“I couldn’t, not after I had to let you go,” she starts to cry. “I searched for it endlessly in the garden below my window until I found it.”

“You don’t know how happy it makes me to see it, sitting again on your finger.” I brush my thumb back and forth across the metal like I did the first day I put it on her hand. Her palm shakes in mine. Her body trembles.

“You don’t know everything…”

“I know enough.” She shakes her head again; a sob escapes her lips as she burrows her face further into my shoulder.

She’s right. I don’t know anything. I don’t know much past waiting day and night, in Kingston Gardens. Going to her house when I thought it was clear only to be turned away, time and time again, by her mother or the nurse. I don’t know more than the rage that filled my veins, the day I saw her finally emerge with him. The man I thought I killed, then was forced to watch him touch, once again, what was mine.

He paid his dues alright. Eventually.

The thing is, I don’t need to know more. What I finally realize about Wendy being my beginning and my end is, there is no need to worry about the middle. My life began with her, and it will end with her. All the rest can go ahead and fuck right off. She’s everything to me. Nothing she has to say can change that.

“I need to tell you…”

“You need to tell me nothing,” I insist as I pull her closer.

“But, Peter,” she pulls back and looks me in the eyes, my resolve crumbling more and more, every time she calls me by my name. Every time the word leaves her mouth, more and more of the darkness fades. Jas Hook will always be a part of me. But Wendy will always bring out my best side. It’s a truth I can no longer run from. One I don’t want to fly away from. Not anymore.

“Do you want me to tell you everything about the past seventeen years you weren’t here with me in Neverland?” She startles, the fog starting to lift a little bit more out of her beautiful eyes. “About Tinker Bell. Tiger Lily. A promise I broke. A darkness that I couldn’t help but succumb to.”

“But I forced you to it...”

“Just like, I’m sure, I did the same to you.”