New York Times bestselling author Gina L. Maxwell introduces Pan, a sexy contemporary romance retelling of Peter Pan, and the first book in her brand new Neverland series.
by: Gina L. Maxwell
Series: Neverland
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: January 22, 2019
Amazon | Goodreads
Once upon a time, in Neverland, North Carolina—I fell in love.
I was twelve when Peter first climbed up to my balcony.
Thirteen when I sneaked out to see him at the School for Lost Boys.
Seventeen when his touch made me fly,
And eighteen when his words made me cry.
We were magnetic, drawn to each other from that very first night, and what I thought would be forever. But when it came time for me to leave, he wouldn’t come with, so I left town with a map for my future and a shattered heart.
Ten years later, I’ve returned to Neverland, hoping to find a man in place of the boy.
Peter was partially right, growing up is no fun. After quitting my fancy career that sucked the magic out of life, I’m now organizing the fundraiser of the year. In a move that could make or break the event and my new company, I’ve hired Peter, master mechanic and owner of LB Automotive, to help me pull this off—trusting him to rebuild a classic car for the auction that could help hundreds of foster kids in need.
I thought I was prepared, but the boy who refused to leave is now a man hell-bent on getting me to stay, and as sparks fly between us, that undeniable fire flares back to life, deeper and hotter than ever.
But that ripped body doesn’t mean Peter’s matured enough to make us or this event work, and not everyone in Neverland is happy about my return.
Not every wound heals.
Not every heart can be fixed.
Not every boy grows up.
And after all this time, the love we found might be lost to us again…this time, forever.
CHAPTER ONE
Peter
Then…
Neverland, North Carolina
When someone is lost, it’s because there’s a place where they normally belong. Where people miss you and never stop looking for you. But me and the other boys have never belonged anywhere but here. No one misses us and there sure as hell isn’t anyone out there looking for us. So I’m not sure why they call us lost.
We know we came from somewhere—we weren’t born at the Neverland School for Lost Boys—the only question is where. Not that I care to know—if my mother didn’t want me bad enough to make sure I stayed with her, why would I?—but the younger boys who wish we had a mother sometimes ask me. I’m twelve, old enough to know that storks don’t deliver babies to random couples, and even if they did, a stork would never drop an innocent baby—or eleven—into the care of Fred Croc and his wife Delia. But I still don’t have the answers they’re looking for.
“How long does it take to wash your dirty fuckin’ mitts up there?” Croc yells up the stairs. “Get your asses down here pronto!”
The boys and I exchange glances in the rust-framed mirror over the row of sinks in our community bathroom. I hate the fear I can see in their eyes, especially over something as stupid as taking too long to wash their grease-stained hands. Living here is a constant practice in “damned if we do, damned if we don’t.” We get punished if we take too long to wash up after working our shifts at the body shop, but if we come down for dinner with so much as a smudge, we get punished for that too. If we’re lucky, it’s being sent to bed without supper. If we’re not, we end up with belt marks across our backs.
I wink at them, all of which are younger than me by a couple of years, except for Hook, and speak so that my words don’t travel down the stairs. “Dirty work makes dirty hands, am I right, boys?” It’s a play on words because not only is our work literally dirty, it’s also illegal.
They all snicker and get back to washing and rinsing, the worry erased from their faces for a while longer at least.
Hook rolls his eyes with a shake of his head. “Everything’s a joke to you, Pan. When are you gonna grow up? You act like it’s normal for kids to be working in a chop shop. This is called a school but we spend more time busting our asses taking cars apart or putting them back together for a small-time crook than we ever have cracking open our textbooks.”
I shrug. “It might not be normal for other kids, but it’s our normal. There’s nothing we can do to change it, so we might as well make the best of things.” I wipe my hands on a towel that was dingy white at best last week but is now a shade of soiled gray. Looking over at Hook’s overgrown black hair as he bends over the sink that’s much too short for him, I add, “Besides, growing up doesn’t sound like all that much fun to me. At least here we have food and a place to sleep. Growing up means getting banished from Neverland, and who the hell knows what happens to the kids then.”
His ice blue gaze snaps up to glare at me through the mirror. He doesn’t like the reminder that we don’t know what happened to the older kids that used to live here. Croc tells us that he sends them off to work at a different shop, but he isn’t known for his honesty, so we don’t especially believe him. Hook is two years older than me and currently the oldest kid in the house. He’ll be the next of us to go.
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Hook spits out. “I don’t care where I go, as long as it’s far away from this place.”
I study him and try to figure out what his deal is. This certainly isn’t paradise, but it’s not the worst life I can imagine, either. And far as I can tell, he has it the best out of all of us. “Says the teacher’s pet.”
His steely eyes narrow on me. “You got something to say, Pan?”
I square up with him, crossing my arms. “Just that I don’t know why you’re bitchin’ about being here when you’re Croc’s favorite. I mean, you’re the one he’s taking under his wing, right? Teaching you how to run the business? That’s what you said he’s doing when he calls you down at night. Or maybe he’s not teaching you anything. Maybe it’s something fun like watching TV together, and you’re lying because he told you not to tell us what you’re really doing.”
The other boys mumble their agreements behind me. We don’t have a television upstairs. Hell, we don’t have anything up here. No books, no toys. Nothing but the beds we sleep on, the dressers that hold what little clothes we have, our imaginations, and each other. Sometimes it’s enough for the boys. Other times, it’s not.
“You talk too much, Pan.”
I smirk. “Yeah, I get that a lot. Doesn’t mean what I’m saying isn’t true, James.”
