Neverland (18 page)

“By the fairies, yes. They gave it to me in a chest with the key. But it’s not just any watch. It was my father’s.
Our
father’s.” I let go of her and continue to descend the rocky tongue of land. The half moon reflects in the water beside us. Without its light, it would be too dark to even see my hand in front of my face now.

“You know,” I hear Angel from behind, “ever since we met Peter in the jungle, I was wondering how you could be brothers and still hate each other so.”

“We’re only half brothers. That’s why.” This is really a part of my life that I don’t like talking about, but if I want Angel to understand, there’s no other choice. “My mother was twenty when she met my father. She fell in love with him in an instant. He was a charming man.” I realize the irony of what I’m going to say next and grin at Angel over my shoulder. “He was a pirate.”

She smiles back.

“Within the year, she had me. As I grew up, I didn’t see my father very often, but I do remember how proud he was when he brought me to his ship for the first time. I was around five then.” I think I hear something in the water, so I stop and listen, but the sea is calm. There’s no mermaid around yet. I sigh and walk on. “My mother died when I was twelve.”

Angel’s fingers tighten around my hand. “I’m sorry, Jamie.”

I nod in the dark, accepting her compassion. “My father never came back for me after that and it didn’t take me long to find out why. Shortly after he met my mother, he fell in love with another woman. They had a son, too.”

“Peter,” Angel gasps. “It must have been hard to find out when you were already grieving over your mother’s death.”

It was like a slap in my face. I had never felt that broken before. And never again afterward. Clenching my jaw, I let go of Angel’s hand. “I didn’t care.”

We reach the pointy land’s end. Here’s a good place to sit and wait for the fish girls to show up. I step to the last rock then help Angel down. She studies my face as if searching for the truth I try to hide. To escape her gaze, I lower to the smooth rock that still bears the warmth of the day, but she squats in front of me and places her hands on my bent knees. “How much older than Peter are you?”

This could be fun, I realize with a notch of sarcasm. “How old do you think I am, Angel?”

“I don’t know. Around twenty-three or a little older.”

I laugh. The sound scares me, because it’s filled with pain. “I’d just turned nineteen when Peter decided to stay a child forever and therewith changed the fate of everyone living in Neverland.”

At my words, Angel tips to her side and lands on her behind. Yeah, she didn’t expect me to be so young. But then I’ve been nineteen for so long, I lost count of the years.

“Do you know why Peter made that decision?”

Sadly, I do. “After I found out the truth, I gave Peter hell. I hated him with a passion for stealing my father.”

“But it wasn’t his fault.”

So what? It wasn’t my fault either, goddammit. “I was a kid. All I knew was that my mother had died and my father chose a different son over me.”

“I see.” Scooting closer, Angel leans her head against my shoulder and takes my hand, intertwining our fingers. “Did Peter know you two were half brothers?”

I stare at our joined hands for a long moment. “Not at first. One day down by the shore, I had him on the ground with my knee on his chest. He begged me to let him go. I didn’t. He cried at my face, ‘Why are you doing these things to me?’”

“Did you tell him?”

I shake my head. “Not that day.”

Her head tilts up and I feel her gaze on my face. “When did he find out?”

“I told him a couple years later, after I had sliced his arm with a dagger from the elbow to his shoulder.” Pausing at this particular memory, I feel my throat tighten. The day ended with a tragedy. “Peter was stunned by the revelation. For the first time since I had lost my mother—and my father—I felt a small bit of victory over Peter.”

“What happened then?”

Suddenly I feel cold. I know it’s not from the night, but from the pictures surfacing in my mind. Longing for a little comfort, I move my arm behind Angel and pull her in front of me to have her sitting between my legs like last night. She curls up against my chest and skims her fingers over my heart in caressing circles. I stroke her back up and down. “When he came around,” I tell her in a lower voice than before, “he ran home and asked his mother about it. She had no idea.”

“It destroyed their family?”

“Worse. When Peter’s mother found out about me—about her husband lying to her all those years—it was too much for her to cope. She ran to a cliff and jumped, trying to end her life.”

