Crossed by the Stars: A Second-chance, Slow-burn Romance

by LJ Evans

  He tugged me toward the back door.

  “I’m not going with you.” I struggled against his grip again. I’d built up a lot of muscle boxing with Lía, but after being battered from the bombing, my muscles were sore and weak. The harder I fought, the more they ached and groaned.

  Still, I got in a punch to his side that had him gasping, but it only made his hold tighten. He pulled his gun from the back of his jacket and tucked it up against my hip in a way that hid it in the folds of the dress.

  “Always so much drama with you,” he said. “Just come along.”

  I tried to plant my feet, but it was useless. Isamu may have been lean, but he had hidden muscles just like Dax, and he just dragged me along with him. My heel caught in one of the Persian rugs, and I would have fallen if he hadn’t been holding me so firmly.

  He hauled me out the back door and into the garden, leading me down the path toward the pagoda once more. The door slid open as we approached. Akari was there, still in her kimono. The grass mats were gone, and in their place, a raised tatami bed rested with lanterns surrounding it, flickering with candlelight.

  My cousin shoved me toward the mat, and I stumbled, landing on my knees. I flipped around, pushing myself back to my feet and turning in time to see Akari reach Isamu’s side. She raised herself on her bare toes and placed a kiss on his cheek. He pulled her hand to his lips in return. Then, they turned to me.

  Akari’s face was dark with anger.

  “You dishonored me and my family by coming today. You’ve dishonored your own family for too long. You’ve had more lives than you deserved, Mori-san,” she said with more twisted sarcasm on the honorific than ever before. “And now, it is time for you to do your duty.”

  “And what duty is that?” I demanded, chin raised, even though I already knew.

  “To die at your own hand in repentance for your sins.”

  “I’m not a samurai or his wife. I have no intention of committing seppuku or jigai or any other form of killing, ritualized or otherwise,” I told them.

  Akari pulled a knife from her kimono, one so similar to the kaiken in the initial note threatening revenge that it was obvious it had been the model for the drawing. Akari was behind the threats. Akari and Isamu.

  “If you do not do it on your own, we will do it for you,” Akari all but snarled. “It is the only thing that your coming today has been good for. We didn’t have to seek you out.” She turned with a shy smile at Isamu. “Although Yano-san is quite adept at finding you.”

  I ignored her, trying to appeal to my cousin, trying to buy time I desperately needed. “I understand why she feels this way. She loved her brother. But you? Why are you doing this? My father has taken you in and made you a part of his world. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “A world he has no idea how to rule any longer. He refuses to see the new ways, to keep pace with the Russians or the Yakuza. Technology is the future, not guns and drugs that are being legalized right and left.”

  “Oyabun dishonors his people as much as you!” Akari added on fiercely. “His affair with my mother is only one of the many ways.”

  I looked from Isamu to Akari. I was confident that he knew about her father’s illness.

  “You haven’t told her the truth,” I said, eyeing him, hoping that I could keep them talking, that I could cause them to argue long enough for me to escape the pagoda. If the sides of it were the traditional cloth or paper, I’d be able to push through them. My pulse pounded, my muscles tightening as I tried to ready myself to run.

  Isamu’s eyes narrowed at me, and Akari turned to him with concern on her face. “The truth? She cannot mean that nonsense of my father being ill?”

  Isamu raised his gun at me, pulling from his pocket a silencer and screwing it on. I couldn’t even count on the sound of a gunshot drawing anyone from the house.

  “Stop talking, Jada-chan,” Isamu said darkly. “Take the kaiken, or Akari will slit your throat for you.”

  “Will she? So you can keep your hands clean? What will you tell my father? That you stumbled on us and tried to stop her?”

  “No. I love Akari. We will both be distraught at finding you slain by your own hand.”

  “Isamu, my father is ill?” She tugged on the lapels of his jacket. “Tell me!”

  I eased toward them, and Isamu lowered the gun slightly to wrap a hand around her waist as he tugged her toward him. “I didn’t want you to feel the pain of it, to know that your mother was cheating on him as he was dying.”

