Page 10 of Never Landing

Aurora, my brain supplied. She looked just like Peter’s sister Aurora.

Aurora, the forest princess.

But that was fucking ridiculous, because Marsha the grocery store owner’s imaginary friend hadn’t been real, and if she had been, she’d be a hundred years old, like Marsha.

But a second later, my eyes were snatched off the lovely little girl, because there he was. The boy who looked just like Peter.

Before I even formed a plan in my head, I was racing for the back door. Maybe everyone in town was going to pretend there wasn’t and hadn’t ever been a Peter, but this boy wouldn’t. I didn’t doubt that for a second. He knew Peter—he had to.

And if Peter was married with a teenage son...well, he’d gotten started on that pretty early, but that could be okay. If—if he was married, I could learn to deal with that. And if he was divorced, well, I’d never thought about having kids before, but I wasn’t absolutely against it.

Fuck me, I didn’t even know if Peter was alive yet, and I was considering adoption of random kids just to get him back.

But I was. I was totally considering that. I hadn’t been truly happy in my life since the last day I’d seen Peter. I would give anything to have him back. Anything at all.

6

Peter

Iwas staring in Everett’s window again.

Since he’d come back to town, I could hardly do anything else.

I tried to shake myself out of it sometimes, go back to the kids and play and be the same Peter I always had been, but just like before, Everett had put a hook in me and was tugging me along, ruining everything just by being there.

Well, back then, I hadn’t thought he was ruining everything. He’d been like the sun, shedding new light on all my games and all my toys and everything I wanted. He’d made it allbetter.

And then he’d left. That was when he’d started ruining things.

“Are you going to talk to him?” Aurora asked quietly.

This time, she’d come alone. I was standing in the backyard at the edge of the tree line. Between us and the house, there was one big oak where his grandma had hung a tire swing. It was gone now, but me and Everett would sit on it together and spin back and forth, this way and that.

Now, he was in the kitchen doing something that looked like the exact opposite of swinging.

“Why would I talk to him?” I snapped.

Aurora shrugged. “Because it’s probably better for you than standing out here alone.”

My eyes only narrowed into smaller slits.

“And because he’s your friend,” she added, even quieter.

He had been my friend, sure, but that was a very different thing than staying my friend.

Friends didn’t leave. Friends stayed with you and played forever and never, ever asked you to change.

Not that Everett had asked, exactly . . .

“He is not my—” I started, turning my glare on Aurora at the same time that her eyes went wide.

“Uh oh,” she whispered.

A second later, the back door banged open, hitting the kitchen wall, and Everett himself leapt out into the yard.

Aurora spun and disappeared, but me? I was stunned. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I just stood there, frozen in—in something like terror, as Everett staggered over the soft ground toward me.

Even if he was different now, taller and more—more like his dad, I wanted him to rush up to me. I wanted him to throw his arms around me and say he was so happy to see me. I wanted things to go back to how they’d been before he’d abandoned me and ruined everything.

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