“Wow, I can’t believe how big it is.” I look over at Peter and the amused smirk on his face gives away his train of thought. Smacking his arm, I clarify. “I was talking about the car show, Pan.”

“I know.” He turns his head and that adorably cocky smirk my way. “For now.”

I can’t help it, I laugh harder than I probably should. He’s too much, and yet, I still can’t get enough of him. From the first night he appeared on my balcony, Peter was a dancing flame, drawing me in and providing the warmth and light I was missing in my rather dull life.

I knew it was risky to love a boy so different from me—one who was being neglected, treated like free labor, and physically abused. But somehow it never seemed to affect Peter. His childlike spirit, boyish charm, and love for adventure were never tainted by the shadows surrounding him.

Unlike poor Hook. Even when we were kids, I knew things were somehow different for him. Peter and I were sixteen when Hook was forced to move out of the school. It was odd not to see him in his bed, broody and pretending not to care about the rest of us. I always hoped that wherever he was, he’d found happiness and someone who loved him despite himself.

Considering what I saw last week, I’m guessing things aren’t all that different, which makes me sad for him. I also feel bad for poor Starkey. I wonder if John might be able to help.

“The show is divided into three main sections—parts and services, rebuilt and shiny, and what we want, which is old and rusted-out. We’ll head over there and go through every aisle until we find what we’re looking for,” Peter says, drawing me back to the present.

“Sounds good,” I say with a smile.

As he leads me down the rows of cars that have seen better days, he stops occasionally to ask questions and talk specs with the owners, and I find myself embarrassingly aware of how attractive this adult version of Peter is. Not that I didn’t notice the second I laid eyes on him, but there’s no harm in taking a second—or fiftieth—look. He’s always been a perfect ten in my book, and that definitely hasn’t changed with how well he fills out those worn jeans and stretches the gray cotton of his LB Automotive T-shirt to capacity. But getting to know him again, like this, is gaining him points that shoot him way above a ten.

Owns his own business: +1 point

Employs and still lives with all the Lost Boys and Tink: +2

Throws hatchets shirtless in a manly display of rippling muscles and tattoos: +1000

Yes, I know, it’s crass and beneath my upbringing as a lady, but I don’t care. That did it for me. A lot. Which, combined with the beer, is what I’m blaming my poor decisions on last Friday when I practically jumped Peter’s bones in his room. Between the memories of him axe throwing and him grinding his other weapon between my legs that night, I’ve had plenty of fodder for my frequent “de-stressing” sessions over the past seven days.

“Everything okay?” he asks, studying me.

“I’m fine, why?”

“You look a little flushed.”

“Oh?” I automatically press my hands to my cheeks, like I’m checking their temperature. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, maybe. It is kind of hot in here, don’t you think?”

“Wen, they’re pumping the AC so hard in here, I’m surprised there’s not frost on the windshields.”

“Really? Huh. Hey, how about that one?” I point to the next car and walk over to it.

He joins me and arches a brow at my lame distraction, but he doesn’t call me on it, so maybe he just thinks I’m weird and not lusting after him in public. I’ll take that. Let’s hope it’s that.

Finally, Peter looks at the car and shakes his head. “It’s not that a 1950 Oldsmobile 98 is a bad choice, but I think we should look for a convertible. Better for enjoying a drive along the coast.”

“I like that idea. Okay, then, moving on.”

I get bold enough to place my hand in his and thread our fingers together as we start walking. He gives my hand a light squeeze that I feel around my battered heart like a soothing balm. But when he places a warm kiss just below my knuckles, everything inside of me sparks to life. If I don’t get my mind on something else, there will be no end to the flushing I do.

“Tell me what happened after I left. How did you get LB Automotive started?” When he doesn’t answer right away, I glance up. His lips are in a tight line and tension brackets his eyes. “Peter? You told me you had a job lined up that offered living quarters and everything. Is that not what you did?”

“Nah,” he says, his face relaxing with the reappearance of his half-grin. “I wasn’t ready to jump into a steady job right away. I wanted the freedom to come and go as I please and work if I wanted and play when I wanted. You know me, Wen, I’m more interested in adventure than adulting.”

