* Because it really does.
* Much more sternly than I would ever dare speak to her, that much is for certain.
? And arguably rude.
? Or perhaps just her very brazen son.
* Need him to be, even.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
I’m going to tell Jem, I decided. That I’m sorry and that before, I was scared and stupid, but actually, I’d like to be together, and if he’d like that too, then I’d like to find a way to make it work.
Because I want it to work. I want him, really. And actually, there’s a word that I’ve never really said before about a boy, but I think I might—I could?—I feel as though I do.
I couldn’t sleep all night because of it.
A bit because it felt funny to sleep in a bed with Peter knowing that I want to be with someone else and also just because I really wanted to tell Jamison.
I’m up before the sun, which I never am. It also means I’m up before Peter, which somehow casts the world in a curious light I don’t know much about.
I think he wakes everything up around here. As I creep out of the tree house, not just the boys are sleeping, but so are the flowers and the woodland creatures. The suns are still tucked away, cosy beneath the horizon.
I creep down to the dock and untie the rowboat.
The water is still, mist hovering above it. It’s not entirely dark because of the four moons, but it mostly is. I’m not trying to beat the light. You can’t anyway. It always wins. Peter will wake soon, he either will or will not notice my absence, and whichever way that goes, it won’t affect what I’m about to do. I’m going to do it regardless.
I’m about halfway across the harbor when I hear him.
“Hello down there,” he calls, a little confused.
I look back and up, and there he is, Jamison Hook, sailing the Golden Folly, staring down at me with a confused smile.
“Oh.” I blink up at him. “Hi.”
He looks so handsome. Brows low, hair falling over his eyes and blowing in the barely there wind, his cheeks flushed, mouth sun-kissed, which I love. I don’t remember his mouth looking this colour yesterday, but it makes him look all the dreamier, so I’m pleased for it.
He gives me a confused smile. “I was just on my way to ye.”
I give him a proper one. “Me too.”
He nods his head at his ship. “Want t’ come aboard?”
I gesture to my little rowboat. “Do you want to come aboard?”
His face pulls, and I smile up at him playfully.
“I’m joking. Throw me down a rope.”
He sniffs a laugh and tosses me down a rope. I stand on top of the big knot at the bottom of it, and he pulls me up to him with an ease that makes me swallow heavy and my heart fall down a flight of stairs. He offers me his hand as my feet find their place on the deck, and our hands linger a few moments longer than they need to in one another’s.
I glance up at him, feeling shy. I pinch my bottom lip nervously. “You look nice,” I tell him.
His face falters. “Dae I?”
I nod, not looking away from him. “Fresh or well rested or something.”
He laughs. Sort of a weird laugh, I suppose. A bit bewildered, or something.
Either way, he doesn’t return the compliment. I’m hardly offended though, as I don’t suppose he could in good conscience. I damn well didn’t sleep a wink last night and am quite sure my face lives to tell that puffy, tired little tale.
“I wanted to talk to ye,” he tells me, face looking serious, and my eyes skip a beat as I nod.
“And I you.” I blink over at him, my eyes blooming like the flowers that are doing so right now on the mainland as Peter strokes their chins awake. “You go first.”
I shouldn’t care to tell him I have feelings for him first needlessly, not when he’s about to tell me himself.
“Right.” Jamison gives me a tender smile and sniffs, amused, nodding to himself. And then he shrugs. “We’re a fucking mess, you an’ me.”
Have you ever been caught in an emotion? Where you’ve been feeling something so heavily and so intensely, and then there’s a sudden change in the emotional atmosphere, and you feel your face, feel the way you’re holding yourself change, feel the smile fall off you like old fruit on a tree that’s past its picking day?
I let out an unsure laugh. “Are we?”
Jamison gives me a wry look. “I like getting in yer head. I like making ye jealous. I like riling you up.”
“Why?” I ask, and I hold my breath to puff myself up so he can’t see me deflating on the spot.
“I d?nnae ken.” He shrugs like it’s a puzzle he’s trying to figure out. “I think we just bring out the worst in each other… d?nnae ye think?”
“Oh.” I stare at him blankly for a few seconds, then I look down at my feet to make sure they’re not actually sinking into the ground, that I’m not really draining away between the cracks in the floorboards of his ship, that it’s just how I feel inside my body. I clear my throat. “I suppose. Maybe.”
“It’s fun getting a rise out o’ye.” He gives me a weak shrug. “It feels good t’ annoy ye, have ye chasing after me.”
I give him a despondent look. “Charming.”
He smirks a little. “Sorry. But forbye”—another lift of the shoulders—“yer a pretty girl, and it’s good to have yer attention—it feels good—but I ken yer not here for me.”
The breeze picks up, and it blows around us. This time yesterday, it would have blown me into him, had me huddling in to have him keep me warm, but today it just cuts me through like a knife.
“Right,” I say, and there’s no air in my words.
“Aye?” he asks, eyebrows up and maybe a little hopeful, and I wonder if he’s waiting for me to correct him, but how could I?
“Um.” I stare at him and swallow. “I—right.” I can’t correct him. I can’t even hold my hand steady right now.
Jamison nods and gives me an easy smile. “It’s just a game, you an’ me.”
I swallow. “Okay.”
His face falters, and I shake my head.
“I mean—” I clear my throat. “Yes.” I nod instead. I’m not making sense.
“Good then,” he says, but I can’t tell if he means it.
I stare over at him and wonder in this sinking way whether he ever actually knew me how I felt he may have or whether that was a stupid hope I fastened myself to because I’m just a girl. He can’t have known me how I thought, because if he did, he would have seen it—it’s right here on the surface. None of this is good.
He lifts his eyebrows again, a bit hopeful. “Because we can be friends now.”
“Right.” I nod, smiling tightly. “Friends.”
He nods back and gives me a pleasant look. “Is that what ye were coming here t’ say?”
There’s a fraction of a second reaction delay to my response, and I wonder if it’s obvious and he knows I’m lying.
“Yes.” I do one emphatic nod. “Exactly. Yes.”
“Good then.”
“And also, sorry.” I flash him a smile. “For being a brat yesterday.”
He gives me a quarter of a smile. “Yer a wee brat every day, so…”