“Well, that’s…good I guess?”
“Of course, they say that some of the other symptoms are difficulty maintaining relationships, reckless behavior, and numbness.” He huffed a bitter laugh. “I told them, hell, that’s not PTSD; that’s just me.”
She squeezed his hand. He must have forgotten he was still holding it, because he looked down as if he were startled. But then a slow smile blossomed on his face, as if the surprise were a pleasant one.
“I gotta say, Jane, as babysitters go, you’re not half bad.”
“I’m not babysitting you!” she said, even though she knew he didn’t believe her. The strange thing was, for the first time, she did. Sure, she was here because Elise had deemed supervising Cameron necessary, but she was having…well, fun was too insufficient a word.
Something had started loosening in her chest since she’d met Cameron. It was as if there was an icebreaker in there, churning up big solid masses she hadn’t even realized were there. And, God, it was so much easier to breathe once there wasn’t an iceberg in your chest anymore.
But there was no way to put that into words, so she tugged on the hand that still held hers and said, “Come on. There’s lots more to see.”
They dropped hands as they made their way into the network of tunnels that ran behind the falls. There was no danger of falling and so no reason to keep up the contact. It made Jane realize that she hadn’t held hands with anyone since Felix. It wasn’t something she missed. Or it hadn’t been until now.
She busied herself reading the signs on the walls of the tunnel. There were a lot of them, but she hated going past interpretive signs without stopping. She liked to know what was happening, and she didn’t care if it made her a nerd.
Cameron would hover nearby, listening to her read sections, and then he’d wander off, poking down another tunnel or into another lookout nook. But he always circled back to her.
Until, all of a sudden, he didn’t. She looked up from a plaque about some of the thrill seekers who’d gone over the falls in barrels or other assorted containers, to find herself surrounded by people. A huge group of them, in fact, and they were all speaking Japanese. She let herself be swept along with them, keeping her eyes peeled for Cameron.
Ah! There he was! The tunnels were interrupted from time to time by cutaways that opened onto the back of the falls. The crowd shuffled along the tunnels and then jostled to try to squeeze into the small nooks where there were views to be had.
Cameron hadn’t put up his hood. She supposed he didn’t have enough hair to worry about it getting wet. So his almost-black hair stood out among the crowd of yellow-hooded tourists. Once again, he was leaning on the railing and staring at the rushing water. There must have been water flowing in what had been the frozen sea of her chest, too, because all of a sudden she was suffused with emotion toward him. It felt like…respect? She considered what she knew about Cameron from Elise’s warnings: he was reckless, impulsive, dangerous. Then she thought about what she knew about him from direct experience: he was reckless, impulsive, dangerous.
Well, yes, but that wasn’t all he was. She remembered him holding car doors for her, taking her hand on the slippery pavement. Not abandoning her when she was drunk at Bar Nine and she’d ruined his evening. Knowing who Xena: Warrior Princess was. Carrying her through the haunted house. Staring at the waterfall as if his life depended on it.
And, most of all, she thought of that tattooed arm. Slung over her body as she slept at Jay’s.
The crowd changed direction, moving on to the next thing, and, jarred from her reverie, Jane had to plant her feet not to be swept along with them.
“Cameron!” she called, laughing because she was like a salmon swimming against the current.
He turned, though she was amazed he’d heard her over the rushing of the water and the chattering of the selfie-taking tourists. Once he realized what was happening, he laughed, too, and tried to make his way to her, but he was as stymied as she was.
She waved as she was carried away by the receding tide of tourists. He flashed that Listerine grin at her and followed as best he could, but the distance between them was maintained, kept consistent by the wall of bodies between them. She had a feeling that he could part the crowd if he really wanted to, but it was like he was a giant surrounded by peasants that he good-naturedly tolerated. He was content for them to float along, though she knew somehow that he wouldn’t let her out of his sight.
As they shuffled along in slow motion, keeping eye contact, it occurred to her that what was happening was actually kind of sexy. If you went for that sort of thing. Which she normally didn’t, but…the way he just calmly kept his eyes on her. He was laughing, but he was also insistent. He wasn’t going to let her go. They couldn’t reach each other, but it was like they were connected by an invisible thread he wasn’t going to allow to snap.
They had drifted to the next cutout in the tunnels, and it was on his side. He turned, and, seeing that there was another lookout that would afford them a view of the falls, he beckoned. His face changed—the smile disappeared. But it wasn’t as if he was angry, more like the giant had decided to stop tolerating the mortals.
He was bracketed by the opening, almost like he was standing inside a picture frame, except the background, instead of being a flat, generic blue or a fake library, was a living, breathing curtain of falling water. The water he was supposed to imagine had the power to wash away his fears.
The water that could wash away hers?
There was a question she’d been asking herself a lot in recent weeks: What would the bride do? She asked herself a more relevant one now: What would Xena do?
He was backing up into the nook, into the picture frame, seemingly into the waterfall itself. Was there such a thing as a male siren? Because suddenly, she started pushing back against the crowd. It was very unlike her, to shove and elbow people out of the way. She didn’t even say “excuse me,” allowed no Canadian “sorrys” to pass her lips.
