by Ana Huang
Farrah couldn’t hide a smile at the mental image of Blake dodging a sweet old lady’s cane while balancing a giant stuffed animal and flowers.
Blake saw it and pounced. “That’s how sorry I am. I almost died for you.” His teasing smile melted into a puppy dog stare. “Can you please give me—”
“No.” Her mirth disappeared, and she stepped back, the frantic little beats of her pulse dancing along her skin before he could finish his sentence.
She knew what he was going to ask her.
She wasn’t sure she could deny him.
Despite everything that had happened, Farrah still loved Blake. She could build the walls around her heart so high they reached the heavens, she could arm it with a thousand soldiers firing flame-tipped arrows, and she could surround it with a moat filled with crocodiles, but if Blake persisted—if he got close enough—those defenses would crumble faster than a sandcastle at high tide.
Once, he was her greatest savior. Now, he was her greatest downfall.
The only way Farrah could protect herself was to keep him so far away he couldn’t touch even the outermost perimeter of her defense.
“Don’t finish that question.” Her words were bullets, shot point-blank at Blake’s chest. “I made myself clear—our second chance is over. If you think a couple of gifts will change that, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“I know. I’m not asking you for another chance,” Blake said softly. “I’m asking you for an opportunity to explain. I’ll tell you everything. What happened in Texas, why I pushed you away. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“It’s too late.”
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Unless Farrah wanted a nice long stint in an insane asylum, she needed to stop believing Blake. How many times was she going to let him hurt her until she got the hint?
Blake’s eyes darkened. “Is it Paul?” He spat out the name like it was a rotten piece of fruit. “Are you in love with him?”
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Disbelief and anger replaced the humor in Farrah’s laugh. “Get out of my house.”
Instead of leaving, Blake moved closer. Farrah stepped back, he stepped forward, until her back hit the wall and there was nowhere left to go. He was all she could see, and his presence was so powerful, so all-encompassing, she drowned in it.
“What is it about him?” Blake demanded. “How could you move on so quickly? From me? From us?”
Farrah’s blood hissed in her veins. “I’m serious, Blake. Get the fuck out.”
“I need to know!”
“I’m not in love with him, you idiot!” she yelled. “I’m not even dating him! God, how dense can you be?”
Blake looked thunderstruck. “You’re not?”
“No.” Farrah shoved him off her. “We met on a dating app. I’d only known him for two weeks. That night you ran into us? It was our third date. Do you think I’m so fickle that I could turn around and fall in love with someone else just like that?” She snapped her fingers for emphasis.
The paleness of Blake’s face could’ve given Edward Cullen a run for his money. “Does that—you fell in love with me again?”
Farrah wanted to bang her head against the wall. “I was always in love with you. Even when I thought I forgot you. Even when I thought I was over you.” Her voice trembled. “From the day I met you, you chipped away at my heart, piece by piece, until you took the entire thing. And you never gave it back, you bastard.”
Blake grasped her chin and tilted it until his eyes bored into hers. “And I’m not giving it back. Ever,” he said fiercely. “It’s mine, and mine is yours. A heart for a heart. It’s only fair.”
If only that were true.
A chill settled in Farrah’s chest, fortifying her defenses and keeping her standing until she did what she had to do.
“Here’s the difference between you and me,” she whispered. “I saw you taking my heart, and I let you. I gave it to you unconditionally. You gave me yours in a locked glass box—beautiful, close enough for me to believe I could touch it, but every time I came close, you pushed me away. Because you didn’t trust me, or you thought I couldn’t handle it, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. In the end, you kept the key, and you ran. Even though you said you loved me. Even though I was right here, all this time.”
Blake trembled against her, tiny, barely imperceptible shudders that belied the stony set of his jaw. He ripped his hand from her chin and grasped her palm, pressing it flat against his chest. “There is no glass box,” he said, the storm in his eyes intensifying into a hurricane. “This is my heart. Feel it. It’s there, and it’s beating. For you. Only for you.”
