Hook's Pan (25 page)

He shrugged. “It will heal. You stole my pearl, I deserve recompense.”

Threat still ringing in her ear, she held onto the apple all the while her jaw shook violently. She didn’t dare move or breathe too hard. The maiden healer could fix her hands if he cut her. Trying to relax through the panic churning through her gut, she held very still.

He sailed into the sky, framed by a shaft of sunlight. She could barely make him out. Squeezing her eyes shut, she turned her head and prayed to the goddess that the boy’s throw was true.

A women’s scream pierced the absolute stillness. “Peter Pan, no!”

Snapping open her eyes, Talia saw the world move in slow motion. A tiny fairy flew at them just as Peter looked up, his arm already in the process of releasing the blade. And seeing that come at her, she could no longer hold still. She rolled to the side, dropping the apple.

The silver wink of metal tumbled through the sky and then there was fire.

Sucking in a sharp breath, Talia looked at her stomach with eyes gone huge in her face. Blood welled like a blossoming petal upon her lily white skin.

Shock kept the pain at bay, all she could do was stare.

And then time spun forward.

“I didn’t mean to,” Peter wailed, dropping by her side. “Tinker, help. I didn’t mean to, you startled her. Help her, Tink. Please. I didn’t mean to…”

A feeling of weightlessness took over her body. Talia closed her eyes, she was so tired.

“Oh no,” Tink moaned, “What have you done, Peter? What have you done?”

Talia knew she should feel pain, knew it should hurt more than it did. But it didn’t, and she was grateful. A maiden’s body was fashioned of the sea, and to it her body would return.

Her final thought was of James and how much she loved him. Then she felt it, the water. Her limbs were turning soft and cool.

But she felt something else too. The tingling ripple of fairy energy. A second before her body disintegrated into the water it once was a tiny hand reached inside her and pulled her out.

After that, there was no more….

Suddenly the vision blurred and tears choked Trisha’s vision. She needed a second. Now she knew the truth, what’d really happened to Talia, what Peter had actually done and why Hook hated him so much.

Lifting her hand, she handed the worm back to its rock.

The memory might be gone, but not the overwhelming, all-encompassing warmth of Talia’s love for James. It breathed inside Trisha, filled her every pore and crevice, every dark part of her radiated with it.

“What did you see?” Hook asked, touching the small of her back with his big, warm hand.

“You loved her,” she sniffed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, “and she loved you. I saw her, Hook. I saw, Talia.” She covered her eyes with her hands, feeling suddenly raw and exposed. “I saw what Peter did.”

He went still. “What did he do?”

Looking into his eyes she debated what she should say, how much to reveal. Did he really need to know everything? Should she tell him how cruel her last moments had been, how the terror had engulfed her, made her unable to even defend herself. Was that fair to him? Talia was dead and him knowing all this would never bring her back. Would only enflame the hate worse. Right or wrong, she decided she cared for him too much to share every single, awful detail of Talia’s final seconds.

“It was an accident. He should never have tossed that blade, but he didn’t mean to kill her.”

“I’m glad to hear it. This doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven or forgotten, but it helps to know he hadn’t meant to steal her from me.”

She covered his cheek with her palm and in the stillness she listened to her heart.

From the moment she’d seen Talia, a dam had broken through her soul. What she’d been denying, what others had constantly pointed out. She cared for him.

No, it was more than that.

He’d filled the broken pieces inside, the bond they shared, the past they’d once lived together…she may never remember specifics, but she felt it all. “I…I…love you,” she choked out and then shook her head. “I’m so confused. I feel all these emotions and I’m scared that maybe they aren’t mine. That they belong to her.”

Grabbing her hands, he pressed them tight to his chest. She looked into his face, seeing him as Talia had, big and brawny and so unbelievably beautiful and her heart shattered.

“Little bird.” He leaned in, then pressed a kiss to her temple, the tip of her nose, and finally her lips.

It felt so right; honestly it had from the beginning. She’d fought it because she hadn’t understood it, and still didn’t.

Love was foreign to her, something to fear, not embrace—something to push away and keep at a distance. But Talia had reveled in it and now she realized, so had she. When he’d kissed her, moved inside her, touched her body…he’d been talking, speaking the words her heart had feared to recognize.

She sighed into his mouth as he gently pulled back.

“I did love her. Do still. A part of me always will, because she taught me how to love. I was a cold man, Trishelle. Before I met her there was nothing but boozing and fighting and women, she taught me it was okay to be more. That loving someone didn’t mean you had to lose yourself. And since she’s been gone, I’ve not felt that kind of passion for another.”

She clenched her jaw, nodding, refusing to accept the fact that his words actually stung. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not in three days, it was impossible. Improbable. Absurd. Ridiculous. And yet…it had happened. Sometime between the first denial and the tenth, she’d fallen as hard for this man as the mermaid had, and the worst of it was, it’d happened so slowly she hadn’t even recognized the symptoms for what they were until it was too late.

Refusing to let him see how those words hurt, she smiled. He wiped the tears from her eyes with his thumb and said, “Until you. I knew the moment I’d set eyes on Talia that she’d be mine and I knew it with you.”

