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 on 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.
The stupid thing was, he’d kind of loved that baby anyway. Which was impossible because not only was it not a baby yet but a mere mass of cells, it apparently wasn’t even his mass of cells. He could see now that she’d done him a favor by not taking him up on his offer to claim the baby regardless of its parentage. That by letting her parents hustle her out of town, he’d dodged a bullet.
But all that logic didn’t matter, not really, because the shame and heartbreak that had come rushing in to fill the void after Alicia left had turned him into a fucking idiot bent on living down to the expectations everyone had of him. What kind of guy knocks up his sixteen-year-old girlfriend and doesn’t do the right thing by her? He was simultaneously so heartbroken and so angry at himself for trusting her in the first place that he hadn’t even bothered correcting the record when the rumors started swirling. Even if they weren’t right about that particular situation, they were right in general, weren’t they? So he’d resisted his mother’s attempts to get him to go back to high school, moved out of her trailer and into his own, and became the person everyone thought he was.
He sighed, dragging himself out of the past. Despite the sour memories, when he thought back to Alicia sleeping in his car, it made him happy. It was the best part of those nights.
Christie, on the other hand, had been a night owl, so there had been no sleeping in cars for her.
And anyway, he was pretty sure Christie hadn’t trusted him. He had been faithful to her on both tours, but again, his reputation had not worked in his favor. And he had been using her, in a way. Her and the army. Their whirlwind romance had begun a month before his first deployment. When he’d asked her to write to him, he hadn’t been totally honest with her. He hadn’t told her that she was going to help save him. That there was the old Cam and the new Cam and that he, having finally decided to man the fuck up and make something of his life, was in transition between them. He had drawn a line in the sand. On one side of it was the delinquent high school dropout. On the other was a man with an honorable job and—he hoped—a steady girlfriend.
Neither of which, it turned out, he’d been able to hold on to. You couldn’t escape your destiny, apparently. No matter how hard he’d tried to get away from Old Cam, that bastard just kept coming back.
Jane must have sensed the shift in the car’s rhythm as he pulled off the highway, because she opened her eyes and stretched. Then she really woke up and sat up straight, only to find herself restrained by her seat belt. “Oh my God, I did fall asleep. I’m sorry.”
He laughed. It reminded him of when she ate something and only belatedly remembered her campaign to lose weight. In some ways, Jane seemed to be at war with herself, subsuming her real desires beneath a set of behaviors she prescribed for herself. The juxtaposition was amusing.
“No worries.” He pulled up in front of her house. She lived in a neighborhood that was mostly home to three-story Victorians, but her house was a tiny one-story cottage with a peaked gable. It looked like the runt of the litter. It was cute and tidy and homey—the opposite of Jay’s imposing luxury high-rise. A wall of exhaustion hit him at the prospect of going back to his brother’s downtown. It was only eleven. He might have to kill some time to make sure he didn’t cross paths with Jay. Cam wasn’t sure he had it in him tonight to deal with his brother.
“God, you must be so tired,” Jane said.
Oh shit. He hadn’t even realized that he’d let his head fall forward onto the top of the steering wheel. He sat up straight and shook it, as if he could shake some sense into himself. “I’m okay. It’s not that late.”
“No,” said Jane, tilting her head. It was too dark to see her eyes properly, but he could imagine them narrowing as she contemplated him. “I mean, you must be, like, existentially tired. You’ve been at war, for heaven’s sake. And now you’re thrust back into this family wedding where the bride—and God bless her, I adore her—is becoming a little unhinged and, well…” She trailed off.
Probably he should say something, assure her that he was fine. But the sudden display of what seemed like genuine sympathy—sympathy that wasn’t tinged with pity—had robbed him of his ability to speak.
She shook her head and unbuckled her seat belt. “I don’t know what I’m talking about. Ignore me.”