  She pounded his chest with small fists. “No. No. This cannot be true.”

  I could argue again that our parents weren’t having an affair. I thought maybe Isamu had told her this lie in order to increase her agitation and encourage her down this path. As Isamu struggled with Akari, I leaped toward the side nearest the door. The fabric tore with the pressure of my body, but it was slow going. It allowed Isamu to swing his arm with the gun in my direction. I pushed harder on the cloth, heart pounding, thoughts of Dax and the words I hadn’t told him, of the life we’d never have flashing through my head as his finger pulled the trigger. My body fell through the material as the bullet penetrated the cloth where my head had been.

  I landed on the ground, tangled amongst rose bushes. Pain ricocheted through my already sore body. Thorns stabbed and slashed at me as I struggled to my feet. Isamu’s face appeared in the ripped fabric with the gun pointed in my direction again. I tore the dress, heels tumbling from my feet as I scrambled to right myself. Just as I’d gotten free, another body collided with mine, pushing me away as Isamu pulled the trigger a second time. I watched in horror as the bullet landed in my father’s chest, blood spurting onto the white shirt below the gold bow tie of his tuxedo. A tie that matched my dress.

  He’d saved me… He’d saved me when, all this time, I’d thought he was trying to kill me. Bodies filled the yard, my father’s security as well as the other attendees, but it was Kaida’s pale face that registered, horror and pain crossing it as she watched my father fall to the ground. I reached him before she did, pressing my hands against the wound.

  “Otōsan,” I cried softly.

  His eyes squeezed shut and opened. “Go,” he muttered.

  I shook my head. I would not leave him.

  I turned back to the pagoda and the gash in the side of it. Isamu’s face was no longer there. Ichika hurled herself toward the building, yanked open the door, and began screaming. I had an idea of what she’d found: her daughter with the kaiken at her throat.

  I turned my eyes back to Otōsan, pushing with trembling hands on his wound and hoping I could save him the way Violet had once saved me.

  Kaida was on the phone, whether she was calling 9-1-1 or a Kyōdaina doctor I couldn’t tell because my ears were ringing again, the fall from the pagoda having jarred my body and head.

  “Jada-tan.” My father’s ragged breath and the tender endearment said with love and no scorn drew my gaze to his face as my eyes filled with tears. How long had it been since he’d even said my name, let alone the sweet nickname? “Go, Jada-tan.”

  I shook my head again, the tears trailing down my face and onto my chin.

  “So defiant. So strong. You must not stay. Too…too m-many enemies.”

  Kaida collapsed on the other side of my father, her eyes as full of tears as mine. She loved him. Maybe even more than me.

  “Oyabun, help is coming.”

  He shook his head, eyes glassy. “Take Jada-tan. You m-must both go!”

  Kaida shook her head just like I had, a surprising moment of disobedience from the ever-faithful servant.

  The men around us were suddenly drawing guns, and my heart pounded, making it even more difficult to hear anything but the pulsing in my veins. But the guns were not pointed at us. Instead, they were pointed to a group that had emerged from the side yard and was coming down the path.

  Cillian, Rana, and several others dressed all in black moved for
ward in a circular formation with their guns out. In their midst was Dax with his own gun—a gun I was pretty sure he’d never used before. My stomach turned, and my tears turned into sobs. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t lose Dax at the same time as I lost the father who’d saved me, who’d somehow loved me enough to trade my life for his even when he’d never once said the words to me.

  Dax’s eyes grew grimmer as he saw me covered in blood that wasn’t mine, hands on my father’s chest. Kaida drew her knife as Dax knelt near me. She leaned over my father, protecting him, sharp edge nearing Dax’s chest.

  “Stay back,” she hissed.

  “I’m not here for him,” he told her, trying to reassure her by tugging at my arm.

  I pulled away from him, shaking my head.

  “My father,” I croaked.

