Page 77 of The Last Lost Girl

“You like the stars.” Hudson lays back to look at them with me.

“I always have,” I tell him. “At least, I think I have. My ceiling is an enormous star chart.”

I know all the constellations, the stories behind the shapes, how they move. All but that Second Star I thought Belle was insane for seeing when I couldn’t yet. I look at it now, bright and beaming. It’s no wonder someone used it to leash Pan. Look at its pulsing power…

Hudson turns onto his side to face me and props his head on his palm. He looks at me for several agonizingly long moments during which his gaze grazes my hair, my nose, my cheeks, and chin. His perusal is so thorough, it almost feels like he’s ghosting over each part with the backs of his knuckles.

“What do you see when you look at me?” I rasp.

Dark lashes fan as he blinks once.

Twice.

“I see someone I can’t believe I’ve found. Sometimes, I look at you and can’t believe you’re real.”

My breath catches.

“How does that make you feel?” he asks, waiting for my reply.

“It should scare me.” I barely know him.

“Should isn’t the same as does,” he says. A corner of his lip curls upward. He reaches toward me with his hook and the curve of the metal ghosts down my forearm. “You have goosebumps. Is it because you’re cold?”

That’s certainly one factor, but it’s not the only one and he knows it.

“How did you get it?” I ask, letting my fingers drift over the metal, pressing the pad of a finger into his hook’s sharp tip.

His expression closes off and he rolls onto his back. “Pan is to blame. Tinkerbell formed it for me and affixed it to what was left of my arm so that I wasn’t left without a way to defend myself again.”

“How many times have you fought Pan?” I ask.

“Not once.” His lips thin. “He is a coward through and through. He doesn’t care how many times his Lost Boys die for him.”

I turn my head to study his profile. His arms are folded under his head. “He’s afraid of you.”

Hudson’s eyes cut to mine. “As he should be.”

And Hudson had admitted that he was scared to step on to Neverland.

I wish I knew the truth of their past and how all these people and lives interconnected, and what severed them. If I did, maybe what’s happening would make sense. It would take someone willing to open up and trust me with their shared history, and I’m not sure if or when that’ll ever happen.

“Rest up, Lifeguard,” he tells me, sitting up and scanning our surroundings again. “While you can.”

twenty-seven

I rest but don’t sleep until sunrise, despite Hudson’s reassurances that he would remind me if I forgot where I was and of our mutual goal. We quickly climb down from the nest into the Neverwood. With our feet on solid ground once more, we hurriedly cut a path to the sea. No predators – human or otherwise – descend upon us as we flee.

As the sun peeks above the horizon, the thick jungle starts to thin. “Hudson,” I breathe, slowing my steps. “I need a minute.” Hands on my wobbling knees, I drag in as much air as I can before my lungs heave it out again. “Just a minute.”

He watches out for us both as I catch my breath, every inch of him ready for anything Neverland throws at us. “We’re close, Ava. But we need to go faster. The sun just came up.”

Faster?

I turn my head and see a vine creeping up the trunk of the nearest tree, swallowing a few of the lowest branches. Its leaves are magenta in the middle, and here and there along the vine are tightly coiled tendrils. I reach out to run a hand under one to check for shadows.

Hudson sees the movement. “No!” he hisses, trying to intercept my hand.

Like a booby trap sprung, the tense coil beside it springs forward and curls around my hand before stretching up my wrist, onto my forearm.

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