My body slices through the air. I feel weightless. Free. Like I could fly, before suddenly, everything rushes me at once. Memories crashing against me like the wind whipping dangerously at my body. Then, suddenly, everything fades to black.

Chapter 2

Hook

“I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind’s back, and then away we’ll go.”

Peter & Wendy

- J.M. Barrie

My teeth grind together as my head lightly sways side to side with the tide. I watch her frame wrestle in her sleep. In her darkness.

Our darkness.

The dream she’s having is relentless on letting her go.

Raising my glass to my lips, I let the rum burn as it slowly slips down the back of my throat while I continue watching. Waiting. Mesmerized and fucking terrorized knowing she’s, once again, by my side.

Wendy Darling, what the fuck am I going to do with you now?

“You can stare at her all you like, never helped you before, it sure as shit isn’t going to help you now,” John, Wendy’s younger brother, says from the shadows in the doorway.

I look up as he enters with a tray, regarding his sister with no more than an irritated shake of his head. He sets her meal down on the table beside the bed, pulls a pack of cigs from his pocket and lights up a smoke.

“Now, Smee, is that any way to welcome a guest back to the Jolly Roger?” My disturbed voice shocks me slightly when it grits out through clenched teeth as my eyes raise and catch his.

I set my glass down on my desk just as the boat rocks harshly against another wake. The wind and storm outside beating against the glass window behind my head. Just like it did when I arrived in London and brought her back with me. It’s almost as if the whole of Neverland is revolting against having Wendy back on the island.

I look to the floor, wrestling with the reality myself. I’m still not sure it was the right choice to make when Tink told me Wendy now lived alone. Her daughters moved across the country. Her husband…well…let’s just say he’s been “taken care of.”

My heart stings at the thought of the man that, for almost two decades, had what I wanted most. The man that took what was always supposed to be mine away. I shake my head, unable to force my thoughts further, to the thought of them sharing a bed. I lean back in my seat, listening to the girl I once loved cry softly in her sleep across the room.

Once loved. Once cherished. That is, before she left me cursed in her absence. Haunted by her memories.