“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.”
Blake watched her closely, like he expected Farrah to bolt any second.
She should. She’d known he’d cheated on her that winter break—he said so himself—but it was excruciating to hear the play-by-play of how it happened, even if he hadn’t meant to do it.
Nevertheless, something glued Farrah in place.
“Go on,” she said dully.
“I came back to Shanghai, and I felt so fucking guilty for cheating on you and lying to you. I wanted to tell you the truth, but I loved you so much, and I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you.” Blake’s voice cracked. “I know it’s not an excuse, but I honestly don’t remember that night. I have no idea what happened, or how I ended up sleeping with Cleo. I just know the secret killed me inside. That was why I acted so weird the first few weeks after we came back. I’m not proud of it, but I thought I could hide it from you. Then Cleo called me and…” Blake’s jaw clenched.