“Call me that again, asswipe,” he says huskily, “and see if I don’t plant my fist right in your face.”
Before I can tell him to go ahead and try, a tiny thing steps in front of me, fists on hips and eyes throwing green fire. “Touch a single blond hair on his head, and I’ll tell Croc you were the one who took his pack of cigarettes that went missing today.”
Hook blanches like he’s seen a ghost—even I mentally wince at the little sprite’s threat—but he recovers quick enough. “What the fuck ever, I’m outta here. Smee, Starkey, let’s go.”
He doesn’t bother to wait before turning on his heel and striding out of the bathroom, but he didn’t have to. “Coming, Captain!” they say, and as always, Smee and Starkey follow after Hook—their captain—like the loyal lapdogs they are, offering apologetic glances at me as they pass.
I give them a small nod. I don’t have problems with either boy. Something about them is drawn to Hook’s darker… I don’t know what you’d call it. Presence? Attitude? Pissiness? Either way, it’s not something I understand, and the rest of the boys don’t either. They consider me their captain, and rightly so because I’m the best man for the job. I’m a good and fair leader—all the boys would say so—which is why I don’t make them call me captain even though I am. Unlike Hook who won’t answer to anything else. See? Better.
“Tinker Bell, you shouldn’t have done that. You’re only nine, and I can take care of myself.”
Her usually adorable face screws into an epic scowl. “How about you just say ‘thanks, Tink’ instead of spouting off dumb facts.”
“Thanks, Tink.” I ruffle her hair the way I imagine an older brother might, earning me a grunt of exasperation as she storms out of the room and calls me a silly ass, her favorite nickname for me. The tinkling of the bell around her ankle fades as she heads downstairs for dinner, and I turn to the remaining six boys: Tootles, Nibs, Slightly, Curly, and the Twins. “Come on, boys, let’s get something to eat.”
We shuffle out of the bathroom together, and as we near the top of the stairs I feel a tug on my shirt. “Peter, are you gonna sneak out again tonight?”
“Tootles, shhh,” I whisper, stopping the group. “You want Croc to hear? If he finds out it’s the end of our stories.”
Six pairs of eyes widen and one of the Twins—I don’t know which because none of us can tell them apart—says, “But we need to know what happens to Cinderella, Peter!”
They’re all whisper-shouting now, some worrying about never knowing if the prince finds Cinderella and the others about what will happen if I’m ever caught sneaking out of the school.
“Lost Boys, listen up.” Using their group name does the trick. They all straighten up like little soldiers and await my next command. “No more talking. Tonight will be like any other night. Got it?” In not so many words, I reassured them that I plan to sneak out, that I won’t get caught, and that I’ll bring back another piece of the story they’re dying to hear. That we’re all dying to hear. Even Hook, though he’ll never admit it.
The rest of the night is like any other.
We sit at the long wooden table off the kitchen and eat in silence, using our eyes to carry on entire conversations that Croc and Delia never hear. Afterward, we clear our places and head up the stairs, oldest to youngest, except for Tink who has to stay and clean the pots and kettles and whatever mess Delia made when she prepared our barely edible meal.
The loud ticking of Croc’s ancient pocket watch that he insists keeps better time than anything made in the twenty-first century echoes up the stairwell. “James,” he barks, and we all freeze on our respective steps.
Hook’s entire body tenses in front of me. Man, he really does hate his first name. I wonder if Croc knows that and uses it on purpose. But that doesn’t make sense if Hook’s his favorite. More likely he doesn’t know, and Hook doesn’t want to tell him out of some misguided sense of friendship. Or because Croc’s temper is known to flare up over the dumbest shit and he’s trying to avoid a beating.
Turning around, Hook takes the couple steps down to my level. “You getting the end of the story tonight?”
“Thought you didn’t care about the stories.”
He looks over and meets my gaze. “I don’t.”
That’s it, that’s all he says. He doesn’t offer anything else. Just stares at me intently, waiting for my answer.
“Yeah,” I say finally. “I am.”
Something flashes in his eyes that I can’t read. Like a mix of sadness and relief, but neither of those things wash with the boy I know. He’s always been a pissy, jealous bastard for as long as I can remember. But since he started hanging out with Croc a couple months ago, he’s been an intolerable asshole. He nods once and continues down the stairs as the boys shift to the right to let him pass.
Croc palms the back of Hook’s neck when he reaches the bottom. “Come on, boy. I’ve got lots to teach you tonight.” Hook glances over his shoulder at me one last time before they disappear into Croc’s office, his expression emotionless like he’s made of stone. Something’s definitely off with him, but I don’t know what.
Slightly pushes past me, followed by the others, jarring me back to the present and my mission at hand: sneaking out undetected. We go through our nighttime routine and get into our beds. Finally, Tink’s bell can be heard as Delia leads her up the stairs. While Tink changes in the bathroom, Delia does a bed check, speaking to us as little as possible. Her constant resentment of us is palpable and we’re happy to ignore her just as much as she does us. Only Tink has to deal with her much.
As soon as Delia leaves, slamming the door at the top of the stairs behind her, I spring out of bed and do my thing. I jimmy open the window with the loose frame, whisper to the boys I’ll be back soon, and climb up to the flat roof of the building. In minutes I’ve made my way over to Barrie Street in the neighboring city of London.
