Crossing Stars

  Instead of flinching back, Rylan reached for my hand. “For payback.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, staring at the sharp pieces of porcelain. A moment ago, the cup had been an elegant, beautiful piece of serving ware, and now it was a jagged, shattered weapon. Mrs. Bailey might not have been able to sneak a gun past the metal detectors, but all she would have needed to do was shatter one of the cups we used every day and stab a piece through my throat. That’s all it would have taken to get her husband back.

  “You remember how when I disappeared, everyone assumed I’d either been kidnapped or killed?” Rylan waited for me to nod. “Well they were right on both counts. I was kidnapped and almost killed . . . by the Costas.” Inhaling, he ran his hand through his hair. “By your father specifically.”

  “My father?” Would I ever be able to stagger off of this mind-bending ride?

  He nodded. “Your father.”

  “He has about a hundred men who do his dirty work for him. Why would he get his hands bloody murdering the only son of his rival?” I wasn’t surprised the Costas had been behind Rylan’s disappearance, but I was surprised that my father had done more than instruct other hands what to do.

  His jaw went rigid, his shoulders following. “From the look of his face that night, killing me wasn’t dirty work. It was more like the greatest moment of his life.”

  “Wait. You actually saw my father the night they tried to kill you?”

  “He was the one holding the needle.”

  This once-happy room turned into a house of horrors. The buttercream walls were blanketed in black, the windows splattered with red. The soft lighting had turned harsh, hinting at interrogation. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to step into it again. “He tried to inject you with the venom?”

  “He succeeded,” he replied.

  “No,” I whispered. I knew what happened to the people who’d been injected with blue krait venom. After being locked up and tied or chained in some room where no one would find them, the venom was injected and the injector walked away. The injected writhed in intolerable pain, praying for death until finally death heard their prayer. “How did you survive?”

  Rylan turned his forearm over. “After my mom was killed, Dad became a bit . . . paranoid. He had a microchip implanted under my skin so he could track me in the event of a kidnapping. Turns out that sometimes paranoia is an all right thing.”

  My hand went to his forearm, my fingers circling it. “They can track you with a microchip? No matter where you go?”

  “With a mass-market one, no . . . but with a black-market one, yes. I suppose you don’t need two guesses which one my dad went with.”

  I couldn’t stop staring at his arm. “So they can track you any time they want? Even . . . now?” If the Morans tracked Rylan here, I didn’t know exactly what would happen, but I knew enough to realize the walls would be more covered in blood than paint by the end of the day.

  “Well, yeah, they could have.” His thumb traced a small white scar midway up his arm. “If I hadn’t made it a condition that if I returned to Chicago, I wasn’t returning with the microchip.”

  My finger traced the scar too. “But why? Here is where you most need the microchip. Here is where it saved your life.”

  Rylan exhaled. “Because my dad was as concerned with monitoring my life as he was with saving it. I didn’t want to have my every step tracked, analyzed, and scrutinized.”

  If my father had gotten to him once, he could do it again, but this time, no one would be able to track him. “Rylan—”

  “It’s gone,” he said firmly. “Moving on.”

  Human microchipping. Just when I thought my world couldn’t get any more bizarre . . .

  Knowing what I did now, it was no surprise my father seemed to flinch anytime he heard the name Patrick, even if it was only on the evening news. Patrick was the name of both his enemy and his enemy’s heir he thought he’d killed. Rylan, however, was just another name in the crowd.

  “Is that why you go by Rylan now? To throw off the Costas?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “Patrick died that night—I’ve been Rylan ever since. I’m not hiding behind a name. This is who I am now.”

  “Good,” I replied with a whisper of a smile. “Since I kind of like this Rylan character.”

  “That’s good. Since I’m not going anywhere,” he threw back with a wink.

  I should have given us a few moments of silence or a segue, but we didn’t have time for either. “So because my father was responsible for killing his wife and nearly his son, your father thought a bit of payback was in order?”

  “I don’t know if I’d call it a bit, but yeah, payback was what he was going for when he put the hit on your life.”

  At this point in the information dump, I was wondering if life had ever made sense. “So my father tried to kill you. And your father tried to kill me. And here we are, both alive and planning to run away to spend our lives together. That ought to teach them.”

  “It is ironic, I’ll agree.”

  I tried to process everything that he had just revealed, but it was kind of like trying to comprehend the size of the universe. “To sum it up, my teacher, the one who’s out there lecturing right now, was supposed to kill me, your father killed her husband for not going through with it, and my father kidnapped you, injected you with venom, and left you to die.” I was out of breath, though from more than just the string of words. “I suppose that’s why everyone on the Costa side, my father most of all, looked like they’d seen a ghost at Armistice Day.” This whole time, my father had assumed the venom had killed Rylan. He’d never known Patrick Moran had tracked his son, saved him, and shipped him off to Ireland to keep him safe. And now he was smack in the middle of the Blue Krait’s home. I was done with irony.

  “I was a ghost for fifteen years, and I’ll remain a ghost for the rest of my life. I rejoined the living long enough to find what I was looking for.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Long enough to see the look on my father’s face when he saw you were still alive?”