I arch a dubious eyebrow. “Well, you must’ve adulted at some point, or you wouldn’t be where you’re at today.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, I did okay. I lived pretty simply, so I was able to save almost every dollar I made working odd jobs for cash. In three years, I was able to buy the house, which was in foreclosure. When the boys and Tink came of age, they moved in with me, and we all worked on repairing it and making it what it is today.”

“I love that you’re all still together. When did you open the shop?”

“Five years ago. Bought it for cash from an old guy looking forward to retirement on the outer banks,” he says, stopping briefly to check something in the interior of a convertible. “A Bel Air would be great, but this is a ’55 4-speed, and not everyone can drive stick. Let’s keep looking.”

“Okay. So what happened to the school after all the boys were gone?”

Peter grunts. “Rumor has it that Croc intended on breaking his promise to Delia about not getting any more kids—he ran out of free workers when they all followed me—but before that could happen, the place went up in flames.”

“Oh wow. I’m not surprised, though. With the way the lights flickered all the time, it was probably their faulty wiring. Thank God it happened after everyone was gone.”

“Yeah, except it wasn’t the faulty wiring that turned it into a steaming pile of ashes,” he says, his tone flat. “It was Hook.”

I drag in a sharp breath and stop in my tracks. “Did he get caught?”

“Never even tried getting away. They found him standing there with empty gasoline cans at his feet, watching it burn. Did two years of a five-year sentence.”

“Poor James.” Over my initial shock, I start to walk again. “He’s always seemed to take life so much harder than the rest of you.”

“He’s also the toughest of all of us. Don’t worry about him, he’s fine.”

Peter probably knows better than I would, seeing as I’m only just returning and haven’t seen him in twelve years to know any different. But I’d always thought Hook harbored a sort of perpetual sadness like some people do. They have different ways of hiding it, like with laughter they don’t really feel. But his mask of choice was anger, and I believe he felt every bit of it. Though sometimes his mask would slip, and I’d catch a fleeting glimpse of his inner sad little boy, and it would break my heart.

Peter whistles like a construction worker appreciating an attractive woman as she passes. Luckily, he’s not whistling at another woman but at an old sports car of some sort.

“Man, what I wouldn’t do to fix this girl up.”

I stop in front of it, but he continues on down the side, caressing the body like it is another woman. “Should I be jealous?” I tease.

He glances up from where he’s leaning over the taillight and studying the sleek lines of the car from back to front. “Possibly,” he says, rejoining me. “This is a 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429 Fastback. They made less than nine hundred of these in ’69, so she’s pretty rare, just like my ’Cuda.”

Looking at the faded black paint and patches of rust, I add, “she’s also in pretty bad shape.”

“Yeah, she is. I could bring her back to her former glory, though.”

“So then why don’t you? If you enjoy rebuilding cars, why aren’t you buying junkers like this and selling them for profit once they’re fixed?”

With one last longing glance, Peter steers me back down the aisle for our original mission.

“I don’t have the extra money up front for projects like that. You might get a car for only a couple grand and think it mostly needs just cosmetic stuff. But then once you take it apart, all these other problems come out of the woodwork and you need to sink in more money than you thought, which is eating into your profits. Plus, there’s no guarantee you can sell it once it is fixed and then you’re really screwed.

“It’d be fun, sure—Tink’s actually been wanting to do it for a while now—but building up enough capital to do something like that would mean longer hours at the shop, so we could take on more work to save up. And I don’t want us spending all our time busting our butts with no down time. We work to live, not the other way around.”

I understand that concept—after all, I left my career because of that very reason—but it doesn’t have to be a permanent thing. If he makes a business plan and—

“Your turn,” he says, interrupting my thoughts. “What was your life like after you left?”

“Dull and boring, mostly. I wasn’t a partier in college or anything like that. I spent my time studying and getting good grades. I got my bachelor’s in financial planning, interned for three years, then got my CFP Cert before finally landing a spot at a big firm in Charlotte that catered to very wealthy people with very large portfolios.”

We turn a corner and head back down the next aisle with Peter surveying the cars as he listens. “And what was the moment?”

