If the Sun Never Sets - Ana Huang Page 0,49

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.

“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