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Her relationship with Blake had proved fairy-tale love existed in real life, but it also proved that every fairy tale had a dark side, that happily-ever-afters sometimes came with less-than-happy epilogues, and that the One Big Love could crush your heart as easily as they stole it.
If Blake were a good person, he would leave Farrah alone so she could move on with someone more deserving. But he was a selfish bastard, and now that she was in his life again, he couldn’t let her go. She was the light to his darkness, the angel to his demons, and his only excuse for trying to crawl back into her heart was that he loved her. Even after all these years. Even after all that had happened.
“I’ve only been in love with one person my entire life. She’s the one I dream of every damn night, and she’s the one who can break me with one tiny glance. I would jump off a fucking tower for that girl, and you know what? Her name sure as hell isn’t Cleo.”
He could handle her hating him, but he couldn’t handle her treating him like he was just some guy she used to date. Because the opposite of love wasn’t hate; it was indifference.
The truth was, everyone was broken. People weren’t shells, hard and glossy like the statues you found in museums. They were messy mosaics, compromised of glittering pieces of love and jagged shards of heartbreak. The lucky ones found someone whose broken edges fit perfectly with theirs, like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.
He’d seen it in her eyes. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. But she wanted his body, and he wanted all of her—heart, mind, body, and soul.
“I want you. All of you. Heart, body, mind, and soul. I want what we had.” His voice thickened. “I messed things up between us in Shanghai, and I’m so fucking sorry. I was young and stupid, and if I could do it all over, I would. But I can’t. All I can do is stand in front of you and ask for another chance. I know I broke your heart, but if you let me, I’ll spend the rest of my life putting it back together.”
“I can’t give you that.” Farrah’s rejection sliced through the space between them, turning Blake’s confession into desolate scraps of confetti that fluttered into a heap on the ground. The glimmer of foolish hope in his heart crumbled into ash, filling his airways and choking him. “I can give you one night. That’s it. Take it or leave it.”
And Mode de Vie canceled his feature spread because they’d landed a last-minute, exclusive interview with the notoriously press-shy Crown Prince of Eldora and his fiancée—an American flight attendant and newly minted fashion icon whom the prince’s family reportedly loathed.
“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“How could you believe me? How could you have looked into my eyes and believed you were anything except my whole world?”
“I don’t share. Not when it comes to you. This is an exclusive arrangement, and if Justin so much as looks at you the wrong way, I will rip him apart with my bare hands.”
He wanted all of her, and this time he wasn’t going to fuck it up. But until that day came, Blake would settle for anything she was willing to give him because even a piece of Farrah was better than all of anyone else.
“Grudges are the worst thing to hold on to. No matter how bad someone hurt you, you can’t heal until you forgive. Sometimes that means moving on. Other times that means giving things another shot.”
Your first love is like a tidal wave. Your head can break above the water, and you might even make it to shore, but the slightest nudge and you’re in the deep again.
If the sun never sets, the stars will never shine.
“From the day I met you, you chipped away at my heart, piece by piece, until you took the entire thing. And you never gave it back, you bastard.” Blake grasped her chin and tilted it until his eyes bored into hers. “And I’m not giving it back. Ever,” he said fiercely. “It’s mine, and mine is yours. A heart for a heart. It’s only fair.”
“For someone who claims never to have touched my heart, you have an uncanny ability to rip it out and tear it apart.”
“It’s still yours, you know. It will never belong to anyone else. Not in this life, and not in the next thousand lives. You have my heart until the earth stops spinning and the stars turn to dust. You can love it or hate it or forget all about it. But it will always be yours.”
The most painful part of loving someone was knowing you couldn’t live without them but not being able to live with them, either.
trying to run from her is as futile as trying to sweep water back into the ocean. Everything I do, every thought I have leads back to her.
You can stay or you can leave, but know this: if you aren’t by my side, it doesn’t matter how bright the sun shines. I’d rather live in eternal darkness with you than live in eternal sunshine without you. So here I am, asking you to give me another chance. This time, it’s all of me.
yours. I don’t want to run anymore, but unless you look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me, I will chase you to the ends of the earth until the sun fucking explodes. You are it, Farrah Lin. You always have been. You always will be.”
I never fell out of love with you, not even after Shanghai. I told myself I did, but it was a lie. This is my truth: you are my One Big Love, my fairy tale, my Hollywood romance.
“Five years ago, I told you I didn’t believe in love, and that the crazy, stupid love they showed in movies was a scam. You proved to me, minute by minute, day by day, how wrong I was until one day I woke up and realized I’d fallen so deep, I would never be able to dig myself out. And you know what? I don’t want to. But I also realized I wasn’t entirely wrong because that crazy, stupid love they showed in movies is nothing compared to what I feel for you. You are the stars in my night, the sun to my earth, and I thank fucking God every day that out of all the cities in all the world, I chose
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