Angel stiffens in my arms. I wrap them tighter around her. No matter what she thinks of me right now, I don’t want her to move away from me. She’s warm. She’s my comfort. “Our father was close behind her, but he couldn’t reach her in time. He wanted to save her and jumped, too. None of them came out of the water again.” I pause and dip my head to smell her soft hair. “Peter and I were there. We saw it happen.”

A melancholy silence lasts for minutes between us. Then Angel takes my hand and places a kiss on my knuckles. “I can only imagine how it would kill me if I ever lost
my
family. My sisters. It must have been so hard for you two to deal with this.”

I’ve never looked at Angel’s situation from her side, what she’s going to lose when she can’t go home. I drag in a long breath and tell her, “It was hard for me. But it was
impossible
for Peter. You see, for one, there was me, who’d tortured him all through his childhood. Then there was our father who built this bubble of lies. And in the end there was his own mother who didn’t even think about him when she made that fatal decision to jump. It destroyed him. He needed a way to escape. And found it with the hex. Forever a child, he thought, he didn’t have to deal with his loss. Children play. They forget. So did Peter. And the Pan was born.”

“Poor Peter. It must take a lot for a child to make a desperate decision like he did. And I’m sorry about your family, too, Jamie.”

“Don’t be. It all happened a very long time ago. I don’t think about it often.” The mood has gone downward for long enough. I don’t want her to feel sorry for me, and I don’t want to dwell on my past anymore, so I force a smile and add, “Unless, once in a while, a strange young woman comes from a different world and turns my life upside down.”

Angel catches on my change of mood and grins. “Yeah, I’ve heard such things happen from time to time. Especially when these women need rescuing from a deadly trap in the jungle.”

Her words carry me back to that night. Particularly to the moment when Peter turned his back on her. He was so hurt. And I’d just now figured out why. “Did you know that you look a lot like Peter’s mother? You have the same dark hair and big brown eyes. I think you remind him of her.”

Angel hums a
hm
. “It might be the reason why he was so angry when I said I wanted to go back to my world.”

“And then he saw you with me and he thought you’d betrayed him, like his mother did when she left him alone.”

“Yes. It makes sense. He still misses her. And I guess you’re missing your family, too.” She picks a stone from the gap between the rocks next to her and tosses it into the waves. “So now you want that chest with your father’s watch back for…a memento?”

I reach for a handful of pebbles too and toss them, telling her, “I want to find it so I can destroy it.”

“Why would you do that?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Try.”

All right. I settle back against the big rock behind me and gaze at the stars. “When Peter decided to never grow up, it was such a grave wish that it affected all of Neverland. No one has aged a day ever since then. Life on this isle continues, just not the way you would expect it. Even though people do different things every day, they aren’t getting on with their lives. It’s an endless loop and nobody notices.”

“Nobody? Why do you know about it then?”

“I was wondering that myself.” For years and years. It’s still weird to go to the port and see the same woman pregnant for decades, or the children never growing older. No one gets born, no one dies. It’s all the same, every new damn day. “My only answer is that it must be linked to us being brothers. Or maybe because I was the one who started it by destroying his family. Who knows?” I let go of a long sigh. Not even the fairies would tell me why I’m the only one who feels odd when everyone else is happy every new morning.

“When I first met Peter and the Lost Boys, they told me about you,” Angel says softly.

I grin and brush the tip of her nose with my finger. “Mean and ugly, I know.”

That makes her laugh. “Yes. But it’s different. I mean different from what you told me. Peter thinks this is all just a game. He doesn’t take you seriously.”

“M-hm.” I nod. “That’s what I meant before. Children forget. Our fights have become a game for him. Stealing my treasure was his greatest coup. Unfortunately, he stole the chest with it.”

“Why did you keep the watch in a chest anyway? If you wanted to destroy it and undo the spell, you should have done so the first chance you got.”

“That wasn’t possible. I can’t destroy the charm. Only Peter can because he initiated it. I was trying to find a way to make him do it.” I shrug. “As you see, I failed.”

“He thinks something very dear to you is inside that chest.”

I waggle my brows deviously at her. “He’s right.”