Silence.
“We can make this work.” Quiet desperation leaked from Blake’s voice and crackled in the air. “I’ve fucked up more times than I can count but tell me how I can make it up to you. You want the key? I’ll give you the key. I’ll give you ten keys. I’ll give you the whole goddamned house! Just tell me what you want and it's yours.”
“I don’t want anything.” Farrah slipped her hand out of his grasp, as calm as if they were sipping tea on a summer porch in the Hamptons. “You see, there’s only so many times you can push a person away before they never come back.”
“Farrah…”
“The key is useless because I’ve given up trying to unlock what’s inside.”
“Don’t do this.”
“You can keep my heart.” She blinked up at Blake, trying to feel something beyond the numbness spreading through her limbs. She couldn’t. “But I no longer want yours.”
Until today, Farrah didn’t think it was possible to see a person actually die inside. Now, she witnessed it in slow motion as the light bled out of Blake’s eyes, turning the crystal pools into flat, empty swaths of ice. His strong, muscular frame crumpled, and devastation lined his face. He was no longer Apollo but a fallen god, mortal and bleeding, and she couldn’t bear to watch any longer.
Farrah closed her eyes. Apparently, there was a limit to her numbness.
Blake’s laugh was short, rueful, and laced with pain. “For someone who claims never to have touched my heart, you have an uncanny ability to rip it out and tear it apart.”
His footsteps stopped at the door. She felt rather than saw him look at her. “It’s still yours, you know. It will never belong to anyone else. Not in this life, and not in the next thousand lives. You have my heart until the earth stops spinning and the stars turn to dust. You can love it or hate it or forget all about it. But it will always be yours.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Farrah thought she’d gotten rid of Blake.
She didn’t hear from him for a week—unless you counted the endless stream of pleading texts, phone calls, and voicemails, which she ignored, though she couldn’t bring herself to block him—yet.
Then he started showing up in person. Every damn day. Begging her to give him just five minutes. Ensuring she couldn’t forget about him no matter how hard she tried.
Farrah’s mouth pressed into a thin line when she saw Blake sitting on the stoop in front of her building, the same way he’d been doing for the past three weeks, even as she tried to ignore the sharp ache she felt at the sight of him.
She’d thought one of her neighbors would’ve called the cops by now, but he’d somehow managed to win them all over, even the grouchy old lady on the second floor.
Farrah didn’t know what kind of sorcery he was practicing, but she wanted no part of it, no matter what her traitorous, fluttering heart said.
The closer she got to him, the more her chest hurt.
Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him.
Blake scrambled to his feet when he saw her. “Give me a chance to explain?”
Farrah fished her keys out of her bag, determined to ignore him, but the question slipped out before she could prevent it. “Don’t you have somewhere t
o be?”
Blake waited in front of her building every evening like a puppy waiting for its owner to come home. She assumed he came here straight from work. She didn’t know how long he stayed, but Olivia came home once at eight and said she saw him outside, looking miserable. Farrah had lasted two minutes before she’d excused herself from the conversation and locked herself in her room, where she’d alternated between trying not to cry, cursing Blake out in her mind, and resisting the urge to run outside and fling herself into his arms.
“I do. Here.” Blake flashed a small, devastating smile before his face turned serious again. “Farrah, please. I just need a few minutes.”
“I thought I made myself clear the other day.” Farrah’s hands curled around her keys until the metal dug painful grooves into her palm. Her ears buzzed, and her heart slammed against her ribcage in a frantic, unyielding rhythm. “I’m not interested. You had your chance. You had two chances. Both times you pushed me away. So congratulations. You got your wish. I’m staying away. Now you need to do the same.”
She tried to look Blake in the eyes to drive home her point but ended up staring at his forehead instead.
Blake’s jaw tightened. “I’m not letting you go that easily.”
