One and Only by Jenny Holiday (7)

When Jane got into Cameron’s car, it took her all of five minutes to ask, “So what did you do last night after you left the bar?”

I stuck my nose in your pillow and jerked off to this weird watermelon smell that reminded me of you.

But of course he couldn’t say that. So he settled for, “I presume that what you’re actually asking me is, ‘Did you sleep with any randoms last night?’” The way she called potential hookups “randoms” was pretty funny.

“I am not!” she protested. She shifted her gaze out the window. “I probably shouldn’t be so hard on you. I didn’t know you’d just gotten out of a long-term relationship. I think sleeping with randoms is probably pretty normal when you’re on the rebound?”

The way she’d phrased it as a question suggested she didn’t have firsthand knowledge of post-relationship slutty phases. Damn if he wasn’t happy about that. He didn’t like the idea of Jane sleeping around. It took a while to get to know Jane. To appreciate her. He didn’t trust “randoms,” to use her term, to do a decent job of it. He didn’t mean it in a sexist, double-standard sort of way—it wasn’t like he thought Jane needed to remain “pure” or anything. But she deserved someone better than your average bar-trolling, right-swiping Neanderthal. Someone with his shit together who could be all in.

She still wasn’t looking at him, but there was alertness about her that suggested she was waiting for him to speak.

“Well, I have no idea about ‘normal,’ but my ex and I had been together for three years. I’m not really looking for anything serious right now.” Or ever again. “So I admit I was kind of looking forward to a little wild oat sowing once I got to town. But,” he added before she could say anything, “I also enjoy betting—even though you kicked my ass with that CN Tower one.”

“Damn right I did.”

He grinned, checking over his shoulder before merging onto the highway that would take them to Niagara Falls. “So all that’s to say, Ms. Denning, that thanks to you, my virtue remains intact.”

She finally looked at him, laughter in her eyes.

“I’m a man of my word,” he added, though he wasn’t sure why. It just seemed important, at that moment, that she know that.

“I know,” she said quietly.

He sighed, a big, content exhale that took with it some of the tension of the past few days—hell, of the past few years. It was another gorgeous day. Sure, he wasn’t doing very well with his return-to-civilian-life list—hell, steak, beer, and TV were pretty much the only items he’d managed to tick off. He pissed off his brother just by being alive. And he had no fucking clue what he was going to do with the rest of his life. But for one minute, none of it mattered. He was in a sweet car with a pretty amazing girl, and there was nothing but blue skies ahead of them.

“Okay, I did some research,” Jane said, dumping a stack of paper out of her purse.

He chuckled. “Of course you did.”

Ignoring him, she said, “There’s a lot to do in Niagara Falls, so I figured we’d want to maximize our time there. So I printed out some stuff to help us decide.”

“We could grab a hotel room if we feel like we’ve not done all we want to do by the end of today.”

The withering glance she shot him followed by the raising of one eyebrow told him what she thought of that idea. And, uncharacteristically, he hadn’t even meant it like that.

“How do you do that?” he asked, reminding himself that “I was watching my passenger raise one eyebrow” wasn’t going to get him out of a ticket when he got pulled over for erratic driving.

The eyebrow plummeted, joining its twin in a furrow. “Do what?”

“Raise only one eyebrow at a time.”

The eyebrow shot back up, and he laughed. “And it’s always the left one.”

And there came the furrow. It was like watching her eyebrow bungee jump.

“It is?”

Eyes on the road. “Yes, so what do you do when you’re not writing portal fiction or babysitting me?” he asked.

“Not much, actually,” she said. “I’m kind of boring.”

He noticed she hadn’t fallen back on her usual protest that she wasn’t babysitting him. “What about this costume ball thing?”

“Not a ball! Comicon.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a convention for people who like comics and sci-fi and stuff. And people dress up like their favorite characters.” She laughed. “It’s a nerd convention, basically.”

“And who do you dress up as?”

“Do you remember the show Xena: Warrior Princess? Probably not—you’re probably too young. And/or too cool.”

“Hell, yes, I know that show. I used to watch it in syndication.” He’d loved the mixture of goofiness with, as dumb as it sounded, Xena’s quest to atone for her past sins. There was something about the noble warrior that had always appealed to him. Of course, there was also the part where his thirteen-year-old self had sexually imprinted on Xena. Not really, but he did appreciate how well Lucy Lawless could rock a leather corset.

