Never (Never, #1) (49)

He nods a couple of times. “So why do ye like Earth so much?”

“I don’t know.” I breathe out in the comfort of the question. “I think I find it grounding? I like my bare feet on the earth—the feel of it.”

He nods, watching me and letting me prattle on.

“I suppose I’ve always just liked it. Rocks and nature and volcanos, the history of things, how they form. It’s all just fascinating to me. I like how stones feel in your hand, how they feel on your skin. I like how a specific chemical formula and time underground, in the dark, where no one is looking, makes these.” I flash him my earrings again, and he smiles a little bit. I shrug, feeling now like I’ve talked for too long. “I like how rocks tell stories. I suppose I like Earth because it’s really just one big rock.”

Jamison’s watching me, eyebrows bending in the middle like he’s almost frowning, but it’s not a bad frown. Neither is it entirely confused. More like he’s just fascinated.

I squirm a little, embarrassed to have his gaze so intensely on me but also a little bit pleased.

I clear my throat to keep things moving. “Is this a planet?”

“Neverland?” He blinks. “Aye, o’ course it’s a planet. What dae you think yer wee feet are standing on here?”

I roll my eyes.

“Neverland’s no’ the planet. It’s an isle that’s a part o’ a realm. The planet itself is called Little St?rj.” He stands up and walks to a bookshelf that’s organised with no rhyme or reason, other than each book is bound in leather. He grabs one with a navy spine and gold foiling and places it in front of me. “’Twas founded around 1300 BC your time.”

“By whom?” I ask him, chin in my hand.

He flips open the book and rifles through a few pages to a black-and-white photo of five people. Three women, two men.

I marvel at them for a few seconds. “What were they?” I ask as I stare at them.

“I think the politically correct term is star travellers.” He smiles as he glances at the photo.

“They’re aliens?” I blink up at him, surprised.

He points at me. “Politically incorrect.”

“Sorry!” I flash him a smile. “So it’s true then, we’re not all alone in the universe?”

Jamison shrugs and looks over his shoulder at the harbor behind us, filled idyllically with fisherman and boats. “Evidently not.” His eyes soften a tiny bit around the edges. “Did ye feel ye were?”

Less so by the second, actually, I think as I stare over at him and swallow heavy, ignoring the feeling of all the threads pulling inside me and stepping around one of about a million potholes that exist in my mind about pirates.

“Her bath is ready,” Briggs calls and pokes his head from around the divider.

“Thank you, Briggs.” Jamison nods at him, and I offer him back the book.

He shakes his head. “Keep it.” He wraps his hands around mine and gives the book back to me. Our eyes catch. “Ye need it more than me, thonner with the wee man. I cannae imagine he’s that grand a conversationalist.”

I stifle a laugh and drop his gaze because his eyes feel too good to hold. He gestures towards the bath.

I give him a quick but grateful smile and slip behind the screen.

I pull my clothes off me and leave them by the foot of the clawed bath.

“I’ll leave ye be,” Jamison calls from the other side.

“You don’t have to!” I say maybe too quickly, and there’s a clunky pause from him.

“What?” he says after a few seconds.

I pause. Scratch my cheek. Try to figure out why I said that.

“I like talking to you” is what I say, and ultimately, it is the truth.

Three seconds go by before he says anything.

“Aye,” he says, and I hear the sound of him dragging a chair over to the other side of the divide. “I like talking to ye too.”

“Just don’t peek,” I tell him.

Pause. “No promises there.”

I smile—a lot—so much that I’m glad he can’t see it, and I lower myself into the bath. I don’t know whether it’s because I haven’t bathed properly in apparently forty-one days,* but it’s perfect. The perfect temperature, the perfect amount of water—it smells like it has oils in it to the perfect combination. The shape of it holds me to the perfect cradled recline.

I breathe out.

“’Tis a grand bath,” he tells me.

“It is.” I nod. “Thank you for letting me use it.”

“Thank ye for taking yer clothes off in my home,” he says nobly, and I try my best not to laugh, but I do and then so does he.

“Grubby, dirty, messy,” I hear Briggs say under his breath, and I snap my head in his direction, peering over the side of the bath.

He’s so little he can’t see in, and when I spot him, he’s staring at my pyjamas, carrying them away.

“Briggs!” Jamison sputters.

“Filthy girl,” Briggs keeps growling as he wanders off.

There’s an uncomfortable silence.

“I think he meant my clothes.”

Jamison starts laughing. “Well, fingers crossed.”

I hear the sound of his chair push back, and he stands. “I’ll be back in a second.”