He very well might. We’re not together. We never have been. He has every right to arrive home with other women. He probably will.
I feel sick again.
Seeing Peter with Calla was like stumbling upon a reality I’d been trying to avoid seeing, but seeing Jamison bring home someone else might push me over the edge of a cliff, and this time when I fall, there’ll be no catching me.
There’s no golden-haired boy to break my fall, no giant paw hands to brush away my tears and distract me by whispering to flowers and making them blush.
When Hook comes home soon with a girl on his arm and his hand up her dress, I will be forced to admit that the reason I’m crushed is because I have feelings for him that are so big and so heavy and so impossible for me to deny without also denying some great part of myself that my only option is to be crushed by them.
Or to leave.
I pick the second one.
I’ll figure out another way home. Or I’ll come back in the morning. I’ll find Orson, have him check that the coast is clear, and then I’ll ask for Jamison to find me a way home. That’s what I’ll do, I nod to myself, standing up and going to gather my things. And then I realise I don’t have things, so I roll my eyes at myself, wonder if it would be dangerous to sleep under the dock in this weather or where else I might be able to wait out this horrible storm.
I turn to leave and—
“Daphne?” Hook says, standing in the rain, frowning. I can scarcely tell he’s frowning, what with the monsoon and the lack of light, but I can feel it on him—the frown. “What are ye doing here?”
“I didn’t know where else to go.” I shake my head. I can’t even look at him, I feel so embarrassed. “I need to go home.”
“Aye.” He takes a step towards me. “We cannae go across till the storm passes, but once it—”
“No.” I shake my head. “I need to back to England.”
His brows go low as he stares at me for a few seconds, then he nods his head towards his quarters. “Come inside.”
“No, I want to go home,” I tell him, my voice starting to break a little. It’s because he’s here, and he undoes me.
“Daph, it’s wild out here. Just come inside,” he says again, ushering me in. He closes the door behind us, then turns to face me, and I notice immediately that he doesn’t close the distance between us. “Now, what’s come about?”
“I told you.” I cross my arms over my chest. “I need to go home.”
Jamison shakes his head, brows low, voice firm. “Daphne, what happened?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m banished.”
“Yer what?” His head pulls back. “For why?”
I sigh. “Because he wills it.”
Hook tilts his head, watching me. “Why does he will it?”
I breathe out, frustrated. “He was getting sexual favors from…” My voice trails, and Jamison’s eyebrows go up. I give him a look. “Your favourite girl.”
His face tugs in confusion. “You?”
I roll my eyes. “Calla.”
“Fuck.” His face falls for me. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
I cross my arms over my chest tightly and breathe out of my mouth because I’m cold.
“Yeah,” I say to the other side of the room before I glance over at him. “It’s okay.”
His brows flicker. “Is it?”
I nod. “I think that it should have crushed me, but it just made me cross.”
He says nothing for a few seconds, just watches me. “Why?” he asks eventually.
“I don’t know?” I shrug. “I’m indignant or something, that he has all these rules and expectations and he’s a hypocrite and a liar and—”
“But yer no’ sad?” Jamison clarifies, holding my eyes with his.
And I can feel it happening as his gaze is on me. The kink in my brow, the scowl that’s been on my face since I saw Peter starts to melt off me, and my face starts to soften to a bloom just because he’s watching me.
I shake my head, but barely. “Not sad.”
His eyes don’t move from me, but he nods before he notices my trembling hands.
My whole trembling self, actually.
“Shit.” He moves towards me. “Ye must be founthered.” He crosses that space that separates me from him and unhooks the cloak that’s around my neck, and it falls heavy and soaked to the floor with a slosh. “We need t’ get ye out o’ these.” He starts undoing the buttons at the front of my dress, and I freeze still because his hands are on me. He gets about midway down my chest before his hand hovers at the button. “Do ye hae anything on underneath that?” he asks that specific button.