“Okay?” I frown over at him and shrug back. “I’m a girl, and you’re a boy, and what’s your poi—”
“No.” He cuts me off. “I’m a man.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay.”
He lifts his eyebrow, catching my eye to deliver this next one. “And I’m interested in actual women.” He nods his head towards Morrigan.
I take a couple of breaths to steady myself, and he uses the moment to drink half of that bottle he’s holding in one go.
I wouldn’t like to cry in front of him, or maybe I wouldn’t mind doing it under any other circumstance but this one in particular, with that girl watching on, sneering over at me. I glare back for a few seconds, and Jamison notices, so he turns to her and kisses her for three incredibly smutty seconds, and then he turns back to me, eyebrows up like he’s proved his point.
I shake my head at him. “Are you trying to hurt me?”
“Aye.” He nods coolly. “Is that no’ what yer into?”
“No!” I shove him. “You can’t treat me like that! Sometimes Peter hurts me but he’s like a kid. He’s just selfish; he doesn’t know he’s doing it. But you’re doing it on purpose!”
Jamison steps towards me and gets right in my face. “He daesnae ken he’s doing it ’acause unless yer right in front of him, he’s never thinking of ye.”
“That’s not true.” I shake my head.
“Aye sure, it is.” He nods, glaring at me. “Ye know it is.”
“That’s just how he is! It’s not his fault!”
“O’ course it’s his fault!” Jamison growls, and it’s a proper growl. Like an animal. “He could choose t’ be better. He could choose t’ evolve. He just won’t!” Hook shakes his head. “The fountain daesnae stunt ye emotionally, Daphne. It just means ye d?nnae look older.” He shoves his hands through his hair all impatient. “My mum’s looked thirty fer about seven hundred years, but she’s no’ running about behaving like a fecking prat.”
I stare over at him, trying to work out if it’s true or whether he’s just being unkind for the sake of being unkind. It sort of makes sense—? But then, I wouldn’t put it past him because I don’t really know Jamison all that well. Sometimes it feels like I do, in this stupid, transcendent way, in the way that I had a pathetic, fleeting thought this morning where I wondered if perhaps I’d flown all the way across the universe not to be with Peter but to find Jem, and do you know what? I thought that was a stupid thought at the time when I thought it, and I think it even more so now, because as I look over at him, bleary-eyed and unaware of the woman’s hand reaching down his shirt, I realise I don’t actually know him. Not at all.
Jamison’s head falls to the side, heavy with drink.
“Yer man chooses no’ to act like an adult…chooses t’ forget ya, chooses to—” He takes a big breath, and somehow it makes it all feel sadder. “Let ye plummet to yer death, leave ye t’ drown.”
“Stop it,” I tell him, my eyes startling to prickle.
Jamison gives me a look. “Aye, but it’s true.” He throws back the rest of the bottle, finishing it in one go.
“Slow down, maybe, Jam?” Orson suggests.
“Nah.” Jamison scrunches his face. “D?nnae think I will.” Then he turns to the other girl with the dark hair and kisses her.
I look away for that one, over my shoulder to Rye, who’s standing there, watching me, eyes all big and sorry for me.
He nods his head towards the door, telling me without words that we should leave, but I look back at Jamison, who’s still kissing that girl while also aggressively feeling her up.
I clear my throat, and he pulls back from her, looking over at me, annoyed.
“What?” He shrugs. “Just taking a leaf out o’ the wee man’s playbook.” He gives me a shitty smile.
“What are you doing?” I ask loudly and obviously hurt.
“Right now?” Jamison clarifies, eyebrows up. “Right now, a’m doing this, and then in a wee bit, I’m going to take her home”—he points to Morrigan—“take her clothes off—”
“Jem—”
“And fuck ’er in a bath just t’ piss you off,” he tells me, staring me dead in the eye.
I take a breath, but it’s staggered. “Jamison, I didn’t come here to fight with you.”
“Then what did ye come here fer? Because I d?nnae want ye here.” He shrugs his shoulders, and he’s back to yelling in my face now. He points far away. “I want ye the fuck away from me and fer ye to stay on yer side of the island.” He swallows. “Go Rudyard Kipling with the man-cub thonder to yer fucking heart’s content, but sure ye stay away from me.”
I turn on my heel to leave, and I go quickly. And were I to have the sort of ears that could hear unsaid things, as soon as I’m leaving, I would hear that he regrets it—that it hits him quickly and immediately and feels like a thousand arrows that pierce down to his bones. Regret can do that. So can pride. Right now, Jamison has both, and I am the biggest fool on the planet.
A pirate? I actually thought a pirate and myself…
I don’t even know what I thought. I can’t think straight. I need to get out of here.
Everything they said, it’s true. You can’t trust a pirate; they’re sneaky and bad, and they get into your head and make you doubt good things, things you’ve wanted, and maybe you even have them and they’re right in front of you, right there for you to have, and you just haven’t been paying attention to them because of some stupid pirate with eyes that look like your home planet and because some snow fell on your stupid face—?
I hate Jamison Hook. I completely hate him.
“Daphne,” Rye calls as I scurry out of the tavern, definitely not crying, because why would I be crying? Rye reaches over and wipes my face. He looks sorry for me. “Not your week.”
I sniff a laugh that sounds a bit like a cry, but to reiterate, I’m definitely not crying.
“Want me to walk you back?” He nods his head to my side of the island.
I nod once, but I can’t meet his eyes. “Please.”
When I get home, it’s getting dark, and I take a few moments to myself, breathe in the cool, damp air, feel the ground beneath my feet, tell myself I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.
This is what I came here for. Peter is who I came here for.
I might have lost sight of that for a second—tricked, let’s call it, actually. I was tricked, and it’ll be my secret, and I won’t think about fires and snow the same way ever again.
I take a big breath to steady myself and wipe away the last dregs of tears that don’t belong here anymore when Rune zips in, hovering in front of me.
She chimes.
“I’m fine.” I shake my head. “I’m just going to head inside.”
She chimes and I stare at her, confused. Then she grabs my hair and pulls it away from the tree house.
“Ow!” I stare at her. “What are you doing? No, it wasn’t Peter. No. No, truly, it wasn’t. Well, if you must know, it was Jamison.”
She chimes again.
“No!” I shake my head at her. “Nothing happened I don’t li—” I give her a tight smile. “I—” I breathe out and swallow. I won’t keep crying over him. “I can’t talk about this, Rune. I—please let me just go inside.”