A few weeks ago, I was looking for an adventure when I walked under the balcony of the brick house in the middle of this block and heard a woman talking to her kids. But she wasn’t just talking. She’d called it a bedtime story and it was all about a girl called Snow White and her dwarf friends that all had funny names, just like the Lost Boys. I hid in the bushes and listened to the story floating down to me through the open balcony doors. But she only told them part of the story before telling them it was time for bed and she’d continue the next night. Their complaints echoed the ones in my head, and I knew I’d have to come back to hear more.
I also knew I had to tell the boys what I’d heard. No one had ever told us stories. We’d never heard anything like that before, and just as I’d known they would, they totally loved it. So every night since, I’ve returned to the story house to get the next part and the next story. I’m not sure what I’m going to do when the weather gets cold and the lady stops opening the balcony doors, but I’ll worry about that then.
As I approach the house under the cover of night, I hear a different voice. A younger one, soft and sweet sounding. “Nana, the longer you squirm, the longer it’s going to take to brush you, you know.” Looking up through the rails of the balcony, I see a gigantic dog shifting its weight from side to side and making unhappy grunts. Well that certainly wasn’t who I—
Then she rises from behind the shaggy beast and I forget to breathe. The light pouring out from the room surrounds her like it’s protecting her from things that might be hiding in the darkness. I can’t see any details of her face but she’s already the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.
“Okay, Nana, that’ll do for now, you big baby. Go on.”
The dog performs an oafish hop of gratitude before bounding back into the house. The girl laughs with a shake of her head, then leans on the bannister and gazes up at the stars. She runs a hand down her long braid and lets out a sigh like she’s wishing for something. Maybe she wants an adventure, too. I could give her one. I don’t know what it would be, but I know in this moment that I would search the earth until I found the right one for her.
As for me, I think I just found mine. She will be my greatest adventure yet.
I want to talk to her, to ask her name, for her to ask mine—
“Wendy, dear, come inside now, please.”
“Coming, Mom.” And with that, she disappears from sight.
Wendy… My adventure’s name is Wendy.
CHAPTER TWO
Peter
Now…
Using the back of my arm to wipe the grease-tinged drops of sweat from my brow, I duck out from under the hood of the Chrysler 300 and turn to grab my— Where the hell is it? Damn it, I hate it when I can’t find stuff. I start pulling open every drawer in my tool bench, one after the other. Knowing that what I’m looking for isn’t in the bottom drawer full of miscellaneous crap I never need, I squat down and open it to rifle through the contents anyway.
I shove aside a roll of paper towels, a mug of pens, a few dirty rags that I should really take home and wash…and then I freeze. There, in the back corner, is a small black box. The kind that a woman in love would freak out over. Except if a woman opened this particular box, she’d be sorely disappointed. Any woman except for the one I’d intended to give it to, anyway.
The dust covering it is evidence of how long it’s gone untouched—half a dozen years, maybe more—but I know every detail of what’s inside without even having to open it.
I pick up the box and swipe my thumb over the top, displacing the dust as my brain displaces the mental lock on that part of my life. Memories of a distant place and time flood my mind like a dam breaking under the pressure. Cornflower blue eyes, long hair the color of maple syrup, and a musical laugh I’ll never forget as long I live.
When I was a boy, I thought she was my forever adventure. But just as they have a beginning, adventures also have an ending, and she had other things to explore. She wanted me to go with her, but even then I knew there was nothing for me outside of Neverland. So she left, I stayed behind, and I did my best to bury her memory and avoid the ache I feel in my chest every time I think of her.
Fuck. Without opening it, I toss the box back into the drawer and slam it shut. Growling, I turn my agitation to my original problem and call out through the garage. “Which one of you assholes didn’t put my 7/16ths wrench back?”
A man with black hair, short on the sides and long enough to curl on top, sticks his head out from the customer service area next to my bay. “Sorry, boss.”
I roll my eyes. Even as a grown-ass man, his childhood habit of taking the blame for stuff is ingrained in him as ever. “It wasn’t you, Carlos. You’ve been manning the front desk all day.”
A boyish smile breaks across his face, popping dimples into his cheeks that make every female customer swoon. “Oh right. Never mind.”
The heavy metal being pumped across the four garage bays from the huge speakers makes it hard for any of the others to hear me, so I make my way down the line.
“Nick, you take my wrench?”
The muscles in his arms bunch, and a sheen of sweat covers his dark brown skin as he drags a wheel from the Jeep on his hydraulic lift and drops it to the ground. “Nah, I’ve done nothing but new tires and rotations today. People out here acting like it’s about to snow in the middle of July or something.”
“They can act however they want as long as they’re spending money here and not over at Croc’s place.”
“I hear that,” he says, grabbing the wheel to haul it over to the tire changer. “Good luck finding your wrench, man.”
I know the next two bays will come up short as well. Thomas is our resident technology geek. Anything that has wires, computer chips, and mother boards, he’s our guy. In the shop, that usually means custom sound systems on a fun day, or aftermarket alarms or remote starts on a boring one. Either way, I know Thomas won’t have my wrench. He has the strictest moral code of anyone I’ve ever known. He’d never take anything that wasn’t his without asking first.
Then there’s Silas. He’d never take anything that wasn’t his either, but for an entirely different reason. He’s an arrogant jackass—and I say that with nothing but love for the guy—who believes he’s just a hair better at everything than you are and all his things are slightly better quality. For lack of a better term, Silas is a one-upper. Usually annoys the shit out of other people, but we accept it as one of the many individual idiosyncrasies that make up our group.
