James reaches up and touches his eyebrow. His eyes widen. “I have a scar too?”
I smile and shrug. “If it makes you feel any better, it suits you.”
“How can you say a scar suits me? That’s so weird.” He hunches his shoulders, pouting a bit like a petulant childwhile he keeps his hand clamped over his eye as if trying to staunch the blood from a wound that healed long ago. Finally, he raises his hook and points. “And how did you get that scar on your face?”
I reach up, tracing my cheek where Moira’s scar sits. I had thought it would be cute and romantic if Hook and Moira both had scars representing their dark pasts. A physical manifestation of all the trauma they went through. “I believe I got it when my—I mean, Moira’s mother—died in a shark attack. In the story, that’s how it happened anyway. How I got it is a different story entirely. I just woke up with it.”
James purses his lips, finally lowering his hand. He braces his arms on his knees as he stairs straight ahead. “So, you really don’t have any answers?”
“Well, we seem to be the only people like us.”
“Like us?” he asks, his whole face scrunching with confusion.
I gesture between us. “From our world. I’m not seeing any other members of the production team here and everyone else seems to be wrapped up in the roles they are playing.”
He nods. “Okay, a fair point. What makes us special?”
“That I don’t know. All I know is that we are in the story, somehow straight down to the scars on our characters.The plot seems to be progressing like normal even without us playing our roles.” I hold up a thumb, gesturing over my shoulder. “I should be actively plotting to kill Naia right now. This meet up is supposed to be you trying to kill me and us flirting in the streets.”
“Well, there is no way that is going to happen,” James says wryly.
I rock back, bristling at his words. He had better have meant there is no way he would try to kill me and not there is no way he would ever flirt with me. Because even if I’m not into James, I think I’m pretty enough that he could force out at least one or two pickup lines if our lives depended on it.
He looks up at me, frowning. “But doesn’t this story have a sad ending?”
“For our two characters,” I murmur, distracted from being offended by James’s apparent distaste at the idea of flirting with me. I reach up, nibbling on my thumbnail. “But I don’t know how that’s going to happen since I doubt that you plan on killing me.”
“Not yet,” he says with a shrug. “Catch me tomorrow when I haven’t managed to have a cup of coffee and it might be a different story.”
A surprised laugh bursts from my lips and James glances at me out of the corner of his eye, looking a bit too pleased with himself.
I jump to my feet and begin pacing. “But the story does end. So, if we can make it to the end with our lives intact… well, then maybe that’s our key to getting home.” I turn to James, ready to ask him what he thinks of my half-baked plan. But the words die on my throat as I see a sword being thrust straight toward my face.
