Page 59 of Crossed By the Stars
She snorted. “Way to be humble, Armaud.”
I shrugged. “I’m pretty, what can I say. Me denying it would be like denying the sky was blue.”
She took the plastic shovel and hit me on my arm with it. “You’re ridiculous.”
But I loved that her shoulders were relaxing, and the strain around her eyes was softening. The note this morning had been just another reminder of the seriousness of what was happening. I didn’t want to think that Ito-san could be gunning for her, not after the woman had defended Jada multiple times since I’d known her. I’d liked her, trusted her to protect Jada from not only the drunks around her but herself.
I rolled the cuffs of my jeans and dug my toes into the sand. I walked closer to the waves before turning back around and dragging my feet until I found the exact spot I wanted. Then, I sank down and started filling the bucket.
Jada hesitated but eventually joined me.
We spent the next hour in almost silence. A hushed word was uttered here or there about sticks or windows or moats. The castle grew until it was about waist high on me and almost to Jada’s shoulders. I pulled out the smaller tools from the beach bag, concentrating on shaping the castle as if I was carving wood.
Jada stopped working, but I could feel her watching me. When I glanced over, her eyes were relaxed and happy, a simple joy filling her face. I wondered if she’d ever had the chance to build a sandcastle as a child. I wondered who would have taken her to the beach and spent a day lost in the sand, and I couldn’t imagine anyone in her life having done so. It hit me hard in the chest, thinking about all the things she’d been denied.
“What other skills have you been hiding from me, Armaud? Cooking, sandcastle construction, romance reading, and what?” she asked with a sardonic twist of her lips.
I arched an eyebrow. “Some secrets are better learned by experiencing them.”
I meant the innuendo, and I was pleased to see her mouth part slightly as she realized exactly what I suggested. In the sun hat, with her long strands blowing in the breeze and her sweater slipping from a shoulder, Jada looked like a movie star, like she should have been in a noir film from the thirties or forties—black and white and yet full of life. The sun was finally breaking free of the fog, sending rays to the ground like lightning bolts, and they shimmered around her like a halo, as if showing off all the good in her that she normally hid from the world.
I took the burner phone from my back pocket and snapped a photo of her with the sandcastle.
“I really should take one of you with your baby,” she said, all sarcasm, as she waved at the castle we’d built.
I pulled her so that she was tucked up against me. “We’ll do one together.”
I shot a few more pictures, thumbing through them and realizing how, despite our differences, Jada and I seemed to fit. We looked like we belonged together. Or maybe that was just my foolish eyes filled with longing. I wanted to send the picture to my father, to showPapathis side of Jada—the woman who’d never been able to be a girl, happily playing with buckets of sand.
“This one,” I told her, showing her the image of her I’d taken. Her beautifully shaped lips were smiling, and it had reached her eyes so they were sparkling like stars. The side of her face with the majority of the scratches was turned away, and the sun hat was tilted to give her the softest, sexiest look I’d ever seen on Jada. On any woman. “I think I should have it framed.”
And just like that, I’d ruined the moment. Pushed one level too far too fast. The smile was hidden back away, her eyebrows furrowing together, and she stalked off to the blanket.
I swirled a couple more designs on the castle and then joined her. I pulled water and snacks from the basket and offered them to her. She took the water and picked at some grapes. The sun beat down harder, banishing more of the clouds, and I took off my shirt so that I could use it as a pillow.
Jada unbuttoned the cardigan and lay down with it behind her head. She wasn’t next to me, but she was close enough that I could pull her legs over mine. She didn’t object, but she didn’t really acknowledge it either.
I opened upThe Sound of the Wavesand started reading.
I didn’t look up, but she was watching me again, as if she could understand the words better by the way I moved my lips.
After a while, I put the book down and asked, “Do you ever wonder if you were born in the wrong time?”
“What?” she asked with a frown.
“Sometimes, I wonder if I would have fit better into the late nineteenth century.”
She chuckled.
“Why is that funny?” I asked.
“Only a man would say that.”
“Explain,” I said as I dragged my hand along her calf, massaging it, reveling in the joy of touching her without her pulling away.
“Well, if I’d been born in that time, I would have been locked away and forced to do whatever my father said until myomiaiwhen all my rights would have transferred to my husband.”
“To be fair, that almost happened to you over a hundred years later.”
