Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
I have got you home again, and I mean to keep you.
“So, this is Hook’s Hideaway?” I follow him up a wooden pier and onto the sandy shore.
He gives me a look over his shoulder. “I’ve never called it that. I don’t know who on my crew did, but if I discover him, he’ll be swabbing the deck by himself for a month.”
My money would be on Starkey, but I don’t mention that.
“This is my home on the island, yes.”
“But your real home is the Jolly Roger?”
“The sea. Has been for almost as long as I can remember.” He climbs a few steps, then turns and offers me his hand.
I take it, and he pulls me alongside him until we reach a wooden platform with ropes around the four corners that are attached to something in the cliff above. “What’s this?”
“Just a little something Smee and I built.” He points through the trees. “We got tired of the stairs.”
I peer through the greenery and barely pick out a staircase hewn into the cliffside. It’s a switchback that moves back and forth for several stories until it disappears into more greenery.
Shaking my head, I say, “I, too, am tired of the stairs, and we only just met.”
He gives me a wry smile, then begins to turn a large hand crank at the back of the wooden platform. It begins to move upwards, and I scoot back until I’m standing beside him in the center.
The ground moves away from us at a frightful pace, and I get a good view of the Jolly Roger and all the pirates disembarking from it. They carry chests and other goods from the ship and load it into the rowboats, all under Smee’s watchful eye.
“Smee hates me,” I blurt.
“No, lass. He doesn’t hate you. He’s just suspicious.” Hook keeps turning the crank, and I can tell it’s getting more difficult the higher we go, because the muscles in his arms begin to show through his shirt.
“Of me?”
“Of course.”
“What? Why?” I put my hands on my hips. “I’m harmless.”
He laughs at that, a hearty one that makes me go warm all over. “You, harmless?” He smiles down at me.
What is this feeling? It’s new. It’s scary. It’s probably just my fear of falling to my death off the side of the platform.
“Smee is the most careful of all my crew. Naturally, he has his misgivings about you. After all, you came to this island under the arm of our greatest enemy. You lived with him, and I’m pretty certain you’d run right back to him if given half a chance.
” His voice sobers on his last words, the smile gone from his lips.
“He thinks I’m a spy?”
“He thinks you could be, yes. He doesn’t want you parroting information back to Pan.”
I mean, it makes sense. I’d still argue I’m harmless—it’s not like I know any inside intel on the Jolly Roger.
Hell, I can barely find my way around the deck, much less have any idea of what lies inside.
But if Smee loves Hook like he seems to, then he’ll want to protect him from every possible threat.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I say quietly.
“You certain?” He focuses on turning the crank. “I’m not so sure.”
“Look, you’re the one who kidnapped me from the Lost Boys and—”
“I saved you from the Lost Boys,” he corrects me.
I wheel on him, hands back on hips. “You didn’t save me. You stole me, and you killed Coy in the process!” I don’t realize I’m shouting until the words are out.
“I told you, lass,” he grates. “What I did was a kindness.”
“How can murder be kindness?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
“He was already dead.”
“He wasn’t!” I step to him, staring up into his deep blue eyes as he stops turning the crank. “He was alive. He helped me. He kept me safe. He was my friend.” My voice breaks on the last word, my eyes filling with tears.
He sighs and runs his free hand through his black hair.
“Listen, lass, I know you won’t believe me when I tell you this, but it’s the truth.
That boy—all those boys—they are well and truly lost. They’re dead.
They died young, most of them so young that they barely remember their parents.
Pan—” Hook’s face sours just at the use of his name. “He takes them when they die.”
“No.” I shake my head. “They aren’t dead. I was there. I was with them. They are living, breathing people. Coy was alive.” I swipe my tears from my cheeks, the hurt still so close to the surface that if it’s grazed, it bleeds. “He was alive,” I whisper.
“All right, lass. All right.” He sighs and returns to the crank, turning faster now as we rise over the trees and hover closer to the edge of the cliff.
I’m stuck in that memory now, unable to see anything except the look in Coy’s eyes as he fell.
He wasn’t dead. I don’t care what Hook says to try to make himself seem less of a villain, I know what I saw.
What I felt. Coy was real. That thought strikes me wrong, though.
Because none of this is real. Not a single solitary bit of this fantasy is the least bit true.
I have to remember that. I keep slipping deeper into it, like I’m being seduced by the make believe of Neverland.
I can’t be her. I won’t be her. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep that damn cinderblock wall at bay. So maybe Hook’s right on some level. None of this is real … which means Coy isn’t either. I rub my temples, a headache threatening to set in.
