❝Never fight fire with fire.
Everything you love will burn.❞
➳
Adi Morris has fire. Peter Pan likes fire. But she's prepared to use that fire against him if it means keeping her freedom. Adi has never been one to follow the rules, and not even a man...
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"If you wanna start a fight, you'd better throw the first punch; make it a good one." The Good, the Bad, and the Dirty - Panic! at the Disco
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IN AN UNFAMILIAR or potentially dangerous situation, the average human usually experiences one of two reactions: fight or flight. Violence or escape.
Adi was a fighter. That much she knew.
But Neverland? Peter Pan? Magic? Definitely not on her list of plausible happenings. She wasn't even sure she was truly awake or that this wasn't some bizarre fever dream. And if she was awake, she wasn't sure she could fight her way out of this one — if there was a way out at all.
So, naturally, she had zero idea how she was supposed to react when Pan took her into one of the cabins built high into the trees and told her that this was where she would be sleeping.
In the same room as him.
And, well. For as little as she cared about romance, Adi was not blind. So what if Pan was slightly attractive? All he had to do was open his mouth for that thought to disappear. Peter Pan had studied her like she was a code to be cracked, an equation to be solved. She liked to believe she was more complicated than that.
The room was bare: a low cot in each corner, a chest of drawers at the foot of the leftmost one, and a flat table haphazardly piled with books and knives. A few candles flickered, painting shadows across the walls.
"Let me get this straight," Adi said. The moment she'd made it up the ladder, she'd rounded on Pan, the faint amusement on his face only adding gasoline to the fire of her rage. "I wake up and have no idea where I am. I meet a couple of random guys — who are for some reason convinced that they are fictional characters — and one of them wants to be roommates. Are you hearing this, too? Am I the only one who realizes how batshit insane it is?"
Pan blinked, affecting innocence. "Yes."
Adi huffed an explosive sigh. "Then please allow me to spell it out for you: I am not sleeping in this room with you."
"Okay," he said with an offhand shrug. "I'll leave you on your own. All alone in the dark woods, in the jungle of an island you know nothing about. Who knows who's out there? What's out there? Don't you think there's a reason we all live so close together? Don't you wonder what we might be protecting ourselves from? Well, I guess you'll just have to find out, won't you?"
As Pan spoke, he took careful steps closer to Adi until she was rigid in place, her jaw clenched hard. She would not tip her head back to look at him. He was not much taller than her, yet he seemed to tower over her.
"You know what's out there."
"I do. Why do you think you're staying with me?"
Because I heard what you were saying to Felix when you thought I was still unconscious. Because you're afraid. Of me. Or what you think I might do. I'm unpredictable, and you don't know what to do with that.
