Pan's Revenge (22 page)

The door to my bedroom stands open. It might
be an invitation. Or it could also be Angel’s way of making sure
she had a fast escape route if need be. When I catch the first
glimpse of her, my heart comes to a total standstill. She’s
kneeling on the floor in front of my bed, staring at the door that,
after all this time, is still out of its hinges.

It’s impossible to say what she sees there,
but she looks lost in yet another world. I approach with caution.
Reluctance overcomes me in the doorway and I stop, leaning one
shoulder against the frame.

Angel doesn’t pay me any notice, so I just
stand here and watch her. The nostalgia that comes with the
memories of her in my room constricts my chest. I want to close the
door behind me and lock the both of us in here forever. Of course,
this isn’t an option.

Now that she’s back in Neverland, I really
don’t know what to do with her. She must hate me. She must want to
go back home. And eventually I’ll have to give in to that. But for
now I’m just happy I can look at her.

After some
time, she heaves a sigh, and I knock gently against the wooden
frame. Her gaze flickers briefly to me, then back to where it had
lingered for the past few minutes. Her silence is driving me
insane.

“
Why are you
in my cabin?” I ask with a soft voice.

There’s a tick in her jaw that makes me
wonder if she’s angry or just trying to close off from me, but when
she speaks, she only sounds as lost as she looked before. “I was
hoping I could put a puzzle together.”

“Any success with that?” When she shakes her
head, I offer, “Maybe I can help.”

She slowly blinks her eyes but gives me no
answer.

“Mind if I come in?”

“It’s your room,” she says no louder than I
had.

I accept the invitation that probably wasn’t
really one and step into my quarters. Instead of walking all the
way to her, I stop after a couple of steps and lower to my knees,
sitting on my haunches, facing her. Avoiding my gaze, she falls
back to maddening silence. It makes me want to grab her shoulders
and shake the words right out of her mouth.

Patience has
never been my strength, but since time seems to be the one thing
Angel needs right now, I do my best. And she certainly exploits it.
After some minutes, I start to grind my teeth to keep myself from
saying whatever shit is forming in my mind.

“What’s with that door?” Her tender voice
shocks me out of my struggle.

I hesitate a second with my answer and try to
keep my tone equally soft when I tell her, “I broke it.”

“I know you did.” She slowly turns her head
my way. “And I was here when it happened. Wasn’t I?”

Her last
question settles like a pile of glowing coals in my chest. So
insecure but at the same time full of hope. It’s almost like
she
wants
me to say yes.

I smile and nod.

“I thought so.” She nods too, as if she needs
the gesture to assure herself before her gaze drifts back to the
broken door. “But I can’t recall it all.”

Luckily, the memory is still as vivid in my
mind as if all the fighting and shouting happened only this
morning. With my head tilted and my hands braced on my thighs, I
wait for her to look at me again. “We had a fight. You came after
me with a dagger that I’d carelessly left in this room. When you
pointed it at my throat I wanted to kiss you so bad it hurt.”

The need in
my voice surprises the both of us. Dammit, maybe it helps to show
her just how serious I am about this. “Later that morning, when we
had another argument and you were wrenching the word
sorry
from
me, you slammed the door closed on my face. I got mad and kicked it
open. I thought you had locked it.” I grimace. “But you
hadn’t.”

Angel takes a
deep breath. Her gaze doesn't waver from mine, but I can see how
much the words that want to come out next trouble her. Hands
clasped in her lap, she swallows then asks with a small voice,
“When did we kiss for the first time?”

Stunned, I stare so hard at her that a
beguiling blush creeps to her cheeks.

She can’t
hold my gaze very long and lowers her head, obviously feeling the
need to explain. “Evidently the kiss down in my garden wasn’t our
first. I could tell by the way you went on about it.” Her blush
deepens as she cuts a quick glance back at me. Her voice is barely
a whisper now. “So intimate.”

