The Acorn Tattoo: The Neverland Series Part 1 Anniversary Edition

by Miller, Alyse

  “Who ye lookin’ fer, lassy?” The bar lady was eyeing Claire suspiciously over the bar top with quick eyes that danced like a pair of blue dragonflies. Davie moved beside Claire as several men turned their attention to her, trying to coax her toward the door. “Shut yer bake, yer trollied idiots, oi canny ‘ear!” she yelled at two men in front of her, flapping a dirty dishrag viciously in their direction. She glowered impatiently at Claire, almost daring her to answer.

  Claire wouldn’t give up easily. “Jake,” she yelled desperately, trying to sound assertive as she thrust herself on the counter and practically shoved the words at the busty, red-haired woman. “Jake Holland!”

  The woman looked confused for a moment, but a toothy smile burst across her face, making it a little bit pretty, if you squinted hard enough. “Ah! So yer de birdy ‘e’s been blatherin’ aboyt,” she winked. “E’s a deadly guy, that Jake is!” She pointed a finger toward the back of the bar, giving Claire permission to weave her way back through the crowd.

  Claire wasn’t sure what a “deadly guy” was, but she grinned back at the lady. She understood completely the instant smile that had appeared on her face when she’d heard Jake’s name. Claire began to move through the crowd, but Davie grabbed her hand, pulling her back into him. The thick cloud of cigarette smoke that clung to the air smothered the sweet, musky scent of his cologne almost completely.

  “Are you sure about this?” he snarled in her ear. His voice was a little too sharp, like his teeth were a little too big. “If I would have known this was the kind of company you were keeping, I would have come for you sooner.” He already stood out from the crowd in his sharp black suit and rigid stance, but the fury in his eyes made him a hostile predator in a room of rowdy Irishmen.

  The energy from the laughing strangers made Claire bold. She wrenched her hand free of his and kept going, forcing him to follow her through the crowd. It was nice for her to be the one storming off for a change.

  On the tiny altar of a stage at the very end of the dingy little pub sat Jake, perched on a makeshift wooden stool, his sandy hair glowing like a halo under the fluorescent stage lights. He was wearing the same faded jeans that he had pulled on that morning, though he’d added, much to Claire’s dismay, a forest green hooded pullover and a tattered pair of loosely tied brown leather shoes. His guitar lay across his lap and he bent over it with eyes closed to the crowd, his left ear hovering barely above the stings as he tuned them. He was a calm island in the swirling chaos of the pub, unmoved by the merry band of misfits celebrating around him.

  “Hello, Boy.”

  Jake looked up, startled by her voice, a pick the same color as his eyes clenched between the pearls of his teeth. His Lost Boy grin spread across his face and he stood up, setting the guitar onto the floor and taking Claire into his arms in one sweeping motion. He lifted her off the ground and twirled her in his arms, spinning her. Like she always did with Jake’s arms wrapped round her, Claire lost herself to the feeling of his body against hers. She felt like it had been years since he’d held her. So much had changed since then.

  “You came back,” he breathed against her hair, nuzzling against her neck and making her giggle against him. He set her back down carefully, making sure she was settled on her heels before he let her go. He held her out in front of him, gazing at the pale pink gown that showed through the slackened folds of the cream coat, the ribbon sash undone by his hug. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more lovely in my life, Claire Darling.”

  Claire beamed at him, her boldness now accented with pride. She could have stared at his eyes, at the gentle slope of his eyebrows, the dimples in his cheeks, forever, had Davie not grunted moodily from the floor behind her, a threatening storm on the edge of a world that barely existed. Jake’s eyebrows furrowed and he glanced behind her, squinting to see through the lights.

  Davie stepped up onto the stage beside the pair and glowered at the two. Claire dropped her arms, nervous under Davie’s disapproving gaze, but Jake’s arms stayed, keeping her wrapped inside him. The men stared at each other, sizing each other up in that stiff way that men do.

