Percival gives me a little kiss on the cheek and Holden just waves.
They leave and Peter stares at me.
I swallow. “Was that true what he said?”
“What?” Peter frowns.
I cross my arms over myself, feeling stupid that I’m having to say it. “That you love me.”
Peter shrugs like it’s no big deal. “Yeah.”
My heart surges in this strange way.
It’s not pure excitement. I’m not happy that he loves me because he loves me; I’m happy he loves me like I’m shipwrecked out at sea and he is the first bit of land I’ve seen in weeks.
I’m excited not to drown anymore.
I lift my eyebrows with a cautious, choppy hope. “Do you really?”
Peter nods solemnly.
“And you’ll stop with Calla properly? And the mermaids? You’ll be mine, and I’ll be yours, and that’s all?”
He nods again, his eyes all big.
“Do you promise?” I stare up at him.
He reaches for my hand. “I promise, girl.”
“Okay.” I nod.
A smile spreads over his face, and he looks down at me, pleased with himself.
I stand on my tiptoes and press my lips into his cheeks. I pull back a tiny bit, hovering over his skin.
“Peter,” I whisper.
He doesn’t move a muscle. “Yeah?”
I stretch my body as tall as it’ll go to reach his ear to tell him quietly, “There is so much more.”
He pulls back a little bit, eyes busy all over my face. “Show me.”
I look up at him with eyes that look heavy with lust, but actually, they’re just heavy. “Gladly.”
And then I throw myself into him, like a wave I’m trying to drown in.
I guess that’s mostly true.
His kisses feel like he’s starving, and I do my best to kiss him back the same way, even though I feel like I just ate.
My hands drop below his belt, which they’ve never done before, and it doesn’t much feel like the kind of thing I’d do, but then, I don’t much want to feel like the person I was when I loved Jamison Hook.
I want to feel different, rid of him, untethered from whatever it is that’s tying me to him.
Peter grabs my hips and lifts me up around his waist, and for a moment, it feels like we’re falling backwards but I realise we’re actually just flying.
He floats me through the house and outside, where lays me down in a bed of clover, and then his hands run down my body and up the dress Jamison bought me.
That makes him pause—the dress I’m wearing. “Can we take this off?” He looks down at it, face scrunched. “I hate it.”
I nod quickly. “I hate it too.”
His eyes flicker over me again, and he looks troubled. “You look like you’re his,” Peter tells me as his brow bends in the middle, and I wonder if I hear a tiny bit of insecurity in his voice.
“But I’m just yours.” I slip my arms around his neck.
He nods quickly and swallows. “Swear?”
I nod back. “I swear.”
Speaking it into being, I suppose… I might not be yet, but I will be soon.
Soon I will rid myself of everything good I have ever thought or felt about Jamison Hook.
Peter breathes out a breath I didn’t realise he was holding, then gives me a pleased smile and pulls out his knife.
It catches in the moonlight, and for the splittest of seconds, there’s this stab of worry that pushes through me, and I feel the adrenaline rush to my fingers that maybe he’s just going to gut me and I’ll die tonight anyway, and in that same brief second, I decide it doesn’t matter, really. Dying is dying. Kill me figuratively, kill me literally—there are so many ways to die. Maybe that’s why it’s an adventure? At the hands of Peter Pan, that’s an okay way to go, I tell myself as I eye that knife hovering above me that he swooshes down towards me and—tear!—he slashes my dress in two. Just like he did my poster the night we met.
I sigh, relieved.
Peter stares down at my body, eyes wandering all fascinated.
His index finger grazes my stomach, and he tilts his head. “I’m the only one who’s touched you, right?”
I nod, and I suppose I’m a liar now. “Right.”
His eyes search over my face, and then they pinch a little bit. “I know you think I did more with Calla.”
I start shaking my head. “I don’t care—” I tell him.
“Some things we did,” he says, speaking loudly over me. “I didn’t do the most with her.”