Ao3 if We Ever Meet Again

  If We Ever Encounter Over again

If Honey Duet Volume #one

Ana Huang

Ana Huang

Copyright © 2022 by Ana Huang

All rights reserved. No office of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including data storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of cursory quotations in a volume review.

Resemblance to actual persons, things, living or dead, locales or events is entirely coincidental.

IF WE EVER MEET Once more

Comprehend designer: Vanessa Mendozzi

Editor: Apr Jones, Salt & Sage

Proofreader: Krista Burdine

Contents

Synopsis

Playlist

Author's notation

Prologue

Chapter ane

Chapter ii

Affiliate 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Affiliate 7

Chapter eight

Affiliate 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Affiliate 12

Chapter xiii

Chapter xiv

Affiliate 15

Affiliate 16

Chapter 17

Affiliate 18

Affiliate 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Spring SEMESTER

Affiliate 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Affiliate 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Affiliate 33

Affiliate 34

Affiliate 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Pre-gild volume 2

Excerpt: If the Sun Never Sets

Continue in touch with Ana Huang

Acknowledgments

About the Writer

IF We EVER Encounter AGAIN

One year, two hearts, and a love that will blindside and, ultimately, shatter them.

She's an aspiring interior designer who dreams of falling in honey.

He'southward an ex-football star who thinks love is a con.

She's a virgin, and he doesn't do virgins.

He'due south cocky, infuriating, and not her type.

She wants the fairytale.

He wants freedom.

Blake and Farrah shouldn't have fallen for each other the way they did: totally, completely, and irrevocably.

Because they're studying abroad in Shanghai, and they only have one yr.

Considering forces at abode threaten to rip them autonomously, even if they don't know it nevertheless.

And because, eventually, they must face the virtually heartbreaking lesson they'll e'er learn: sometimes, fifty-fifty the greatest love can't conquer all.

"The Hardest Thing"—98 Degrees

"Chances"—Backstreet Boys

"Free"—Brood

"Skyfall"—Adele

"Vanquish"—3G'south

"Sea Eyes"—Billie Eilish

"Like Yous'll Never Encounter Me Again"—Alicia Keys

"Impossible"—Shontelle

"Moral of the Story"—Ashe

"I Never Told You"—Colbie Caillat

"Here's to the Night"—Eve half-dozen

"Glad You lot Came"—The Wanted

"The Time (Muddied Bit)"—Blackness Eyed Peas

"See Yous Again"—Charlie Puth & Wiz Khalifa

"Don't Forget About United states"—Mariah Carey

"If We Ever Meet Once more"—Katy Perry & Timbaland

Author's notation: This is book one in a duet. It'southward a full-length novel with no sudden cliffhangers, simply Blake and Farrah'south story continues in book 2, If the Sun Never Sets (coming July 2020). HEA guaranteed in volume two.

Prologue

This would kill him.

It didn't matter how much he prepared; these next thirty minutes were going to rip his eye out and pulverize it.

It was inevitable.

"We haven't talked in a while." She sounded equal parts accusing and uncertain.

He didn't blame her. If he were in her shoes, he would've given up on himself a long fourth dimension ago. She hadn't, which made him love her fifty-fifty more, but her loyalty made this chat all the harder.

He rested his forearms on his knees and clasped his easily together. He focused on the grain of the wood floors beneath his feet until it swirled in front of his eyes.

"I've been decorated."

"With?"

"Classes. Bar plans. That sort of thing."

"You'll have to practice amend than that."

His head snapped up at the sharpness in her voice. Looking at her turned out to be a fault.

His chest squeezed at the sight of her face up and the hurt swimming in those beautiful brown eyes. It'd been two weeks since they were concluding alone together, but it may as well have been two lifetimes.

His dread mixed with a strange exhilaration at being alone with her again, and it took all of his willpower non to sweep her up in his arms and never let go.

"Tell me the truth." Her voice softened. "You tin can trust me."

It would exist so like shooting fish in a barrel to pretend everything was fine. To give her the reassurances she wanted to hear and go back to the way things were.

He did trust her—but the truth would shatter her.

So he did the only thing he could do: he lied.

"I'thou sad." He wiped the emotion from his voice and funneled information technology into the pit of despair swirling in his tummy. Could she hear it? The panicked thump-thump-thump of his heart chirapsia against his ribcage, screaming at him to cease? "I didn't want to do it like this, but I don't think we should see each other anymore."

Farrah'due south face paled. His centre beat louder.

"What?"

He swallowed difficult. "It was fun while information technology lasted, but the year is near over and I—I'm not interested anymore. I'm sorry."

Liar.

"Yous're lying."

He flinched. She knew him well. Too well.