Her shyness makes me smile, while my heart
knocks in a triumphant flourish. “You’re right. I kissed you
before, on that very same day of our argument. It was late at night
and we were pretty much the only ones on deck.” When the memory of
Smee interrupting the best moment of my life returns, I huff, “With
a few disturbances that is.”

Angel takes a couple of minutes to process
this new bit of information. She falls so still that I want to help
her breathe. Suddenly she croaks, “You took something from me.
Something small.” Closing her eyes, she obviously struggles to
remember. “It looks like a piece of paper.”

“
The
travelcard,” I tell her and laugh. If she remembers that little
thing, we can’t be far from discovering the rest for her. Pumped
with joy, I crawl toward her on the floor, but she backs away like
a spider. I stop, trying to hide my disappointment. “Sorry, I
didn’t—don’t want to scare you. It’s just…you do remember,
right?”

Angel looks only half convinced. “It’s all so
vague. Almost like I was a witness at this scene but can only see
it through a haze now. It doesn’t feel like I was really there but
the pictures are in my mind.” Her shoulders sink and she tilts her
head, looking forlorn and puzzled. “How can this be?”

There are
about six feet separating us. Far too much distance. I want to
reach out and pull her into my lap, hold her and whisper everything
into her ear until she remembers exactly who I am. But this is
hardly the right way to make her trust me. It would ruin
everything, and we’ve already come so far.

“Why don’t we try to get to your memory from
a different angle?” I suggest. “Maybe it helps if you tell me
everything you can see in those pictures in your mind, and I can
explain where they come from.”

She sighs,
but it’s not one of those sounds that make you feel frustrated.
It’s a sigh full of surrender. A wonderful sound. And then she
starts to talk. “I see you and me, but you look different.” Her
gaze drops to the foreign pants I’m wearing on the fairy’s advice
then shifts back up to my face. “The only thing I can see clearly
is your eyes. I remember their vibrant blue. The rest is…covered?”
She makes such a hopeful face that it’s hard for me to stay where I
am and not touch her. “Sorry, I know it doesn’t really make
sense.”

“Oh, it might make more sense than you’d
believe. I used to wear a hat back then, but you didn’t like
it.”

“How do you know I didn’t?”

I chuckle, rubbing the back of my neck. “You
told me so on a couple occasions.”

She stares at me for a long moment. Then her
eyes narrow. “You scared me,” she breathes.

My stomach drops. Why, of all things, does
she have to remember this first? I let go of a long sigh. “Yes, I
did. I wasn’t very nice to you at the beginning. That’s why you
came after me with the dagger, actually.”

Her gaze bores into mine. Suddenly a small
smile plays on her lips. “And you brushed it off like it was
nothing.”

The air freezes in my lungs. “What did you
just say?”

I DON’T KNOW
what it was exactly that managed to lift the fog in my mind, but
once I start to remember, it all comes back like an avalanche. Even
though it’s rather my feelings for James Hoo
k that come back than the memories of entire
situations.

“We were sitting on the wooden boxes on deck
when you kissed me first, weren’t we? And I was wearing your
cape.”

His face lights up as he nods.

“
I
wanted
you
to kiss me, right?”

“I’ve never forced myself on a woman,” he
growls through a smirk.

That’s something I can easily believe. Ever
since the first moment our eyes met in the street in front of my
house I wanted him to kiss me. I even let him shortly before he
kidnapped me. And nothing ever felt so right before. But there’s so
much more to discover. So many things still don’t make sense. Most
of all the fact that I remember Peter as a boy and not the man that
he is now. “How much time has passed since I left Neverland last
time?”

“About three months.”

That’s exactly the time that passed since my
fall from the balcony. But if back then five days in Neverland
equaled five minutes in London, something must have changed. My
theory about me getting back to my world at the moment when I left
starts to crumble.

“It still hasn’t fully returned, has it?”

“Hm?” Hook’s question startles me out of my
musing as much as the fact that he suddenly kneels in front of me,
far closer than before. “What do you mean?”

