Never (Never, #1) (3)

I’m a light sleeper. I always have been.

I smile at the sound of the window pulling up as it always does. I wonder which grandmother it is, those sweet pests. I’d know in a minute because I know their sounds too. Wendy always steps on the same floorboard that creaks, and Mary, no matter how many times we’ve played this game, her walking cane hits the door on the way out.

I wait, brows up, listening for my clue so I can complain to the right one in the morning about them minding their own business and how they’d rather me have pneumonia than risk their imaginary boyfriend seeing a closed window.

But I hear none.

No floorboard creaks.

No cane hits.

I wait.

They’ve opened my window all my life. I know the sound of my window opening, so I know for certain that it is open…that and I can feel the breeze I wait for.

I bolt upright, and it takes only a second for my eyes to adjust, but even before they do, I can make out a figure standing there.

Tall. Broad. A man.

In a split second, I think “Shit! It’s finally happened! The youths and the drug money!” However, I decide I won’t take my imminent death lying down, so I smack on the lamp that’s next to me and sit up as quickly and tall as I can.

“Who are you?” I ask him quickly, sharply. I hope he doesn’t catch my nervous breathing.

His face screws up. “You don’t know who I am?”

And that is when I notice his face.

Golden hair. Interesting eyes that stick out on his face, but I can’t tell the colour from here. He’s just in a pair of faded, ragged olive linen trousers that tie at the front. Shirtless.

Distractingly so, if I’m honest.

You don’t see a lot of shirtless men around London, I suppose is the thing. And it’s barely summer anymore, and there aren’t beaches here anyway, and who’s swimming in the Thames, and I’m just staring at his chest, dazed, mouth a little ajar. His skin is so tan that he looks dirty. I tilt my head because maybe that is literally just dirt? His feet are definitely dirty.

Though, admittedly, quite large.

I look up again at his face.

Heavy brow, head tilted as he watches me, eyes dancing over me, and possibly, if I were to dissect the moment, he might look as confused as I do.

I jump out of bed and glare over at him, and I’m not scared anymore, though perhaps maybe I should have been? Maybe, in retrospect, one day I will be.

Instead, I raise my eyebrows to his question.

“Am I supposed to?”

“Yes.” He scowls. “Bit embarrassing for you that you don’t.”

I fold my arms delicately over my chest.

“Is it not perhaps more embarrassing for you that you’ve broken into my bedroom expecting to be known and yet you are not?”

He gets a look in his eye. “You must know who I am a bit, or else why aren’t you afraid?”

“I could be incredibly brave,” I tell him, nose in the air.

He rolls his eyes. “Or stupid.”

I huff a bit, cross my arms over my chest, and peer over at him through the light that the moon’s throwing on him. “Are you”—I blink twice—“Peter Pan?”

“I knew you knew who I was!” He points at me, victorious.

I squint over at him, shaking my head. “You can’t be.” I frown as I take a careful step closer to him. He’s about six foot one. Maybe bigger. Tall, for certain. “You’re…” I blink a few times, face nearly scrunched. “Big?”

He looks down at his bare chest and puffs it up a little, flicks his eyes up at me, and does this thing with his eyebrows that might make my heart go weak at the knees. “I know.”

“But you’re supposed to be…” I look for the right words. “A boy?”

He looks annoyed. “I am a boy.”

I tilt my head at him again. He doesn’t look like a boy. He looks my age, maybe even a tiny bit older.

My eyes pinch. “Well, so how old are you then?”

“Bigger than you,” he tells me quickly.

“I didn’t ask how big you are.” Though he is indisputably bigger than me. I stand a mere five foot six. “I asked how old you are.”

“Older than you,” he tells me, and it’s then that I notice he has an American accent. Evasive answer. No surprises there…damn Yanks.

“Which is how old?” I put my hands on my hips, beginning to feel cross.

“The perfect kind.”

I stomp my foot. “Which is what?”

He takes a step towards me, and now I can see his eyes.

Green. Unmistakably green.

Peter Pan looks me up and down. His head is cocked to the side.

“You’re the perfect kind of old too.”

I blush. I don’t know why.

I swallow quickly, shake my head, and refocus.

“Come on, Wendy.” The boy reaches for my hand, and I snatch it away.

“I’m not Wendy.”

He rolls his eyes and groans, a bit impatient and rude.

“Well, what are you then?”

“Do you mean ‘who am I’?”

He rolls his eyes and says nothing.

“I’m Daphne.”

His face pulls. “That’s a weird name.”