“For God’s sake, Joy, I said I’ll try. Look, I have to go. I’m with someone.” A pause, then a grudging, “Love you too. Talk to you later.”
Farrah tried to focus on her Kindle app and not eavesdrop on Blake’s conversation.
She failed. Miserably.
A second later, Blake stepped out of the bathroom, wearing sweatpants and…nothing else. An orange Syracuse T-shirt sat balled in his fist instead of covering his sculpted chest and six-pack abs. His sweatpants rode low on his hips, eliciting wicked fantasies about what would happen if they inched down just a bit.
Farrah gulped. She pulled the covers up to her chest, hyperaware of her hard nipples pressing against the thin fabric of her own T-shirt, which was so large she wore it as a dress.
She and Blake arrived at the B&B with no incident but had gotten soaked during their run from the car to the inn. Since neither had planned for an overnight trip, they didn’t have a change of outfits. Fortunately, the owners were kind enough to lend them clothes for the night. Unfortunately, Farrah’s bra was tumbling in a washer somewhere along with the rest of her clothes instead of hiding her obvious and unwanted reaction to the man standing in front of her.
“Is everything ok?” The question came out breathier than she would’ve liked. Farrah cleared her throat. “You look upset.”
“I’m all right. Family stuff.” Blake tossed the shirt onto the chair in the corner. “Shirt’s too small,” he explained. “Hope you don’t mind.” Apology and a hint of mischief crept into his expression, one that said he knew what the sight of his bare chest did to her and what he’d find if he pulled the covers off her and shoved her panties aside.
Farrah’s thighs clenched. Her mind spun in a million directions, all of them counterproductive to her emotional and, soon, physical well-being. Whatever the female version of blue balls was, she had it. Bad.
“Is it your dad?” She silently applauded her attempt at maintaining a normal conversation when all she wanted to do was run into the bathroom and relieve the ache between her legs.
Blake rubbed his jaw. “Sorta. I was talking to my sister. My dad’s fiftieth birthday is in August, and she wants me to fly back to Austin for the party.”
“That doesn’t sound so terrible.” Farrah’s brows drew together. Blake didn’t have the best relationship with his father, but… “He can’t still be mad at you for quitting football.”
“Who the hell knows.” Blake leaned against the dresser and crossed his arms over his chest. “I told him why I quit, you know. After I returned home from Shanghai. He all but called me a pussy for worrying about CTE. Said the threat of a concussion was better than failing as a businessman. He was so sure my sports bar wouldn’t make it.”
Farrah’s heart twisted at the bitterness coating his voice. She’d had a tumultuous relationship with her own father when he was alive, but for all his faults, he’d never made her feel less than. “But it did. It’s one of the most successful sports bar chains in the country. You built an entire empire in just a few years.”
Blake flashed a sardonic smile. “Yes, and do you know how many of my bar openings he’s been to? Zero. Not even the inaugural in Austin. My mom was there, and my sister, but not him. Said he wasn’t feeling well, but we came home to him drinking beer and watching football.”
In that moment, Farrah saw Blake not as a heartbreaker, but as someone whose own heart had been broken so many times by those closest to him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
She curled her fingers around the comforter, willing herself not to hug him and pour into him some of the light that seeped out every time he brought up his father.
So many reasons I shouldn’t.
“You know what the most fucked-up part is?” Blake’s eyes brewed with a storm that made the one raging outside look like a gentle summer rain. “All I ever wanted was to make my dad proud. Even in the moments when I resented him, even when I mailed copies of my Forbes and New York Times features to him out of spite, hoping to get a rise out of him, I wanted him to look at me and say, ‘Son, I’m proud of you.’ He never did, and probably never will, yet I still hope.” His humorless laugh scraped against Farrah’s chest. “Isn’t that pathetic?”
Screw it.
Farrah swung her legs over the side of the bed and walked over to Blake until they stood mere inches apart. She placed a hand on his arm, afraid to embrace him fully but unable to stop herself from giving him this basic act of comfort. “It’s not pathetic. It’s human. Maybe your dad is proud of you and just doesn’t know how to express it.”
“It’s a few words. Should be simple enough.”
“Sometimes the simplest words are the hardest to stay.”
A small smile touched Blake’s lips. A real one this time. “You always saw the best in people. Even the ones that are broken.”
The hairs on Farrah’s skin prickled. Something hung in the air between them, so thick and heavy she tasted its tangy sweetness on her tongue.
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. Two imperfects, holding each other up in the storm. And it would feel so safe, so right that they’d get addicted to the illusion of completeness, forgetting that one wrong move could throw them out of sync, and the other’s jaggedness would slice them so deep they’d bleed from the inside out.
“It’s better to go through life wearing rose-colored glasses than searching for demons.”
A boom of thunder rattled the windows, swallowing Farrah’s words, but Blake appeared to have heard them perfectly.
“Classic Farrah.” His fingers grazed her cheek, a featherlight touch followed by the blossoming of goosebumps on her skin and pooling of moisture between her legs.
Blake’s gaze dropped to where her nipples puckered painfully against her shirt, and the indifferent, robotic Blake from earlier that day disappeared. In its place stood raw, wicked lust, the kind that had zero compunction about ripping your clothes off, bending you over, and fucking you until you shattered into a thousand pieces of ecstasy.
Farrah bit back a whimper.
Blake’s sweatpants did as good a job of hiding his arousal as her shirt did hers—which was to say, not at all. She could see his erection through the gray fabric, long and thick and hard. Her core throbbed in response, aching to be filled, and Farrah realized, with all the certainty in the world, that she needed to see this through.
All this time, she’d resisted what she wanted, afraid one concession would lead to another, and another, until they toppled like dominoes and created a path back to where she didn’t want Blake to go. But here was the thing about resistance: the harder you try to pull away, the harder the object you’re resisting sucks you in. It was a clash of wills, and the person who was willing to forfeit a battle was often the one who won the war.
Farrah took a tiny step toward Blake, then another, until her nipples brushed his bare chest.
Blake flinched, his jaw tight, his eyes dark. She could see his pulse beating in the hollow of his throat. She wanted to press her mouth to it, to confirm whether it beat in time with hers and if his blood ran as hot as the fire scorching her veins.
He dragged in a shaky breath. His fingertips brushed her hips, and just when she thought he was going to kiss her, he broke away with a growl.
“I’m taking a shower.”
The bathroom door slammed behind him and splintered the spell.
Farrah collapsed against the dresser, panting and woozy from unfulfilled desire and confusion. It wasn’t true, what she said earlier about wearing rose-colored glasses. She saw, very clearly, in black and white, what was in front of her.
Blake Ryan was her missing puzzle piece, her broken other half. He was her drug, her addiction, her downfall, and if she wanted to survive, she needed to get him out of her system—even if it meant compromising her heart.
