Page 40 of Crossed By the Stars
Silence surrounded us. I knew the guilt would eat at him. Just like it ate at me for leaving the house in New London two years ago in a tantrum. Just as it ate at me for not forcing her to come to my apartment the other night.
“Call or text when we can talk to her,” Dawson said.
I agreed, and we hung up, remorse weighing on both of us.
I sent a text to Cillian and Reinard about theForce de la Violetteoffices, and they both came back with plans they’d already had in play. Yet another reason I trusted them with my life. They were usually five steps ahead of me.
I’d just finished my whiskey when my phone rang. I was only half-surprised to see it was my father. He knew I was in San Francisco for the boat show, and I was sure the news of the bombing in Jada Mori’s San Francisco apartment had made it to France by now. It had been all over the local stations earlier.
Even though I’d held Jada at a distance ever sincePapahad told me the truth, he still knew how I felt. He also knew I was bound to her through my relationship with Dawson, through their friendship and the business they owned with Violet. The degrees of separation between us were much, much smaller than my father preferred.
“Papa,” I greeted.
“What the hell is going on?” he demanded in French. It took me by surprise. I’d expected worry or maybe some quiet probing, but not fury. My father had rarely lost his temper with me. He’d always used reason and explanations more than scolds.
“You’ve seen the news?” I asked.
“Yes. All of it. The explosion and the engagement.”
I stilled. Engagement.Putain…the words I’d used to get inside her hospital room. The smiling nurse who’d thought we were a couple.
“It’s not what you think,” I said, more out of habit than truth. I wasn’t her fiancé. But I’d also realized I couldn’t just walk away from her again, from the feelings that had chased me for more than a decade, or the emotions I’d had since first seeing her in a red tulle dress with heels too high for a thirteen-year-old and a look of pure defiance on her face. She’d sat alone at the table her father had bought for the charity event. Her parents were in Japan, her grandmother in Singapore, and she’d been sent to represent the family. She’d handed out the Good Samaritan awards with the poise and grace of someone three times her age.
“Tell me which part was wrong,” he growled, shuffling a paper that I could hear over the phone. “Dax Armaud, son of Étienne Armaud ofÉclair S.A., was overheard telling the hospital staff that he was engaged to Jada Mori, daughter of Tsuyoshi Mori of Mori Enterprises, as he stumbled, distraught, into her hospital room after a bomb went off in her San Francisco apartment. The bomb left one dead and Miss Mori critically injured.”
My heart twisted because I knew it hurt him to see our names tangled together that way. Armaud and Mori. I also knew I couldn’t take it back. I couldn’t undo it.Even worse, I knew that, if given the choice, I would make the words a reality. I would twine Jada’s and my lives and bodies together until there was no visible space between us.
When I didn’t respond, he filled the silence with a question. “Is she? Critically injured?”
Anger swelled through my chest because I could have sworn there was hope behind his words. Hope that she would disappear from our lives. “No,” I growled. “She’ll recover just fine.”
It was his turn to be silent.
“Dax, you know this is impossible.”
“We can’t choose who we love,Papa. Wasn’t it you who told me that?”
More silence greeted me before he grunted out, “There are other women.” But I could hear how little he believed it himself.
“There is only one soul designed by the gods just for us. If I walk away now, there’ll be nothing left of me but a shell that was once your son. IfMamanhad been denied to you, would you have been able to leave her?” I demanded.
“Mon Dieu, this is totally different,” he stormed. “What he did... What he took from us?”
“It isn’t Jada’s fault Aunt Élodie died,Papa. She wasn’t even born. Neither was I. We cannot be expected to bear the sins of our fathers.”
He inhaled sharply. “We did not sin. There was no sin on our part!” he stormed.
I sighed. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“The only sin was his,” Papa said as if he was suddenly tired. I felt the same way. Exhausted. Drained. And hating the rift this was causing between me and the man I admired most in the world. My father was a good man. Brilliant. Talented. Caring.
A noise drew my eyes to the hallway. Jada stood there, holding onto the archway, looking pale and wobbly as if she was going to hit the floor at any second, and my pulse raced. How much had she heard?
“I have to go. Jada is awake and needs help.”
“What a fucking mess,” he said, and I could only agree. But one look at Jada and I knew I was making the right decision. She needed someone to go to battle for her. She had Dawson and Violet, but it wasn’t the same. She needed someone who loved her so much they were willing to be a shield keeping her from the world. From her father. From the wrath that was heading toward her.
“I love you,Papa. Please do not force me to choose.” I stood up, taking the five steps needed to reach Jada. I wanted to wrap her in my arms but settled for placing a hand on her waist to steady her.
