If the Sun Never Sets

by Ana Huang

  Guilt flitted through her eyes, which didn’t make sense. What did she have to be guilty about?

  Blake had been the one behind the wheel. He’d been the one who’d insisted they drive to Cleo’s place after he and his father had some ridiculous argument, even though it’d been storming so hard you couldn’t hear yourself over the rain. He’d swerved to avoid a deer, smashed into a tree, and killed both their son and relationship in one go.

  He hadn’t done it on purpose, but the guilt had weighed on his conscience every night since, especially when Blake remembered his prayer. He’d woken up at three a.m. one night before the accident, drenched with sweat at the thought of becoming an unexpected father at age twenty-two, and sent a silent missive to the heavens.

  Please make this all go away.

  A week later, the accident happened.

  Blake hadn’t been thinking miscarriage. He hadn’t been thinking at all. He’d just been panicked and exhausted, and even though he wasn’t a super religious person, he couldn’t help but wonder if the accident had been God’s way of punishing him for his shitty, selfish, off-the-cuff prayer.

  “Can you meet me at our old place tonight?” Cleo glanced around. “I don’t want to talk about it here.”

  Their old place—the playground they’d frequented as teenagers, back in the good old days when they were nothing more than friends. They used to stay up through the night, swinging on the swings and staring at the sky, musing about what their futures would look like.

  Neither had expected things to turn out the way they did.

  “Of course.” Curiosity burned a hole in Blake’s stomach. Before he could ask her for more information, the scent of Old Spice assaulted his senses.

  Blake winced. He only knew one person who wore Old Spice.

  “Blake Ryan.” Daniel Bowden’s scowl could’ve melted stone. “Didn’t know you’d crawled back into town.”

  “Dad,” Cleo hissed.

  “Cleo, go meet your mother at the checkout counter.”

  “Dad, leave Blake alone. We just ran into each other.”

  “Now, Cleo!”

  She grit her teeth but did as he bid. Playground, eight o’clock, she mouthed behind Daniel’s back.

  Blake blinked his agreement.

  Once Cleo was out of earshot, Daniel jabbed a finger at Blake’s chest. To most people, he was an intimidating man. Six feet four inches of corded muscle and fiery energy, all of which he aimed at his daughter’s ex.

  He’d liked Blake well enough when he’d dated Cleo. Hated him when he broke Cleo’s heart. Fucking loathed him after the accident.

  It’d been a rapid and ugly fall for the relationship between Blake and his ex-future-father-in-law, and if there was one thing Daniel Bowden was good at, it was holding grudges.

  “Mr. Bowden—”

  “Shut up,” Daniel growled. “And stay away from my daughter. I don’t want you talking to her. I don’t want you even looking at her. You’ve hurt her enough. She’s finally found someone who treats her right, and I will not let you screw that up.”

  “I wasn’t plan—”

  Daniel continued like Blake wasn’t speaking, and his next words turned Blake’s blood to ice.

  “You’ve been toying with her emotions since you were old enough to vote, and I won’t let you mess things up for her again. Because that’s what you do. You screw up people’s lives. The world sees a golden pretty boy, but I see you for what you really are: a black star, a heartbreaker, and a selfish bastard. You hurt everyone around you and, what’s worse, you can’t help yourself. It’s just what you do.”

  The full moon hung round and heavy in the sky; in the distance, a dog howled, and the swings creaked in the quiet night, adding to the horror movie atmosphere draped over the empty playground.

  Empty except for Blake and Cleo, who sat side by side on the swings.

  Their old teenage stomping grounds.

  How simple life had been back then, when all they’d had to worry about was where to apply to college and who they were going to prom with.

  “Forgive my dad,” Cleo said. “I don’t know what he said to you, but I can imagine. He’s a little overprotective.”

  “I don’t blame him.” Blake threw her a lopsided smile, like Daniel Bowden’s words hadn’t carved themselves into his heart with a sharp, poison-tipped pen.