“Yes,” he said, finding his voice, because suddenly he didn’t want her to get out of the car. Not yet. “I hadn’t really thought of it like that, but you’re right. I’m pretty fucking wrecked. Like, elementally. And I just…” He trailed off. It was one thing to agree with her, another to turn her into his shrink.
“You just what?” she prodded.
His head found its way back to the steering wheel. He simply could not keep it upright anymore. “I don’t want to go home and deal with my brother. I probably owe him an apology. But it’s all so goddamned exhausting.”
“Then don’t go home. I have a guest bed in my office. You can crash here.”
His head popped back up. He was turning into a fucking marionette. Which was an uncomfortable thought, because if he was the puppet, who was pulling the strings here? But that question faded in favor of a more astonishing one: Was she propositioning him? Because that was generally what was going on when you spent a day with someone that included a wicked make-out session and delivered them home only to be invited in. But she’d said, “guest bed.” And Jane wasn’t like everyone else. Maybe she truly was worried about his existential exhaustion. She was a good enough person that he wouldn’t discount the possibility. Unsure how to respond, he fell back on his usual methods. “I know what’s going on here,” he said, teasing, but kind of not. “This works in your favor doesn’t it? If I’m underfoot, it helps with the babysitting mission.”
“I’m not babysitting you,” she said, and he mouthed the words along with her, which made her purse her lips in annoyance. But then she cracked a smile and said, “Suit yourself,” and got out of the car.
He got out of the car, too.
* * *
“You don’t need to remake the bed,” Cameron said as Jane threw back the covers on the daybed in her office.
She tossed the cushions that sofa-fied the bed by day onto the floor, and said, “Yes, I do. I nap here a lot when I’m working.”
“So? You don’t have cooties, do you?”
Ignoring him, she stripped the sheets. Not furnishing a guest with fresh linens offended her sense of order. Jane was surprised that Cameron had taken her up on her invitation to stay. She was surprised at herself, too, for offering. It was just that she felt…sorry for him wasn’t really the right phrase. Cameron was not the sort of man who invited pity.
She’d always been good at putting herself in other people’s shoes. It was what she did professionally, of course, imagining how any given character would react emotionally to certain scenarios. But she’d been good at it when she was younger, too. It was how she’d always known how stressed out her brother was, as he attempted to maintain his good grades while working nearly full-time to keep them afloat. She’d been able to mold herself into the smallest, least objectionable person she could be in order not to add to his burdens.
“I do not have ‘cooties,’” she said, belatedly answering Cameron’s question while making air quotes with her fingers. “I do, however, have standards. Hang on; I’ll be right back.”
It took her maybe fifteen seconds, tops, to walk the two steps to the hallway linen closet and locate a set of matching sheets and pillowcases. And, okay, maybe another fifteen to stand there and catch her breath. Her house was small. The rooms in it were small. And Cameron was…not small. He was tall and muscular, and beyond that, he took up a lot of psychic space. She was starting to second-guess herself. Empathy was one thing, but her bed was just on the other side of the wall from the guest bed in the office. Now that she’d tasted his lips, felt his hands roaming over her body, how was she ever going to fall asleep knowing he was mere feet away from her?
She took a deep breath. She could hardly rescind the invitation. Nothing for it now but to push through.
She had only been gone those thirty seconds, but when she pushed back into the office, she saw that it had been thirty seconds too long. Because it had taken Cameron no time at all to open the top drawer of the small filing cabinet she kept next to her bed. She used the bottom drawer for actual files and the top drawer for—
“A fine collection of vibrators you’ve got here, Jane,” he drawled, the McConaughey coming on strong.
Her skin heated, but she refused to be embarrassed. Well, she was embarrassed, but she refused to cop to it. There was nothing wrong with having a “fine collection” of vibrators. It was a heck of a lot less problematic than having a collection of messy ex-boyfriends. And she didn’t have a current boyfriend around to take issue with them, so she was holding her head high. Even if it was steaming from how hot her cheeks were.