"I'm non." He tried to audio nonchalant when all he wanted to practise was fall to his knees and beg her not to go out him.

"You are. Y'all said you loved me."

"I lied."

He couldn't look her in the eyes.

Her sharp inhale twisted his heart into a painful knot.

"You're full of shit." Her voice quavered. "Await at you, you're shaking."

He clenched his hands into fists and forced his body to still. "Farrah." This was it. His jiff came out in short, shallow bursts. "I got back with my ex-girlfriend over the holidays. I didn't know how to tell yous. I love her, and I fabricated a fault hither, with us. But I'm trying to fix information technology."

Her sob ripped through the air. Tears stung his eyes, but he blinked them back.

"I'thousand lamentable." Such a stupid, inadequate thing to say. He didn't know why he said it.

"Stop saying that!"

He flinched at the venom in her vocalisation. She clutched her necklace with ane manus, betrayal swirling in her eyes.

"Information technology was all a lie then, this past twelvemonth."

He dropped his gaze once again.

"Why? Why did you pretend you lot cared? Was it some sick joke? You wanted to see whether I'd be gullible enough to fall for yous? Well, congratu-fucking-lations. You won. Blake Ryan, the champion. Your father was right. You shouldn't have quit. No 1 plays the game amend than you."

So this was what dying felt similar. The pain, frozen inside like a lump of jagged black ice. Th

e regret over words he couldn't say and promises he couldn't keep. The loneliness as he slid into dark, starless oblivion with no 1 left to save him.

"I'm sor—"

"If you say 'I'one thousand sorry' ane more than time, I'll go to the kitchen, come back, and cut your balls off with a rusty pocketknife. In fact, I may do that anyway. Y'all're a fucking asshole. I'yard deplorable I wasted all this time on y'all, and I'g 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 odor that drove him crazy, to confess how caput over heels he was for her and to buss her until they ran out of breath.

But he couldn't. The first role would exist a lie and the 2nd…well, that was something he could never do once more.

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 information technology. But she didn't. Instead, she turned away and airtight the door behind her with a soft "click" that echoed in the silence similar a gunshot.

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

It was over. In that location was no going back.

Information technology was the right thing to do, and yet…

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to cake out the hurting. He couldn't get the prototype of her face out of his heed, the one that said she thought so petty of him she didn't desire to waste matter whatsoever 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 every bit a fantasy concocted by Hollywood to sell movies. It wasn't a fantasy. Information technology 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 in that location was no employ abode on what-ifs. Duty leap him to someone else, and sooner or afterwards, Farrah would move on and run into a guy who could give her everything she deserved. Someone she would love, ally, and have kids with…

The last intact piece of his centre shattered at the idea. The shards pricked at his self-control until he could no longer hold dorsum the tears. Huge, silent sobs wracked his trunk for the beginning time since he was seven, when he'd fallen out of a tree and broken his leg. Only this time, the pain was a one thousand thousand times worse.

All their moments together flashed through his mind, and the boy who'd in one case sworn he would never cry over a girl… cried.

He cried considering he'd hurt her.

He cried considering 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.

Affiliate One

8 months ago

"Ane classic milk tea and one dearest oolong milk tea with tapioca. Regular sugar, regular ice."

Farrah Lin slid a twenty yuan notation across the counter toward the cashier, who smiled in recognition. Four days in Shanghai and Farrah was already a regular at the bubble tea joint by campus. She chose non to dwell on what that meant for her wallet and her waistline.

While the staff prepared her social club, Farrah examined the card. She knew nai cha (milk tea) and xi gua (watermelon). She recognized a few other Chinese characters, but not enough to course a coherent phrase.

"Here you go." The cashier handed Farrah her drinks. "Meet y'all tomorrow!"

Farrah blushed. "Thank you."

Note to self: ask Olivia to make tomorrow's run.

Farrah stepped out of the tiny shop and walked back to campus. The dominicus began its descent and bathed the city in a warm golden glow. Bicyclists and motorcyclists zipped by, battling with cars for space on the narrow side street. The delicious smells wafting from the restaurants Farrah passed mixed with the far-less-pleasant scents of garbage and construction grit. Street vendors called out to passersby, hawking everything from hats and scarves to books and DVDs.

Farrah made the mistake of making eye contact with 1 such vendor.

"Mei nu!" Cute girl. It'd exist flattering if Farrah didn't know the hard sell that accompanied such a greeting. "Come, come." The elderly vendor beckoned her over. "Where are you from?" she asked in Mandarin.

Farrah hesitated before answering. "America." Mei guo. She dragged out the last syllable, unsure whether the access would hurt or help.