  “This is Davie,” Claire offered, silently willing Davie to at least try to appear friendly and not like he was there to pick a fight. “He flew in from Seattle to surprise me.” Davie returned Claire’s introduction with a scowl. “This is Jake.” She made a pleading sort of gesture with her hands at Davie and hoped Jake wouldn’t notice.

  “David Hunter.” Davie’s voice was bland. He stuck out his hand, but kept his eyes locked on Claire. The gesture looked almost automatic, like one his body forced him to do for the sake of politeness, whether he wanted to or not. It reminded Claire of his smile in the town car.

  Either Jake didn’t notice the awkward tension between them, or he didn’t acknowledge it. “David,” he exclaimed, ignoring Davie’s outstretched hand and releasing Claire to put his arm around the other man’s shoulders as if they were old friends. “Claire says such great things about you. It’s an honor to meet you—all the way from Seattle.” There was something teasing in Jake’s voice, a faint tone of manly cockiness that Claire only barely heard, and would probably never fully understand. Her eyes darted back and forth between the two men.

  “Likewise,” Davie muttered through gritted teeth. His lips tried to carve a smile across his mouth but ended up looking more like a crooked sneer.

  Jake laughed good-naturedly, clamping Davie’s shoulder. He returned to Claire, winding his arm around her waist and planting a quick kiss on her cheek that made the butterflies in her stomach flutter and a sour look skip over Davie’s puppeteer smile. The stage lights flickered and Jake motioned them to a table at the base of the stage.

  “That’s my table. You guys sit, have a drink. The show’s about to start.” He grinned at Davie, and then at Claire. He pulled her suddenly into a deep kiss, his hand stretching along the length of her jaw. The kiss took Claire by surprise and she fell into it, her mouth filling with the sweet taste of Jake’s excitement.

  Davie grumbled under his breath and stepped off the stage, waving away a waitress carrying two sloppy pints of beer. “Gin and tonic. Hendrick’s,” he ordered without looking at the girl again. “And a glass of white wine,” he added, ordering for Claire. He wiped the tabletop and the two wobbly chairs with his handkerchief, inspected it and rolled his eyes, then tucked the dirty cloth into his back pocket before sitting rigidly in the straight-backed chair.

  “You really could try to be less of a grouch.” Still a tiny bit breathless from Jake’s kiss, Claire sank down in the chair next to his before he had a chance to pull the chair out for her. Davie stood up anyway and fussily pulled the sleeves of the coat from Claire’s arms so that it didn’t drag against the dirty table. He folded it on his lap, paying too much attention to the lapels as he smoothed them flat.

  “Indeed, I could try,” Davie growled. He rolled his eyes and sat back in the chair with his arms crossed, looking every bit as petulant as he could in all that sleek Italian silk. He glowered at Jake, who was readying the microphone, oblivious to the wave of venom aimed at him by the man in the front row. Clearly, he could try, but he wouldn’t.

  Jake began to hum a soft melody that poured warm over the crowd. It started slowly and grew until every ear in the pub was hanging on each note. Only then did he began to sing, letting his voice rise and fall in waves, then crash in a deep, rolling tune that ran off the stage and against Claire’s body, calling to her like a siren from the sea. Even Davie, his jaw tense as he sipped his gin and tonic, looked noticeably mollified, unable to resist the soothing calm of Jake’s drowning voice. The words of Jake’s song were lost to an otherworldly pattern of sounds strung together in a harmony both breathy and sensuous. His song was about love, a plea for a kiss, and when his voice cracked under the strain of emotion, every girl in the pub swooned, wishing he were singing for her. Then he stood, lapsing into a solo that quickened the pulse of everyone in the bar and pulled them along
with him into climax. He hopped lightly off the stage as he plucked the last few notes of his song, sinking to his knees in front of Claire’s chair. With their eyes locked, he sang the final lyrics of his song only to her.

  When the music faded finally to silence, Jake pushed the guitar behind his back with one hand and curved the other around Claire’s waist. He scooped her off the chair and into a lingering kiss that pulled from the very tips of Claire’s toes through her lips, pouring from her mouth into his. The pub erupted with applause as everyone cheered the dramatic ending to the song, feeling as if they were witnessing an unrepeatable moment in time, breathtaking and spectacular. Everyone except Davie, that is, who sat stiffly by, his face a fiery shade of red against the stark blackness of his suit, looking like lit dynamite, ready to explode.