  Dax looked from me to the man whose chest I was holding, brows furrowing in confusion. I hated my father, and yet there I was, suddenly desperate to save him. I had so many questions for him. So many things to say that I’d never been able to.

  My father coughed, blood streaming from his mouth, and my heart wrenched with sadness and loss that I’d never expected to feel at his death.

  Otōsan’s eyes landed on Dax. “Take her…m-make her go.”

  “Mon bijou, he’s right. We need to go,” he said, eyeing the men all pointing guns at each other as they surrounded us.

  I shook my head.

  My father grabbed Dax’s arm even though doing so made him gasp with pain. “Tell your father…h-he died. The man who killed Élodie. He died.”

  Dax’s eyes grew wide.

  Otōsan’s hand fell. “I m-mourned her loss… I took his life, his money, his organization and crushed it… H-he paid for what he t-took.”

  My tears wouldn’t stop.

  My father’s eyes closed.

  “Oyabun!” Kaida cried, falling onto his chest, dislodging my hands. Her sobs were as loud as the ones coming from the pagoda where Ichika was still wailing, loud enough that I could hear them clearly through the cotton cloud taking over my head.

  I looked down at my father as the breath seemed to leave his body, the limbs going still. He was gone. The blood pouring from the wound that was dead center in his chest would have been nearly impossible to survive, but I’d suddenly wanted it more than anything I’d wanted from him in a very long time. I’d wanted him to live. To tell me the secrets he’d kept from me. From all of us.

  Dax put his arm around my waist, lifting me as he stood. “We have to go,” he mumbled in my ear. My chest hurt. My body hurt. My lungs were having difficulty breathing.

  Cillian, who’d been standing over us, reached down to tug at Kaida. “You need to come,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I will not leave him.”

  “It’s your funeral,” Cillian said with a shrug.

  “Kaida…Ito-san…you shouldn’t stay,” I said gently, reaching down to touch her shoulder. As Otōsan’s personal guard, she would not be trusted by whoever filled my father’s shoes. She would be a loose end that needed to be tied.

  “I will not leave him,” she sobbed. She dropped the knife and pulled two guns from her jacket. She pointed them in both directions. “I will make sure he is taken by those we trust.”

  My eyes met hers. They were grim and determined, a look I recognized from myself. From my father. She was so much more like me than I’d ever acknowledged…except she’d been loyal to my father. And now, she’d do everything in her power to make sure his memory and his body were honored. She would die in order to make it happen, but I didn’t think she’d have to. The Kyōdaina would do right by him if only to hide the treachery inside the syndicate itself.

  Rana’s voice was grim as she took in the dark suits closing in, guns still on alert. “Dax. We need to leave. Now.”

  Dax grabbed my hand, regardless of the blood that was sticking to it. My father’s blood. The blood that also flowed through me. Death and destruction following us.

  He pulled me into the circle of people who’d brought him into the Matsudas’ garden, and we backed away, going down the path slowly. My bare feet scraped the stones and gravel. Dax seemed to register it more than I did, and he swung me into his arms with ease even though he was still favoring his hurt knee. I wrapped my arms around his neck and leaned my head against his chest. It was padded and thick, and I suddenly realized he was wearing a bulletproof vest underneath his suit. It was a small relief, the knowledge that he’d worn some protection, but I still didn’t know if I should yell at him for rescuing me or thank him. I would never be worthy of his sacrifice.

  We exited by the garden gate where the bulky guard who’d stood there earlier was on the ground with a dart to his neck, similar to the one that had taken down Mike at the cottage. An eye for an eye. It was so something my father would have done that it brought tears again. They flowed quietly. Silently. Not the loud sobs of Ichika or Kaida.

  We were hustled into a set of SUVs that were parked askew in the middle of the quiet street. Cillian hit the gas, and we sped away from the darkness toward a sunset that was turning the sky purple and orange.

  I was still in Dax’s arms, sitting on his lap rather than in a seat, the heat of him seeping into me, bringing me comfort by just being there.

