ity.
They weren’t fears; they were inevitabilities.
And Farrah knew if she wasn’t careful, they could break her heart.
Chapter Twenty
You can do this. You’re Blake Ryan. Girls do not scare you.
Blake paced his room, his pulse thrumming with anticipation. His stomach churned, and he couldn’t tell whether he was excited or about to be sick.
Probably a bit of both.
Blake had done a lot of scary shit in his life. He’d gotten up in front of a hundred cameras and told the world he was quitting football. He’d flown halfway across the world to spend a year in a country where he didn’t know the language or the culture. He was preparing to open his own sports bar even though he had zero experience running anything resembling a business (thank god for Google). In fact, he finished his first real-life business plan the other day. Market analysis, marketing plan, operating plan, financial plan, management plan…all done.
But he’d never once told a girl he loved her—and meant it. He said it to Cleo, more out of obligation than anything else, and the words tasted like cardboard. Empty and meaningless. Now, those same words burned inside him, screaming to get out.
Blake almost said it to Farrah the night she told him she was ready to lose her virginity. But then, well, that happened. Blake wasn’t upset—though he’d be lying if he said his ego didn’t take a hit—but the timing was off. He hadn’t worked up the courage to tell her to her face again.
In his mind? Yes, a million times. Every time he looked at her, saw her smile, heard her voice, felt the heat of her skin against his, he wondered how he’d survived without her. Twenty-one years of not knowing she existed only to have her turn his world upside down in three months. Yet in those three months, he’d lived more and loved harder than he had in the years preceding them.
There was an entire world outside Texas, and Blake was only now getting a taste of it.
“Don’t be a pussy.” Blake continued to pace, giving himself a pep talk like a crazy person. Thank god he didn’t have a roommate. If someone walked in on him like this, they’d have him committed. “There’s only three weeks left in the semester. After that, you won’t see Farrah again until late next January.”
He stared at the elephant figurine Farrah gifted him after she returned from Thailand. Blake Jr. stared back, positively dripping judgment. Tell her already, you idiot, it screamed.
Great. Now Blake was hearing voices from inanimate objects. He needed to get out of here before he really did go crazy.
“You got this,” he muttered under his breath as he barreled down the hall, nearly bowling Nardo over in the process.
“Where’s the fire?” Nardo yelled.
Blake ignored him. He stopped in front of Farrah’s room. He couldn’t breathe.
Was this a good idea? Probably not. But what the hell. As Drake said, YO fucking LO.
After a final moment of hesitation, Blake rapped his knuckles on the door.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Farrah opened the door. She was wearing her adorable sheep pajamas and one of those goopy white masks that made girls look like horror movie extras.
“Hey.” Surprise flared in her eyes. “Is everything all right?”
Blake’s mind blanked. The speech he’d rehearsed, gone. His ability to speak, gone.
All he could do was stare at Farrah, wishing the floor would swallow him whole.
Concern replaced surprise. “Do you need to—”
“I love you.” The words rolled off his tongue, sweet and rich like honey. It wasn’t how he pictured this going. He had a whole flowery speech lined up (thanks to those rom coms Farrah forced him to watch) before he dropped the L bomb. But heck, it was already out there. There was no going back now.
The rest of Blake’s confession tumbled off his lips, like they were scared they wouldn’t get the chance to see the light of day if they waited too long. “I didn’t expect it or even want it, but it happened. If I’m being honest, it happened a while ago, and I’m only now getting the courage to tell you. You said once every second counts, and I don’t want another second to go by without you knowing that I am totally, completely, one hundred percent in love with you.”
Farrah stilled.
The next minute stretched on for eternity.