As she busied herself putting the fitted sheet on the bed, she pondered whether she should take the vibrators out of the room with her when she left. But then would he think she would be…using them that evening? No, better to play it cool. She unfurled the top sheet with a flick of her wrist.
This was the problem with spontaneity. Normally when she had guests over, she cleared out the “fine collection.” But when you invited your friend’s fiancé’s brother to spend the night on a whim after a discombobulating day in which you made out with your friend’s fiancé’s brother, it was possible for your Hitachi Magic Wand, your Love Egg, and your Jessica Rabbit to slip your mind.
Whatever. She was not embarrassed, right? “There’s nothing wrong with vibrators,” she said, wincing at the defensiveness that had crept into her tone. “Anyway,” she said, trying again, “I would hardly call three ‘a collection.’” Nope, still defensive. Ugh.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “No judgment here.”
Shock prompted her to jerk her gaze to his. She was sure he had been playing her, that when she found his blue-green eyes, they would be full of mockery. When she met his gaze, though, she was surprised to find it free of any ridicule. Instead there was just…heat?
She must have been looking at him funny, because he showed her his palms and said, “What?” His turn to be defensive. She tamped down a smile at the turned tables. “What’s not to love about a vibrator?” he added.
She shrugged and turned her attention to the pillowcases. “I had a boyfriend once who had a massive problem with them.” She’d always kind of assumed that most men would share Felix’s feelings on the matter. And she could kind of see it. It was hard for a mortal man to compete with Jessica’s “unique oscillating motion.”
He took the second pillowcase from her and started stuffing a pillow in it. “Well, he sounds like a fucking idiot.”
She did smile then, and she didn’t try to hide this one from him. “He was actually a big brainiac. Premed major when I met him. Now he’s a surgeon.”
“Really? Because to my mind, being threatened by something you can use to give your girl screaming orgasms doesn’t sound like a very smart move.”
“He was a member of Mensa,” she said, laughing, both because it was funny but also because she was thrown off kilter by the rush of arousal that his declaration had summoned. There was something about Cameron talking so matter-of-factly about giving a woman “screaming orgasms” that made her nether regions want to volunteer as tribute. And the way he’d said, “your girl.” Not “your girlfriend.” They should have been synonyms but somehow were not. And it was easy—too easy—to imagine him replacing the pronoun and saying, “my girl.” She squeezed her thighs together in an attempt to lock down the party that was starting between them.
“Oh, I see,” said Cameron, shaking out the duvet she handed him. “I’m getting a picture of this dude. Premed. Mensa. Threatened by a piece of pink silicone shaped like a bunny rabbit. He was clearly overcompensating for a huge insecurity complex.”
She laughed again. “You know, I think you might be right.” She hadn’t thought of it like that, but Felix was always making a point to explain things to her that didn’t need explaining, and he’d been really into proving his “stamina” in the bedroom, which for him meant pounding away at her for what felt like hours. When she’d finally worked up her courage to suggest they introduce a vibrator, he had lost his mind. Told her a real woman didn’t need battery-powered assistance. “Anyway,” she said, “I find vibrators very…efficient.”
“I do not disagree. Though there is something to be said for human touch, too, don’t you think?” Cameron asked, finishing the bed by smoothing the duvet over it. It was so strange to be standing here doing something so mundane as making a bed together while they were having this conversation. Talking about anything remotely sex related with Felix, outside of when they were actually having sex, had not been possible. And, sure, she talked about sex with the girls, but that usually just involved her having to defend her practice of preferring her “fine collection” to the “real thing.” Though, in their defense, they didn’t mean that in the way Felix had. They were always on her case about her stance against dating (Elise) and her stance against casual sex (Gia), but they weren’t mean about it. Wendy mostly left her alone, because one of Wendy’s many amazing best friend qualities was that she was profoundly nonjudgmental. And possibly also because she knew Jane well enough to know that even though she’d never admit it, Felix had thrown her for a total loop. God, when she thought of that night, their last together, where she’d finally gotten her courage up to suggest they move in together, and he’d shot her right down…well, the shame was as fresh as ever—both over the stinging rejection and over her own blindness. How had she spent six years with someone who didn’t satisfy her sexually and didn’t want to move toward anything more permanent than “dating”? Where had her self-respect been?
