“Or,” she hisses and my eyes flash back to meet hers. “Is this just another one of your sick games?” I suck in a deep breath as my eyes widen. “Make-believe?” She taunts. “Pretend? Because, I do remember how much you never understood the difference between the two. You say I’m the fool, but you never believed enough in what you should, and turned your back on…”

“Don’t say it!”

“Why? Because it’s the truth?”

My hands shake, this time for different reasons than rage. For reasons I’ve always found hard to understand. I close my eyes, willing the visions away. She doesn’t know I know, my heart screams. Looking quickly back in her eyes, I realize that might be the biggest lie standing between us right now. Maybe the biggest lie always standing between us.

“Always running,” she seethes. “Always flying away from what matters most.”

“I never ran away from you.”

“You never followed either.”

“Didn’t I?” I hiss.

She grows silent. Nervous. She can try to deny it all she wants, but she knows that’s a huge lie. Her eyes drift low between us as my teeth grind together viciously the longer I wait her out.

“Seems to me we’re both dancing around the same truth,” my heated comment condemns both of us quietly. “Neither of us wants to admit when the truth actually becomes very clear.”

Her gaze lifts hesitantly to mine. She glares at me as a scowl darkens her features. “And how clear is it to you? Obviously, not very. Not when you have me here, once again making me do your dirty work for you, because you can’t seem to grow up enough to do it yourself.”

Fisting the ropes around her middle, something inside me snaps as I pull her backward a few steps. Quickly sitting down on a nearby rock, she struggles to break free, digging her feet into the sand, using all her power to stop me. Flinging her across my knee, she lands with a sharp exhale and shouts out my name in warning.

But it’s not Hook or Peter that leaves her lips. It’s the cold use of my last name that rings through my ears. So impersonal, so distant, when my Wendy has never been so far removed from me. From us.

My Wendy.

I haven’t thought of her like that in years. My thoughts have only been filled with hatred for what she stole from me. For what she pushed away because she didn’t wait for me. Because she turned her back on me, a second time, when I couldn’t immediately give her what she wanted.

My Wendy.

I look down at her and instantly something inside softens at the thought of her once being mine. Against my better judgment, I lean forward and whisper into her ear, “Easy, Darling. Or I’ll let them watch.”