No new messages.
Had she even read his note? Of course, she had. Who could resist a secret?
He rubbed at his chest for reasons that had nothing to do with Phantom’s hit.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Are you all right?”
Victor looked up, and his heart soared when he saw Dawn standing in the doorway beside Donny.
Phantom wasn't nearly as happy to see her.
“You just let her in here without asking your boss for permission first?” Phantom asked Donny in his rough Cantonese, suddenly concerned with the hierarchy of Red Diamond command.
“I told him he should always let her in,” Victor signed, coming to Donny's defense.
“Yeah, well, that's a bad fucking idea,” Phantom muttered in Cantonese. “Just like all the other shit you’ve done for this girl.”
Fortunately, Phantom simply glowered and didn’t speak his enmity in English directly to Dawn in that particularly American way of his. Victor wouldn’t have stood for that.
“Hi,” she said into Phantom’s glowering silence with a tentative wave. “I'm Dawn. We didn't exchange names the last time we met.”
She waited, probably expecting a polite answer.
But Phantom wasn’t polite. By any standard, American or Chinese.
He merely stood there, letting her know that he wasn't one for small talk with his lack of response. And he turned his back just enough not to have to see any commands Victor might give him concerning his behavior toward Dawn.
So Victor answered Dawn himself. “His name is P-H-A-N-T-O-M.”
“Phantom,” she repeated without speaking. “Like the ghost?”
“Exactly,” Victor answered. “And he doesn't understand ASL. If you want to be rude and shut him out of our conversation, the way he shut you out in Cantonese, we should keep talking this way.”
Dawn laughed at his suggestion. But then she looked at him worriedly and asked, “Are you sure you're all right? That hit was crazy. You flew!”
Yes, he had. No doubt he would find his chest covered with a bruise the next time he took off his shirt. Perhaps his back, too, considering his crash into the table.
“I'm fine,” Victor signed, nonetheless. It was the truth. All of his pain had receded into the background as soon as he saw Dawn standing at the door.
“Leave us alone,” he signed to Donny.
“Boss said to clear out,” Donny let Phantom know in Cantonese.
Phantom did as he was told, but he glared at Dawn all the way out the room.
“I don't think P-H-A-N-T-O-M likes me,” Dawn signed with a chagrinned look as soon as his cousin slid the doors closed behind him.
Her sign language was the usual mess of CSL and ASL, but Victor understood her meaning.
The polite thing to do would have been to assure her that Phantom’s ire wasn't her fault. But Victor couldn't be polite. He had to know, “What are you doing here so late?”
“I had to wait until my father left and my mother was asleep to sneak out and come here,” she answered in a rush.
But then her hands faltered. She raised them once, twice, before speak-signing, “I read your note.”
Victor's heart hammered in his chest. It was a wild animal throwing itself against its cage because it wanted something so badly.
But he waited. Not out of patience. He waited because he couldn't have signed in those long moments if he’d wanted to. He could barely breathe.
“You are so great, Victor, but I can't.” She gave her head a short sorrowful shake. “I can't do this with you.”
So this was what it felt like to get rejected. A new kind of pain exploded inside his chest.
Strange, so much had been given to him his entire life. Friends, women, servants, and riches. His life had been painless up until now. Even his mother and ability to speak had been taken away before he was old enough to truly feel the loss.
But this…this hurt. This hurt even more than he’d bargained for when he’d decided to return to Tokyo and finally tell her how he felt.
A wind, despairing and loud, filled his head, and he could barely concentrate on the rest of what she said after that.
Who cared about her reasons anyway? The point was she'd read his secret. And she'd come over here to tell him she didn't feel the same. He should send her away. Have Donny drag her out before she realized how upset he was—
“….I just couldn't do that to another girl. And I know a lot of people are all about open relationships these days. I also get that Americans have a reputation. But I'm not like that."
Those particular words broke through the howling wind inside Victor's head.
He froze. Frowned. Then lifted his fingers to sign, “What?”
“You don't know this sign? Girlfriend?” she asked, emphasizing the sign for GIRLFRIEND. “It's like wife…but before marriage.”
Yes, of course, he knew that sign. In both CSL and ASL. He’d thought of it often during his time in Hong Kong away from her. But… "What did you say about girlfriend. Repeat that last part.”