  It was never the lies that were lethal. No matter how scandalous or widespread, lies fell short of piercing the armor of righteousness, because you knew—even if no one else did—that what your enemy was saying rang false. No, it was the dark truths that were most dangerous, the ones you couldn’t admit to yourself until someone said them out loud for you. They forced you to face your demons, the ones you’d hoped would stay locked up forever. But once they were out, there was no putting them back.

  They were there to haunt you for the rest of your life.

  “He’s gone overboard since…you know.” Cleo’s lashes swept down. “Thank God Peter —my husband—and I have our own place, or I’d go nuts. Anyway.” She laughed nervously. “Enough about my dad. That’s not why we’re here.” Guilt crept back into her eyes, along with a healthy dose of nerves. “Like I said, I have something I want to tell you.”

  “Me too.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “Before you say anything, I have something I need to tell you.” Blake sucked in a breath. Oxygen filled his lungs, and he forced the words out before the air left his body. “What happened the night of the storm—”

  Pain slashed across Cleo’s face. “Blake, don’t.”

  He pushed on. He had to say it and get it off his chest. Otherwise, his guilt would crush him, inch by inch, until there was nothing left. “It was my fault. All of it. I know you said you don’t blame me, but I prayed for something like that to happen. I mean, not a car accident, and certainly not for you to get hurt. But I asked for God to make it all go away and—” His throat constricted. “I’m sorry. I’ve been running all these years, avoiding you, because I couldn’t face you. I couldn’t face what I did. I’m the reason you miscarried. I killed our son.”

  A sob escaped Cleo’s throat. She pressed her fist to her mouth and shook her head. “That’s what I should’ve told you,” she said, her voice wretched with agony. “He wasn’t your son.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Something was wrong.

  Unease dug into Farrah’s bones, weighing her down until she sank beneath a tide of doubts and nerves.

  Blake returned from Texas a week ago. He’d texted her to cancel their date for the night after his return, and she hadn’t heard a peep from him since.

  Farrah tried to shrug it off, but she felt the depth of his absence to her core. She missed him—the sparkle in his eyes, the richness of his laugh, the heat of his touch.

  If it were anyone else, the silence wouldn’t be a big deal, but Blake never went MIA this long. At the very least, he would call or text her to say good night.

  The last time he’d been this incommunicado had been in Shanghai…right before they broke up.

  You’re being paranoid.

  Farrah nibbled on her cardboard-tasting pizza. Her taste buds must’ve taken the day off while her mind spun intricate stories of why she hadn’t heard from Blake. Each story branched off into a new, more horrifying path until they formed a cobweb of paranoia that choked off the possibility of dwelling on anything else.

  She hated feeling this way again. Hated that it was because of Blake—again. Last time, she’d made the mistake of waiting to confront him and stewing in her own anxiety. She wasn’t going to do that this time.

  “Do you want more wine?” Olivia raised their half-empty bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

  Farrah shook her head. “All yours. You need it more than I do.”

  Olivia had a new manager at work, and she did not get along with him—to put it mildly. She’d come home every day the past week ranting about how incompetent, misogynistic, and sexist he was
—a rare slip of form for a woman who’d handled Wall Street’s old boys’ club with admirable aplomb the past four years. If Olivia lost her cool like this, that meant the new manager must be a special form of horrible.

  It had been Olivia’s idea to destress with an outdoor movie, so here they were, plunked on a blanket in the middle of Brooklyn Bridge Park while Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey mamboed their way across the screen. Grapes, cheese, wine, and a large grease-stained pizza box separated the roommates, and the Manhattan skyline—a cinematic masterpiece in and of itself—glowed golden behind the projector.

  “Thanks.” Olivia filled her plastic cup to the brim. “Let me know if you change your mind. Is Blake still pulling the Casper act?”

  “He didn’t ghost me.” Farrah took another bite of pizza before she gave up and tossed it into the empty box. She debated texting Blake, but her past five messages had gone unanswered, as had her phone calls. One more and she may as well register herself in the national stalker database, if there was such a thing. “LNY is opening in two weeks. He’s busy.”

