Never (Never, #1) (4)

I pull one back. “No weirder than Peter Pan.”

“My name’s the best name.” He shrugs proudly.

I squint over at him. “Why Pan?”

“Why Daphne?” he shoots back in a dumb voice, and I think he’s a terrible pest.

I take a big breath and sigh at him to make sure he knows I’m displeased, but as I do, I accidentally smell him. You know how the air gets when summertime’s close? Like frangipani and the ocean. He smells how the air feels right before the storm. He smells like freedom, and I don’t mean to, but I breathe him in. And once I feel him inside my chest, there’s this peculiar sinking—it’s rather distinct—that the feeling of him being there might not ever quite leave.

Do you ever get a feeling like that? A foreboding? A grave permanence to whatever’s about to come next?

That’s how breathing Peter Pan in feels. Like taking the first step on a carpet rolled out in front of you.

His eyes flicker around my face with a curious intensity I don’t understand, and I wonder whether he’ll kiss me, he’s leaning in so close. Does he even know about kisses? My cheeks feel hot, and I swallow nervously before I shake my head at myself.

I mustn’t forget—because it’s undeniably a woman’s strength—that I’m dreadfully stroppy at him for, off the cuff, calling me stupid, getting my name wrong, and then calling it weird. I turn from him, arms folded across my chest and my brows high with indignation.

“Wendy, girl.” He cranes his head around my shoulder. “Why are you angry?”

“Wendy isn’t my name.” I move away from him and sit on my bed. I don’t think I much like him, if I’m honest. He’s not making me feel good inside myself, yet I so desperately want his approval, and I’ve never wanted the approval of a man before.

I’ve had boyfriends before. Lots of boys like me. I’m attractive enough in a conventional way, and I’m clever. I’m from a well-to-do (albeit considered eccentric*) family. I’m mysterious and aloof. I don’t care about the things some other girls care about. When Jasper England asked me to his family’s manor for dinner, every girl in my dormitory screamed, but I didn’t.

I went. I had a fun time. We kissed. He was good at it. He asked me what I wanted to do after I finished school, and I said I wanted to go to university. He asked if I wanted to get my MRS, because if I did, he could save me a lot of time.

When I said I wanted to get a degree in mineralogy, he stared at me like I told him I wanted to stick a fork in a power socket.

We dated for the entire summer,* because he actually really was a very good kisser, and at the end of it, Jasper asked if I was joking about “the geology thing,” and I said no, and then he dropped me home shortly after, and we’ve not spoken since.?

I don’t know what it is about Peter Pan that’s made me feel instantly disheartened, but I do. I don’t know why. I obviously don’t know this boy, except that I do, I think. I know him how you know him and we all know him…from once upon a dream.

And no one likes it when a dream is fractured.

“But you are a girl.” Peter kneels in front of me, and he puts his hands on my knees, and this is the first time we touch. My brain makes a note of it because I know my heart will want to remember it later. I’m wearing quite short bloomers and a white, cotton camisole, and he’s staring up at me, smiling.

Peter’s brows furrow, and his smile is confused but present.

“The best girl I’ve ever seen,” he tells me matter-of-factly, and my cheeks go pink.

This pleases him, my pink cheeks. I can tell because his chest puffs up a little and he jumps up off the ground, shoving a hand through his blond hair.

He walks around my room, looking at the posters on the wall.

“Who’s that?” He points to a poster on my wall.

I glance over at the poster and then give Peter a confused look. “That’s Mick Jagger.”

“Do you know him?” He frowns.

“No, but—”

“Why’s there this picture of Mick Jagger on your wall then?”

“Well, because he’s rather sexy, don’t you think?”

Peter pulls a face. “What’s sexy?”

I purse my lips. “Handsome,” I tell him. “Or pleasant to look a—” I barely get the words out before he pulls a dagger from his belt and slices my poster in two.

It all happens so quickly—a blink-and-you-miss-it sort of change in him—but Peter’s face goes like a flash from inquisitive to dark. The poster flits to the ground, our eyes following it.

“Hey!” I growl. “That was my favourite!”

“I’m your favourite now.” He gives me a curt smile.

I frown at him.

“I don’t like to share,” he says, inspecting his dagger before pocketing it again.

“Share what?” I cross my arms again.

He frowns at me. “You.”

And I wish that didn’t win me over, but it does in the slightest. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never really known the approval of a man before.

“Fatherless girls who are left unchecked are a danger to society and themselves,” I once heard one of my grandmothers’ more judgmental friends say. I’m unsure what she meant by that, but it may have been pertaining to an instance such as this one.