Silas and I are two of the three body work specialists in the shop, but it’s rare we get the opportunity to flex our skills. Pulling dents out of doors is child’s play when you can take a rusted POS and turn it into an award-winning, custom beauty. But if we don’t do the mundane crap that pays the bills, we won’t ever have the money to open up the custom rebuild business we’ve been wanting forever. Something we’ll get around to doing someday.
“Si,” I say with a nod as I pass.
He gives me a chin lift and his signature smirk before going back to sanding the bondo on a Chevy Malibu’s quarter panel.
I can hear the arguing before I even get to the next bay, which is nothing new when it comes to the twins. I find them standing underneath a lifted Toyota, one working on the exhaust and the other replacing brakes, their blonde hair sticking up in different directions from running their hands through it as they do when working.
I stop in front of them and cross my arms over my chest, raising an inquisitive brow. “What’s the argument today, boys?”
“Hey, Peter,” they say in unison.
The one fitting the new exhaust pipe pauses to say, “Numbnuts over there says that a Camaro SS would beat a Mustang GT in a quarter mile.”
His brother points a wrench—not my missing wrench, I notice—in his direction. “If they’re both stock? Absofuckinglutely. Now if you’re talking aftermarket mods, that might be a different story.”
“What do you think, Peter?” they ask.
The creepy twin thing is something they do often but I guess when you’re inseparable with someone, it’s bound to happen. They do everything together—including women, which is about the only thing they don’t argue about. And they can easily turn around a job that has multiple issues in half the time with their tag-team approach, so I’ve never made them split up. We don’t have enough bays for all of us to work separately, anyway. Carlos and Thomas share a bay and switch off with front desk duties since they’re the best at customer service.
“Well, in my humble opinion—” There’s nothing humble about it because I know everything there is to know about cars. “If you’re talking stock, and you’re driving a Mustang GT, you might get him off the line, but his SS would smoke your ass before you get halfway down the track. So…” I glance at the embroidered name patch on the coveralls of the twin on the left. I wish one of them would dye their hair a different color for chrissake. “Tobias is right this time. Sorry, Tyler.”
“Aha! Told you, asshole!” Tobias continues to rub his victory in a grumbling Ty’s face as I move onto the last bay in our shop.
A pair of shapely legs in jean cutoffs sticks out from underneath the front of a Dodge Challenger, one black combat boot tapping along to the heavy beat of the music.
“Tink, you wouldn’t happen to know what happened to my 7/16ths, would you?”
She rolls out from under the car, a huge smile on her face and a familiar wrench in her hand. “You mean this 7/16ths?”
I arch a brow down at her. “That’d be the one, yeah.”
She raises her free hand up to me and I help pull her up to her feet. She’s wearing a tank top with a chopped-off bottom, leaving her stomach bare except for the grease smudges. I gave up telling her to wear a pair of coveralls years ago. She claims she can’t work in restrictive clothing, and honestly, it doesn’t hurt business when guys bring their cars in for unnecessary oil changes or diagnostic checks just to get a chance to chat up Tink. It’s not like her Daisy Dukes and crop tops are distracting any of us. Tink’s always been a non-sexual entity in our group, though we stopped referring to her as one of the boys after she nailed Si in the balls for it when she was twelve.
“Sorry, Peter, I couldn’t find mine,” she says looking up at me.
“You need glasses, Tink?”
She furrows her brow under the longer fall of her blond pixie cut. “No, why?”
“Because yours is right there on your workbench.”
She follows to where I’m pointing. Her skin flushes as she bites on the inside of her cheek, making the thin gold nose-ring glint in the light. “Well, would you look at that,” she says with an embarrassed chuckle. “I swear it wasn’t there earlier. But now that I’ve got you here, Peter, I wanted to ask you—”
“Boss!”
I turn to see Carlos gesturing wildly at me like it’s a life or death situation. Shit, I hope the computer isn’t on the fritz again. We can’t afford to replace it if it fries. “Sorry, Tink, hold that thought.”
“That’s okay, I’ll walk and talk,” she says, falling into line as I make my way back across the bays, the bell she keeps on a long chain around her neck tinkling with every step. “I was wondering if you wanted to go to the Pitt County car show next weekend and pick out a custom project we could work on together. You know, to sell when it’s done as another way of bringing in money.”
“We don’t have the time or space to devote to a project like that right now. We need all our bays operational for the daily stuff that’s paying the bills.”
“No, I know. But we could make space for it in the pole barn and then after work—”
“Tink, what have I always said about after work?”
She sighs. “When work is done the fun’s begun.”
“Exactly. We only work as much as we have to, and after that, we work hard at having fun,” I say, dropping my wrench off in my bay as we pass. “Which, correct me if I’m wrong, makes me the best boss on the planet.”
“You’re absolutely the best boss, Peter. You’re the best at everything.”
I smile down at her. “Won’t get an argument from me on that one.” We stop in front of Carlos, and I put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “It’s a good idea, Tink, just not for right now. Someday we’ll be able to do stuff like that without pulling overtime hours. Until then, let’s keep doing what we’re doing.”
“Boss.”
Carlos is practically bouncing in place as I finally turn my attention to him. “What is it?”
“There’s someone who wants to talk to you about a custom rebuild.”
I arch a brow in Tink’s direction but she holds her hands up. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t talk to anyone but you about that.”
“Tell him we don’t do custom rebuilds right now but we can refer him to someone who does. Hold on, I think I have a number for J.R. at the Toy Shop in London…” I fish my phone out of the pocket of my coveralls and pull up my contacts.
“It’s a her, Boss,” Carlos corrects. “And trust me, you’re gonna want to talk to her.”