"Ah, America. ABC," the vendor said knowingly. ABC: American-Born Chinese. Farrah had heard that a lot lately. "I have some great books in English." The vendor brandished a re-create of Swallow, Pray, Love. "Just twenty kuai!"

"Thanks, just I'k not interested."

"How most this 1?" The woman picked out a Dan Brown novel. "I'll give y'all a deal. Three books for fifty kuai!"

Farrah didn't need new books, and 50 kuai (around $seven USD) seemed pricey for cheap reprints of onetime novels. But the vendor seemed like a prissy old lady, and Farrah didn't accept the energy to bargain with her.

She skimmed the English options and went straight for the romance: Jane Austen, Nicholas Sparks, JoJo Moyes.

Ok, Sparks and Moyes write love stories, not romance, merely still.

Given the drought in Farrah's dating life, she'd settle for any kind of romantic relationship, fifty-fifty one that ended tragically. Well, maybe not with death, merely with a breakdown or something. Anything that proved the crazy head-over-heels love you found in books and movies existed in real life.

After a disappointing freshman year filled with mediocre dates and fumbling stops at tertiary base, Farrah was fix to surrender on reality and live in fantasyland full fourth dimension.

"I'll have these." She prepare her drinks on the ground so she could option up Pride & Prejudice (her personal favorite), The Notebook, and Me Before Y'all. She'd read all of them already, but what the heck, a reread never injure everyone.

Farrah paid the vendor, who beamed and gushed her thanks earlier turning her attending to the next passerby.

"Mei nu!" The vendor flagged downwardly a young adult female in a cobalt dress. "Come, come."

Farrah looped her shopping handbag effectually her wrist and picked up her drinks while the young adult female fended off the vendor's aggressive sales pitch. She speed-walked back to campus, taking care non to make middle contact with whatever more vendors lest she got suckered into buying something else she didn't need.

Farrah stopped at the crosswalk. Instead of crossing when the pedestrian light flashed greenish, she waited until a grouping of teenagers stepped off the curb earlier post-obit them into the jungle that was Shanghai traffic.

Rule #ane of surviving in Mainland china: cantankerous when locals cantankerous. There'due south safe in numbers.

By the fourth dimension Farrah arrived at Shanghai Strange Studies University, her study abroad program'south host campus, she'd already finished her drink. She tossed the empty container into a nearby trash can and pushed open up the door to FEA's lobby.

FEA, aka Foreign Pedagogy Academy, occupied ane of the oldest buildings at SFSU. Not only did the four-story building lack an elevator, but the interior pattern left much to be desired. The lobby had potential—marble floors, tons of natural light streaming in through big windows facing the courtyard—but the furniture was straight out of the 80s (and non in the cool retro kind of way).

A cracked brown leather couch lined the wall beneath the windows alongside mismatched chairs and tables. A spindly magazine stand up sagged beneath the weight of dozens of back issues of Time Out Shanghai. Faded Chinese landscape paintings hung on the wall, adding to the musty feel.

Every bit usual, Farrah couldn't help mentally redecorating the space. Every bit she took the stairs to the third floor, she swapped out the electric current furniture for a cushioned wicker set with glass-topped tables, which would visually expand the lobby. Out went the old watercolors and in came the panels of Asian-inspired art—perchance some upward-close representations of the lotus flower or plum blossoms with mod Chinese calligraphy. There could be a wall of bookshelv

es for—

"Ow!" Farrah had been so absorbed in her design daydream she slammed into the wall. Her hand shot to her forehead as pain ricocheted through her encephalon. Fortunately, she couldn't experience a bump.

Olivia's bubble tea also remained intact, thank god. She was scary when she didn't get her sugar fix.

The wall moved. "Are you ok?" it asked.

A walking, talking wall. She must've hit her head harder than she thought.

Farrah peeked out from below her hand and found herself staring into a pair of crystal blue eyes. She recognized those eyes. They'd stared back at her from the cover of Sports Illustrated last yr, forth with the accompanying high cheekbones and self grin.

Now, they examined her with a mix of amusement and business organization.

"You're not a wall," she blurted.

"No, I'chiliad not." The not-a-wall artsy an eyebrow. A hint of a smiling played over his lips. "I've been called a lot of things in my life, merely that'southward a new one."

Farrah fought the flush of embarrassment spreading beyond her face. Of all the people she could've run into, she had to see Blake Ryan.

Even though she wasn't a sports fan, she knew who he was. Everyone did. A hotshot football role player from Texas who caused a national uproar when he quit the squad at the beginning of the year. Also the Sports Illustrated embrace, Farrah remembered Blake from an ESPN documentary almost the most talented college athletes in the country. Farrah'due south roommate concluding year forced her to watch it because she was obsessed with the point guard on CCU's basketball team, and she needed someone she could gush to.

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