He clenched his hands into fists and forced his body to still. “Farrah.” This was it. His breath came out in short, shallow bursts. “I got back with my ex-girlfriend over the holidays. I didn’t know how to tell you. I love her, and I made a mistake here, with us. But I’m trying to fix it.”
Her sob ripped through the air. Tears stung his eyes, but he blinked them back.
“I’m sorry.” Such a stupid, inadequate thing to say. He didn’t know why he said it.
“Stop saying that!”
He flinched at the venom in her voice. She clutched her necklace with one hand, betrayal swirling in her eyes.
“It was all a lie then, this past year.”
He dropped his gaze again.
“Why? Why did you pretend you cared? Was it some sick joke? You wanted to see whether I’d be gullible enough to fall for you? Well, congratu-fucking-lations. You won. Blake Ryan, the champion. Your father was right. You shouldn’t have quit. No one plays the game better than you.”
So this was what dying felt like. The pain, frozen inside like a lump of jagged black ice. Th
e regret over words he couldn’t say and promises he couldn’t keep. The loneliness as he slid into dark, starless oblivion with no one left to save him.
“I’m sor—”
“If you say ‘I’m sorry’ one more time, I’ll go to the kitchen, come back, and cut your balls off with a rusty knife. In fact, I may do that anyway. You’re a fucking asshole. I’m sorry I wasted all this time on you, and I’m sorrier for your girlfriend. She deserves better.”
God, he didn’t want her to leave hating him. He wanted, more than anything, to tell her it was all a joke and that he was messing with her. He wanted to grab her and breathe in that orange blossom and vanilla scent that drove him crazy, to confess how head over heels he was for her and to kiss her until they ran out of breath.
But he couldn’t. The first part would be a lie and the second…well, that was something he could never do again.
Farrah walked to the door. She paused in the doorway to look back at him. He expected her to hurl more venom at him—he deserved it. But she didn’t. Instead, she turned away and closed the door behind her with a soft “click” that echoed in the silence like a gunshot.
His shoulders sagged. All the energy drained out of him.
It was over. There was no going back.
It was the right thing to do, and yet…
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the pain. He couldn’t get the image of her face out of his mind, the one that said she thought so little of him she didn’t want to waste any more energy yelling at him.
Because of her, he believed in love. The kind of knock-you-down, once-in-a-lifetime-love he used to dismiss as a fantasy concocted by Hollywood to sell movies. It wasn’t a fantasy. It was real. He felt it to his core.
If only they’d met sooner, or under different circumstances…
He’d always been a practical person, and there was no use dwelling on what-ifs. Duty bound him to someone else, and sooner or later, Farrah would move on and meet a guy who could give her everything she deserved. Someone she would love, marry, and have kids with…
The last intact piece of his heart shattered at the thought. The shards pricked at his self-control until he could no longer hold back the tears. Huge, silent sobs wracked his body for the first time since he was seven, when he’d fallen out of a tree and broken his leg. Only this time, the pain was a million times worse.
All their moments together flashed through his mind, and the boy who’d once sworn he would never cry over a girl… cried.
He cried because he’d hurt her.
He cried because it kept his mind off the desperate loneliness that weighed on his soul the moment she left.
Most of all, he cried for what they had, what they lost, and what they could never be.
Chapter One
Eight months ago
“One classic milk tea and one honey oolong milk tea with tapioca. Regular sugar, regular ice.”