If the Sun Never Sets - Ana Huang Page 0,91

she found him in the snowstorm proved that. To be honest, Blake wasn’t sure why he’d waited outside that so long. All he knew was, he was desperate to get back into her good graces, and if that meant he had to freeze his ass off on the slim chance that the love of his life might come out and talk to him…well, that was a risk he’d been willing to take.

And it had worked.

Now, if only he could break through her final wall.

“I came here for you,” he said simply. “And to give you this.” Blake held out the gift in his hand. Farrah stared at it like it was a cobra waiting to strike.

For a second, he thought she wasn’t going to take it. But then she walked over and plucked the wrapped box from his palm. Her orange blossom and vanilla scent slammed into him with dizzying impact, and he had to shove his clenched fists into his pockets so he didn’t crush her to her chest and kiss her until they couldn’t breathe.

Blake’s gaze didn’t stray from her face as the crinkling of gift wrap replaced the silence. Farrah sucked in an audible breath when she saw what lay beneath the matte gold foil.

An engraved heart-shaped locket, nestled inside a tiny glass box.

“There’s something inside the locket.” Blake fished the key to the box out of his pocket and pressed it into her palm, savoring the soft warmth of her skin against his before she pulled away. “My final letter. You don’t have to read it now. I just…” He trailed off. “I wanted to deliver this one myself.” He watched her, his pulse jumping beneath his skin. “Have you read any of my other letters?”

Farrah’s nostrils flared. “Yes,” she admitted.

Funny how one quiet word could hold so much power. Blake’s heart soared in his chest, and he tamped down a grin.

Read my letters when you feel like you might be able to give me another chance.

Maybe Farrah had just been curious, but he was going to take any win he could get.

He watched, afraid to breathe, as she opened the box with trembling hands. She retrieved the sheet of paper tucked inside the locket, folded into the smallest of squares.

In it, Blake explained everything—the truth behind Cleo’s pregnancy; the accident; his run-in with Cleo and her father when he’d been in Austin; how Daniel Bowden’s words had carved themselves into his brain, exploiting every fear he had about the kind of person he was.

He shared the deepest, darkest thoughts he had over the years, the ones that convinced him of what a shitty person he was—the excitement and panic of being a father, the resentment over being forced to parent at such a young age, the guilt over his role in the car accident and, most shameful of all, the relief. It had been a flicker that lasted less than a millisecond, but the tiny of fission of relief Blake felt at not having to spend the rest of his life with someone he didn’t love plagued him long after he and Cleo parted ways.

In that millisecond, he’d been sure he would go to hell because only monsters would be relieved over a loss so horrific. It didn’t matter that the relief played an infinitesimal part of his larger reaction, that it’d been quickly drowned out by overwhelming grief and pain. The fact it’d existed at all was his greatest disgrace.

Blake’s pulse ticked in rhythm with the clock on the mantel.

Tick. One eternity. Tick. Two eternities.

All the while, a universe of emotions played out across Farrah’s face—shock, horror, sympathy, pain, and sadness that crashed into a crescendo when she lifted her head to meet Blake’s eyes.

“This is all true?” she whispered.

“Yes.” The word rasped over his dry tongue. “You can check the sources if you don’t believe me. Landon knows what happened. My family too. But the parts about how I felt—” Blake’s throat processed a hard swallow. “That’s all me. I’ve never told anyone the things I told you in these notes. I’ve spent so much of my life being the sun—the homecoming king, the football star, the successful businessman—that I was terrified of what would happen once the sun sets and night falls. So, I ran. I ran every time darkness closed in, every time I had to have a hard conversation or face up to my shit. When I quit football, I ran to Shanghai because I didn’t want to deal with