Page 67 of Crossed By the Stars

I did love Dax. I had maybe from the moment he’d asked me to dance at thirteen. But if I let those words out to him, if I let them become real by saying them aloud, it would be much harder to take them back and walk away.

I took the pill, swallowing some water, and then he brought the tray over.

I laughed when I saw it. Fast food burgers and fries on china.

His smile grew. “I was a little too preoccupied to cook, so I sent Terrence out for food.”

The Sound of the Waveswas back on the tray. I picked it up. “Did you go back to the beach while I was asleep?”

He shook his head, bashful Dax on display once again. “No. Mike and Armando brought everything up with them.”

I laughed softly. “So, pretty much everyone knew we were in here having sex, right?”

He lifted one of his perfectly formed eyebrows. “Does that bother you?”

I shook my head. “You know better than that. Having employees and security around us twenty-four seven means having to give up most of our privacy.”

He didn’t respond. He didn’t have to. We ate in silence.

My eyes landed on a shiny object on the tray that didn’t belong—a chain of platinum with a simple charm that readhope.

“What’s this?” I asked. It seemed almost…childish. Like something teenage Dax might have given to teenage me when he was still sending me stargazer lilies as secret messages.

“It’s a GPS tracker that Cillian got for you.”

I picked it up, trying to decipher how the charm was big enough for a tracker. I knew for a fact that most devices were big and clunky. Large. The size of a couple of double-A batteries.

“This? It’s really a tracker?” I asked, surprised.

Dax nodded. “Reinard’s team has access to some cutting-edge technology. They actually test items for some of the developers. This is one of them.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about wearing it. It tossed me back to my childhood and memories I didn’t want.

Reading the things I couldn’t say aloud, he said, “I know it’ll make you feel…trapped, but I’m hoping that you’ll agree to wear it for me.”

For him. God. At one point in my life, I would have done anything for him.

“When I first moved to New London, my father forced me to wear an ankle monitor,” I told him.

Dax’s face grew cloudy. “What?”

“It’s kind of laughable, right? The criminal treating me like one,” I said, tossing the bracelet from hand to hand, feeling relief at having something in them after not having my phone.

“Why did he do that to you?” His voice was quiet, knowing I didn’t like to talk about my father, my past, or things I couldn’t change.

“He was pretty angry. I’d just been kicked out of the fifth high school he’d gotten me into. The only reason they’d taken me was because ofOtosan’senormous donation, so when I’d ditched class and taken my art teacher with me, it was kind of the last straw.”

Dax’s brows furrowed more.

“What happened?” he breathed the question, hesitant again.

I laughed. “We were having sex in the back of the teacher’s car is what happened.”

He swallowed hard. “That isn’t what I was asking. What happened that changed you from the girl staring at the stars, wanting nothing more than to live in our world, to the girl who hated everything about it?”

I looped my finger in one of the links of the bracelet and spun it around, the smooth metal colliding with skin a balm somehow, allowing me to retell the story with the same detachment I’d had for years when talking or thinking about the day I’d discovered what and who my father truly was.

“I’d always wanted his attention. I’d been calling out for it, really. I’d done all the ‘right’ things to try and get him to truly see me. But then…I walked in on him watching as one of his minions cut off some guy’s pinkie, and everything changed.”