skin. Peter looked how summer felt.
“You have no idea how amazing this feels,” Peter mumbled into his shoulder. His eyes opened and the sudden closeness of those astonishing eyes made her spring back.
Tripping over her own feet, Wendy struggled for a moment before popping back upright. “What?” she breathed, her hand hurriedly running through her damp hair.
Peter pushed himself onto his elbow. For a moment, he lay there, looking up at her with a curious tilt of his head. “Your bed,” he finally clarified, a small shadow of a smile on his lips.
“Oh, yeah, it’s the mattress pad.” Wendy’s rushed words tumbled out of her mouth. She cleared her throat and took a step back. “You can sleep on the bed, if you want,” she offered suddenly. “I don’t mind sleeping on the floor.”
Waving her off, Peter slid to the edge of the mattress. Wendy took two more steps away.
“No way, you sleep in your own bed,” he told her. He went to the floor and sprawled out on the sleeping bag. “That wouldn’t be very gallant of me,” he pointed out, arching his back and gripping at air as he stretched.
Wendy plucked a pillow from her bed and tossed it at him. “Since when are you gallant?” Wendy asked.
Peter caught it easily. “Your words wound me, Wendy Darling,” he said with a smirk before tucking the pillow behind his head and flopping onto his back.
Wendy laughed—a nervous, shaky thing. Gathering up the remaining food, she moved it onto the bedside table.
“Aren’t you going to eat anything?” Peter asked, peeking at her from the other side of the bed.
“I already scarfed down half the chow mein,” she told him. But she did reach out for the orange and peeled it as he devoured the Chinese food. She split it in two and tossed Peter one half, which he easily caught out of the air. Wendy ate the slices and reveled in the sweet, cool juices of the orange.
When she was finished, Wendy crawled into her bed and curled up in a ball on her side, close enough to the edge that she could still see Peter. Her bed smelled like him: grass, honeysuckle, and earth woven into the soft threads of her pillow. She breathed it in. She breathed it out.
Peter tucked his hands behind his head, the motion pulling up the hem of his ill-fitting shirt. He heaved a deep sigh as he closed his eyes.
“Peter?” Wendy said quietly.
He opened one eye and tilted his head to look up at her. “Mm?” he hummed.
She wasn’t sure how to phrase her question. “Are you— Do you think the shadow is going to come for you again?” she asked. “Are you any safer here? With me?”
Peter frowned as if he hadn’t considered it. “I’m not sure,” he confessed with a shrug.
Wendy’s fingers brushed against the acorn where it hung at the center of her chest.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Peter added earnestly.
“It’s not me I’m worried about,” she told him. She needed to keep Peter safe. If the shadow showed up, would she be able to protect him? The uncertainty did little to soothe her already frayed nerves. “Will you wake me up if anything happens?” she asked.
“You’ll be the first to know,” Peter told her with a nod.
Wendy reached out and clicked off her fairy lights, plunging the room into darkness. She never slept with them off, but she didn’t want Peter to think she was a child who couldn’t sleep without a nightlight. Wendy pulled the covers over her. The weight of them felt reassuring, but almost immediately she got too hot. Summer was no time to be hiding under a down comforter. She pushed it off. Wendy closed her eyes and tried to force herself to fall asleep, but her imagination wouldn’t let her. She rolled onto her other side. Every noise outside startled her and every shadow in her room seemed to shift.
Every nerve in her body was tense and screaming. She couldn’t relax. There was no way she could fall asleep.
Wendy’s hand shot out and clicked the fairy lights back on.
Peter was already watching.
“Sorry, I … can’t,” Wendy muttered. Shame sweltered on her skin. She felt like she needed to explain herself to him. “I—”
“It’s okay,” was all Peter said. His voice was gentle, which only made her feel more pathetic.
Wendy rolled onto her back and tried to will herself to sleep, but her mind wandered to the woods.
The gentle chirping of crickets drifted