  Chapter 13

  With one last quick kiss, Jake let her go and hopped back up on the stage, poised to begin another song, this one livelier, more joyful. Smiling for the crowd that cheered him on, Jake looked for all the world like the clever king of some merry pack of misfits.

  When Claire looked again to the chair beside her Davie’s seat was empty. She scanned through the crowd and, disappearing into a swarm of cheers, she spotted Davie heading swiftly for the exit. He slid through the crowd easily and unnoticed, but without the grace he normally commanded. Instead, his movements were jerky, like he was fighting to keep his composure as he weaved his way out of the pub.

  “Davie!” Claire ran after him. She tried to push her way through a crowd that kept reaching out for her. A few times someone’s hand would catch hers and try to pull her into a light-footed dance, but she spun and shoved her way to the door, trying to catch up to the shrinking black shape of Davie’s back. Her heart beat Morse-code alerts inside her chest. Davie would never abandon her. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

  “Davie, wait!”

  By the time she finally made it outside, Davie was standing on the street corner with his back to Claire, his scarf whipping angrily in the air around his head. The night glittered with the first snow of the season, and tiny snowflakes melted on Davie’s jacket. As if on cue, the town car sailed up to the curb and he moved to grab the door handle. Davie was leaving without her.

  “Davie!” Claire yelled again. He spun around at the sound of Claire’s frantic voice, and she was shocked to see tears streaming down his face. It had been more years than she could count since she’d seen him cry, but his eyes were wide, iced over with the shine of unshed tears. He raked a hand roughly through his smooth hair, freeing a fistful of curls to the wind. He looked a wild man, so unlike himself, that Claire was taken aback, and she stopped short. They faced each, separated by a few steps that might as well have been an ocean.

  “Where are you going?”

  Davie blinked at her once, twice. His mouth heaved air in and out as if he was out of breath. “Damn it, Claire! I love you. I love you! Don’t you see that?”

  He rushed toward her, clutching her hands in his and pulling her toward him in a desperate fervor. His hands were ice cold on hers and shook hers roughly, as if he was trying to shake the words into her skin as he spoke.

  “With every inch of skin that covers my body, every ounce of blood that flows in my veins, ever damn synapse firing in my brain, I love you. I've loved you since you brought that candle into my bedroom, giving me the only damn thing in the world that mattered to you just so I wouldn't be afraid. In that second I was hopelessly in love with you, Claire. You were so strong, so wonderful and sweet and gentle, and I needed you so much. You saved me.”

  He sucked in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and kept going. “And then we grew up, and the little girl I played with and shared secrets with became this incredible, beautiful woman, and I looked at you and realized that you were made for me. You are my soul mate. We were meant to love each other, to take care of and be taken care if by each other. To laugh, to cry, to grieve, to experience joy together. We just found each other early! Call it fate, or design, or whatever you want, but the universe knew how desperately we needed each other, Claire, and it gave us each other. With everything that we’ve lived through already, it gave us that one mercy and gave us each other. Don’t you see that?

  “We’ve had the chance to spend a lifetime together, to literally love each other each and every day for our entire lives. I don’t know anything except loving you. I’m so sorry I couldn’t tell you before, I’m so sorry if it hurts you now. I was just so afraid. But you’ve got to know, Claire. I can’t lose you.”

  He had sunk to his knees before he finished, wrapping himself around Claire’s legs as if she was the last solid thing in the world. His fingers dug into the backs of her legs, so tight her knees almost buckled against him. It was a peculiar, abasing way to be held, and it broke Claire’s heart to see Davie so desperate.

  Claire braced herself with her hands on Davie’s shoulder and stood frozen in place on the sidewalk. His words filtered through her slowly, her ears hearing them but unable to absorb them, like sugar refusing to melt in cold water. Time seemed to pause and she was numb. This single moment under the snowy New York sky was a beginning and an end, changing the course of her life completely.

