Unhooked(90)

I reach out and take his hand in mine, stroking the back of it as I watch him sleep amid the blinking monitors and maze of tubes. After a few minutes I start to pull away, but his grip tightens and his eyes flutter open.

“Gwendolyn?”

I lean in closer so he can see me. “How are you feeling?”

“Where am I?”

I’m not sure what to say, but a second later, he notices the fluorescent lights and the strange machines, and I don’t have to explain. His gaze darts wildly about the room, trying to take everything in as he struggles to sit up.

“Shhh, you have to settle down before the nurse comes.” I place my hands on his shoulders and try to steady him in the bed.

His eyes are still wild with panic. “Why?” he asks in a shaky voice, and I know he isn’t asking about the nurse.

“You were dying, and you were the last person I could save.”

He stops struggling then and slumps back against the pillow, looking away from me. “Better to have let me die.”

“Don’t”—I cup his face with my hands and force him to face me—“don’t you dare say that. Not after all we’ve been through.”

“I told you, lass—”

“I couldn’t leave you,” I cut in. “I couldn’t leave you to die there. It wouldn’t have helped anyone.” Then I explain what happened—how the Queen was killed, how Pan died, how Neverland had started to fall apart.

He hesitates. “Olivia?”

“She saved me. Or maybe she just did it to avenge Pan, but we wouldn’t be here without her. I couldn’t save her, though.” I shake my head, unsuccessful in my attempt to will away the image of my friend cracked like porcelain doll, her eyes glassy and far away.

He pulls my hand away from his face and places a kiss on the center of my palm before he intertwines my fingers. “I’m not part of this world anymore, Gwendolyn.”

“You are now.”

“I don’t belong here. . . .” he protests, his eyes still warily taking in the blinking lights and plastic tubes that surround him.

“You survived in Neverland,” I say with a teary sniff. “The twenty-first century is going to be easy.”

His mouth flattens into an unhappy line, but he doesn’t argue. Or agree.

“We’ll figure it out. Together,” I promise.

His brow creases, but he doesn’t argue. “My arm?” he doesn’t look at the empty spot under the covers where his arm should have been.

“I don’t know.”

My mom peeks into the room at that moment. “It’s time.”

“Do you know what they did with his arm?” I ask her.

He eyes glance between us, appraising our closeness. “I’m not sure.”

“We’ll find it,” I assure him. “And then we’ll figure out everything else.”

“You need to let him rest,” my mom says. I think she can sense how badly I want to kiss him. If she thinks her presence will be a deterrent, she’s wrong. After all we’ve been through and all I lost, I refuse to wait another moment.

I lean forward and press my lips gently to his. It’s not more than a peck, and he doesn’t return it.

“Sleep well,” I tell him, backing away. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I don’t need to look at my mom to sense her questions, just like I don’t need to look back at Rowan to feel the intensity of his gaze following me out.

? ? ?

It takes a couple of weeks, but we eventually get Rowan out of the hospital. Thanks to the documents our landlord arranged, he becomes a new person—at least on paper. Behind those dark eyes, though, he’s the same as ever. Still, there are moments I can’t help but worry he’s left part of himself behind. That he’ll never really forgive me for bringing him back.

For weeks he’s mostly silent, watching his new world with wary eyes. I don’t blame him one bit. When I finally came to, I’d hoped that I had only lost days, maybe weeks. But I later discovered I’d lost more than a year to Neverland. There were moments in those first days when I was almost as unsettled by the subtle changes to my world as Rowan must have felt. I had a new president, but whole countries had changed and rearranged themselves in the time he was gone, including his own.

As we waited for Rowan to be released from the hospital, I read through the papers my mom and the landlord kept that documented our ordeal. It took less than four days for our kidnapping to go from the front page to the inside of the paper. After a few weeks, we were rarely mentioned at all. To everyone but the few who were close to her, Olivia had already been forgotten.

But I hadn’t forgotten, and neither had Olivia’s parents.

I once thought the Fey were cruel with their lives built from nothing more than wanting, but after I returned to my own world, I came to understand they’re not alone. By our very nature, humans are heartless things. The Fey, at least can be excused—their world, after all, wasn’t made from memory. We humans, however, select the memories that suit us to remember and forget the rest—the wars, the tragedies, the lost. Neverland might have helped with the forgetting, but it didn’t create it. That we do well enough on our own.





But in the moments that followed, the boy felt himself alive. No longer did he feel as though he were in a waking dream. He began to collect the pieces of his fragile heart, and though some would always be missing, there were enough of who he once was to fight . . . to go on.