“Trust me,” I say, scrolling through the names in my phone. Did I save it under the J’s or the T’s? “I’m really not.”
I hear the door to the waiting area open just as Tink whispers, “Holy shit,” making me look up from my phone…and my heart stops.
“Hello, Peter.”
A woman with cornflower blue eyes and long hair the color of maple syrup steps into the shop. Her smile is shy, and her small hands twist together in front of her like she’s unsure of her welcome. So much time has passed since I’ve seen her, and yet she’s just as beautiful as that night I saw her standing on her balcony, wearing only a nightgown and rays of moonlight.
“Can you believe it?” Carlos says excitedly. “Wendy’s home!”
Peter
Then…
Neverland, North Carolina
When someone is lost, it’s because there’s a place where they normally belong. Where people miss you and never stop looking for you. But me and the other boys have never belonged anywhere but here. No one misses us and there sure as hell isn’t anyone out there looking for us. So I’m not sure why they call us lost.
We know we came from somewhere—we weren’t born at the Neverland School for Lost Boys—the only question is where. Not that I care to know—if my mother didn’t want me bad enough to make sure I stayed with her, why would I?—but the younger boys who wish we had a mother sometimes ask me. I’m twelve, old enough to know that storks don’t deliver babies to random couples, and even if they did, a stork would never drop an innocent baby—or eleven—into the care of Fred Croc and his wife Delia. But I still don’t have the answers they’re looking for.
“How long does it take to wash your dirty fuckin’ mitts up there?” Croc yells up the stairs. “Get your asses down here pronto!”
The boys and I exchange glances in the rust-framed mirror over the row of sinks in our community bathroom. I hate the fear I can see in their eyes, especially over something as stupid as taking too long to wash their grease-stained hands. Living here is a constant practice in “damned if we do, damned if we don’t.” We get punished if we take too long to wash up after working our shifts at the body shop, but if we come down for dinner with so much as a smudge, we get punished for that too. If we’re lucky, it’s being sent to bed without supper. If we’re not, we end up with belt marks across our backs.
I wink at them, all of which are younger than me by a couple of years, except for Hook, and speak so that my words don’t travel down the stairs. “Dirty work makes dirty hands, am I right, boys?” It’s a play on words because not only is our work literally dirty, it’s also illegal.
They all snicker and get back to washing and rinsing, the worry erased from their faces for a while longer at least.
Hook rolls his eyes with a shake of his head. “Everything’s a joke to you, Pan. When are you gonna grow up? You act like it’s normal for kids to be working in a chop shop. This is called a school but we spend more time busting our asses taking cars apart or putting them back together for a small-time crook than we ever have cracking open our textbooks.”
I shrug. “It might not be normal for other kids, but it’s our normal. There’s nothing we can do to change it, so we might as well make the best of things.” I wipe my hands on a towel that was dingy white at best last week but is now a shade of soiled gray. Looking over at Hook’s overgrown black hair as he bends over the sink that’s much too short for him, I add, “Besides, growing up doesn’t sound like all that much fun to me. At least here we have food and a place to sleep. Growing up means getting banished from Neverland, and who the hell knows what happens to the kids then.”
His ice blue gaze snaps up to glare at me through the mirror. He doesn’t like the reminder that we don’t know what happened to the older kids that used to live here. Croc tells us that he sends them off to work at a different shop, but he isn’t known for his honesty, so we don’t especially believe him. Hook is two years older than me and currently the oldest kid in the house. He’ll be the next of us to go.
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Hook spits out. “I don’t care where I go, as long as it’s far away from this place.”
I study him and try to figure out what his deal is. This certainly isn’t paradise, but it’s not the worst life I can imagine, either. And far as I can tell, he has it the best out of all of us. “Says the teacher’s pet.”
His steely eyes narrow on me. “You got something to say, Pan?”
I square up with him, crossing my arms. “Just that I don’t know why you’re bitchin’ about being here when you’re Croc’s favorite. I mean, you’re the one he’s taking under his wing, right? Teaching you how to run the business? That’s what you said he’s doing when he calls you down at night. Or maybe he’s not teaching you anything. Maybe it’s something fun like watching TV together, and you’re lying because he told you not to tell us what you’re really doing.”
The other boys mumble their agreements behind me. We don’t have a television upstairs. Hell, we don’t have anything up here. No books, no toys. Nothing but the beds we sleep on, the dressers that hold what little clothes we have, our imaginations, and each other. Sometimes it’s enough for the boys. Other times, it’s not.
“You talk too much, Pan.”
I smirk. “Yeah, I get that a lot. Doesn’t mean what I’m saying isn’t true, James.”
“Call me that again, asswipe,” he says huskily, “and see if I don’t plant my fist right in your face.”
Before I can tell him to go ahead and try, a tiny thing steps in front of me, fists on hips and eyes throwing green fire. “Touch a single blond hair on his head, and I’ll tell Croc you were the one who took his pack of cigarettes that went missing today.”
Hook blanches like he’s seen a ghost—even I mentally wince at the little sprite’s threat—but he recovers quick enough. “What the fuck ever, I’m outta here. Smee, Starkey, let’s go.”
He doesn’t bother to wait before turning on his heel and striding out of the bathroom, but he didn’t have to. “Coming, Captain!” they say, and as always, Smee and Starkey follow after Hook—their captain—like the loyal lapdogs they are, offering apologetic glances at me as they pass.
