Page 65 of Crossed By the Stars
“Stop thinking,chérie,” I said, hoping to prevent her walls from rising up between us.
“We don’t want the same things, Dax,” she said quietly. Our conversation on the beach about marriage and children was already coming back to haunt me.
“I’d give up anything and everything if it meant a life at your side,” I said softly.
“Your family?”
It hurt—a knife to my heart at the thought of losingPapaandMaman, at the disappointment my father would feel in me choosing a Mori over them.
“Yes,” I told her. What I had to make all of them see, including Jada herself, was that she wasn’t a Mori. She wasn’t her father. She was loyal to those who’d earned it. She was completely dedicated to the people she loved.
Surprise and another emotion crossed her face. It was regret. I didn’t want that tied to what we’d done today.
“I don’t want you to give them up,” she said.
I nodded. “I know. It’s just another reason why I love you.”
She rested her chin on my chest, watching my face, but I wouldn’t look away. I wouldn’t back down.
“If there was no Mori behind your name and no Armaud behind mine, what do we look like to you?” I asked.
“We can’t play that game. It isn’t a possibility,” she said, frustration leaking in. She laid her head back down on my chest so I couldn’t see her eyes. I had a few more minutes before I pushed her too far and she disappeared. I straddled a line I knew I had to in order to keep her.
“I see two people living life with joined hands, walking on the beach, picking up seashells and bringing them back to a house that is already full of them. I see them kissing under a Caribbean night sky where the moon looks so large that it feels like it could swallow the Earth. I see them making love while the sea breeze moves the sheers about them, making it a dream. I see every day a repeat of the last.”
“If there was no Armaud or Mori tied to their name, they wouldn’t be able to afford to live that way,” she said sarcastically.
I smiled. “Fine. If they must, they’d leave their little cocoon during the day for him to work on a sailboat, taking tourists out to snorkel, and her at the duty-free perfume shop at the seaside. When they came back home, they’d lose their clothes as they walked through the door because they’d been apart for too many hours.”
I felt a dampness on my chest and realized I’d made her cry. My arms tightened around her. “Mon bijou,” I groaned out.
She shook her head. “It’s just…beautiful. I wish I could have that.”
I ran a hand through her hair. “You can. We can. I’ve always loved my father’s villa on St. Micah. Let’s go. We’ll make it our home. No one will bother us there. No one will care about two billionaire’s kids who got lost somewhere in the islands.”
The tears were falling faster, and I didn’t know how to help her. I moved so that I was sitting, pulling her up with me, looking into her face and the dark eyes that were filled with longing and sadness but also the love she hadn’t been able to say yet.
“I’m serious,” I told her. “What’s keeping you here? Dawson and Violet?Force delaViolette? You can manage your business from anywhere, traveling back to the city if and when you really need to.”
“What aboutÉclairand your father?”
I shook my head. “I think he always knew I wouldn’t want it—not in the way he hoped I would.”
“It’s a beautiful dream, Dax. But that’s all it can be. Just like this moment. It can’t stay once we return to the real world. None of it.” She was disappointed, and I was suddenly angry—at myself and her.
“So, this time, you’ll be the one to run? I didn’t think I’d ever see you walk away from a fight.”
She bristled, and it was better than her just giving up.
“I know the difference between a battle I can win and a massacre.”
I laughed. “No one is going to be massacred.”
“I won’t be the reason your family unravels. I won’t have another Mori destroying the Armauds. We have this. Right now. These days hidden away here at Vanya’s, but when we open the doors and drive back to the city, it’s going to have to be the end of it.”
She was trying to protect me and my family, but it still angered me. I deserved it after all the times I’d walked away from her, left her behind without even a word, but I didn’t want that anymore. I was a selfish bastard who wanted it all.
The thing was, I knew, deep in my heart, that she wanted it, too.