  That’s what she told herself, anyway.

  She would’ve worried about Blake being sick or kidnapped or something, had behind-the-scenes videos of him not been splashed all over the official Legends Instagram account in the run-up to LNY’s opening.

  He was alive and well and, apparently, avoiding her. But Farrah didn’t want to jump to conclusions without knowing the full story, so she kept that theory to herself.

  “You’re probably right.” Olivia dropped a grape into her mouth.

  Farrah arched a surprised brow. Despite Blake and Olivia’s truce, her friend still wasn’t Blake’s biggest fan. “I thought you hated Blake,” she said.

  “I don’t hate him. Well, I hated him a little after he what he did to you,” Olivia amended. “But we were friends once. Besides, people change, and he’s crazy about you. I can tell by the way he looks at you.”

  Farrah’s heart flipped. “You don’t know that.”

  “I do, and I know the feeling’s mutual. Don’t deny it,” Olivia said when Farrah opened her mouth to protest. “I was there when you fell for him the first time. I was also there for every guy you’ve dated since him. And there’s only been one person who made you look at him like he hung the stars in the sky.”

  The ache in Farrah’s chest had nothing to do with the cold, greasy pizza she ate earlier.

  “I just got over him,” she murmured. “Before he dropped back into my life.”

  “Bullshit.” Olivia slammed her empty cup onto the blanket. “You’ve never fallen out of love with him. 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. Now, that’s not true for all people, but it is for you and Blake. You are each other’s oceans.”

  If that were true, the waters were rocky as hell. They crashed against the edges of Farrah’s confidence, chipping at it, eroding it, until she floated adrift in a sea of uncertainty. Was she making too big a deal out of Blake’s silence, or did she have every right to worry?

  “Liv, the poet.” Farrah threw a grape at her friend in an attempt to dispel the heavy emotions Olivia’s observations stirred up. “You should get an MFA instead of an MBA.”

  It worked. The conversation about Blake ground to a halt as Olivia snorted and tossed a grape back. “Ha! No way. I don’t do lovey-dovey literature. That’s why I read erotica. They gloss over all the bullshit and focus on the good part: the sex.”

  “Hmm.” A teasing smile tugged at Farrah’s lips. “I remember a time when you were very much in love.”

  “You better not be talking about Sammy.” Olivia poured herself another cup of wine and chugged it. “That turned out to be a disaster.”

  Farrah’s smile widened. “I didn’t mention Sammy. You did. You should stop by to see him, you know. His pop-up is crazy popular, but he’ll make time for you.”

  Olivia’s eyes narrowed into slits.

  Luckily, someone interrupted them before she could strangle Farrah.

  “Farrah?”

  The throaty, familiar voice slid through the humid summer air, followed by a cloud of Chanel No. 5.

  Farrah’s eyes grew to the size of saucers when she saw Jane, her old supervisor at KBI, picking her way through the crowd toward her.

  She scrambled to her feet. “Jane! What are you doing here?”

  “Same as you. I can’t resist me some Swayze, though it appears I missed half the movie. I just got here and saw you, figured I’d say hi. It’s been a while.” Jane surveyed Farrah. “How are you doing? Where are you working these days?”

  Jane couldn’t know about Kelly blackballing Farrah. Kelly was subtle about her sabotage. She planted her rumors in a few key ears and let them spread the gossip for her. Plus, Jane viewed Kelly the same way Farrah used to: as a sometimes-ruthless industry icon whose talent outweighed her shortcomings.

  There was also zero chance Jane knew about Kelly and Matt’s relationship, or she wouldn’t be so calm. If there was one thing Jane despised, it was office romances, especially between a higher-up and their subordinate.

  “I’m giving the consultant route a try,” Farrah said. There was no point in spilling Kelly’s dirty secrets. Even if Jane believed her, it wouldn’t do anything except stir up drama.