I give them a small nod. I don’t have problems with either boy. Something about them is drawn to Hook’s darker… I don’t know what you’d call it. Presence? Attitude? Pissiness? Either way, it’s not something I understand, and the rest of the boys don’t either. They consider me their captain, and rightly so because I’m the best man for the job. I’m a good and fair leader—all the boys would say so—which is why I don’t make them call me captain even though I am. Unlike Hook who won’t answer to anything else. See? Better.
“Tinker Bell, you shouldn’t have done that. You’re only nine, and I can take care of myself.”
Her usually adorable face screws into an epic scowl. “How about you just say ‘thanks, Tink’ instead of spouting off dumb facts.”
“Thanks, Tink.” I ruffle her hair the way I imagine an older brother might, earning me a grunt of exasperation as she storms out of the room and calls me a silly ass, her favorite nickname for me. The tinkling of the bell around her ankle fades as she heads downstairs for dinner, and I turn to the remaining six boys: Tootles, Nibs, Slightly, Curly, and the Twins. “Come on, boys, let’s get something to eat.”
We shuffle out of the bathroom together, and as we near the top of the stairs I feel a tug on my shirt. “Peter, are you gonna sneak out again tonight?”
“Tootles, shhh,” I whisper, stopping the group. “You want Croc to hear? If he finds out it’s the end of our stories.”
Six pairs of eyes widen and one of the Twins—I don’t know which because none of us can tell them apart—says, “But we need to know what happens to Cinderella, Peter!”
They’re all whisper-shouting now, some worrying about never knowing if the prince finds Cinderella and the others about what will happen if I’m ever caught sneaking out of the school.
“Lost Boys, listen up.” Using their group name does the trick. They all straighten up like little soldiers and await my next command. “No more talking. Tonight will be like any other night. Got it?” In not so many words, I reassured them that I plan to sneak out, that I won’t get caught, and that I’ll bring back another piece of the story they’re dying to hear. That we’re all dying to hear. Even Hook, though he’ll never admit it.
The rest of the night is like any other.
We sit at the long wooden table off the kitchen and eat in silence, using our eyes to carry on entire conversations that Croc and Delia never hear. Afterward, we clear our places and head up the stairs, oldest to youngest, except for Tink who has to stay and clean the pots and kettles and whatever mess Delia made when she prepared our barely edible meal.
The loud ticking of Croc’s ancient pocket watch that he insists keeps better time than anything made in the twenty-first century echoes up the stairwell. “James,” he barks, and we all freeze on our respective steps.
Hook’s entire body tenses in front of me. Man, he really does hate his first name. I wonder if Croc knows that and uses it on purpose. But that doesn’t make sense if Hook’s his favorite. More likely he doesn’t know, and Hook doesn’t want to tell him out of some misguided sense of friendship. Or because Croc’s temper is known to flare up over the dumbest shit and he’s trying to avoid a beating.
Turning around, Hook takes the couple steps down to my level. “You getting the end of the story tonight?”
“Thought you didn’t care about the stories.”
He looks over and meets my gaze. “I don’t.”
That’s it, that’s all he says. He doesn’t offer anything else. Just stares at me intently, waiting for my answer.
“Yeah,” I say finally. “I am.”
Something flashes in his eyes that I can’t read. Like a mix of sadness and relief, but neither of those things wash with the boy I know. He’s always been a pissy, jealous bastard for as long as I can remember. But since he started hanging out with Croc a couple months ago, he’s been an intolerable asshole. He nods once and continues down the stairs as the boys shift to the right to let him pass.
Croc palms the back of Hook’s neck when he reaches the bottom. “Come on, boy. I’ve got lots to teach you tonight.” Hook glances over his shoulder at me one last time before they disappear into Croc’s office, his expression emotionless like he’s made of stone. Something’s definitely off with him, but I don’t know what.
Slightly pushes past me, followed by the others, jarring me back to the present and my mission at hand: sneaking out undetected. We go through our nighttime routine and get into our beds. Finally, Tink’s bell can be heard as Delia leads her up the stairs. While Tink changes in the bathroom, Delia does a bed check, speaking to us as little as possible. Her constant resentment of us is palpable and we’re happy to ignore her just as much as she does us. Only Tink has to deal with her much.
As soon as Delia leaves, slamming the door at the top of the stairs behind her, I spring out of bed and do my thing. I jimmy open the window with the loose frame, whisper to the boys I’ll be back soon, and climb up to the flat roof of the building. In minutes I’ve made my way over to Barrie Street in the neighboring city of London.
A few weeks ago, I was looking for an adventure when I walked under the balcony of the brick house in the middle of this block and heard a woman talking to her kids. But she wasn’t just talking. She’d called it a bedtime story and it was all about a girl called Snow White and her dwarf friends that all had funny names, just like the Lost Boys. I hid in the bushes and listened to the story floating down to me through the open balcony doors. But she only told them part of the story before telling them it was time for bed and she’d continue the next night. Their complaints echoed the ones in my head, and I knew I’d have to come back to hear more.
I also knew I had to tell the boys what I’d heard. No one had ever told us stories. We’d never heard anything like that before, and just as I’d known they would, they totally loved it. So every night since, I’ve returned to the story house to get the next part and the next story. I’m not sure what I’m going to do when the weather gets cold and the lady stops opening the balcony doors, but I’ll worry about that then.
