One and Only(33)

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

Jane flashed him a relieved smile as the bridal party returned. She was glad he didn’t mind the company, but also glad things weren’t going to be weird between them. They hadn’t communicated since he’d left her house yesterday—left her house and yard in tip-top shape—so she wasn’t really sure where they stood. She had been hoping to see him again. Well, truly, she’d been hoping to bone him again. Ha! Look at her, the queen of casual sex! So things being “not weird” between them was a promising sign. She might actually get her wish.

Eventually.

It was going to be a long day.

“All right,” she said, perusing the map and trying to figure out the most logical way to tackle things. “What do you say we do rides in the morning, then lunch, and then we can spend the afternoon at this Splash Works thing?”

“Whatever you say,” Elise said at the same time that Gia said, “You’re the boss.”

“Okay.” She looked around to orient herself relative to the map she was holding. “Why don’t we walk to the far northeastern corner, and then we can work our way back. That will maximize—hey!”

Cameron had grabbed the map from her hands. “Or we could go on that thing because it’s right here.” He pointed at a yellow and blue monstrosity with huge plunges and sharp angles.

She read the tall yellow lettering at the entrance to the coaster. “Leviathan.” The word was surrounded by some kind of dragony sea monster–type creature with enormous teeth.

“I’m in!” Gia said. “Will you hold my stuff, Jane?”

Wendy, who wasn’t an overt thrill seeker the way Gia was but was nevertheless quite the adventurer in her quiet, determined way, silently handed Jane her backpack.

“Whoa,” Jane said, lifting her hands over her head so she couldn’t accept any of the bags and sunglasses being shoved at her. “If we need someone to hold stuff, we’re going to have to go in shifts, and I’m going to be on the first one.” Heck, better to get it over with.

She was confronted with three dropped jaws and one wide grin.

“What is she doing?” Elise was speaking to Wendy—and looking at Wendy like she was Jane’s mom instead of her best friend. Wendy shrugged.

Elise sniffed. “Well, I’m not going on that thing. Normally I would, but I don’t want…”

Jane was glad that Elise’s hesitation drew everyone’s attention away from her.

“I don’t want anything to happen to me before the wedding.” She smiled sheepishly. “I know that’s irrational. I’ve been kind of insane lately, you guys.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Gia said, giving her a squeeze. “Your wedding is going to be amazing.”

“It’s going to be the most beautiful wedding in the history of weddings!” Wendy said, slinging an arm around Elise’s shoulder from the other side, as if she hadn’t been calling the forthcoming nuptials the “w-word” a day ago.

“It’s going to blow the lid off Pinterest,” Jane chimed in. There were no sides of Elise left to hug, but she blew a kiss, which of course Wendy had to “catch” with a wink.

“Hey!” said Elise with mock outrage. “That was mine!” But then her eyes filled with tears. “I love you guys so much.”

“Aww! Group hug!” Gia yelled as she let go of Elise enough to make room for Jane to slide into the pack.

Jane was suffused with emotion. The wedding had everyone on edge, but at the core of things was her crew of girls, and that would never change. She was so lucky. Her friends, her brother: people didn’t get better than them.

She felt someone watching her and lifted her eyes from the hug.

Cameron.

Right.

“Should we get this show on the road?” he said, and she shivered.

She really was scared of the ride she was about to get on. But one of the things she’d learned from Cameron in the past few days was you could be scared of a thing and still do that thing.





Jane was scared of the coaster. Cam could tell by the determined way she marched to the end of the lineup. Wendy and Gia chatted and exclaimed as the ride made crazy loops above them, but Jane remained silent, staring straight ahead as they inched their way toward the head of the line.

As they moved closer, it became apparent that there were four seats to a row on the coaster. Jane walked onto the platform first, still concentrating on her target and seemingly oblivious to everything else.

