes.” Defensiveness crept into her tone. “How do you like it?”
“The same as I did when I signed on off everything,” Blake said dryly. “I love it.”
Decorated in an elegant, masculine palette of navy blue, gray, and white with gold accents, the apartment looked like something out of a magazine spread. But thanks to personal touches such as the wall of photos from every one of his bar openings—custom framed to include an engraving of the host city’s name—and the shelf of knickknacks collected during his travels, it felt like home instead of a museum.
“Pat loves it too,” he added.
“Pat?”
“The woman who was just here.”
“Oh.” Farrah pursed her lips. “Pat, is it?”
“Short for Patricia.” Blake chuckled. “She hates it when I call her Pat, so I only do it when she’s not around.”
That was a fair compromise, in his opinion.
“I see.” Farrah’s voice could’ve frosted glass. “How do you know each other?”
He tilted his head. Was that…jealousy he detected?
Blake watched Farrah’s face closely as he responded, “We met at a bar and hit it off right away.”
Technically true. He met Patricia at his Austin bar when she showed up for her interview, and he knew within five minutes that she was the perfect person for the job.
Farrah crossed her arms over her chest. Her expression didn’t budge, but her eyes blazed.
Oh, yeah. She was definitely jealous.
Blake smothered a grin. A spark of hope rekindled in his chest.
“Great. I’m glad the other night worked for you too, considering how fast you moved on.” Farrah turned on her heels and walked away. “So much for that big speech you gave about wanting another chance.” She muttered the last part under her breath, but Blake heard her—and it pissed him the hell off.
All traces of amusement fled. He closed the distance between them with two long strides. He grabbed Farrah’s wrist and spun her around, pinning her against the wall and caging her in with his arms. His eyes blazed just as hers did.
Other than a sharp intake of breath, Farrah didn’t react, but defiance and resentment shimmered beneath those chocolate pools glaring up at him.
A volcano of pent-up emotion bubbled between them, waiting to erupt.
“You mean the speech where I offered you my heart and you turned me down?” Blake gritted out. “You rejected me. You said you couldn’t give me a second chance, only one night, and at the end of that one night, you walked away without so much as a goodbye. So, tell me, what goddamned right in this goddamned world do you have to be jealous?”
“I’m not jealous!”
“Dammit, Farrah!” Blake pounded the wall next to her, frustration leaking from every pore. Her eyes widened in shock. “Can you say what you really feel for once?”
“I did,” she shot back. “In Shanghai. Look where that got me! I loved you. I trusted you. I gave my virginity to you. And you threw it all away like it was nothing.” Tears hung on the ends of her lashes like tiny fallen stars. “Do you really expect me to give you a second chance just because you say you made a mistake? It doesn’t work like that. You broke my heart.”
The stars fell, dripping down Farrah’s cheeks in a molten river of grief. Each one shattered Blake a little more until the spiderweb of cracks exploded and destroyed him from the inside out.
He wiped away her tears with his thumb as pain ate away at his anger.
“Don’t you know?” Blake’s voice cracked with regret. “It broke my heart too. Because everything I said that night was a lie. I didn’t stop loving you. I never stopped loving you.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
I didn’t stop loving you. I never stopped loving you.
Farrah couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t process.
All she could do was tremble and cling to the edge of the cliff, trying to save herself from what was sure to be another fall. Except this time, she didn’t think she’d survive.
There were only so many times a girl could fall before something inside her irrevocably broke. The first fall split her in half, into before and after. Before Blake, after Blake.
She didn’t want to know what would happen a second time.
“You’re lying.” Farrah’s voice quavered—from hope or fear, she didn’t know.
Blake’s laugh was so bitter she could taste it in the back of her throat. He pushed himself off her and stepped back, and she mourned the loss of his warmth even as her senses crept back into her foggy brain.
“God, Farrah. We were together for months. I loved you, in every way I could, for months. But all it took was a few words for you to believe it had all been a lie.” The anguish in his eyes ripped her apart. For all the years and distance between them, for all the heartbreak that littered their past, his pain was hers. “How could you believe me? How could you have looked into my eyes and believed you were anything except my whole world?”