The closer she got to the waterfall—the closer she got to Cameron—the more deafening the rush of water became.
It made it easier to block things out: the crowd, her pounding heart.
Her fear.
It made it easier to do what she wanted, which was to walk up and kiss him.
* * *
Despite his reputation, Cam hadn’t kissed anyone for five months. And he hadn’t kissed anyone but Christie for years. His last kiss had been as he set out for his most recent tour, when she kissed him good-bye at the airport in Thunder Bay.
And of course, since he’d been in Toronto, Jane had frustrated all his attempts to get lucky.
Jane. Jane who had walked right up to him after this extraordinary day, grabbed his head, pulled it down, and pressed her lips against his.
Probably he would have had the sense to stop her if it hadn’t been for the ear-splitting rushing of the falls. Realistically, they were several yards from it, but it felt like it was right behind them, like they were inside it even, suspended in a world where the normal rules and consequences didn’t apply. He hadn’t been kidding before when he’d said that his mental picture of “waterfall” had not done justice to this particular example. It comforted him somehow. The knowledge that no matter what stupid shit all the petty humans on this Earth got up to, these falls were impervious to it. It was strangely soothing. People could betray each other, disappoint each other, assault each other, even kill each other, and this water would keep rushing over this cliff. None of it mattered.
And if none of it mattered, he could say, “Fuck doing the right thing,” and kiss Jane back.
And holy shit. Maybe he was out of practice, but he was pretty sure that Jane was planting on him what was, objectively, the best kiss he had ever had.
The kiss was just like her: strong but a little tentative. Was it wrong that he found that slight hesitancy attractive? It was like she had to overcome her own doubts first, and for some reason, that made his dick as
hard as the rocks these tunnels were carved into. Like she was choosing him despite her better judgment. She was full of contradictions, this one. Scared and brave—look at the last two days. Compelling and maddening.
Sexy and sweet: that was Jane. That was this kiss.
And her lips. Oh God, her lips. It was like he’d been crawling through the desert dying of thirst, staring at a waterfall but unable to touch it, and then there was Jane, bearing water. Bearing absolution it felt like even, which was ridiculous.
She’d been holding his cheeks, and when she let go, he had a flash of panic that she was going to pull away. He wasn’t ready for this to be done yet—he hadn’t drunk his fill—so he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him.
She sighed into his mouth, and her body relaxed. It was like she was giving herself over to his care, and it drove him wild. They had been kissing with slightly open mouths. He’d been letting her tongue make tentative incursions into his mouth. But it was no longer enough. He wanted more. He needed more, so he angled her head back and plunged his tongue into her mouth, relishing the whimper the maneuver summoned from her. Normally, in a situation like this, he would try not to be too overt about his hard-on. He certainly wouldn’t be enough of a jerk to rub it against the lady in question. But hot damn, he couldn’t help it. He wanted her to feel it. Wanted her to know what she was doing to him. So he pressed their bodies together even harder. He would stop the moment she asked, but until then, he was lost in her.
Her whimpers became moans, and he wanted to pump his fists in victory to celebrate having cracked the reserve of composed, demure Jane. To have made those sounds come from his goddamned babysitter—it was making him crazy.
He became aware only gradually of a tapping on his shoulder, a tapping that wasn’t coming from Jane. He tried to shrug it off, but it grew more insistent. With a groan, he broke the kiss, dragging his lips from hers, gratified that she hugged him tighter as he did so. She didn’t want it to be over any more than he did.
It was a family of tourists. “You’re blocking the view,” the father said.
“Also, there are children here,” said the mother, frowning at them.
Jane took a step back and clamped a hand over her mouth. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!”
Right. That was his cue. He had to get her out of here before embarrassment took over. He could embarrass Jane, but he’d be damned if anyone else did.
Chapter Nine
He bought her dinner. She tried to protest. “I didn’t make it through the haunted house.”
“Yes, you did,” he said.
“Because you carried me.”
He shrugged. “You’re not on that stupid chicken list, are you?” Though he wasn’t sure why he was arguing. What was the point of a bet if you started actively campaigning against your own position? “Anyway, it’s done.”
And it was. He’d slipped the waitress his credit card when she delivered their dessert.
Jane lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Well, thank you,” she said. “This has been surprisingly good for a tourist trap.”
It had been. They’d found a mom-and-pop Italian joint, complete with red gingham tablecloths and Chianti-bottle candles, and had consumed vast quantities of pasta and veal Parmesan. It turned out that confronting demons—whether of the fake-blood-and-strobe-lights variety or of the more insidious psychological sort—worked up quite the appetite.
And, man, he loved watching Jane eat. That first day, at the steakhouse, she’d said that she “really, really enjoyed eating.” And she had. He remembered how she had moaned when she’d taken a bite of his steak. Tonight, unlike then, she hadn’t been cautious about her intake. There was none of that cutting everything up into smaller-than-bite-size pieces. No shoving the bread basket away like it was made of fire. She hadn’t been squeamish over the idea of veal like so many women were—they’d ordered pasta and veal parm and shared both. She’d acted like each dish their server brought was the greatest thing she’d ever laid eyes on, even going so far as to clap her hands in glee when their molten chocolate cake arrived. It was almost like she’d forgotten about—
“Oh my God!” Her fork clattered to the table. “I forgot about my dress.” She let her head fall forward so it was cradled in her hands and wailed, “Noooooo!”
