“I believe this belongs t’ ye,” he says, offering it to me.
“Keep it,” I tell him, flashing him a smile that I hope looks less threadbare than it feels on my mouth. “One’s grown in its place already.”
“Ah,” he concedes. “Ye love an enchanted dress, d?nnae ye?”
I give him a demure shrug. “I wear what’s given to me.”
Jamison’s eyes fall down me before they drag back up to meet mine. “This dress—”
I swallow, my eyebrows bending in the middle. “You don’t care for it?”
“Aye, sure, I care for it.” He gives me a playful look. “That fairy missed her wee calling there.”
I breathe out a small laugh. “I suppose she has.”
Jem holds the flower out to me again. “Put it on me.” He taps the lapel on his jacket.
I take a breath, but it’s shallow because I tend to lose mine when he’s around me.
I find the buttonhole in his jacket and poke the flower through it. I’m sure it’s going to fall immediately, but then quite on its own and rather magically, a little stem grows and fastens itself onto him.
He stares at it, confounded. “Did ye do that?”
I shake my head, and he looks up at me.
“Magic,” he says, staring at me.
I say nothing and drop my eyes but give him a smile before I turn back towards the balcony. I lean over it, looking down, and I hope he’ll stand next to me.
I don’t want to not be beside him. I’m just afraid he’ll see something in my eyes that tells him what I should have just put away. How stupid of me to hold on to it. Let it run its course? Pish. Give me the aspirin.
He sidles up next to me, arms on the balcony, leaning over it. His shoulders feel like a shield even though they aren’t around me.
“Y’are here wi’ Peter,” he says.
“Yes,” I say as I stare at Peter down on the dock with another girl. I hope Hook doesn’t notice; he will if I keep staring at them, so I look up at him instead. “Who are you here with?”
He gives me a long look, and I realise that’s a question I probably don’t really want answered. Morrigan, I think he’s about to say, but he flicks me a little look.
“Me marm.”
“Oh.” I laugh once, and I hope it doesn’t sound relieved. I give him a little shrug. “Most beautiful woman here then.”
He tilts his head in consideration. His mouth pulls, and he stares right at me. “Sure, I d?nnae ken if I agree.”
And somewhere far away, that bag I threw to the floor rattles around, begging to be remembered, but I can’t hear it, and even though it excites me, it incenses me also that he’d say that to me after what he’s put me through.
Of course, he doesn’t know he’s put me through anything, but it’s my right as a woman to hold him in contempt for that which he’s done without his knowledge. Of that I feel quite sure in this moment.
I square my shoulders and stare over at him coolly. “Friends don’t say things like that to one another.”
He swallows and clears his throat. “No.” He clears his throat again. “I s’pose they d?nnae.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “What, then, are you doing?”
Jamison presses his lips together, like there’s something he’d like to say but he’s not saying it.
“Old habits” is what he tells me.
Something about that deflates me, flattens me all the way back down to a pancake.
Old habits. That’s all I am.
“How’s the girl from your ship?” I ask him with a smile that tries its best to be bright, but it’s wilting.
Jamison juts his chin out and shakes his head, disinterested by the question. “I’ve no’ seen her since.”
“Ah.” I nod, clearing my throat as I glance away. “She sounds special.”
My voice is dripping with sarcasm, but it’s all I could muster that wouldn’t lead to tears. Something about that makes it worse.
He shrugs and tosses back his whole drink. Rum. Full glass. Neat.
“A wee bit heavy-handed coming from the girl whose boyfriend is a womanising toddler.”
I roll my eyes at him and give him a dark look. “There you go again, calling me a girl.”
“And there ye go, being one,” he shoots back, and it crushes me.
“Well then.” I lift my shoulders like his words mean nothing to me, like that yoke around my neck I feel all the time whether I’m with him or not isn’t now just choking the life out of me. I flash him a quick smile. “Don’t let me keep you. So many people here…so many women”—I give him a pointed look—“for you to choose from.”