“I don’t know that there is that much to be said for the human touch,” she said, answering Cameron’s earlier question. But maybe she should have just agreed with him rather than answering it honestly, because now she was going to have to give him the same speech she always gave the girls. Or at least an abbreviated version. “I don’t really believe in the idea of ‘the one,’ you know? The notion that there’s one and only one perfect match for each person? I don’t think that’s true for me. I haven’t had a boyfriend for a really long time, and I haven’t missed it.”
“Well, if Mr. Bunny Hater was your last one, I don’t blame you. But you don’t have to be in a relationship with someone in order to, uh, avail yourself of human touch.”
She would have thought maybe he was propositioning her. The Cameron she’d met a couple days ago would have been. But the slight hesitancy in his speech and the total absence of any leering or eyebrow wagging suggested he wasn’t. So she decided to go with it. She was actually finding this conversation kind of…stimulating. “Yeah, well, I considered trying Tinder, but really, why would I?”
He shrugged, encouraging her to answer her own question.
“Because vibrators don’t give you sexually transmitted infections or pregnancy scares. They don’t ax-murder you. You don’t have to cuddle with them. They don’t treat you like a sex doll.” When you go out on a limb, they don’t break your heart.
“Hmm,” he said. “You don’t want to be treated like a sex doll, but you also don’t want to cuddle.”
It did sound a little contradictory, but she didn’t care. “It’s a fine line.”
“What about marriage, kids, the white picket fence?”
“Nope, nope, and nope.” And that was it. She held up a hand to signal the end of the conversation. Because the only thing left to say was, I already ruined one family, and those words would never be uttered aloud to another soul. Not even Wendy. Because it was impossible for anyone, except maybe her brother, to understand. And she was never going to be more of a burden to him than she already had been by dumping that confession on him.
That had been the one great thing about Felix—he hadn’t wanted kids. Maybe that’s why she’d stuck around for so long. With him, she’d been able to imagine a future that included a life partner, but one who wasn’t going to pressure her to procreate.
“One more question,” Cameron said.
She shook her head. She was done with this little stroll down memory lane.
He asked anyway. “Why are these in here and not in your bedroom?”
She laughed. And here she’d been expecting him to insist she was making a big mistake, that women weren’t fulfilled without love and family. That she just had to keep searching until she found “the one.” It was an insidious cultural norm and she expected it at every turn. To have Cameron not go down that road was refreshing.
So she answered him honestly. “They are not in my bedroom because I tend to use them more in here.” That would have been a sufficient answer, but she decided to throw him for a loop by adding more of the truth. “I find that when I’m writing for long stretches, they’re, uh…” But, crap, her bravado faltered, and she trailed off.
“You get yourself off in this bed,” he said, grinning. “That’s what you meant when you said you ‘napped’ in here a lot.”
Her face was heating again, but she clung to her “no shame” stance. “It’s good for productivity, I find.”
He was nodding, eyebrows raised, but still there was no mocking in his gaze. “I can totally see that.”
She waited, because surely there was more. Cameron MacKinnon couldn’t let this whole conversation pass without making some kind of suggestive remark, could he? This was the guy who’d ordered an ice cream sundae the other day specifically so he could use it to make lewd gestures.
But she was met with silence. “Well, okay then. If you’re all set, I’m going to go to bed. Tomorrow’s the bachelorette party, so tomorrow morning is my last chance to figure out something for that danged chakram I’ll need for Comicon on Sunday.” When he smiled, she added, “A warrior princess’s work is never done.”
She had the strangest impulse to blow him a kiss, but she stifled it.