  He leaned in so close I could smell his aftershave. “Long enough to find the woman I want to fall asleep beside every night and wake up to every morning.”

  “If you consider one month and a handful of encounters long enough to decide a person is someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, I think you’re in danger of being labeled a hopeless romantic . . . or a hopeless fool.” I eased my words with a soft smile. Only part of me believed them—the sensible part. The other part, the part I couldn’t explain or define or put a finger on, didn’t buy a word I’d just said.

  “I don’t care what anyone labels me. What I care about is you and us. The rest is all white noise.”

  “It’s so easy for you, isn’t it? To believe in us? In it lasting?”

  “It is,” he answered instantly, his eyes narrowing at me. “Isn’t it for you?”

  The answer was yes. And no. “With what I’ve seen of the world, things like forever and selflessness and unconditional love . . . love, even in its most basic form, is difficult to believe in.”

  His face didn’t break from my admissions. It remained as peaceful and steady as it was the majority of the time. “See, you look at the dark world we’ve been raised in and find it difficult to believe in good. I look at the dark world we’ve been raised in and see that as an affirmation that there is good. You can’t have light without dark. You can’t have good without bad. You can’t have peace without fear. Well, I’ve experienced the dark—we’ve lived it—and that makes it all the easier to believe in the light.” Rylan’s hand slid around my neck, its warmth penetrating my skin. “And when I look at you, all I see is light.”

  I took what he’d said inside of me, letting it simmer and steep. I let it process inside of me for so long, it would always be a part of me. “I guess we know who’s the pessimist and who’s the optimist now.”

  He laughed. “You’re proving my poi
nt. Our relationship couldn’t succeed without balance, so it’s a good thing you tend to look at the world and curl your nose and I tend to look at it and want to give it a hug.”

  “Says the man who carries a gun wherever he goes,” I teased.

  He lifted a shoulder. “You never know when it might not want to hug back.”

  When our combined laughter came to an end, Mrs. Bailey’s voice droned back into the room.

  A blanket of darkness cast itself over my lightened mood. “That’s why she snuck you inside, wasn’t it? Because she’s still working for the Morans.”

  The skin between Rylan’s brows creased. “She stopped working for them the day they killed her husband, Jay. Why would she ever go back to work for people like that?”

  “Because they kidnapped someone else and threatened to kill them unless she did what the Morans told her to.” My words sounded as sharp as the ones my father used on the men who’d betrayed him, and realizing that made me flinch. In the great nature vs. nurture debate, I was screwed.

  “Other than an ancient cat who’s meaner than my second-grade teacher, she doesn’t have any family or friends left to kidnap.”

  The only person close to her was dead. For some reason, that made tears burn at the corners of my eyes. “Then why did she sneak you in here?”

  Rylan’s expression stayed creased with confusion. “Because she knew you cared for me . . . and she cares for you.”

  “She has an interesting way of showing it,” I whispered.

  “She refused to kill you knowing her husband’s life was the price for that choice. How can you not believe she cares for you?”

  His words made me as sad as they made me angry. “I don’t know. I’m just so confused . . . so upset . . . so . . .” I popped up out of my chair. “I’m so, so confused.” I was feeling a hundred things, but confused summed it up best. I’d had so much information poured on me, I wondered if anything I’d known was true. Or if my life all had been one giant lie.

  “I know, Jay. I know.” Rylan rubbed the back of his neck, probably struggling with what would be best to say or do to talk me down. “You thought your world was one way, and you’ve just discovered it wasn’t. That’s confusing. But you know the only thing that will cut through the confusion?” He approached me slowly, almost like I was a frightened animal.

  “A lobotomy?” I suggested, bracing my hands against the counter as I stared into the stainless steel sink. My reflection was distorted, difficult to recognize.

  “Time,” Rylan answered in a voice that was as strong as it was soothing.

  I knew he was right, but I wasn’t thrilled with the realization. Of course I’d come to learn that time healed most things, but right now, I wanted a short cut around the confusion immobilizing me. “Sounds like a blast.”

  “You know what you can do in the mean time?” He kept approaching me slowly, each step intentional.

  “Find a doctor who will put me into a temporary coma?”

  “Find a distraction to pass the time. Something you enjoy doing.”

  I heard the smile in his voice. I also heard the hint of mischief, which did what he was probably hoping it would—get my attention and distract me. “To cut through the crazy in my head right now, it would have to be one heck of a distraction.”

  “I can think of one.”

  My head whipped to the side where he was looking at me in a way that was far from innocent. I cleared my throat purposefully. My teacher who’d come close to killing me was a room away. Dozens of armed, Moran-hating guards were inside the estate. My father, who wouldn’t use a Moran as a human shield as a matter of principle, was probably a floor above us in his office. Not exactly the ideal place to take our relationship to the next level.

  “Not that one,” Rylan clarified, clucking his tongue. “Though not due to lack of interest on my part.”

  His smile tipped the wicked scale, making me brace against the counter for a new reason. “Then what’s stopping us?” I swallowed, wondering if those words had come from my mouth. Had I just suggested what I thought I had? Veiled suggestions and innuendos didn’t pass through the lips of girls who wore pastel and pearls.