I frown. “Which moment?”

He turns his head to look at me. “The moment you realized you couldn’t do it anymore.”

“Oh, that. I think I knew it a long time before I actually did anything about it. But the defining ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ was when a client chose to miss his daughter’s dance recital in order to discuss his stocks. He took her FaceTime call during the meeting. She was backstage, about to go on as the lead, and I saw the look on her face when he told her very matter-of-factly that he had a meeting he couldn’t get out of.

“The man had all this money, tons of assets and properties, and talking about it with me—something that could have been handled over an email—was more important to him than his own child.

“I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t spend my life catering to the filthy rich whose families came second to their bank accounts. I couldn’t continue to surround myself with people who stopped believing in magic.”

Peter stops me in the middle of the aisle and turns me to face him. He steps in so close I have to tilt my head back to meet his gaze, but I’d bend over backward to see those electric blue eyes if I had to. The world around us evaporates as he frames my face in his roughened hands and brushes his thumbs over my cheeks.

“I’m glad you never stopped believing, Wen. When you left—” He pauses, swallows, and sets his jaw like he’s determined to get this out. “When you left it was the thing I was scared of most. That you’d stop believing and forget all about me.”

Reaching up, I hold onto his wrists and make him a promise. “Never.”

That single word seems to ease his tension as a lopsided grin cracks his stoic expression. Just when I think he’s about to kiss me, something catches his eye behind me.

“I think we found our winner.” He rushes me over to a huge convertible that was probably a cherry red back in its heyday but looks closer to pink now. “Damage from the sun and salt, but nothing too bad. The richies at your event would love this once she’s fixed up.”

“What is it?”

“A ’57 Chevy Bel Air. It’s an automatic, fuel-injected, and has some other perks like power steering and a power top. I think it’s perfect.”

I wish I could see what Peter sees because I can’t share his enthusiasm. It’s missing the side mirrors. Actually, that’s not entirely true. One of them is dangling from its cord over the door. The windshield has a huge crack going through it, and the leather seats look like Michael from the Halloween movies went to town on them. And that’s just what I can tell as a car-ignorant person.

“I don’t know, Peter, maybe we should look for something a bit less…needy.”

“This is the last row of junkers. If we don’t get something here, I’ll have to start scouring the classifieds and who knows how long it’ll be before I find something.”

“And you’re sure you can get it done in time? The event is in five weeks. If I show up without a car to auction off, I’m beyond screwed.”

I’d have to return to Charlotte with my tail tucked between my legs and a tarnished reputation. Word travels fast in this industry, and there’s no way I’ll get hired for anything other than birthday parties if I fail. Not to mention the well-meaning “I told you so” lecture I’d get from my father as well as feeling like I let my mom down. I absolutely cannot mess this up.

“I’m sure,” he says. “Remember how I said we needed to fix that problem of you not believing in me? Let’s start right now, with this. I won’t let you down, Wendy.”

He has a point. I came to him for this because I believed he could do it. There were other, totally unrelated reasons, too. But the pertinent one at the moment is his ability to come through for me on this.

Smiling, I say, “Okay. Let’s buy ourselves a car.”

Peter grabs my face and kisses me soundly, leaving me reeling while he negotiates price and delivery with the seller. As he haggles over the price, I get an alert on my phone about tomorrow’s event, and all my current excitement goes right out the window.

“Crap, now what am I going to do?”

“What’s wrong?”

Looking up from the email I just got, I sigh. “The event I’m bringing you to tomorrow is at the Children’s Hospital. I’m throwing a Disney themed party, and the model I hired to play Cinderella just canceled on me. So now I have a princess party with no princess.”

Peter plants his feet, crosses one arm over his chest, and rubs his chin with his other hand. “A princess, huh? Would it matter if this Cinderella has some tattoos and a pixie cut?”

“Well, I have a wig so—” I stop, realizing what he’s saying. “No way can you get her to do it. Not in a million, trillion years.”

“Now what did I just say about you believing in me?”

His signature cocky smirk plays across his face, and I can only laugh in response. This is either going to be absolutely amazing, or Peter’s going to need an ice pack for a very sensitive area of his body.