The Never King (Vicious Lost Boys, #1)

by Nikki St. Crowe

I haven’t attended a normal high school in over two years, but yet I find myself still hooking up with the star quarterback in the passenger seat of his SUV. He is bad at sex. Magnificent on the football field. If only I liked football and hated sex.

The sun sinks below the horizon and I yank the door open. “All right. Violence it is.” He follows me up the stairs. I take them two at a time. And the whole way up, his voice is a singing lilt behind me. “Three, two, one. One, two, three. Better watch out: Peter Pan is going to murder thee.”

When the Darling comes back, she’s wearing her dress and that sweater that hangs off her bony shoulders, and something stirs in my gut at the sight of her, so tiny and fragile. I can’t breathe.

And it’s then, when some distant part of me gives in to it, when I decide to endure for them and not because of them, that something clicks into place. And then the light cuts out and the pain ebbs away and I collapse into Vane’s arms.