  “Say something, Claire.” Davie’s wet eyes stared up at her. His bottom lip trembled a tiny bit, and she pressed her finger against it, feeling it jump under her touch. “Anything.”

  No words came to Claire’s rescue. She struggled to sort through the jumble of thoughts spinning in her head, but it was no use. This was simply not something she’d ever expected, for Davie to be in love with her. She had no idea how to react, much less any idea how she felt. With Claire’s silence, a kind of dark acceptance washed over Davie’s face. He gave her legs a final squeeze and stood up, nodding his head resolutely. “I am so sorry,” he whispered, his eyes holding the sorrow of a dying man. And with that, he turned away, ducked into the car and shut the door behind him, disappearing into the night.

  Claire felt shattered beneath the weight of Davie’s confession. She ached. Every molecule of oxygen had been sucked out of her body, suffocating her heart until it stopped beating. A million memories sped through her mind—Davie as a boy who admired her, as a teenager who coveted her, and now a man who loved her—a progression she had either refused to see or been too naïve to notice. When she’d finally gathered her wits enough to remember she was standing alone outside in the falling snow, Claire waved her hand for a taxi and, with one backward look at the pub, flung herself into the cab and fled.

  When Claire arrived at her home, it was as she’d expected. There was no sign of Davie. It was as if she’d imagined him ever being there. If he’d brought anything with him, it was gone, probably already back to Seattle, or as far as way from her as he could get. The thought made Claire’s insides twist, and she threw herself on the couch, tears spilling from her eyes. She could smell the faint trace of Davie’s cologne still on the fabric, and the spicy sweetness in her nose made her wail harder, pummeling her fists into the cushions.

  She was furious with him, and at the same time, suffering with sadness deeper than any she had felt before. A part of her had been ripped from her chest and she was bleeding out with no one to help her. She hated him for hurting and confusing her and yet she longed for him; wanted to lash out at him, but craved the feel of his arms around her. It was a maddening contradiction, as if she were a victim of an inner battle she wanted no part of.

  Eventually Claire dragged herself to her bathroom and filled the tub with bubbles, hoping that the steam would ease the pain in her heart. She tried not to think about the lovely pink gown as she peeled it from her body, tried not to remember the look of adoration on Davie’s face when she twirled in front of him in a happy memory that already seemed so long ago. Even the echoes of Jake’s praises sent sharp stabs through her heart—some for the hurt she’d unknowingly caused Davie, and others still for the hurt in her own heart for the boy with the acorn tattoo, whose memory brought fresh tears to
her eyes. She loved him, truly loved him like she’d never loved anyone else, and yet here she was, crying naked in her bathroom with her heart broken by another man. She didn’t deserve the love of either of them. She’d given her heart to one, only to find it claimed by the other. It seemed abnormally cruel to Claire, to have craved love for so long only to find herself given more love than she could have and forced to give some back.

  The water lapped warm around her as she lowered herself into the tub. She cried until the water ran cold, and refilled the tub twice until her skin was pink and wrinkled, as if she’d wept her youth away and drained herself to an old maid. Hours before she’d been young and carefree, blooming into a woman, and now she felt emptied from the pain of a heart broken in two.

  A stir of movement in her peripheral vision made Claire look to the door of the bathroom. Standing in the doorway, looking frayed and feverish, was Davie, dark curls in unruly tangles, his scarf and tie missing. He stared at her like a silent, crazed beast.

  For the space of a few heartbeats, they stared at each other, an ocean of unsaid words filling the void between them. Claire stayed as still as she could, hoping that Davie couldn’t see her soul beating wildly against the bared flesh of her chest. A dozen jumbled thoughts raced across her mind. Part of her wanted to cover herself, to cower beneath the filmy water, but another part of her was relieved to be exposed before him—and still another part was curious at how he would react. Looking at Davie, motionless and silent, she wondered if he felt the same surge of strange, compelling emotions. After everything he’d said, everything that had happened, Claire waited on him, letting him choose how this moment would unfold.