Trembling with joy, with confusion, she clenched his hand. “What if this isn’t real? What if I wake up tomorrow and everything changes? It’s only been three days, Hook. It doesn’t happen, this doesn’t happen.”

“Doesn’t it? Even in your world, are there not stories of lovers marrying after only knowing one another for a few days?”

She laughed, not worrying about wiping the tears up anymore. There were too many to check. “Yes, but…those are fairytales.”

His smile was sure and deep. “And are we not in one now? Someday, Trishelle, there will be a story written about us. This is the land of stories. Stay with me.”

This was so stupid, so reckless, and she didn’t even know why she was giving this serious thought.

This had only been three days. But Danika and Betty both had told her repeatedly, a day in Kingdom was a month on Earth. And it had felt like months. She’d keenly felt the length of each day. Time was different here. Each day had felt like an eternity and in the time she’d spent with him, she’d learned one indisputable truth… Captain James Hook was a good man. And he was hot.

Like, super crazy hot. And the hook, her stomach curled, she was positively addicted to that thing, the way he played her body with it. Strummed her like an instrument… Oh yeah, she was one hundred percent lost.

Her, the girl who changed out guys the way another girl changed out purses had finally found a man who made her want it. Love.

The thought was terrifying as hell.

He must have sensed her indecision, because he kissed her lips. A quick peck, nothing intense, but it held a wealth of meaning. Wrapping his hooked arm around her waist, he whispered against her lips.

“I am sorry for your sister, and I think the bastard deserves to rot in hell for it, but I swear to you, I am not him, Trishelle Page. I would honor you, make you the other half of me. Your pain will be my pain, your joy, mine, your happiness, mine. All of you, everything, all mine and treasured above everything else.”

“I’m so scared,” she whispered, “scared that this will end, scared that you’ll wake up one day and realize I’m not her after all. That you’ll regret this and I don’t think I could take that. I’ve never given my heart to anyone.”

Bringing her cold fingers to his lips, he kissed each and every one. “Give it to me and trust.”

Trust, she was so bad at that. Trisha liked to believe that she wasn’t really jaded, but she could see now how she’d always doomed any relationship to fail from the get go, because trust was something she’d taught herself not to do. And she’d always said it was to honor her sister, but in the end, she saw it was really because she was a big, fat coward.

“Can I still visit home, every once in a while? At least let my parents know I’m still alive?”

 
A smile split his face. “Is this is a yes?”

“Is yours?”

Picking her up, he twirled her around, giving a jubilant shout and causing all the lights to wink out. “Yes, little bird, yes.”

She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him passionately.

“Then yes, Hook. I will stay.”

She slept. Blonde strands of hair curled around her face and upper body. Moonlight kissed her temples as the sea gently rocked them to sleep. But he couldn’t rest, because tomorrow was their wedding.

Every day Trishelle stayed in Kingdom was another day she’d age on Earth. Here, she was locked in a perpetual stage of youth and verve, but if she ever decided to return to Earth to visit any family or friends she’d age to the point she should naturally be.

She’d been here another eleven days. Which meant she was already another year and two months older. He wanted her by his side for all eternity, wherever he went. Be that the Isle of Sylphs’, or modern day England.

He could just slip the stone of Veritas around her slender neck and whisper the vows that would seal her immortality on any realm, but Danika had convinced him that Trishelle deserved a wedding. A true one, with flowers and cake and guests. For him, none of that mattered. He’d be just as content to recite their vows in bed and not leave his room for another year at least. But he’d do much to make her smile, and if it took an extravagant wedding to do it, then so be it.

Laying on her stomach, small hand curled above her cheek, his heart clenched. She’d been through so much, and not just as Trishelle Page. The day he’d met Talia had been the day he’d known he’d finally found his other half. His true and pure self.

The wrapping might be different, but the essence of that purity lived on and it was that purity that called to him still. Dragging his knuckles along the velvety softness of her temple he memorized the planes of her face.

By nature he wasn’t a giving or a kind man, never really had been. Save for her. She owned him, every ugly, wretched inch of his body and soul belonged to this woman. He’d vowed to her that her pains and sorrows would be his and he aimed to prove himself true.

There was a ghost that lay between them, the memory of her sister’s death. It was a great chasm in her heart, and he sensed it was because justice had never truly been served.

Hook would give her the justice the courts denied. It would be his wedding gift to her. Clenching his jaw, he wondered if she would understand or beg him not to. But in his world fate wasn’t determined by a judge, it was settled with a sword and she was his woman now. Her wounds were his, his to hold and to heal.

“Believe in me, little bird,” he whispered, before brushing a tender kiss against the curve of her jaw. Rolling out of the bed gently, so as not to disturb her slumber, he stood and dressed quickly. Walking over to his dresser, he methodically switched out his hook for one with a more versatile tip. Rather than the steel curving, this attachment was flat and long and straight as a blade. It took no time at all to change out. Finished, he went in search of his first mate.

Smee was above deck, manning the helm.

It was the peak of night; most of his crew were below in their sleeping quarters, only a few straggled about. But even they were slumped over barrels and crates, feet propped up and hands tucked on their bellies, softly snoring out a lullaby.