Jane’s jaw fell open. She was surprised he knew the show.

“Hey,” he protested. “Xena and Gabrielle run around scantily clad and kick ass. What’s not to like?”

She laughed. “Yeah, well, Comicon is this weekend. I’m going Sunday, which totally conflicts with the wedding, but Elise knows I’ve been planning this since last year. I went as Gabrielle last year, which is the obvious move for me because my hair has a red tinge, but Xena is my brass ring, and I’ve been working on the costume for months, so Elise doesn’t dare say anything.” She grinned like she was particularly pleased with herself. “So barring total wedding apocalypse, I will be transforming into Xena this coming weekend. I’m all ready to go except for the chakram.” She eyed him. “You know what a chakram is?”

It felt like some sort of test. “It’s that circular weapon thingy, right?” She beamed. Hell, that might have been the only test he’d ever passed on his first go. “This all sounds great.” It really did. Goofy, and definitely nerdy, but great. “But I don’t see what the scheduling problem is. The wedding isn’t until the weekend after this coming one, so it doesn’t conflict, does it?”

“For mere mortals? No. But a bridesmaid is not a mere mortal. Alas. A bridesmaid must bend space and time so as to make herself continuously available at the whim of her friend the bride. I have duties this coming weekend.”

Right. Because why else was she here if not because she was doing her bridesmaid duty, looking after the wild-card brother who couldn’t be trusted?

“Well,” he said, glancing at the pile of papers in her lap, “I’m up for something totally low-brow first.” He’d had enough of playing tourist in his brother’s refined life. Swanky condos and interior designer fiancées and ten-dollar pints of beer were wearing on him. Apparently you could take Jay out of the trailer park, but not so much Cam.

“Oh, that should be easy,” she said, reading from one of her printouts. “Dinosaur mini-golf, wax museum, or, oh! If you’re not into dinosaurs, there’s wizard mini-golf! Also, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Nightmares Fear Factory, some kind of indoor roller—”

“Nightmares Fear Factory.”

She whipped her head around to look at him. “I’m not going into a haunted house, particularly not one named Nightmares Fear Factory.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have an overactive imagination. Haunted houses scare the crap out of me. Horror movies, too—all that stuff.”

Wow. He had expected her to give a speech about how stupid and juvenile haunted houses were, not to admit that she was just plain afraid. “Even though you know it’s all fake?”

“Does that really make a difference in the moment?” she asked.

“Well, I worked on a haunted hayride when I was in high school. So I think the illusion is ruined for me.”

“Really?” She seemed out-of-proportion delighted by his seasonal teenage job. “What did you do?”

“Well, I started in the support crew—mixing up vats of cooked spaghetti and red food coloring for example.”

“What?”

“Yeah, you have no idea what goes on behind the scenes to make the experience seem authentic.”

“Kind of like being a bridesmaid.”

He barked a laugh. “Yeah, well, I worked my way up over the years. My last year there I was Freddy Krueger, complete with the long fingernail-knives.”

“Oooh! I’m impressed. And then what? You graduated high school and that was the end of your haunted hayride career?”

“Nope,” Cam said. “Never graduated. Just moved on.” He had to force himself to let up on the gas pedal. They were going too fast, even for him. “Got my high school equivalency later, though,” he added, seized with the desire that she not think him any dumber than necessary. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I can’t believe you’d do EdgeWalk one day and then let a dinky little tourist trap haunted house get the best of you. Come on. I have a professional interest.”

“No way. No. Way.”

“I dare you. Let’s make another bet.”

“Hmm.” He glanced over. She had her head tilted and one finger pressed against a cheek in an exaggerated “I’m thinking” posture. “What do I get if I do it?”

“I’ll buy you dinner.”

She pretended to think about it for a few more seconds. “No. Well, yes, you can buy me dinner, but you know what I really want.”

“What are you? A professional cock-blocker?” he said, laughing, knowing he was going to agree.

“Not usually!” she said. “But I’m deriving a strange sort of enjoyment from it in your particular case.”

The fucked-up thing was that he sort of was, too. He glanced at her again, then forced his eyes back to the road. But the image of her stayed with him, burned into his retinas. She’d worn her hair down today. She looked different without the ponytail. Softer. And her eyes had been twinkling. He liked that he could make her eyes do that.

