Their Vicious Darling (Vicious Lost Boys #3)(56)

“What?”

“You lost,” she guesses.

I sit forward, my elbows on my knees, the empty glass still clutched in hand. It’s cool in my sweaty grip.

“I’ve come to realize, Smee,” I say, “that I am endlessly searching for something that I don’t think I will ever find.”

She grabs a nearby chair and brings it over. She sits on it backwards, arms braced on the curved back. “I have to tell you something.”

“Okay.” I gesture to my glass. “Do I need another drink?”

“Maybe so.”

I nod and get up, fill the glass halfway and return to my chair. “I’m listening.”





Every word Smee utters makes me number despite the heat of the alcohol burning through my veins.

I’ve never been so angry that the anger vibrates in my ear drums. And yet I can barely hear Smee over the ringing in my ears.

“Say something, Jas.” I only know the words because I can read the movement of her lips.

What the fuck am I supposed to say?

“You betrayed me.”

Those are the only three words I can get out past my rage.

“I did what I needed to do.”

I stand. “That’s the difference between me and you.”

She stands next to me. “Is that right?”

“Yes. You don’t think in loyalty. You think in strategy. I traded my sister for you!”

I may be drunk now. I’m shouting, my voice filling the room.

“I never asked you to do that,” she says.

“But I did it anyway. I risked my own flesh and blood for you. And for what? Secrets and lies? Wendy Darling is in the Isles and she was pregnant with—”

I can’t finish the sentence. I don’t know if it’s true.

But if it is… Christ.

The room sways.

“Did he know?” I ask and jab my finger in the Crocodile’s direction.

“He did.”

I down the last dregs of my drink and slam the glass on the bedside table.

Five days he’ll be out? Plenty of time for me to get a head start.

That fucker planned to keep Wendy from me. I know he did.

He used me, gorged himself on my men, and kept Wendy Darling from me.

In fact, maybe his plan to kill Peter Pan was all a ruse considering he failed.

I look down at him still sprawled in the bed. There is blood smeared all over his face and down his clothes in splatters and stains.

When I look at him, when I follow the curve of his lips and the cut of his jaw and the complex lines of all of his tattoos, I am rendered shapeless. A puzzle with no solution.

I can hear the heavy drum of my heart in my ears.

I turn and leave the room.

“Jas,” Smee says and follows me out.

“I’m leaving,” I tell her.

“Slow down. Think about what you’re doing…”

“I don’t need to think about it, Smee.” I go up the staircase and to my private quarters. “How many men do I have left?”

I start packing a bag.

Smee says nothing.

“However many are left, tell them to be ready to leave within the hour. Tell Cherry too.”

She and I both know that I am leaving out her name purposefully.

There is nothing as important to me as loyalty.

Right now, the anger festering like an open wound, the one thing I want to do is sit down with Smee and vent about misdeeds and disloyalty. Smee was the one person who would listen and never judge me.

Deep down, I know what she did was the safest route.

The logical one. Not motivated by greed or emotion or fear.

She wanted to protect me.

I know she did.

And yet…

She comes around, removes the bag from my hand and wraps me in a hug.

When I was eleven, I had a cat that was trampled by a horse. I held its crumpled body in my hands and sobbed over it.

My father found me, pried the cat from my grip, tossed it into the nearby woods and told me to stop acting so foolish.

I refuse to shed tears.

Poor form, indeed.

I sink into Smee’s arms and return the embrace.

“I’m sorry, Jas.” She pulls back, shoves her hands into her trouser pockets. Our moment of weakness has passed and we will never speak of it again.

“I’m staying,” she says.

I nod. It’s probably for the best.

But it still feels like I am leaving something of myself if I leave her behind.

I can’t come back. Peter Pan made that clear enough.

“The house is yours,” I tell her. “The town as well. Do with it what you please.”

“And the Crocodile?”

I look past her toward the hallway and the stairs beyond, as if I can sense him just barely out of my reach.

He is at his most vulnerable again and in my house and taking up space in a bed I own. I could kill him.

I want to kill him.

But I want to reach Wendy Darling first and see his face when he catches up and realizes I’ve bested him.

“If he survives this coma, when he wakes, tell him exactly where I went.”

“Another fight, Jas?”

“The last one, Smee.”