Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 72233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
“Come on, Wendy, swing with me!” he yelled, winding back and forth like a pendulum.
He was insane. “I don’t swing!”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” He swooped by again, losing momentum as gravity slowed him to a twirling dangle. “Are you afraid of heights?”
“No, but I’m in a nightgown with muddy feet, and I’d much rather reach the house than climb trees.” He was lucky he didn’t break his neck. The vine was nothing more than a tangle of leaves and branches. “Can we please keep moving?”
“All I hear is priss, priss, priss, priss, priss, priss, priss.”
She ground her molars. “Look, I’m not in the mood for juvenile games.” She slapped her ankle when a mosquito bit it. “Could you please go back to acting like an adult and take me to your house?”
Dangling ten feet overhead, his foot held in a loose knot where the vine looped. He laughed at her. “Ms. Darling, you sound rather irritable.”
“Mr. Pangbourne, that’s because I am irritated,” she said between clenched teeth.
“Is it because we got interrupted by the turbulence?”
She scoffed. “No, it’s because my tour guide is a reckless man-child.”
“I could finish what we started on the plane. Maybe that would improve your mood.”
She gaped at him. “I can’t believe you just said that.” Unsure where she was going, she stomped off.
“What? I was being generous!”
She growled and kept walking toward the steady beat that pounded in the distance. It was not a sound of nature but the sound of human life. Perhaps someone there could help her. Peter claimed the Never Lands were his, but he also mentioned lost boys. There were clearly others on the island. At the moment, she could easily trade her escort for someone less annoying.
A twig snapped behind her, and she turned, startled to find Peter at her back.
“Did I scare you?”
“No. And what is this obsession you have with my fear.”
He shrugged. “Girls are always in distress.”
“Hardly. We have much more fortitude and courage than society realizes.”
“There’s a spider in your hair.”
She swatted wildly only to realize he was teasing her when he laughed. Composing herself, she glared at him. “You’re a child.”
He smirked. “You only say that because adults forget how to have fun. It’s like some sort of amnesia. You might already have it.”
“It’s called responsibility.”
“More like indentured slavery if you ask me.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“Half the rules are unnecessary. People are too afraid of chaos.”
Typically, she’d agree with him, but with each muddy step and stinging mosquito bite, the thought of her secluded bedroom grew more and more attractive.
Speaking of chaos, he’d removed his jacket and tie, and a storm of confusion whirled inside of her.
He rolled his sleeves, exposing the strength of his forearms. His tanned skin and muscular physique were undeniably attractive, but his cavalier behavior was a total turn-off. Unfortunately, he wore unruly well. And his unpolished, bad boy appearance confused her all the more.
“What are you looking at?”
Realizing she was staring, she dropped her gaze and asked, “Do you hear that music?”
“That’s just the Lost Boys.”
“And who are the Lost Boys again?”
“My friends.”
She self-consciously looked down at her clothes. “How many are there?”
He quietly counted on his fingers. “Six. Seven if you count Belle.”
“Who’s Belle?”
“She’s the only girl in the group. I can’t very well call her a Lost Boy.”
“What are the others’ names?”
“In the Never Lands, our names are whatever we choose. You can be whoever you want to be here.”
He wove about the woods as if dribbling an invisible soccer ball. Every few seconds, he’d leap over a tree root or ollie off a trunk, careless enough to defy gravity. His energy seemed endless.
“Well, what do you call them?”
“First, they call me Pan—short for Pangbourne. Then there’s Tate, Nibbs, Bayne, Cass, and the twins, Thayer and Tristan.”
“They all live with you?”
“God, no! Although they rarely leave.” He frowned. “I don’t actually know if they have homes. They’re always just…around. Like homeless nomads.”
“You don’t know if your friends have homes? Didn’t you ever ask or try to visit them?”
He shrugged. “I guess I never took interest.” He doubled his pace. “But they’ll go nuts when they see you!”
The louder the music pounded in the jungle, the stranger this journey seemed. Peter was prancing from tree to tree like a squirrel on cocaine while she grew increasingly concerned about the people she was about to meet in nothing more than her pajamas.
This sort of uncertainty is exactly what she deserved after such an impetuous decision to run off with a stranger. How had she ever believed herself safe with him?
Something slithered through the underbrush and hissed from the shadows. She stilled. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“I don’t know. It sounded…slimy.”
“It was probably just a Never Snake.”
Her eyes widened. Did she even want to know what a Never Snake was?
“Or could be a Never Spider. They make a lot of noise when they're full grown.”