So he stuck his hand over the center console for her to shake and said, “You got yourself a deal. You do the haunted house, and I stay pure another twenty-four hours.”

An hour later, they were lined up outside Nightmares Fear Factory, which Jane, who had studied the attraction’s Wikipedia page while he found parking, informed Cameron was the oldest continuously operating haunted house in North America.

“This is a former coffin factory, too,” she said, reading on her phone as they approached the entrance. “Its owner was supposedly killed when a stack of coffins fell on him. Now that is a nice touch.” It appealed to the storyteller in her.

A sullen teenage employee explained the rules to them. You could shout “nightmares” if you were panicking and needed out, and “something” would come get you. But from then on, your name would be forever entered on the house’s “chicken list,” which he reported was one hundred and thirty thousand names long and counting.

“I want you to know that I have absolutely no problem with my name going on that list,” she told Cameron. “They need a better deterrent than that.” She was joking to cover her fear. But actually the chicken list was kind of a deterrent. Normally, she wouldn’t care about appearing on it, but for some reason she wanted to show Cameron that she wasn’t afraid of silly things. For heaven’s sake, the man had been a soldier in a combat zone, and she couldn’t face a little fake gore?

“But what if you bail and once you’re gone, I strike up a conversation with a nice young lady?” Cameron said. It should have been a gross threat, but he was smiling as he said it. He was trying to make her feel better by making her laugh.

“I bet you’ve never picked up a girl in a haunted house before,” she said, using the banter to distract herself. But suddenly, she was thinking of some girl shrieking and grabbing Cameron’s hand for “comfort.”

“Well, there was this barn portion of the haunted hayride, and it was really, really dark in that barn…”

Hmm. Elise said Cameron had burned down a barn in his youth…There was also the rumor that he’d gotten a girl pregnant. She really wanted to know about that one. She could see how young Cameron, if he was as handsome and wild as the current incarnation, would be a total heartbreaker.

A low, ghostly moan came from the speakers that pumped “ambience” onto the sidewalk, and Jane winced. She tried to think of a teenaged Cameron mixing red food coloring into spaghetti. It was all fake, she reminded herself. Fake, fake, fake.

“You ready?” he asked.

She gulped, but…what the hell. “Ready.”

They stepped into the house and were plunged into total darkness.

Her heart rate quadrupled, and she grabbed for his hand. She tried to tell herself that nothing had even happened yet.

Follow the red dots of light. That’s what the kid out front had said. The faster they did that, the faster they’d be done. She searched the floor, and when she located them, she gave Cameron a shove.

“We really don’t have to do this,” he whispered.

“Go!” she said, and shoved harder.

It wasn’t actually so bad once she got the hang of it.

And by “got the hang of it,” Jane meant, “figured out that if she plastered herself to Cameron’s back and closed her eyes, she could move through the haunted house without actually having to see anything.”

She could deal with the sounds, it turned out. They were mostly people screaming, chain saws, eerie moans, that kind of thing. They were scary sounds, yes, but without the accompanying visuals, she could more easily classify them as generic haunted house noises.

“Go faster,” she kept whispering to Cameron. To his credit, he was obeying her. He had dropped the teasing and wasn’t trying to force her to experience any of it.

So she was getting into kind of a…well, not a groove, but they were moving forward, and her coping mechanisms were working. She was even starting to feel kind of smug that she’d managed to game the whole system. Suck it, Nightmares Fear Factory.

There was also the part where being plastered to Cameron wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Surprisingly. His back was solid underneath her, hard where she was soft, and his muscles bunched and shifted as he moved.

Then they started touching her, and that was the end of her little swoony moment.

It was a hand on her back first. A light touch—there and then gone. But she screamed and hugged Cameron even as she tried to shake the hand off. She had been holding on to the back of his T-shirt, gripping handfuls of the fabric and resting her forehead on his back to hide her eyes as they shuffled forward, but now she wrapped her arms around him like she was riding behind him on a motorcycle.

“It’s not real,” he said as he continued to press onward. “None of it is real.”

She nodded against the muscles of his back, unable to speak.

“Do you want to say the password and get out of here?”

