“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.