The tears fell again, a torrential downpour so strong she couldn’t see past it. Farrah didn’t bother wiping the tears away. “Because everyone leaves,” she bit out. “My dad left. You left. And I’m always the one left holding the pieces.”
She sank to the floor, her body shuddering with the force of her sobs. She wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face against her knees, drowning beneath the waves of her grief. Farrah was damn good at bottling up her emotions, but that was the thing about bottles—there comes a point when they run out of their capacity to contain, and their contents gush forth, toppling everything and everyone in their path.
For Farrah, that point was now.
For years, she’d been wracked with guilt over her last words to her father before he died—I wish you were dead—but there was something else. A part of her, buried deep down inside, that resented him for not taking better care of himself after he and her mom divorced. For gambling with his health and passing his days as if he had nothing to live for when he had a daughter who needed him. Farrah couldn’t help but wonder if her words had driven him over the edge. She didn’t think he killed himself—his liver disease had developed over several years—but maybe her teenage viciousness had loosened his grip on what tied him to this world. Maybe, if she’d been a better daughter, he would’ve tried harder to stay.
Farrah squeezed her eyes shut and tried to calm her sobs. She hated crying in front of other people. She could count the number of times she’d done so on one hand, and four out of the five it had been because of the man next to her.
Blake slid onto the floor beside her and wrapped both arms around her, holding her close. The erratic thump of his heart and the shivers in his body matched hers. He was both her storm and her shelter from the hurricane.
“I’m here.” He stroked her back, and it felt so safe, so familiar, she cried harder because she couldn’t bear the thought of losing this haven. “I’m not leaving. I’m right here.”
Farrah raised her head and wiped her face with the back of her hand. She must look like a mess, all teary-eyed and red-nosed, but she didn’t care. “What happened with my necklace?”
Blake’s brows dipped.
“Sammy said to ask you about the night I lost my necklace. He said it’ll explain everything,” she hiccupped.
Blake swore softly. “Do you remember how you got your necklace back?”
“Sammy found it and returned it to me.”
“He didn’t find it. I did.”
Shock stuttered her breath. “How—”
Blake’s throat convulsed with a hard swallow. “I knew how much that necklace meant to you, so I searched for it while everyone was getting ready for the dance. I found it hidden in a pile of leaves off the main path. It must’ve fallen off and washed away in the rain
. Sammy saw me on his way to get his phone from the auditorium. I gave it to him to give to you and told him to say he found it.”
There’d been a giant storm that night. The worst storm they’d seen during their year in Shanghai. The mental image of Blake rummaging through the bushes, searching for her necklace in the pouring rain, wrapped around Farrah’s chest like a vise and squeezed until she couldn’t breathe. “Why would you do that?”
Blake smiled a sad smile. “Like I said, I never stopped loving you. But I didn’t want you to know.”
Dammit. Farrah was going to run out of moisture in her body before the end of the night. She blinked back another onslaught of tears and asked the biggest question of all. “Why? If you still loved me, why did you break up with me?”
Blake’s eyes darkened with guilt. “Before I say anything, I want you to know—I’m not always a good person. I want to be. But I make mistakes.” He drew in a deep breath. “When I broke up with you, I told you I got back together with my ex-girlfriend over winter break and that I still loved her. That wasn’t true. Not really. We were both at a mutual friend’s party—Landon’s party, actually. Cleo and I grew up together. My parents always pushed me to date her, even though I never saw her as anything more than a friend. But I caved in college, and we dated for a year. I broke up with her right before I left for Shanghai. When I saw her again on New Year’s, I wanted to make things right. We’d been friends for a long time, and I hated the way we ended things. She agreed to be just friends, even though I could tell she still had feelings for me. We drank the night away and…” His voice trailed off. “Well, we got hammered.”
Acid sloshed in Farrah’s stomach. She had a feeling she knew where this was going.
“The next morning, I woke up in one of Landon’s family’s hotel suites. I had no recollection of the previous night, save for a few random flashes here and there. I rarely black out from alcohol, but I went in with an empty stomach and I drank a lot. At first, I thought, no big deal. I was hungover as shit, but it’s nothing I haven’t experienced before. But then Cleo came out of the shower and…” Another hard swallow. “She said we slept together.”