“No!” She feared what saying the password would bring. The kid outside had said, “something” would come for them. Would that “something” separate them? Because she would rather be here with Cameron, where she didn’t have to open her eyes, than on her own for even a minute.

But then something latched on to her leg. Something low, on the ground. And it grabbed. Took hold and pulled so hard that she lost her grip on Cameron as he continued to move forward. She stumbled, trying to catch up to him, but she couldn’t get her leg free.

“Jane!” Cameron called, but then there was something else, right up against her face, whispering low and gruff in her ear, “Jaannnnneee.” Whatever it was ran a finger down the back of her neck.

She was beyond screaming. She started to cry.

But then there was Cameron. The thing that had been terrorizing her had been touching her lightly, after that initial sharp grab anyway, running a finger almost imperceptibly along her skin. But now Cameron’s hands were on her, and his touch was the opposite of light. A strong hand grasped hers and pulled her toward him, away from the thing behind her. He pulled her tight to his chest and wrapped his arms around her. She tried to think about the many colors of his tattooed arm, shielding her from the darkness.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his tone urgent, almost like he was scared, too.

“No,” she tried to whisper, but nothing came out. She was ready to shout the password, to do whatever it took to get out, but she couldn’t seem to make her voice work. She shook her head violently back and forth against his chest.

“I’ve got you,” he said, and he scooped her into his arms. She spared a passing thought for what a baby she was, and also for how heavy she must be, but then he started to move, and all she could do was bury her head against his chest and try to stop crying.

Well, shit. That had been a mistake. Cam had thought it would be like the CN Tower. Jane would be spooked, but then she’d conquer her fear and surprise herself by having fun.

But instead of the exhilarated, grinning goddess in the sky that she’d been yesterday, what he had now was an embarrassed, shaking, mortal human woman.

He also hadn’t considered the consequences for him. He’d been thinking of the whole haunted house thing in the context of his old job in Thunder Bay. He hadn’t been thinking about what it would feel like when someone hiding in the dark tried to snatch Jane away from him.

His heart still beating out of control, he set her on her feet once they were out, and she blinked against the light. She had tear tracks on her cheeks—thin paths where her makeup had been washed away—and her mascara was smudged.

It was like a knife to the heart. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, rolling her eyes at herself. “That was…a lot worse than I thought it was going to be.”

“So I’m guessing you don’t want the souvenir photo?” he asked, hoping some humor would calm them both. There had been a covert picture taken of every group at a certain spot in the house, and they were being projected on a screen as people left. Most of the images were actually pretty funny. Everyone was terrified, but seeing their expressions outside of the context of the house was amusing. Most people were laughing at theirs, and some were stepping up to buy copies.

“Whoa!” she exclaimed when their picture came up. “You’re not scared at all.”

He followed her gaze to the image. He was staring straight ahead, almost like he was looking at the camera, though he hadn’t known it was there. She was wrong, though. He had been scared, but he’d hidden it well. He was holding her in his arms, and she was snuggled against his chest. The only part of her head that was visible was the curtain of auburn hair that hung down to her shoulders. He had one hand pressed against the back of her head. He had been encouraging her with the gesture to hide her face from the horrors, to use his chest as a shield. His other arm was hooked beneath her bent knees, and his hand rested on her outer thigh, fingers splayed wide as if they wanted to cover as much of her as possible.

It was strange to look at himself from the outside, to see himself standing tall and unmoved, using his body to safeguard Jane even though he’d been as freaked out as everyone else.

He looked…strong.

Steady. Dependable.

Not at all like the kind of person who had screwed up his life, leaving broken hearts, unmet expectations, and juvenile criminal records in his wake.

“Would you like to purchase this, miss?” said a girl working behind the counter. She held out a print of the image that had been projected on the wall.

“No!” Jane smiled. It was good to see her smile, to know there wasn’t any lasting damage. “I don’t think I need to be in possession of permanent photographic evidence of my epic cowardice.” She heaved a sigh and looked up at him. “Can we go to the falls next? I think I need a dose of the wonders of nature. It’ll be an antidote to all this.”

“Sure thing. I’m going to hit the restroom first. Why don’t you get out of here, and I’ll meet you outside in a couple minutes?”

She nodded and headed for the exit.

And once she was out of sight, he bought the damn picture.