“Here we are.” He stops cranking, and the platform halts abruptly, hanging so high in the air that I swallow hard.
He jumps a short distance to a rock outcrop. “Come on. You can make it.” He holds out his hand. “Just don’t look—”
I peer between the platform and the rock, then grip hard onto one of the ropes overhead.
“Down.” He grimaces.
“I can’t.” I shake my head vehemently. “Nope. That’s a whole lot of nope.”
“Lass, just breathe. It’s no more than a few feet. Come on.” He steps to the edge of the rock and reaches out for me.
“Don’t! You’re going to fall.” I clench my eyes shut.
“Worried about me, are you?” I can hear the amusement in his tone, and I have the urge to smack him. Not hard. Just enough to wipe the smug look off his face.
“Shut up.”
“I don’t recall a lass as pretty as you ever being worried about me.”
I open my eyes. “Did you just call me pretty?”
“Aye.” He still offers his hand. “Prettiest thing I’ve ever found in any waters.”
I scoff. “You’re just trying to distract me.”
“By telling you the truth?” He waggles his fingers. “Grab on. You can do this.”
Why am I blushing? I feel like my emotions are attached to a boomerang, flying away and then coming right back. I can’t settle down.
“Captain? We’re ready!” Smee calls from far, far, far below.
“I’ll send it back down. Rein it in for now.” Hook always keeps a rather harsh tone with his crew. I have to admit I like it when he uses it on Smee.
“Aye!” Smee calls.
“Look, if you take my hand, I’ll let you hit the lever that’ll send the raft crashing down on Smee’s head, all right?”
“Why would you think that would be an incentive?” I shake my head.
He groans. “I didn’t want to do this.”
“Do what?” I yelp as he jumps back onto the platform, wrenches my hand off the rope, then scoops me into his arms and jumps over the chasm and onto the rock, which draws a bloodcurdling scream from me.
Raucous laughs echo up from below us, and with a sideways kick, Hook hits a lever that sends the wooden raft back down at a mannerly pace.
God, I’m mortified. “Okay, put me down.”
“I lied.” He carries me up a set of stairs.
“About which part?”
“When I said I didn’t want to do this.” He looks down at me with a heated look, one I can feel deep in my ladybits.
I can only stare at him. I can’t deny the current between us, the absolutely electrical connection.
But I don’t want it. Not with him. Not with the man who killed my friend and most likely wants me dead.
These emotions are going to wreck me if I let them.
I have to get back to Peter. Then I’ll sort it all out and figure out how to get back home.
“Are you always at war with yourself like this?” he asks.
“Wh-what?”
“Must be tiring.” He shrugs, which brings me even more tightly against his hard chest.
“I don’t know what you’re talking—” My words break off when I catch a glimpse of the structure ahead.
Past the stone cliffs and into the forest beyond, there’s a clearing with a huge house.
I blink several times, trying to clear my eyes of this absolute impossibility.
But no, the house is still there. It’s like someone went to England, plucked a home off a windswept seashore, and deposited it here on Neverland.
It’s painted in hues of aqua and blue, the woodwork on the sides like mermaid scales.
Hmm, that’s the first time I’ve thought of mermaids and not winced in quite a while.
It’s three stories of intricate beauty with a wide front porch, a swing, and the now familiar Neverland flowers growing all around it.
There’s even a little fountain and pond out front with fish in it.
More homes lie farther back in the trees.
They’re painted in the same style but are smaller cottages that seem to be laid out in a diamond pattern.
“It’s like a little town.” I can barely believe my eyes.
“Don’t worry. We still have buried treasure around here somewhere, and I can make you walk the plank if you’re interested.” He strides right to the big house and climbs the stairs.
The door ahead of us swings open, and a wizened old lady cackles. “Brought you a boon, eh Captain?”
“Okay, that’s it!” I kick my legs to make Hook put me down. It doesn’t work. “Why do people keep calling me a boon?” I point my finger in his face, sending his eyebrows straight up. “I want a straight answer this time. No more bullshit.”
The cackle only grows. “Oh, yes, she’ll fit right in here. Come along, come along. James, put her down! You mustn’t treat a lady so.” She smacks him on the arm, her fingers twisted and spotted with age.
He drops the arm under my legs, which means my front is pressed against him as he slowly lowers me to my feet. I feel every hard inch, and I know for a fact my face is bright red by the time I touch the floor.