He didn't expect to get the answer he wanted. In fact, he was a bit lost on what answer he really did want. If Tinkerbell shut him out, sent him away, shouldn't that have been the best possible option? The statistics were stacked against them, in all sorts of ways. They knew each other but they weren't from the same world. Tinkerbell was a fairy, she had a life and obligations and responsibilities — and to truly commit longterm would mean she would have to give up everything she knew, fair or not. And he had nothing left but vengeance to strive for. Maybe he'd manage to survive beyond it but he rather expected that killing his Crocodile would end up with him dead as well, and he'd long since resigned to it. He was supposed to exist and not much more, and anything else he took on he not only didn't deserve, it simply couldn't last. Nothing that they had here in the City would last longer than their time there. To let their connection get any deeper would only hurt both of them in the long run. Maybe he wanted her to send him away, rebuke him, live up to his expectation of the world. Perhaps he just didn't know what he wanted, just what he didn't. He hadn't lied, he didn't want to leave her, hadn't wanted to the moment it happened and yet he still had, for a time. Ruined everything and then still had the audacity to come back.
Her stuttered words weren't particularly hopeful, and the non-reaction was a little painful to say the least. The look on her face was hard to place, terrified more than anything, and that really didn't tell him too much. What was terrifying — the idea that a dangerous, hopeless man could want her? How he might react if she told him she didn't feel the same and never had? Possibly a fair concern, considering his temper, but Hook wouldn't hurt her for not wanting him. He wasn't that far gone. She could have been afraid of the same thing he was, letting someone close when there was a timestamp so clear over their heads. The fact that she wasn't allowed to have such a connection wasn't lost on him either. In the end there were simply too many things that could account for the fear laced in her expression, and despite knowing her quite well he couldn't guess what was troubling her. He could often guess what she was thinking, but in this he was lost.
Didn't know how it worked? He frowned, not sure exactly what she meant. Honestly, he didn't much know where they went now either. Would owning up to how he felt make every moment they spent together bittersweet? Even if they could face the fact that their time together was temporary, it had a chance of souring what had been dispensable earlier. What they did from this point on was really a bit of a mystery to him as well. He'd thought he had it all figured out, that he'd go back to the meagre way he'd survived before, and not even three days he came chasing back like an addict that needed just another taste. It made him wonder how he'd manage to function when they were really and truly separated, and he didn't want to imagine.