As I approach the house under the cover of night, I hear a different voice. A younger one, soft and sweet sounding. “Nana, the longer you squirm, the longer it’s going to take to brush you, you know.” Looking up through the rails of the balcony, I see a gigantic dog shifting its weight from side to side and making unhappy grunts. Well that certainly wasn’t who I—
Then she rises from behind the shaggy beast and I forget to breathe. The light pouring out from the room surrounds her like it’s protecting her from things that might be hiding in the darkness. I can’t see any details of her face but she’s already the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.
“Okay, Nana, that’ll do for now, you big baby. Go on.”
The dog performs an oafish hop of gratitude before bounding back into the house. The girl laughs with a shake of her head, then leans on the bannister and gazes up at the stars. She runs a hand down her long braid and lets out a sigh like she’s wishing for something. Maybe she wants an adventure, too. I could give her one. I don’t know what it would be, but I know in this moment that I would search the earth until I found the right one for her.
As for me, I think I just found mine. She will be my greatest adventure yet.
I want to talk to her, to ask her name, for her to ask mine—
“Wendy, dear, come inside now, please.”
“Coming, Mom.” And with that, she disappears from sight.
Wendy… My adventure’s name is Wendy.
CHAPTER TWO
Peter
Now…
Using the back of my arm to wipe the grease-tinged drops of sweat from my brow, I duck out from under the hood of the Chrysler 300 and turn to grab my— Where the hell is it? Damn it, I hate it when I can’t find stuff. I start pulling open every drawer in my tool bench, one after the other. Knowing that what I’m looking for isn’t in the bottom drawer full of miscellaneous crap I never need, I squat down and open it to rifle through the contents anyway.
I shove aside a roll of paper towels, a mug of pens, a few dirty rags that I should really take home and wash…and then I freeze. There, in the back corner, is a small black box. The kind that a woman in love would freak out over. Except if a woman opened this particular box, she’d be sorely disappointed. Any woman except for the one I’d intended to give it to, anyway.
The dust covering it is evidence of how long it’s gone untouched—half a dozen years, maybe more—but I know every detail of what’s inside without even having to open it.
I pick up the box and swipe my thumb over the top, displacing the dust as my brain displaces the mental lock on that part of my life. Memories of a distant place and time flood my mind like a dam breaking under the pressure. Cornflower blue eyes, long hair the color of maple syrup, and a musical laugh I’ll never forget as long I live.
When I was a boy, I thought she was my forever adventure. But just as they have a beginning, adventures also have an ending, and she had other things to explore. She wanted me to go with her, but even then I knew there was nothing for me outside of Neverland. So she left, I stayed behind, and I did my best to bury her memory and avoid the ache I feel in my chest every time I think of her.
Fuck. Without opening it, I toss the box back into the drawer and slam it shut. Growling, I turn my agitation to my original problem and call out through the garage. “Which one of you assholes didn’t put my 7/16ths wrench back?”
A man with black hair, short on the sides and long enough to curl on top, sticks his head out from the customer service area next to my bay. “Sorry, boss.”
I roll my eyes. Even as a grown-ass man, his childhood habit of taking the blame for stuff is ingrained in him as ever. “It wasn’t you, Carlos. You’ve been manning the front desk all day.”
A boyish smile breaks across his face, popping dimples into his cheeks that make every female customer swoon. “Oh right. Never mind.”
The heavy metal being pumped across the four garage bays from the huge speakers makes it hard for any of the others to hear me, so I make my way down the line.
“Nick, you take my wrench?”
The muscles in his arms bunch, and a sheen of sweat covers his dark brown skin as he drags a wheel from the Jeep on his hydraulic lift and drops it to the ground. “Nah, I’ve done nothing but new tires and rotations today. People out here acting like it’s about to snow in the middle of July or something.”
“They can act however they want as long as they’re spending money here and not over at Croc’s place.”
“I hear that,” he says, grabbing the wheel to haul it over to the tire changer. “Good luck finding your wrench, man.”
I know the next two bays will come up short as well. Thomas is our resident technology geek. Anything that has wires, computer chips, and mother boards, he’s our guy. In the shop, that usually means custom sound systems on a fun day, or aftermarket alarms or remote starts on a boring one. Either way, I know Thomas won’t have my wrench. He has the strictest moral code of anyone I’ve ever known. He’d never take anything that wasn’t his without asking first.
Then there’s Silas. He’d never take anything that wasn’t his either, but for an entirely different reason. He’s an arrogant jackass—and I say that with nothing but love for the guy—who believes he’s just a hair better at everything than you are and all his things are slightly better quality. For lack of a better term, Silas is a one-upper. Usually annoys the shit out of other people, but we accept it as one of the many individual idiosyncrasies that make up our group.
Silas and I are two of the three body work specialists in the shop, but it’s rare we get the opportunity to flex our skills. Pulling dents out of doors is child’s play when you can take a rusted POS and turn it into an award-winning, custom beauty. But if we don’t do the mundane crap that pays the bills, we won’t ever have the money to open up the custom rebuild business we’ve been wanting forever. Something we’ll get around to doing someday.
“Si,” I say with a nod as I pass.
He gives me a chin lift and his signature smirk before going back to sanding the bondo on a Chevy Malibu’s quarter panel.
I can hear the arguing before I even get to the next bay, which is nothing new when it comes to the twins. I find them standing underneath a lifted Toyota, one working on the exhaust and the other replacing brakes, their blonde hair sticking up in different directions from running their hands through it as they do when working.
I stop in front of them and cross my arms over my chest, raising an inquisitive brow. “What’s the argument today, boys?”
“Hey, Peter,” they say in unison.
The one fitting the new exhaust pipe pauses to say, “Numbnuts over there says that a Camaro SS would beat a Mustang GT in a quarter mile.”