Angel sits up on her knees and looks me sternly in the eyes. She pouts sweetly then her brows knit together in the mockery of accusation. I don’t know if I should take her serious now or if she’s going to laugh at me. Then she smacks me playfully on the shoulder. “So you didn’t really want to help me find my home to make up for being so cruel in the jungle, you rascal! All the time, you only wanted the location of the chest’s hiding place.”

I lean forward with a smirk and slip my hand to the back of her neck. “Of course.” Then I yank her closer and kiss her delectable lips.

Nothing ever tasted as good as Angel. I nibble and kiss her bottom lip until she starts to smile against my mouth and kisses me back. Her shyness of last night entirely gone, she lets me pull her into me, sits between my legs again and digs her fingers into my shirt.

I feel a longing for this girl I can barely control. Finding her hands, I lace my fingers with hers from the back and move them up to my open collar. I want to feel her skin on mine, if only this little part of it. Her hands are cotton-soft, her fingers exploring. They crawl up behind my neck and run through my hair. Shudders of pleasure race through me. I do the same to her, letting her silky hair flow through my splayed fingers. Angel is amazing. She
feels
amazing. I never want to let her go.

Tracing my tongue first over her bottom lip then over her top lip, I explore every little bow and valley of them. They are perfect to kiss. I skim her hair aside and hook it behind her ear. There’s a spot right behind that I know makes her shiver when I kiss it. It’s been tempting me all day. Seductively slow, I run my tongue all the way around the shell of her ear. Angel giggles and the expected shiver travels through her body. It’s exhilarating. I take her earlobe between my teeth and nibble. Delicious.

“You’re a ruthless man, James Hook,” she whispers as I trail a path of kisses down the column of her throat.

It makes me chuckle against her downy skin. “Yes, I am.” And she hasn’t even seen half of it yet. But she’s also the only person in my world who gets to see
this
side of me. The side that tempts me to lose myself. My pirate side starts to crumble in front of her. And I’m in no hurry to pick up the pieces.

I lean back, dragging her with me. Our kiss turns deep and salacious, our tongues sliding against each other in slow, demanding moves. I want to eat her up, drink her in and breathe all of her. However many more days I have with her, they can never be enough. Angel fits against me like she’s my long-missed other part. Everything is perfect about her. She completes me. I hold her tighter, afraid this is only a dream and she’ll be gone when I open my eyes.

But when I blink, she’s still here. And she smiles at me. “You look surprised.”

I press a soft kiss to her brow. “Not surprised. Just happy.” For once. After a very long time.

Angel giggles again. I love that sound. “Has that anything to do with me?” she teases.

“It has all to do with you,” I confess and stroke her soft hair out of her face.

Her warm smile returns. “I like that.” Covered with my cape, she nestles against me. I hold her tight and start to draw small circles at the back of her neck with my fingers. After some time, I just shape my palm to the side of her face and skim my thumb back and forth over her cheekbone. Her body twitches a couple of times as she drifts off to sleep in my arms. I don’t stop caressing her.

Hours tick away. Slowly the moon wanders from my left to my right. In the distance the stars blink like they’re smirking down at me. I bend one knee and rest my arm on it. The night sky has never been more beautiful.

A heavy tiredness creeps over me. To keep a tight watch on the sea for any sign of the mermaids, I can’t allow myself to follow Angel to the land of dreams. I ignore the pull of sleep and in my mind relive the time I’ve had with her instead. It’s been only three days, but when I press a kiss to the top of her head and rest my cheek against it, feeling her content sigh against my chest, it seems like we’ve know each other far longer than that.

The sea is calmest shortly before dawn, so I realize I’ve been sitting with Angel for the entire night. And though my bones are stiff and cold and my back hurts, I enjoyed every minute of it.

“Thanks for trying to help me, Jamie,” she mumbles.

Hearing her voice again after the silent hours brings a smile to my face. “You’re welcome.” I caress her hair. “Did you sleep well?”

“No, it’s never been there.”

“What?” I frown and look down at her face. Her eyes are still closed. “Angel?”

“It’s the wrong place,” she whispers. “Not in the jungle.”