PROLOGUE 2

“It was all a lie then, this past year.”

He dropped his gaze again.

“Why? Why did you pretend you cared? Was it some sick joke?

You wanted to see whether I’d be gullible enough to fall for you?

Well, congratu-fucking-lations. You won. Blake Ryan, the champion.

Your father was right. You shouldn’t have quit. No one plays the

game better than you.”

So this was what dying felt like. The pain, frozen inside like a

lump of jagged black ice. The regret over words he couldn’t say and

promises he couldn’t keep. The loneliness as he slid into dark,

starless oblivion with no one left to save him.

“I’m sor—”

“If you say ‘I’m sorry’ one more time, I’ll go to the kitchen, come

back, and cut your balls off with a rusty knife. In fact, I may do that

anyway. You’re a fucking asshole. I’m sorry I wasted all this time on

you, and I’m sorrier for your girlfriend. She deserves better.”

God, he didn’t want her to leave hating him. He wanted, more

than anything, to tell her it was all a joke and that he was messing

with her. He wanted to grab her and breathe in that orange blossom

and vanilla scent that drove him crazy, to confess how head over

heels he was for her and to kiss her until they ran out of breath.

But he couldn’t. The first part would be a lie and the second…

well, that was something he could never do again.

Farrah walked to the door. She paused in the doorway to look

back at him. He expected her to hurl more venom at him—he

deserved it. But she didn’t. Instead, she turned away and closed the

door behind her with a soft “click” that echoed in the silence like a

gunshot.

His shoulders sagged. All the energy drained out of him.

It was over. There was no going back.

It was the right thing to do, and yet…

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the pain. He

couldn’t get the image of her face out of his mind, the one that said

she thought so little of him she didn’t want to waste any more energy

yelling at him.

Because of her, he believed in love. The kind of knock-you-down,

once-in-a-lifetime-love he used to dismiss as a fantasy concocted by Hollywood to sell movies. It wasn’t a fantasy. It was real. He felt it to

his core.

If only they’d met sooner, or under different circumstances…

He’d always been a practical person, and there was no use

dwelling on what-ifs. Duty bound him to someone else, and sooner

or later, Farrah would move on and meet a guy who could give her

everything she deserved. Someone she would love, marry, and have

kids with…

The last intact piece of his heart shattered at the thought. The

shards pricked at his self-control until he could no longer hold back

the tears. Huge, silent sobs wracked his body for the first time since

he was seven, when he’d fallen out of a tree and broken his leg.

Only this time, the pain was a million times worse.

All their moments together flashed through his mind, and the boy

who’d once sworn he would never cry over a girl… cried.

He cried because he’d hurt her.

He cried because it kept his mind off the desperate loneliness

that weighed on his soul the moment she left.

Most of all, he cried for what they had, what they lost, and what

they could never be.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***