Never (Never, #1) (11)

Taking in all that water isn’t too pleasant at first, but after a short while, it’s not so bad.

And I’m thinking, as I float here dying, how tremendously sorry I am for coming to this stupid place, that my mother was right all along, that I should have just gone to Cambridge.

And then something drops into the water next to me. And my heart rejoices a little bit because Peter Pan has come to save me, and I will later recall this moment that’s about to happen next as the part where everything—everything—henceforth changes.

I won’t realise that for quite some time though.

I’m pulled to the surface, I think, because suddenly there’s breath in my lungs again, and I’m coughing and spluttering, and the four suns are so bright that I can’t see a damned thing, but I can feel that I’m safe again because I’m scooped up in his arms, and then he lays me flat on a warm deck.

I’m hacking up water like a burst hydrant, and I still can’t see anything more than a figure looking down at me, but he tilts his head, and that’s when my eyes go clear and I see it isn’t Peter with his head tilted. It’s someone else entirely.

Is there a word that encapsulates being terrified and enthralled at once?

If there is, I should like to invoke it now.

Awe, maybe? The etymological meaning of the word from the fourteenth century. Fear and great reverence. Strange, this terrible awe I have for the man who’s frowning down at me with the most serious pair of eyes I’ve ever seen. I swallow heavy at the sight of them. Something a bit like home in them. Like all the darkest blues of the water on that planet I’m so very fond of. They belong to a man—definitely a man, not a boy. I can tell he’s a man because he has facial hair, and he wears the serious kind of face only men do. That and he’s very tall. Not just in stature but in how he stands too, even though he’s not standing. He’s on his knees beside me. I can tell he’s tall and that given a chance, he’d stand a certain way. Shoulders square, eyes straight ahead.

His hair at first glance is mostly brown, but it’s lighter than you think it is. Longer than it is short too. Around his chin, all wavy. His skin is darkened by the sun, and he’s wet. From head to toe, he’s soaked right through.

“Are ye right?”* The stranger shifts some hair from my face, brow furrowing as he stares at me.

He’s not blinking; he’s just staring at me, waiting. But me? I’m blinking like a maniac because he is deplorably beautiful.

Dug-out cheeks, heavy brow, the best nose I’ve ever seen on any human being ever in all my life,* and even though there’s probably a bit too much facial hair for me to say with absolute certainty, I suspect that one might be able to cut oneself on his presumably immaculate jawline.

I sit up.

“Does nobody wear shirts here?” I ask, sounding cross about it, but I’m using it as a crafty deflection to distract from the fact that I’m overtly staring at his tattooed arms and chest.

He glances down at himself, bare chested and unfortunately chiseled, then back up at me, amused.

“I took it off? ye before I saved yer life.” He gives me a look, and I immediately resent his tone and can’t pick his accent all at once.

Scottish? Irish? Somewhere in the middle. From the Isles for certain.

I fold my arms over my chest and sit up a little straighter still.

“Are ye right though?” he asks, a touch gentler.

“Yes.” I glare.

“Are ye sure?”

“Yes,” I tell him, a bit indignant. I clear my throat. “Who are you anyway?”

“Who am I?” He blinks, throwing a look at the men who’ve appeared behind him. “A’m no’ the one who came hurtling down from abain,§ lass. Who are ye?”

He nods his chin at me as he takes my hand, pulling me up off the ground, and when we touch, it feels as though something gets knocked off of a shelf that I’ve kept very neat and very tidy for my whole entire life. It’s a very organised shelf—colour coordinated and alphabetised—but somewhere inside of me, I hear something shatter, and it frightens me, so I snatch my hand away and fold it uncomfortably across myself.

I raise my eyebrows impatiently as I wait for his answer. “I asked you first.”

He cocks a smile, and the trigger in my heart cocks also.

“I’m Hook.”

I freeze, a little horrified, a lot confused.

“No, you aren’t.” I shake my head.

He looks over his shoulder again at his friends, face all amused. “Aye, sure I am.”

“No.” I shake my head. For one, the person in front of me isn’t that old. Does no one age here? The way my grandmothers described him, Hook was older—a man of at least thirty-five, if not more—and sure, old Perfect Face here has facial hair that other boys his age might be jealous of, but I know without doubt, he couldn’t be close to thirty anything at all.

As well, they told me Hook’s eyes were the colour of forget-me-nots, an eerie sort of light blue, but this person’s eyes are made of the sort of colours you’d see out in the most unexplored parts of the Maldives—

And then, most damning of all, my eyes fall to his hand, the one I’d just been holding, and then I flick my eyes over to his other one…both very much there and very unfed to a crocodile.