Peter gives me a confused look.
“Hook called me a girl, but I don’t think he meant it as a compliment,” I try to explain.
He shakes his head as he stares at the ceiling. “You don’t want compliments from pirates anyway.”
“No, you’re right.” I close my eyes. “I don’t.”
He kisses my cheek. “Good night.”
“Good night,” I tell him, but I can feel him watching me in the dim lighting of the tree house.
“Girl?” he says after a few seconds.
“Mm?” I say with my eyes shut still.
“Do you know what beautiful means?” Peter asks.
I look over at him with a confused look. “Yes?”
He nods solemnly. “You are it.”
* * *
* “My house,” he interrupts me with.
* Because it really does.
* Much more sternly than I would ever dare speak to her, that much is for certain.
? And arguably rude.
? Or perhaps just her very brazen son.
* Need him to be, even.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
I’m going to tell Jem, I decided. That I’m sorry and that before, I was scared and stupid, but actually, I’d like to be together, and if he’d like that too, then I’d like to find a way to make it work.
Because I want it to work. I want him, really. And actually, there’s a word that I’ve never really said before about a boy, but I think I might—I could?—I feel as though I do.
I couldn’t sleep all night because of it.
A bit because it felt funny to sleep in a bed with Peter knowing that I want to be with someone else and also just because I really wanted to tell Jamison.
I’m up before the sun, which I never am. It also means I’m up before Peter, which somehow casts the world in a curious light I don’t know much about.
I think he wakes everything up around here. As I creep out of the tree house, not just the boys are sleeping, but so are the flowers and the woodland creatures. The suns are still tucked away, cosy beneath the horizon.
I creep down to the dock and untie the rowboat.
The water is still, mist hovering above it. It’s not entirely dark because of the four moons, but it mostly is. I’m not trying to beat the light. You can’t anyway. It always wins. Peter will wake soon, he either will or will not notice my absence, and whichever way that goes, it won’t affect what I’m about to do. I’m going to do it regardless.
I’m about halfway across the harbor when I hear him.
“Hello down there,” he calls, a little confused.
I look back and up, and there he is, Jamison Hook, sailing the Golden Folly, staring down at me with a confused smile.
“Oh.” I blink up at him. “Hi.”
He looks so handsome. Brows low, hair falling over his eyes and blowing in the barely there wind, his cheeks flushed, mouth sun-kissed, which I love. I don’t remember his mouth looking this colour yesterday, but it makes him look all the dreamier, so I’m pleased for it.
He gives me a confused smile. “I was just on my way to ye.”
I give him a proper one. “Me too.”
He nods his head at his ship. “Want t’ come aboard?”
I gesture to my little rowboat. “Do you want to come aboard?”
His face pulls, and I smile up at him playfully.
“I’m joking. Throw me down a rope.”
He sniffs a laugh and tosses me down a rope. I stand on top of the big knot at the bottom of it, and he pulls me up to him with an ease that makes me swallow heavy and my heart fall down a flight of stairs. He offers me his hand as my feet find their place on the deck, and our hands linger a few moments longer than they need to in one another’s.
I glance up at him, feeling shy. I pinch my bottom lip nervously. “You look nice,” I tell him.
His face falters. “Dae I?”
I nod, not looking away from him. “Fresh or well rested or something.”
He laughs. Sort of a weird laugh, I suppose. A bit bewildered, or something.
Either way, he doesn’t return the compliment. I’m hardly offended though, as I don’t suppose he could in good conscience. I damn well didn’t sleep a wink last night and am quite sure my face lives to tell that puffy, tired little tale.
“I wanted to talk to ye,” he tells me, face looking serious, and my eyes skip a beat as I nod.
“And I you.” I blink over at him, my eyes blooming like the flowers that are doing so right now on the mainland as Peter strokes their chins awake. “You go first.”