A frustrated groan tore from her throat. Why was he making this so hard? “Stop. We both know this isn’t going to last.” She gestured between them. “One day, you won’t be here. You’ll leave. That’s what you’ve always done when the going gets tough.”
“Not this time.” Blake’s eyes burned into hers with an intensity that sent trembles up her spine. “I love you, and you love me. I’m not giving up on that.”
“You already did.” Farrah sucked in a deep, shaky breath and turned her head, afraid the mess of emotion in her throat would be reflected on her face. She needed to leave before she broke down. “You’ve always been good with words, but actions matter more, and yours told me all I needed to know.”
She fled inside her building before Blake could rope her back in. A tear escaped, then two, then more than she knew what to do with.
Damn him, she thought bitterly.
Blake was right. She did love him, even after all he put her through, and he knew what he was doing by showing up here every day.
But he was going to stop. She was sure of it.
Except…he didn’t.
Mid-December rolled around. The leaves had fallen off the trees, and holiday fever had swept the city, but Blake remained stubbornly, infallibly present, to the point where even Olivia felt bad for him.
“Maybe you should talk to him,” Olivia said tentatively one evening, while Farrah was packing for her trip home for the holidays. Her flight was four days away, but after living with Olivia for so long, some of her roommate’s tendencies—including packing early—had become her own. “It’s been almost two months. I know you’re hurt and angry, and you have every right to be, but he’s trying. No guy waits that long—”
“Liv, don’t.” Farrah shoved a dress into the corner of her suitcase. She’d done a decent job of pushing Blake out of her mind—other than her heart splintering every time she saw him outside her building, of course. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
She’d managed to avoid discussion of Blake so far, even when Olivia complained about the teddy bear blocking half the TV in the living room. Farrah said she couldn’t throw the bear out because it was gigantic, and there was no good way to dispose of it, but they both knew that wasn’t true. Olivia, thankfully, hadn’t called her out on her obvious lie.
It helped that there had been plenty of distractions this fall: namely, the Kelly-Matt scandal, which blew up right before Thanksgiving and sent shock waves through Manhattan. Kelly’s best friend and Matt’s mom, a wealthy, well-connected socialite who split her time between Chicago and New York, had flown in to surprise her son. She ended up being the one surprised—when she caught him in bed with Kelly.
The socialite killed Kelly’s reputation among Manhattan high society. The gossip sites covered the sordid affair for weeks—Design icon caught in bed with employee (and godson)! Wealthy heir ensnared by cougar!—and, in an attempt to save his own ass, Matt declared Kelly forced him into the relationship. He also spilled all her dirty secrets, including the tactics she used to get back at those she felt had wronged her. Among them: sending a PSA to all the design studio heads in New York, telling them not to hire Farrah because she was insubordinate and difficult to work with. Kelly claimed she’d been about to fire Farrah anyway before Farrah quit in a childish tantrum over not receiving a promotion.
Matt’s accusations fell apart after a gossip columnist dug up the history of filthy, very much un-coerced texts he’d sent Kelly over the past year. He fled to Chicago with his tail between his legs; Kelly took an extended leave of absence from KBI and was reportedly hiding out upstate.
Meanwhile, Farrah had been inundated with messages from her former coworkers and interview offers from companies who’d been radio silent until news of Kelly’s deception broke. She was glad she finally knew for sure what happened, and that her reputation in the industry was no longer in tatters, but she couldn’t help feeling bad for her ex-colleagues. A lot of them had to look for jobs elsewhere, given KBI’s new client stream had slowed to a trickle.
Farrah herself hadn’t replied to her interview offers yet. If this were a few months ago, she would’ve jumped on them in a heartbeat, but now, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to work for someone else. She enjoyed being her own boss, and she was even getting the hang of the business side of things. Sort of.
“I’m just saying.” Olivia’s voice brought Farrah back to the present. “It’s snowing like crazy out there. Blake’s probably freezing.”