  “Oh.” Jane’s brow creased. “Any chance you’ll come back to KBI? We miss you and you were—are—an excellent designer.”

  Yeah, if I want Kelly or Matt to poison my coffee on my first day back.

  “I don’t think so. I appreciate the offer though.” Farrah smiled. Jane had been a mentor to her since she was an intern, and she missed the other woman’s advice and humor. “We should get coffee one day. No work talk.”

  Jane beamed. “I’d love to.”

  Farrah introduced her to Olivia, and they chatted for another minute before Jane returned to her friends, and Farrah sank back onto the ground. Good thing she and Olivia were sitting at the back of the crowd, or she would’ve gotten pelted with popcorn for blocking other moviegoers’ view of Johnny and Baby’s final dance.

  “She seems nice,” Olivia said. “Too bad she’s not the top dog at KBI.”

  “Yeah.” Farrah fiddled with her skirt.

  When she first quit KBI, she’d been intent on joining another firm. She liked having a stable paycheck, and she still had so much to learn about the industry. But after Blake’s and Yuliya’s projects, she realized how nice it felt to set her own hours and have full creative control over her vision (except for the client’s input). Sure, the business side of things gave her a major headache—taxes and bookkeeping were the work of the devil—but she was doing pretty well for herself, all things considering. Yuliya had even recommended her to one of her magazine editor friends, and Farrah was in the midst of closing the deal.

  So why didn’t she go all-in on the independent route? What was she afraid of?

  Whatever your fear is, or however far you fall—you’ll survive. And I’ll be there to catch you.

  Here was the crazy part: Farrah believed Blake.

  Even though he hadn’t contacted her in a week. Even if her brain swarmed with conspiracy theories about his absence.

  She didn’t know how or when it happened, but she trusted him. Not only about what she was capable of, but about…everything. Blake was dangerous, as any person who had the power to break you was, but he was also her safety net. The person she turned to when she needed comfort and support.

  Maybe it was the sincerity in his eyes when he promised he’d do anything to help her after they ran into Kelly and Matt. Maybe it was the way he pushed her to be a better, stronger version of herself. Or maybe it was just him—the way he filled her soul and made her believe in love, in fate, and in destiny, not only as abstract concepts but as something real. Tangible.

  Whatever it was, Blake had, once again, breached her defenses. She should’ve known it was only a ma
tter of time—once Blake Ryan set his sights on something, he didn’t stop until he got it.

  And he got her.

  Hook, line, and sinker.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Farrah went to see Blake the next day.

  She was tired of waiting for him to reach out, and she needed clarity before her paranoia drove her crazy. It didn’t help that she was still reeling from her revelation of how easily he’d burrowed himself inside her heart a second time.

  Then again, he’d never left.

  But when Blake swung open his door, Farrah wondered if she’d made the wrong decision.

  Because the man standing in front of her? She didn’t recognize him.

  He had the same golden hair, crystal eyes, and sculpted muscles, but his playful, cocky smile was missing in action, and he surveyed her like she was a stranger.

  Blake, normal Blake, never looked at her like that.

  Don’t jump to conclusions.

  “Hey.” Farrah flashed an easy smile even as her heart thumped in warning. “Haven’t heard from you in a while so thought I’d swing by.”

  “Sorry.” He stepped aside to let her in. “I’ve been busy.”

  “I figured.”

  The smell of booze assaulted her the instant she walked into the apartment. Farrah wrinkled her nose. What the—

  Her eyes widened when she saw the pile of empty beer and whiskey bottles on the kitchen counter. She whipped her head toward Blake, who watched her reaction with curious apathy.

  He didn’t appear drunk. No slurring of the words, no unsteadiness on his feet, no redness in his face. Then again, Blake was the type who could be hammered, and you wouldn’t know it unless he threw up or passed out.

  “What’s going on?” The unease in her stomach spread. “Is everything okay?”

  Blake had been fine when he left for Texas. Something must’ve happened, either with his bar or his family. He didn’t have a great relationship with his father.