It’s something I fear has altered the boy I once knew in a way I will never understand. Never grasp. In a way that threatens both my future and what we once had.

Something I’ve been holding onto for all these years, never giving up hope. As pathetic as it is, I always prayed one day he’d come back for me. Staring in his eyes now, I fear I will never get the boy I once knew back. The boy I loved.

All of his light. His darkness. His good and his bad.

He had been forever seventeen long before I ever was. Long before he stole me away to Neverland, when I was the same age as him, all those years ago. Long before I lost myself in him, fell in love with the myth before being discarded as if I meant nothing when a choice I had to make called me home.

Yes, I left, but he could’ve come with me. We could have still been happy.

When we both haven’t spoken for far too long, I inhale hope and release all fear as my gaze falls to his lips.

“You’ve changed,” I whisper, and another wicked smile tugs at his mouth. “You’re not...”

“Listen to me, Darling. Listen close,” he murmurs, his thumb caressing softly across my mouth before he pulls it down harshly on my bottom lip, silencing any rebuttal I can make.

He tugs his thumb down further, smearing my lipstick as his tongue greedily runs across his lips. His eyes are trained on my mouth as our chests rise and fall quickly. Our breathing synced. The temptation between us shows to be just as strong as it’s always been, even after all these years.

“When you left, everything changed,” he hisses.

His gaze rises and he steals my breath away. The darkness has cleared, the light blue eyes I fell in love with almost two decades ago stare back at me.

“Darkness is all I know now,” he whispers. “A darkness you made. One you created.”

I go to speak but he stops me by placing a finger against my lips.

“I can’t find it,” he confesses, his voice shaking as demons surface in his eyes. It’s another slight break in the new man that’s holding me in his arms. A man that is still so much and yet, so little the boy I fell in love with. “I need you to help me find it.”

Find what?

“Do I have a choice?” I blurt out.

Anger brews in the pit of my stomach for all the years that have passed since I last saw him. As much as it hurts me to see him suffer, I’ve suffered too. I know, I don’t have any clue what I’m getting myself into, especially since I have no clue what he’s lost.

Or do I?