“The difference between us, Pan, is you believe everything and blame everyone else but yourself.” His hand on the rope shakes slightly. Is that anger, or fear staring back at me in his eyes? Before I can decide, I go on. “Me? I believed in the wrong boy at the wrong time.” I swear I see hurt flash through his bitter gaze, but his eyes begin to darken a moment later, washing away all feeling, any clue that his heart is actually beating at all after all this time. “It cost me more than he will ever know because,” I take a deep breath, take a small step closer, and whisper just between the two of us, “he’ll never be man enough to understand what he once lost.”

He scowls as he looks to the floor for a moment. The lost boys attempt to come closer, but he holds his hand up stopping them for the time being. When his gaze lifts and finds mine, a sadness fills his expression. It strangles my heart, tempts it to break for him. But I hold strong. Hold onto the past. All the hurt and pain that losing him inflicted on me all those years.

“Believing in everything means not living in denial, Darling,” he softly says back with a frown. “As for blame, my intentions with you were always honorable. Your refusal to accept the past, to be honest with yourself, will always bring you more shame than any pain, any suffering, I could ever inflict.”

He looks beyond my shoulder, a menacing grin stretching across his face as he studies the lost boys just a few steps away.

“The boy I knew would never disgrace me for his own victory.”

His eyes flash back to mine in an instant. A bitter resentment stares back at me as his jaw ticks with rage.

“The boy you knew lost everything. His fall from grace was your doing.” He leans in close, and his breath falls across my lips in a heated, passionate, anger that has my head spinning. “You humiliate me with your lies, Darling. The lies you tell yourself. The way you tarnish our past. You’ll always win, Wendy. Because fools surround themselves with lies so they don’t have to look at the truth.” My body begins to shake slightly, my knees grow weak as the past comes crashing back to the present suddenly. He cocks his head to the side and smiles. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”

“What?” I exhale on a shaky breath.

“Realizing your own world is full of make-believe, pretend.” His grin deepens, his eyes lowering, studying me, roaming over every inch, every curve of my face. “I’m not the only one who has been living a lie, Wendy. I’m not what’s always been wrong. It’s time you fucking accept that.”

Chapter 9

Wendy

“...Peter’s peculiarities, which was that, in the middle of a fight, Peter would suddenly change sides.”