Forever Neverland(61)

Wendy didn’t understand. She shook her head, frowning. “What. . . what do you mean?” she asked.

“You’re the reason the sun rose in Neverland, Wendy. You were the ‘X’ that marked the spot.” Hook gently raised his hand again, this time to caress her cheek with the backs of his fingers. Wendy didn’t flinch at the contact. In fact, he felt warm. He felt. . . good. She almost closed her eyes.

She wanted to grasp his hand and hold him closer. Despite everything – despite the gun he’d held to her brother’s head – she wanted to embrace him. How could that be?

She felt her pulse speed up. Her fingers and toes tingled. Her breathing quickened.

“The treasure,” Hook whispered then. Wendy’s world came to a standstill as she drowned in his blue gaze. She knew he was drawing nearer, and could do nothing to stop him. She didn’t want to stop him.

My God, she thought. I don’t want to stop him.

I want. . . . Her lips parted as his left hand gently cupped her chin, and Wendy’s heart fluttered, heat flooding her body. She no longer noticed the storm. She could no longer form any coherent thought at all. All she knew, all she was aware of, was the pirate captain James Hook, and his indomitable closeness.

But just before his lips would have brushed hers, he stopped. And his grip on her chin tightened the slightest bit. “You ran from me,” he whispered. Something dark flickered in his eyes, hardening them like ice. “Why?” he asked, a desperation lacing his voice. “Why must I always play this role?” He looked away from her then, though he did not move. His expression became troubled and distant, despite his retained closeness to her. “Always the villain.”

“I didn’t leave you, Hook,” Wendy told him. She raised her hand to cup the side of his face. He flinched at the touch, but his eyes instantly softened once more. She could see that he was holding his breath. “I didn’t run from you,” she repeated, shaking her head. “It was Peter. I was –”

Hook’s gaze instantly narrowed, freezing at once into a cold, cruel visage. He pulled away from her, leaving her feeling strangely bereft.

“Pan,” he hissed.

Lightning crashed somewhere near by. Wendy glanced up. The storm was returning.

“Of course it was him. It’s always about him,” Hook growled. “This entire bloody world is for Peter Pan.” He spat Peter’s name as if it left a bad taste on his tongue.

“No!” Wendy yelled. “You don’t understand!” She stepped toward him, determined to make him listen to her. “I know what Peter did to you!” She peered up at him through the tears that were suddenly gathering in her eyes. She willed him to listen, to believe. “I know the truth! I know the truth about this!” With a rush, she lunged forward, grabbing the hook on his right hand with both of her slippery, wet fists. “I know what he did!” she cried, screaming now in order to be heard, not only above the returning, building roar of the wind and the rain and the crashing waves below, but by him and his stubborn hatred.

Hook gazed at her through wide eyes and tried to pull away. But she held him fast.

“I know what happened that night!” she continued. “He took your hand out of nothing more than – than – ” She searched for the right words. “Childish, vindictive spite!” she screamed. “And if I were you, Captain James Hook,” she cried, desperation wracking the words from her mouth through sobs of anguished pain. “I would probably hate him too!”

Hook froze in Wendy’s grip, his tall form going solid and still. But his breaths were quick and his brow was furrowed with emotion as he hissed, through clenched teeth. “I can’t be in love with you, Wendy Darling.” He half-whispered, half-screamed. “I can’t love you and be who I am!”

Wendy’s breath hitched in her throat. Her vision tunneled slightly. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

And, at the same time, it was the only thing she was sure of in that moment. In the maelstrom that Neverland had become, Hook was a port in a storm. And he’d just told her that he loved her.

“Then don’t,” Wendy whispered, no longer in control of the words she uttered.

“Just. . . . “ Her gaze skirted to his lips and back again. She felt suddenly at a loss.

Hook, for his part, needed no further hint, no more urging. Time had been champion for too long. A thousand years of misery and hopelessness backed him from behind as he used his hook and the leverage of her grip to yank her forward, into his embrace.

His kiss seared the cold from her body – or, at least, she expected it would have.