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.