Cam dropped his own fork, which drew her attention. He didn’t know if he was annoyed at her, or at Elise, or at, like, the patriarchy (and that would be a first). He only knew he was annoyed. They’d been having a perfectly nice time—dare he say even a great time?—and now they had to stop and have this conversation again.
Well, best to get on with it. “Jane, who the hell cares about the dress? You’re going to wear it for one day. One day in which presumably everyone will be looking at Elise and my brother.” Though that might not be true. If Jane was in what he’d come to think of as “goddess mode,” a term he’d come up with after her spin outside the CN Tower but had seen displayed again as she’d stalked toward him and kissed him at the falls, how could anyone not stare at her? He wasn’t really sure how he’d gone from thinking of her as plain, muddy Jane to a goddess, but he didn’t feel like analyzing it.
“Yes, but, Cameron,” she said, emphasizing his name in a way that made his dick twinge—“let’s assume for one minute that I don’t care that I’m going to look like a ruffly, purple hippo. I still have to actually fit into the dress. It has to physically zip up.”
“You are not going to look like a hippo.” There went that eyebrow and, with it, his annoyance at having to have this conversation. It was replaced by outright anger—though he still wasn’t sure at whom, or what, it was directed. “Jane, you are as sexy as they come, so shut the hell up.”
She had her mouth pre-opened to lob her next argument at him, but she clamped it shut as her eyes widened. He tried not to laugh. He probably shouldn’t have said it like that, but it was true.
And it sure as hell shut her up because she stopped arguing about the bill. Didn’t say much of anything, really, as they walked back to the car. The silence continued as they navigated to the highway and settled in for the drive home.
But it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, which was a little surprising because they hadn’t said one word about their kiss behind the falls. Not that there was anything to say. They’d had a moment. A hot moment, but moments were by definition fleeting. The fact that she didn’t want to “talk about it,” as most girls would, was actually awesome. And she’d already heard his “I’m not looking for a relationship right now speech” in the car ride on the way up, so it wasn’t like she hadn’t known the score when she’d kissed him.
So companionable silence was more than fine by him. It gave him time to appreciate that, despite his haunted house freak-out, he’d had a really good day. That was…a novelty.
Then she started yawning.
Then he started yawning.
Then they started laughing.
“I’m sorry!” she said, covering her mouth and trying to stifle another yawn. “They’re contagious.”
“No problem,” he said—or tried to. It came out all garbled as another one hit him. “I should have taken the top down. That would have kept us awake.”
“I’m not sure it would make a difference in my case. Getting the shit scared out of you, then stuffing yourself with carbs: it makes a girl sleepy.”
He noticed she didn’t mention “making out like the world was about to end.”
Which was fine, he reminded himself, because hadn’t he just been thinking about how he was glad she didn’t want to talk about that? He cleared his throat. “Feel free to nap.”
She shook her head through another yawn. “I will not abandon you,” she declared with a vehemence that was awfully cute as she opened her eyes comically wide. “You should stop and get yourself some coffee.”
“I will if I need to.” He didn’t tell her that thinking about their kiss was having a…wakeful effect on him—or at least o
n certain parts of him.
She cracked her window. “Do you mind? I think it will help keep me awake.”
“Not at all,” he said, appreciating the cool air as she let loose yet another enormous yawn. He smiled. He was pretty sure nothing was keeping Jane awake, despite her noble intentions.
As predicted, it wasn’t five minutes before she was fast asleep, her head lolling back and against the passenger-side window, which drew his attention to her long, graceful neck. He’d never thought of necks as particularly sexy before, but apparently there was a first time for everything.
Alicia used to fall asleep in his car sometimes, too, back in Thunder Bay. When he’d turned sixteen and gotten his license and scraped together enough to buy a beat-up Chevy, the freedom had been intoxicating. They would hit McDonald’s and then drive and drive through the night, talking about everything, until they’d pull over behind Our Lady of Charity school, which abutted a big park, and lose themselves in each other. Later, on their way home, Alicia would fall asleep.
To his mind, sleeping in the presence of someone who was awake was to make yourself vulnerable. And to do it when the other person was driving, shepherding your unconscious body through space at high speeds, struck him as the ultimate act of trust. When Alicia fell asleep in his car, he always had to remind himself to watch the road and not her. It had been so intoxicating, the idea that she was his. That someone had chosen to give herself to him, the loser kid from the trailer park who was perpetually on the verge of flunking out of school.
Of course she hadn’t really. Or at least not exclusively to him. What an idiot he had been. He’d thought it was true love. And when she’d announced she was pregnant, after he’d gotten over the initial panic, he’d dropped out of school, tripled his shifts at the hardware store, and bought her a shitty cubic zirconia engagement ring, promising to exchange it for a real diamond later when they were in a better financial position.
When he thought about what happened next, the familiar shame rose in his chest. It never went away. It’s not yours, she’d said, tears streaking down her face. I wish it was.
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