“What was that?” he asks, eyebrows up.
“Nothing.” I shake my head.
“No, say it.” He juts his chin a bit. “Say it.”
I say nothing. My eye doesn’t even flicker to the love bite on him that’s still there now. Or maybe that’s new? Is that in a different spot than before?
Peter sniffs and eyes me down. “You’re disgusting. I can smell him on you.” He takes a step from me.
“Nothing happened.” I reach for him, I don’t know why. Compulsion, maybe? “He was just being kind. It’s lucky he gave it to me!”
“Lucky?” Peter says in disbelief.
“Yes!” I nod. “Otherwise, I might have died!”
Peter shakes his head. “Honourably, at least.”
I breathe out quietly. “You’d rather me dead than use something Hook gave me to live?”
“He is my enemy!” Peter yells loudly.
“No, he isn’t!” I insist. “That’s all just crazy talk. It’s all in your head!”
“When was he with you?” Peter grabs me by both my wrists, moving me backwards. “Did he take you? How? When? Right out from under my nose?”
“He didn’t take me. I went with him,” I say clearly. “Happily, because for the fourteen millionth time, you went away with the mermaids or Calla or whoever you go to when you aren’t with me, and you forgot about me!”
He shakes his head, stubborn. “I never forget.”
“You just forgot me!” I yell. “You left me!”
He shrugs. “I knew you’d be fine. I never forget.”
“You always forget!” I yell. “Always! And if you don’t, then that’s worse.”
“Why?”
“Because, Peter! We’re either together or we’re not, and if we’re not, than you can’t give a fuck when I’m with him.”
His eyes pinch. “What’s a fuck?”
And I don’t mean to. I shouldn’t have done it. But I sniff a laugh.
He grabs me by the shoulders, his face darkening in an instant. “Don’t you laugh at me.”
“I’m not laughing at you.” I sigh. “I’m just…tired of you.”
Peter breathes out loudly from his nose. “No friend of mine likes a pirate.”
I straighten myself out a little as I peer up at him. “Are we back to just friends?”
Peter pulls a face. “What else would we be?”
I let out a hollow laugh.
“I told you not to laugh at me,” he growls.
I wonder if he’s truly forgotten what we were before, what he called me before. It feels too embarrassing to have to remind him, so I refuse to do it and simply let the weight of this rejection be distinctly lessened by the fact that however many nights ago,* I would have given everything I had on my body and in my bank to be with Jamison Hook.
“What else would you and me be, girl?” Peter asks, impatient. “I asked you a question.”
“Well.” I clear my throat demurely. “I don’t tend to share my bed—”
“My bed,” he cuts in to remind me.
I ignore him. “—with other boy…friends of mine.”
Peter’s face clouds over instantly. “You have other boy friends?”
“Male friends,” I clarify with an eye roll. And when he still looks equally horrified, I offer him a shrug. “Back in London?”
“Who are they?” Peter asks sharply, jumping straight to his feet. “How tall are they?”
“Well, one of them is quite tall.” I think to myself. Jasper was a tower.
“Which one?” Perter scowls. “What’s his window street?”
I look over at him confused and give him a little shrug. “I’m…not sure.”
Peter squints at me annoyed for a few seconds before he shakes his head like I’m an idiot. “He’s not taller than me.”
“Jamison is taller than you,” I say without thinking, I suppose. Just rolls off the tongue. I don’t know why.
His face clouds over. “Who’s Jamison?”
I swallow, a bit nervous, because I mean, if anything was going to send him—and I really don’t like to send him—fuck. I could have said no one. Probably I should have, really, but I don’t because it wouldn’t have been a lie I liked to tell. He is taller than him, in every single possible way.
I swallow before I say it.
“Hook,” I tell him with a shrug like I’m not nervous, like I’m not wincing already.