But he must have been wrong about that, because when he hung back, gesturing out of politeness for Gia and Wendy to precede him up the steps, she whipped her head around, her eyes darting all over until she found his gaze. She hung back then, which initially caused a traffic jam because Gia and Wendy came to a stop behind her. She waved them ahead of her, avoiding their eyes. It was hard not to arrive at the conclusion that she wanted him to sit next to her. It was also hard to disguise the stupid, proud grin that idea generated.

“Want to wait for your boyfriend?” one of the teenagers working the ride said. “That’s so sweet.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Jane said, just as Cam was about to issue the same correction. It was good to know they were on the same page in case she wanted to get busy later. Please let her want to get busy later. He even had condoms this time.

They settled themselves into the coaster. Jane was silent, her lips pressed into a thin, determined line. She was turning inward, like she had as they’d begun shuffling out onto the deck outside the CN Tower. He wanted to take her hand. His own were itching to touch her somewhere, anywhere, and not only because she needed soothing. But he didn’t want to get her into trouble with her friends, whom he gathered were already on her case about matters of dating and relationships.

As the coaster made its way slowly up the first hill, its ominous clacking had his own heart beating fast, and Wendy and Gia on the other side began squealing.

Jane, still staring straight ahead, grabbed his hand, took as much of his arm as she could grab, in fact, into her lap. He grinned and squeezed tight.

As the car approached the top, Jane shut her eyes. After what seemed like ages teetering there, it tipped. People started screaming. He only had eyes for Jane. He watched her like a hawk. She squeezed her eyes tighter and twisted her face into a harsh grimace.

Just when he was starting to fear he had miscalculated, that maybe roller coasters hadn’t been a good idea, her eyes popped open, and so did her mouth. She turned to him as much as she could, given the restraining apparatus, and whooped. Her eyes danced, her grin was as wide as the sky, and her hair was a curtain of fire.

There she was in all her glory: his goddess.

It was almost as good as watching her come.

Almost.





“Are you sure you want to go on this one, though?” Cameron asked when, one hour and three rides later, Jane pointed to a ride called Wonder Mountain’s Guardian. He would gladly follow Jane around the park all day and strap himself into any contraption she liked to be flung around defying gravity in any way that suited her. But this particular ride didn’t seem like a good match. “It’s dark,” he said, reading about it in the brochure they’d been given on their way into the park. “They give you 3D glasses, and you shoot at creepy-crawlies.”

“That’s fine,” Jane said.

“Jane.” He grabbed her arm. “It’s a haunted roller coaster.”

“No problem,” she said again, shaking off his hand and following her friends into the line. He wasn’t going to be able to bodily carry her out of this one, but, hey, she was free to make her own mistakes.

As they prepared to board the coaster, she did that same thing where she maneuvered so she was sitting next to him. She probably thought she was being subtle, but Gia was onto them. Every time Jane did it, Gia raised her eyebrows at him, and this time was no different, except she added an “I’m watching you” gesture by moving her index and middle fingers back and forth between her eyes and him.

He shrugged and sat where Jane wanted him to. Each car had four seats—two facing front and two facing back. Jane had arranged things so Gia and Wendy were facing front. She seemed unconcerned as the ride began to move, which wasn’t altogether surprising. With each subsequent ride they had gone on after the Leviathan, she’d appeared less nervous out of the gate. He wanted to offer his hand, but he didn’t think she needed it. Or wanted it, frankly, because she was pretty much ignoring him.

As the coaster ascended the first hill, her face remained impassive. This wasn’t as steep a coaster, but still. It was like she had been desensitized. As they made the first dip, which was combined with a turn, he gave up looking at her and focused on what was ahead of them, which seemed to be a tunnel. That was probably the dark part.

“What the hell?”

He recoiled instinctively against the sensation of someone coming after him, but calmed when he realized that all that had happened was that Jane had grabbed his 3D glasses off his face. He was about to protest, to say that the glasses were the whole point of the ride—you couldn’t see the stuff you were supposed to shoot at without them—when they plunged into darkness.