God, she was an idiot. By the time Cameron reappeared outside in the summer sun, Jane had already cycled through sheepishness, embarrassment, and had moved on to self-disgust. The fake stone façade of the haunted house was so obviously not real. And the building was attached to a bar and grill advertising beer specials. There was a family with two toddlers sitting on the patio, for heaven’s sake.
“I’m sorry,” she said again when he reached her side. It felt lame to apologize, but it felt lamer not to.
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” he said, blinding her with that ultra-white smile. “I’m the one who’s sorry. We shouldn’t have done that.”
“I mean, you’ve probably seen real horrors,” she said, feeling the absurd need to embroider her apology.
He merely shrugged. But he didn’t deny it.
“You must think I’m such a chicken,” she went on.
“Nah. That was pretty scary.”
“Worse than the haunted hayride?”
He laughed. “Way worse than the haunted hayride.”
“And, God, I didn’t even see any of it. But the loud noises that you can’t identify, the fear that people are after you.” She shuddered. He was looking at her with a funny expression she couldn’t decode. Was he…sad? She thought back to her previous, offhand comment about him having seen real horrors. Oh God. She’d been so focused on her own fear. But was it possible that he’d been affected by the haunted house, too? “Are you…okay?” she ventured. “Because what I just said? Loud noises and people after you? Now that I think about it, I could’ve been describing a war zone.”
He gave her a small smile, but it seemed like a resigned one. “I didn’t really think. It usually doesn’t work like that. At least not for me.”
“What doesn’t work like that? War zones?”
“PTSD.”
Holy crap. She forced herself to keep her tone even as she asked, “You have post-traumatic stress disorder?”
He shrugged. “So they say.”
Jane opened her mouth, then shut it. Because what did you say? I’m sorry you witnessed things so awful they gave you PTSD? Thank you for serving? She wanted to say both those things. She meant both those things. But she feared they would only come out sounding like platitudes, and Cameron was not the kind of man who tolerated platitudes.
“Dangling off the CN Tower was fun,” he said, clearly trying to change the subject, “but not so much Nightmares Fear Factory, huh? Who knew?” He shrugged. “But that’s how it goes. You take a risk; it doesn’t always work out.”
Jane realized with a start that she pretty much never took risks. Not anymore, anyway.
She didn’t have time to ponder this revelation, because Cameron held out an arm, like they were preparing to walk down the aisle at a wedding. “Come on, Xena, we’ve got a big-ass waterfall to see.”
* * *
“This is more my speed,” Jane said as they donned translucent yellow rain slickers and lined up for Journey Behind the Falls. Normally, she’d be afraid she would look like an idiot in the getup—like a plus-size rubber duckie. But she found herself not caring, possibly because only an hour ago she’d been crying in Cameron’s arms, so comparatively speaking, a little plastic raincoat-induced humiliation was nothing.
They’d walked down to the falls from the haunted house. It had been probably fifteen years since Jane had been to Niagara, and she’d forgotten how stunning the main attraction was. Cameron must have shared her awe because he’d maneuvered them through the crowds to a spot right against the railing and stared silently at the roaring water for a long time. Longer than he realized, she suspected.
Why was it such a surprise to find out that Cameron had PTSD? It must be fairly common among military people. It was just that she thought of him as invincible. He stalked through houses of horror and hung off buildings without batting an eyelash. He was the consummate daredevil, but with a protective streak. She shivered.
Now that she was out of the haunted house, she could think back to the experience separate from the fear that had been attached to it in the moment. The way he’d scooped her up like it was nothing. Feeling those strong arms around her. Seeing them, later, in the picture. She’d laughed off the notion of buying the picture, but a part of her had wanted it. It was stupid really, but when was the last time someone had taken care of her like that?
Never.
That was the horrible truth. Her parents had meant well, but her father’s addiction had been all-consuming for both him and Mom. Her brother had stepped in after their father died. He had, for all intents and purposes, become her parent. The only reason she was where she was in life was because of her brother, and she loved him like crazy for it.
But when was the last time someone had taken care of her without being obliged to?
It wasn’t lost on her that she’d used the word invincible earlier, in her mind, in reference to Cameron. She used to think of him as cocky. What was the difference between cocky and invincible? The writer in her pondered the question. Maybe invincibility was only justified cockiness.
They boarded an elevator that would take them down through the bedrock behind the falls. Yesterday, she’d been dangling off the highest building in Canada. Now she was headed down behind one of the largest waterfalls in the world. What had happened to her? Cameron held the door for her to enter before him. It seemed impossible that only three days ago, she hadn’t known him.
And why did he look so good in his poncho? It wasn’t fair. If she was a plus-size rubber duckie, he, with those brilliant blue-green eyes, was a movie star. A movie star in an ugly rain poncho, but still. There was no rational reason to be attracted to Cameron MacKinnon, but the more time she spent with him, the stronger his pull was.
The elevator disgorged them into a series of tunnels and lookouts they were free to explore. The first lookout was a little to the side of the falls, about halfway up. It was crowded, but as he had at ground level, Cameron made a beeline for a spot on the railing, where they would have an unobstructed view. It was misty this close to the falls, and the pavement beneath them was wet, so he took her hand. He’d used the hand from the tattooed arm, and she looked down at the swirling, mostly green foliage that came all the way down to his wrist. His hand engulfed hers, and it was warm, despite the cool, wet air swirling around them.
When they reached the edge, he propped his elbows on the rail, but he didn’t drop her hand. It had the effect of tucking her close to his side. He stared at the falls with the same intense concentration as before. The water was louder here, more forceful, and it demanded one’s attention.
After a few minutes, he said, “My shrink used to make me do this meditation exercise. I was supposed to visualize a waterfall. It was supposed to wash away pent-up…shit.”
It had seemed initially like he was going to say something more specific than “shit,” but she didn’t press him, asking instead, “Did it work?”
“Nope.” He dipped his head at the falls. “But, hell, I’m thinking now that maybe I was imagining the wrong kind of waterfall. I was thinking more Snow-White-cavorts-in-the-woods-and-stumbles-across-a-gentle-woodland-waterfall kind of scenario.”
“But this isn’t that,” Jane said, nodding her understanding even though he wasn’t looking at her. “This is pure, unstoppable power.” It was easy to get distracted by the hordes of tourists, by the cheesy haunted houses and other schlock in town, but truly, the raw force of the falls was something to behold.
It was his turn to nod. “Exactly.”
“Maybe you haven’t been doing it long enough?” Probably nothing she could say would be helpful, but she found herself wanting to try. “You’ve only been back, what? A week?”
His attention was back on the falls. “Nah, the, ah…PTSD is from my first tour—from Afghanistan. So I’ve been doing this visualization shit for almost two years now.”
“Oh. I see.” She didn’t miss that he had trouble even saying “PTSD.”
“I don’t have it so bad, really. Not as bad as some guys. No nightmares or flashbacks.”
“So what…happens?”
“I have trouble when I’m in settings that remind me of the…incident.”
She wanted more than anything to ask about “the incident,” but she was counting herself lucky that he was saying as much as he was. She had a feeling he didn’t do that, and he hardly knew her.
“But usually the landscapes have to be the same,” he went on. “Wide open spaces, sunshine—something that mimics the desert. So I didn’t even think. I mean, that was a dark, enclosed space. I was fine until…” He swiveled his head to look at her. “Until something snatched you away from me.”
She started to apologize but stopped, knowing that he’d wave it away, say it wasn’t her fault. He’d be right, technically. But she felt terrible anyway.
He shook his head. “Anyway, I thought I was over it. I haven’t really had a triggering event for the better part of a year, even on my second tour.”
“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.