“
Your memory.
You’re struggling with something. And I know that look of yours.”
He smiles and lifts my chin with his finger. “I lost
you.”

A sigh escapes me. “Being in
Neverland—again—doesn’t make sense on either end.” I wonder if it
ever will. “There are flashes of you, pirates on deck, strange
women.” My brows knit together at the image of a girl with long
dark hair and a fishtail. “Did I ever talk to a mermaid?”

When he
chuckles, I cross my arms over my chest and glare at him. “It’s
nice that my confusion amuses you, but I’d rather get some
answers.”

The chuckle turns into a laugh. I like that
sound. As he rises from the floor, my gaze follows him until he
towers over me and holds out one hand. “Come on, Miss London.
You’re in for a story.”

Reluctantly, I slide my hand in his and he
gently closes his fingers around mine. Then he pulls me to my
feet.

Way too close, I’m suddenly standing flush to
his body. His hand placed at the small of my back, he makes sure
there’s no space between us. I shape my palms to his firm chest,
because the nearness startles me, but it’s not uncomfortable. And
then his forehead dips to mine.

“I’ve been dreaming of this for so many
nights,” he whispers. “You don’t know what you did to me when you
left.”

Being in the arms of James Hook feels more
than just right. It feels perfect. But the shiver his touch sends
along my spine makes me aware that I know nothing about him yet.
“You promised me a story,” I tease in a shy voice.

He strokes my hair away from the side of my
face and brushes it behind my ear. His fingers there make my skin
tingle. Everything points at him going to ignore my weak protest,
but a few heartbeats later, one corner of his mouth tilts up in a
lovely, taunting way. “And a story you shall get.”

Not letting go of my hand, he sits down on
the edge of his bed and pulls me closer. I don’t know what to do,
because for a moment the urge to lower onto his lap overcomes me.
But that would be too awkward, even if there might have been a time
when I did this and liked it.

“It all started with an apple. I sort of
stole it from you.” James Hook tilts his head and, with a sheepish
look, starts to stroke his thumb back and forth over my knuckles.
“Under pretence of helping you find your way back home, I later
lured you on board of this ship.”

For a while, I just stand in front of him and
listen to each detail of the cruel beginnings of our supposed
friendship. That guy clearly has a ruthless streak. But when he
explains how he saved me from the deathly trap in the jungle and
how later on he gradually fell in love with me, and apparently I
with him, my grimness toward him starts to crack.

While James
Hook keeps talking, I wander about in his room and try to hunt for
objects in here that might help me remember more of the
us
-thing.
Nothing really stands out, so I sneak a glance into the room behind
the broken door.

There’s a
huge desk by the window wall. Ambling toward it, I notice a black
hat with an impressive feather waiting to be picked up. I don’t
dare touch it, but it stirs awake another blurred memory—images of
James slumped forward in his chair and sleeping like an exhausted
child with his arms folded on the desktop. The hat lay at the exact
same place back then. Tracing my finger along the edge the desk, I
slowly skirt it then sit in the captain’s chair for a
moment.

“Apart from Smee, no one was ever allowed in
this room.”

I look up and find James leaning against the
doorframe, arms casually crossed over his chest. He watches me like
I’m his favorite TV show. One side of his mouth tilts up. “But as
soon as you came on board my ship, you developed a habit of
storming in an out of my quarters as if you owned them.”

“I’m sorry.” I grimace and stand, though I
don’t know if this was even the right thing to say. “Would you
rather I didn’t come in here again?”

James pushes himself away from the doorframe
and crosses the room to me. He leans back against the desk,
gripping the edge with both hands. The sun shining through the
windows and falling on his face makes him look so much younger. “In
fact, I’d rather you never again left my quarters,” he tells me in
a soft voice.

I can feel how part of me once wanted that
too. Exploring that part is easy. It starts to rise and tries to
take over, but I’m not willing to give in to this need. “You know
that’s impossible, Captain. You’ll have to take me back at some
point.”