Page 85 of Crossed By the Stars
“I can’t go with you,” I said, and my heart tore as his eyes flickered with hurt and fear.
“Unless they plan on shooting you, they can’t stop you,” he said, stepping closer with an unconscious limp in the knee that Kaida had kicked. It twisted at me. He was already hurt.
Isamu drew nearer with a hand going to his back where I was sure he kept a gun.
“If I wanted my daughter dead, Armaud, it would have been done a long time ago.Musumehas some work to do today. It doesn’t concern you.” My father’s voice was sure. Smooth and unruffled.
“Fuck you and your job. She’s made it clear she wants nothing to do with you. Why can’t you leave her alone?” Dax said, closing the distance between us, causing Isamu to put a hand out to stop him. Dax shoved it aside, and he and Isamu were soon in a shoving match.
“Stop!” I cried, moving around Isamu to pull at Dax’s arm.
Dax stared at Isamu for a long time before finally looking down into my face. His eyes were full of confusion, worry, and love. I reached up and touched his face.
“I need to do this,” I told him.
“Where you go, I go,” he said gruffly.
Tears filled my eyes, and I closed my lids to push them back. When I opened them again, he was still staring at me as if he could read my mind, as if he could will me to acquiesce and go with him. In my father, it had angered me. In Dax, it made me ache to give in.
“I can’t go. And you can’t stay,” I told him, and then, ever so slowly, I put my finger at the corner of my left eye. To anyone in the room, it might look like I was wiping at a tear. From there, I moved to tuck a loose strand behind my ear that had escaped the low, neat chignon I’d pulled my hair into.
Dax’s eyes widened slightly.
“I won’t leave you,” he said, but he acknowledged my sign by tugging at the cuff of his right sleeve.
“I’ll be okay,” I promised him. “You’ll see me in a few hours.”
I wanted to believe it was true. I wanted to believe that, by the end of the day, I’d be back in his arms, making plans for our future and telling him the thing I hadn’t been able to say before. That I loved him. That I loved him so much it tore at my insides and crawled at my skin to get out. I didn’t just love him…I needed him. Needed him more than water or air.
Kaida stepped forward to join Isamu. “It’s time to go, Armaud,” she said, flashing her knife. She was a magician with the weapon. They’d come in handy in the past when I’d needed her to get rid of unwanted attention, but it had been over two years since she’d used it to try and defend me. This wasn’t defense. This was offense. Offense for my father.
Dax stared into my eyes, emotions warring within him.
I wanted nothing more than to tuck my arm in his and go, to leave my father, the battle for theKyodaina, and his world behind. But I also knew the truth. Whoever this was wouldn’t stop coming after me now that they had started. If it was tied with my father’s battle, then it had to become mine. I had to finish this.
I grabbed Dax’s hand, turning it so that I kissed the palm of it in the way he had mine before he’d said he loved me. I hoped he understood. I hoped he understood that the motion was opposite of the words I was going to say, “It’s been fun, Armaud. But this is where the story ends. Go back to France and your boats.”
He brought our joined hands up to his lips, turning them to kiss the back of mine.
“This isn’t where the story ends. It may be the chapter close, but our story is infinite. We’re not Romeo and Juliet. We’re Shinji and Hatsue at the Yashiro Shrine with the gods watching over our fate.”
Isamu cleared his throat as if the emotion was too much for him.
“Sometimes, even the gods cannot prevent destiny,” I told him, but I followed it with another sign. I lay his hand flat on my chest, spreading it while I did the same on his chest. The beating of our hearts was another shared moment.
We stood that way, letting everything around us disappear, until there was only Dax and Jada and promises we were making.
After what felt like an entire lifetime, he let go of me with reluctance, stepping away slowly as if he was being dragged by an unseen hand. I moved so that my fingers were playing with the long sleeves of the kimono, drawing his eyes to the fact that I was no longer wearing the bracelet with the tracker.
His face grew grim before he turned on his heel and walked out.
The teenager in me screamed in pain because it felt like he was leaving me in the same way he had over and over in our lives. As if my world had grown to be too much. But the woman in me knew the truth. He’d returned my signals with his own. He wasn’t disappearing on me again. Suddenly, I felt very much like Shinji, praying to a god he’d believed in but that I never had. Praying that my selfishness wouldn’t cost Dax everything. Praying that he would make it through this day with nothing worse than his injured knee, regardless of what happened to me.
Dax
FINAL SONG
“But when you're gone the music goes
