One and Only

by Jenny Holiday

  “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 juveni
le 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.

  Chapter Eight

  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.�
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  “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.”