  I looked to the front seat where my old bodyguard sat, and my chest squeezed once more. “What are you doing here?” I demanded, voice cracking in a way that I hated.

  Rana grimaced. “Protecting you.”

  “It isn’t your job anymore. You left.”

  She didn’t disagree.

  “She’s the reason we knew what we were facing,” Cillian said. “We were lucky she found us.”

  It wasn’t an answer. There was more that I needed to know, but I couldn’t seem to focus on it. My eyes kept filling with a white shirt covered in blood and my father’s last words.

  Dax’s arms tightened around me.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked, voice tender with worry laced through it.

  I shook my head, the ringing reminding me that I was still hurt. My wounds that had not had a chance to heal had been broken back open. But worse than the physical marks to my body were the emotional ones that had scarred me today. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever recover from those.

  Dax

  WHAT IF THIS IS ALL THE LOVE YOU EVER GET

  “I'm in the ruins too

  I know the wreckage so well.”

  Performed by Snow Patrol

  Written by Lee / Lightbody / McDaid / Quinn / Connolly / Wilson

  She had blood all over her hands and new scratches that were marring her arms and legs. She’d barely started to heal and was now covered in new cuts. My heart twisted and fell in my chest.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  She shook her head, and more tears sprang from her eyes.

  “He saved my life,” she whispered, and the shock of her words spread through me. The father who’d abandoned her, threatened her, and kidnapped her…had saved her? It made no sense.

  “It was Akari Matsuda and my cousin, Isamu. She wanted revenge for her brother, and he wanted to take over from my father. Killing me, or having me kill myself, would have just been the start.”

  The realization of how close Jada had come to dying sent chills up my arms.

  “Mon Dieu, we shouldn’t have left Ito-san there…” I said, trailing off.

  A small sob escaped her. “I think she’ll be okay for today. They need her to take the body. But after… I don’t know what will happen to her then.”

  I wasn’t sure if Jada was right. If Ito-san knew what had really gone down, they wouldn’t want that to come out. If Rana was right about all the different factions, Ito-san would be just an unnecessary piece of the puzzle. One that no longer fit. Her allegiance had been to the man and not the organization.

  After Cillian parked us in the underground garage of my building, I carried Jada to the elevator even thou
gh it caused daggers to shoot through my knee. I wasn’t prepared to let her go, and she didn’t struggle against me at all. There was no determined voice telling me to put her down, and it caused more fear and sorrow to flow through me. I may have rescued her body, but I was pretty sure her soul was still kneeling next to her father.

  In the apartment, I took her through the bedroom and into the bathroom. I turned on the shower with one hand and then gently put her down. I unzipped the dress, and she continued to let me with no complaints, no snark, no fight. My fear continued to grow. She was in shock. Or maybe I’d lost her completely in a new way. Lost her to the emotions and the images in her head.

  I shed my clothes, and I finally got a reaction. Her hands settled on the bulletproof vest, and a sob escaped her. “You shouldn’t ever risk yourself for me. Never. Do you understand?”

  I threw the vest off and tugged her into my arms. Her face was pressed against my chest, and mine landed in her dark hair. “You are the only thing on Earth worth risking my life for. I would have no life without you.”

  She hadn’t stopped crying. The tears had been a roller coaster of slow to heavy, and now they continued to trail down her face and onto my chest. I held her tightly for several long minutes until they seemed to recede. Then, I reached in and lowered the showerhead so the stream of water would cover our bodies instead of our heads. I proceeded to wash the blood from her arms and hands. As she watched the trail of red go down the drain, it increased her silent cries all over again, her entire body shaking with them.

  Stepping out, I wrapped her in a towel and headed for the closet. We’d brought all of her new things to Vanya’s. There was nothing left here, so I pulled out two pairs of my sweats and two T-shirts and returned to her. She was standing exactly where I’d left her, eyes trained on her body in the mirror, looking at something I couldn’t see. The wounds on the inside.

  I dressed us both and then picked her up and took her back into the bedroom, sitting her on the edge of the bed.