Page 90 of Freeing Hook

I wait for Astor to burst. To send me careening off the side of this mast. My fists ball at the ready. It’s not as if Maddox’s training would be of much use against Astor, but there’s a tension crawling underneath my skin that’s begging for him to take a step toward me.

I think I could land a punch before he sent me overboard. Part of me thinks it would be worth it.

Instead, he just offers me an amused smirk. “Can it be? Has the pup finally learned to bite?”

I don’t know how I went from feeling so calm, so peaceful up here, to my skin itching with the need to dig my fingernails into his flesh until I draw blood, but the craving for violence is swelling up within me. It’s like I’m a child taken to the fair on a hot day, dehydrated and worn out and lashing out to go home.

Except I never got to be that child—not after I fell ill.

I want the captain to come at me, but he doesn’t. He just leans back against the rim of the nest. “What’s got you so riled?”

From his tone, I’d think he was being sincere. If the words were coming from anyone else’s mouth.

I open my mouth to explain, but there are too many things, too many thoughts swarming together, competing for my attention. And I can’t pinpoint any one of them. They flit around me, evading my grasp as I lose focus and try to curl my fingers around another at the last minute.

“It’s…it’s nothing,” I say.

“Oh, I doubt that.”

“I’m fine,” I say, taking a breath that’s supposed to be steeling and instead feels more like an accident as I turn to climb down the mast.

“You’re angry,” he says.

“I’m not an angry person.”

“And do you actually believe yourself when you say that?”

I whirl around to face him, keeping my palms behind me, pressed to the mast. “I’m not an angry person,” I repeat. “I don’t have outbursts. I don’t scream or yell or hurt people. That’s you, in case you’ve forgotten. I assure you I haven’t.”

He cocks his head at me. “I’m not the one you’re angry with, Darling.”

My heart races. “I already told you; I don’t get angry.”

He shakes his head, looking pensive. “No. No, you don’t. You don’t get angry. Youareangry. It’s so much a part of you, you can no longer recognize it in yourself.”

I stare at him, not bothering to hide the mockery on my face. “You think you know everything. But really, you’re just a bitter man who thinks himself unaccountable because of something that happened over a decade ago. Do you think you’re the only one who hurts? Do you have any idea what it’s like to wake devastated because it’s morning again, and you have to spend another day trapped in your own body? Shackled in your own mind, prisoner to your own thoughts? Do you know what it’s like for your own mind to hate you, spend every moment of the day torturing you—and for no apparent reason? At least you had a reason.”

The captain’s eyes have gone wide, his breathing ragged, but he stays plastered to the rim of the nest, unmoving.

“You don’t have a monopoly on missing a piece of yourself, you know. I’m sorry, alright?” I say, and I realize I’m screaming now. Hopefully my voice gets lost in the howl of the wind before it can reach the ears of any on the deck. “I’m sorry that she was supposed to be here, and I wasn’t. I’m sorry that instead of Iaso, the world got stuck with me. You think I haven’t felt it?” I say, grasping the fabric of my shirt above my heart. “You think I haven’t known all this time that I wasn’t supposed to be here? That I’ve outlived my welcome in this world? Sure, maybe Ididn’t know exactly why I’m not worthy, but that didn’t close up the hole in my chest. So go ahead,” I say, holding my arms wide in front of me, a mockery of invitation. “Tell me you hate me. Tell me you can’t stand to look at me. It’s nothing I don’t hear every day of my life, ringing in the back of my skull. Say it, and then you can join the chorus in my head. Just know your voice isn’t nearly as original as you believe it to be.”

“Wendy.”

“No. No.” I hiss through my teeth. “You might think you’re stuck with me, but you chose that. You stole me from Neverland. That was your choice. And before that, you came after my family. Your choice. And when all of this is said and done…” I clutch my stomach, unable to breathe. “When it’s done, and you get what you want from me—for me to talk to the shadows or the dead or whatever it is that you need from my shadow soothing, guess what?”

When he doesn’t answer, I scream. “Guess!”

The captain blinks, pushing himself up and stepping toward me slowly.

“You get to be rid of me. You get to…” I clutch my stomach, pain writhing in my belly as I search for the words to make him understand. “You don’t have to be in my head. I can’t get away from me. I can’t…” My fingers find my hair, knuckles bulging, but the words remain holed up inside me all the same, no matter how hard I try to pry them out.

“Darling,” the captain whispers, taking my fingers and unraveling them from my hair. Some of the sting at my scalp goes away, but he doesn’t let go of my hand. Instead, he slides it downward until my hand is a barrier between his and my cheek. “There is nowhere I could go, no corner of the world I could hide, where that would be the case. Where I could get away from you.”

I listen for the taunting, for the vile loathing, but it’s absent.

My breathing takes up the space between us. He’s so close now, with so little room in this nest. Close as the day I hit him and he determined not to train me anymore.

“You’re wrong, you know,” he says. “I don’t think I’m the only one who feels it.”

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