His brother points a wrench—not my missing wrench, I notice—in his direction. “If they’re both stock? Absofuckinglutely. Now if you’re talking aftermarket mods, that might be a different story.”
“What do you think, Peter?” they ask.
The creepy twin thing is something they do often but I guess when you’re inseparable with someone, it’s bound to happen. They do everything together—including women, which is about the only thing they don’t argue about. And they can easily turn around a job that has multiple issues in half the time with their tag-team approach, so I’ve never made them split up. We don’t have enough bays for all of us to work separately, anyway. Carlos and Thomas share a bay and switch off with front desk duties since they’re the best at customer service.
“Well, in my humble opinion—” There’s nothing humble about it because I know everything there is to know about cars. “If you’re talking stock, and you’re driving a Mustang GT, you might get him off the line, but his SS would smoke your ass before you get halfway down the track. So…” I glance at the embroidered name patch on the coveralls of the twin on the left. I wish one of them would dye their hair a different color for chrissake. “Tobias is right this time. Sorry, Tyler.”
“Aha! Told you, asshole!” Tobias continues to rub his victory in a grumbling Ty’s face as I move onto the last bay in our shop.
A pair of shapely legs in jean cutoffs sticks out from underneath the front of a Dodge Challenger, one black combat boot tapping along to the heavy beat of the music.
“Tink, you wouldn’t happen to know what happened to my 7/16ths, would you?”
She rolls out from under the car, a huge smile on her face and a familiar wrench in her hand. “You mean this 7/16ths?”
I arch a brow down at her. “That’d be the one, yeah.”
She raises her free hand up to me and I help pull her up to her feet. She’s wearing a tank top with a chopped-off bottom, leaving her stomach bare except for the grease smudges. I gave up telling her to wear a pair of coveralls years ago. She claims she can’t work in restrictive clothing, and honestly, it doesn’t hurt business when guys bring their cars in for unnecessary oil changes or diagnostic checks just to get a chance to chat up Tink. It’s not like her Daisy Dukes and crop tops are distracting any of us. Tink’s always been a non-sexual entity in our group, though we stopped referring to her as one of the boys after she nailed Si in the balls for it when she was twelve.
“Sorry, Peter, I couldn’t find mine,” she says looking up at me.
“You need glasses, Tink?”
She furrows her brow under the longer fall of her blond pixie cut. “No, why?”
“Because yours is right there on your workbench.”
She follows to where I’m pointing. Her skin flushes as she bites on the inside of her cheek, making the thin gold nose-ring glint in the light. “Well, would you look at that,” she says with an embarrassed chuckle. “I swear it wasn’t there earlier. But now that I’ve got you here, Peter, I wanted to ask you—”
“Boss!”
I turn to see Carlos gesturing wildly at me like it’s a life or death situation. Shit, I hope the computer isn’t on the fritz again. We can’t afford to replace it if it fries. “Sorry, Tink, hold that thought.”
“That’s okay, I’ll walk and talk,” she says, falling into line as I make my way back across the bays, the bell she keeps on a long chain around her neck tinkling with every step. “I was wondering if you wanted to go to the Pitt County car show next weekend and pick out a custom project we could work on together. You know, to sell when it’s done as another way of bringing in money.”
“We don’t have the time or space to devote to a project like that right now. We need all our bays operational for the daily stuff that’s paying the bills.”
“No, I know. But we could make space for it in the pole barn and then after work—”
“Tink, what have I always said about after work?”
She sighs. “When work is done the fun’s begun.”
“Exactly. We only work as much as we have to, and after that, we work hard at having fun,” I say, dropping my wrench off in my bay as we pass. “Which, correct me if I’m wrong, makes me the best boss on the planet.”
“You’re absolutely the best boss, Peter. You’re the best at everything.”
I smile down at her. “Won’t get an argument from me on that one.” We stop in front of Carlos, and I put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “It’s a good idea, Tink, just not for right now. Someday we’ll be able to do stuff like that without pulling overtime hours. Until then, let’s keep doing what we’re doing.”
“Boss.”
Carlos is practically bouncing in place as I finally turn my attention to him. “What is it?”
“There’s someone who wants to talk to you about a custom rebuild.”
I arch a brow in Tink’s direction but she holds her hands up. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t talk to anyone but you about that.”
“Tell him we don’t do custom rebuilds right now but we can refer him to someone who does. Hold on, I think I have a number for J.R. at the Toy Shop in London…” I fish my phone out of the pocket of my coveralls and pull up my contacts.
“It’s a her, Boss,” Carlos corrects. “And trust me, you’re gonna want to talk to her.”
“Trust me,” I say, scrolling through the names in my phone. Did I save it under the J’s or the T’s? “I’m really not.”
I hear the door to the waiting area open just as Tink whispers, “Holy shit,” making me look up from my phone…and my heart stops.
“Hello, Peter.”
A woman with cornflower blue eyes and long hair the color of maple syrup steps into the shop. Her smile is shy, and her small hands twist together in front of her like she’s unsure of her welcome. So much time has passed since I’ve seen her, and yet she’s just as beautiful as that night I saw her standing on her balcony, wearing only a nightgown and rays of moonlight.
“Can you believe it?” Carlos says excitedly. “Wendy’s home!”
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When she’s not reading or writing steamy romance novels, she spends her time losing at Scrabble (and every other game) to her high school sweetheart, doing her best to hang out with their teenagers before they fly the coop, and dreaming about her move to sunny Florida once they do.
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