  “Logistics.”

  That might have been one of the top ten least likely responses I’d expected. “Logistics?” I repeated, my voice a note or two higher than normal. “What do logistics have to do with it?” Sure, my experience in the physical department might have been lacking—to put it generously—but I was fairly sure I’d never heard the word logistics tied to any of the filthy words, phrases, and recaps coming from Serena’s mouth.

  “We’ll get into that later.” His hands fell on either side of my waist, slipping down the slope of my hips. “Because right now I want to do something else.”

  My breath was already faltering, coming in short pulls. “Like what? Discuss the merits of logistics?”

  “No,” he whispered into my hair before twisting me around and setting me on the edge of the counter. He’d moved so quickly, I’d barely had time to let out a breath of surprise. “Like distract you.”

  Despite the speed he’d used to throw me up on the counter, his mouth moved at a different speed. A much slower, more deliberate one. His pace left me reeling—wanting more one moment to feeling like I couldn’t take any more the next.

  He pulled back just long enough to ask, “Distracted?”

  “From what?” I pulled him back to me before the last word had slipped out.

  Instead of only focusing on our conjoined mouths, I focused on the less obvious expressions of our kiss. Like the way the cool counter against my back was a stark contrast to the warmth spreading from where our bodies connected. I wrapped my legs around him to pull him closer, making the warmth grow to heat that spread up into my stomach.

  Next I concentrated on his hands. The way they explored the bends and dips of my body, lingering on the curve of my neck or waist. How shivers ran down my spine every time he dragged a finger down my throat. The way his hands seemed to be of two minds—one moment, they’d be in control, the next, not as much. Sometimes they caressed me so softly, they were feather-light; sometimes I thought he was trying to bury them inside of me. Most of the time, they explored me with the expertise of a person who’d done this countless times, but sometimes they fumbled like they were as unsure as I was.

  I noticed other things too. Like how I couldn’t decide what I liked touching more: his hair, the spot where his shoulders fell into his arms, or the ridge separating his lower back from what was below it. Or the sounds he made when I touched him a certain way—a low moan when my hands slipped away, or a shallow sigh when my hands lowered to a different place on his body.

  I noticed so many things I’d never known had been present in a kiss but were somehow just as intimate and sensual as the actual kiss. Like everything else, time was lost. When the gentle knock at the door came, it could have been five minutes later or five days. Going with Rylan’s time-would-heal-my-confusion theory, I hoped for the latter.

  “That’s my two-minute warning,” he said, not quite panting but close enough.

  “Two-minute warning for what?” I asked, my own breath just as overcome.

  “Escape.” He smiled, sliding some of my likely disheveled hair behind my ear.

  Reality came back, shoving my temporary delirium over the precipice. “You’ve got to go.” I untangled my legs and pushed on his chest at the same time. After our last two kisses, I could confidently say I wanted to spend a long, full life with him . . . which would be a wish extinguished if he was caught. My eyes flickered to the door as I imagined one of the guards bursting through it. “How are you getting out of here?”

  “Not the same way I got in, that’s for sure.” He massaged his neck with a feigned look of anguish.

  I put a hand on my hip, waiting. When his eyes lingered on a space just above my knees, a silly smile on his face, I checked to find the reason for his near-giddy smile. My skirt was a crumbled, wrinkled,
twisted mess. Fussing with it, I shot him an I’m Waiting look.

  Sighing, he tapped one of the large windows. “I’ll crawl out one of these, leap to the grass below, rolling to break the fall, then sprint like the devil’s chasing me. Oh, and I’m not planning on slowing my mad-dash pace until I’m ‘safe and sound’ on my side of the world.”

  My eyes went wide. “You are not doing any crawling, leaping, rolling, or sprinting. Do you want to get shot? Because that’s a surefire way for it to happen.” The suitcase was one thing, but escaping out the window was another thing—an insane thing.

  “I don’t want to get shot, and good thing for me, I won’t be shot.” He lifted his hand as I started to interrupt. “I know where the weak spots in security are, where the surveillance cameras don’t cover entirely, and when the guards take their lunch breaks. Right about now”—Rylan tapped his watch—“they’re feeling extra sleepy from the big meatball subs and cannolis sitting heavy in their stomachs. At this point in the day, they’d rather use their gun for a pillow than a weapon.”

  All I could do was gape at him. These weren’t run-of-the-mill security guards who couldn’t even run a mile, let alone complete one in under ten minutes. These were highly trained, top-of-the-security-guard-class killing machines. No doubt Rylan realized that—he wasn’t stupid—which meant his underemphasizing the situation was for my benefit.

  When he saw that his reassurances had done just the opposite, he slipped an arm around me, pulled me close, and pressed his lips to my temple. “Don’t worry. If I can sneak into Salvatore Costa’s legendary White Party without being detected, I can easily sneak out of his tea room window on a Thursday afternoon.” He was already winding the window open. “Besides, the guards are watching for people trying to get in. Not out.”