Her face flushes a dark red before turning so pale, the longer we stand in silence, that I worry what I said might have killed her. No. Not possible. That’s some sort of make-believe bullshit that Peter would have thought up. Shaking my head, I take a step forward and go against my better judgment of sticking to the plan and why we both came here, because once again, the need to treat her tenderly starts to surface in my mind, and quickly takes over my brain. My heart.

“Darling…”

“Wendy,” she shouts and my eyes flash up to meet hers. “Wendy. Not Darling. You lost the right to call me that name a long time ago.”

Glaring at her, I take a deep breath and contemplate what to say next.

“Fine, I regress,” I smile. “If you insist on acting like a little girl, I suppose I should call you by a name more fitting.”

She keeps telling me I’m the boy incapable of growing up, but she’s obviously no better herself.

I watch as her eyes flare with anger, only fueling my decision to treat her like the brat she’s become. She crosses her arms over her chest, waiting for me to continue. Bringing my smoke up to my lips, I take a long inhale. The tip of the cigarette glows red as it sparks and cracks, my lungs fill up with an addiction I’ve acquired since she’s been gone. I study her over the butt end of my smoke, watching her grow more impatient. Her eyes flash from mine to the object between my fingers more than once before she huffs, stomps her foot, then pushes past me towards the ledge overlooking the forest.

Throwing my smoke to the ground, I curse under my breath, turn, and feel myself cave, give into her once again when I’ve promised myself so many times that I wouldn’t.

“Wendy, I…” but before I can finish, the floor falls out from under her and she starts to tumble off the cliff. My eyes widen as she turns back my way and then quickly scrambles to keep her footing as the rocks fall away to the ditch hundreds of feet below us.

“Peter!”

“Fuck me.”

Swaying and bending out across the ledge, I grab a hold of a swinging vine and shout, “Wendy! Grab this in three. Two. One!”

The vine swings out, misses, and comes right back to me faster than before. She cries out in fear, the rocks quickly tumbling out from under her as she claws at the ground that’s left, trying to keep from joining them in the abyss below.

“What are you doing?” she demands. “This isn’t time for games, Peter. Catch me. Fly out to me!”