Farrah’s heart seized at the mental image of Blake standing outside, shivering in the storm. “He’s not out there.”
“It’s seven. He usually doesn’t leave until eight or nine.”
“You said it yourself. It’s snowing like crazy. No sane person would be outside right now.”
“No sane person would wait outside their ex’s building for two months straight, either,” Olivia retorted.
Farrah resumed packing, but her heart wasn’t in it. “When did you turn into a Blake apologist?”
“Since I saw how miserable you are. You can ignore him all you want, but if you really wanted to get rid of him, you’d have called the cops on his ass a long time ago.”
“He’s not breaking any laws,” Farrah murmured.
“I’m sure you could make a case for harassment or something. At the very least, you could’ve tried. But you didn’t.” Olivia’s tone softened. “Babe, you can’t keep going on like this.”
“I won’t. I’m leaving for L.A. in a few days, and I’ll be gone for a month. Once I come back, Blake won’t be here.” Farrah folded a denim jacket and stuffed it next to her dress.
“If you say so.” Olivia pursed her lips. “I’m going to take a shower before this storm knocks out the electricity or something.”
“It’s not snowing that bad!” Farrah yelled after her, right as a fierce howl ripped through the air outside.
There was no way Blake was out there. Right?
Don’t do it, Farrah Lin. Don’t you dare.
With a groan, Farrah threw on a coat and shoes, grabbed her keys, and stomped outside. She was furious with Blake for being so persistent, with Olivia for putting the suggestion he might be outside in her head, and with herself for caring.
She opened the door to the building and flinched when a blast of icy air almost knocked her over. The ground was blanketed in thick, powdery snow, and the cold soaked through her layers of clothing until it clawed at her skin.
Farrah didn’t notice. She was too busy staring at the figure shivering in the corner. He stood beneath an awning, but it was too small to prevent the snow from collecting on his hair and coat. There was an alarming blue tinge to his skin.
Her breath rushed out in a gust of shock and anger. “What t
he hell are you doing?” she demanded. “You’re going to get yourself killed!”
Blake’s eyes lit up. “You came outside.” Then he frowned at the sight of her thin coat—she hadn’t put on her parka for such a quick trip—and slip-ons. “You must be freezing.”
Farrah wanted to cry. “I’m freezing?” She grabbed his arm and yanked him inside, trying to ignore the shower of sparks that erupted in her belly. The door closed behind them, shutting out most of the cold, but Blake continued shivering. No wonder—he was soaked from the melted snow. A messy ball of emotion clogged her throat. “What are you doing outside in this storm? Are you crazy?”
Blake lifted his shoulder with a slight furrow in his brow. “I told you I’m not going anywhere. Not until you give me a chance to explain.”
Farrah wanted to scream. “You could’ve gotten hypothermia!”
“Worth it.” His lips curved into a small smile. “At least you’re speaking to me.”
He was certifiably insane.
They could’ve argued all night, but pale blue still tinted Blake’s skin, and if he didn’t warm up soon, he really was going to catch hypothermia.
“You need to get out of those clothes, or you’ll get sick,” Farrah said. “And don’t you dare make a sexual innuendo right now,” she added when Blake opened his mouth to speak.
“Okay.” The mischievous glint in Blake’s eyes told her he may not be saying it, but he was thinking it.
Farrah’s lips inched up before she caught herself. “Don’t take this as anything more than basic human decency, but you can shower and change at my place.”
Blake followed her silently into her apartment, where a freshly showered Olivia was reading one of her erotica books on the couch. Other than an arch of her eyebrow, she didn’t look surprised to see a soaking wet Blake enter her living room. “Blake.”
“Liv.” Blake returned her greeting.
“I’m going to be in my room. All night,” Olivia announced. She closed her book, stood, and left, but not before shooting Farrah an I-told-you-so look, which Farrah ignored.