Gia’s hand clamped down on Jane’s forearm.
What the hell? “Let me go,” she whisper-yelled as she tried to twist out of her friend’s grip. Her struggle only caused Gia to double down, adding a second hand to Jane’s arm and planting her feet as if preparing for a tug-of-war. What happened to the loyal, true friends she’d so recently been snuggling with? Gia’s refusal to let her go was a betraying blade, slicing into her chest.
“Hang on,” said Gia, even as their struggle for control threatened to turn into an outright tussle. Which is why Jane didn’t see what was happening until she heard Wendy gasp. She looked at Wendy, who had one hand clasped over her mouth in horror and the other pointing toward the parking lot.
Correction: her hand wasn’t pointing toward the parking lot; it was pointing toward Hercules getting out of a blue Corvette.
“What?” she whispered, barely able to get the word out, which was funny because in her head the question had sounded like a shout.
She swayed toward Gia, thankful suddenly for the bracing contact. But Gia chose that moment to let go and step away, whispering, “You’re okay.”
She was not okay. What part of this was okay? There was no part of this that was okay. There was no part of this that made sense. If she’d felt like Gia had stuck a knife into her chest before, she’d just pulled it out, leaving Jane gasping, a gaping hole in her chest welling with…something.
Even though he was instantly recognizable as Hercules, he looked different from the actor who played the character on the show. The clothing was right: leather pants, tattered beige shirt, leather wristbands. He even carried a sword at his waist. But the similarities ended there. Whereas Kevin Sorbo had long, flowing hair, Cameron still sported the military buzz cut. And of course there were the tattoos. The sleeveless shirt revealed his inked arm, and the angel peeked out from the shirt, which was unbuttoned almost all the way.
There was also the part where he was carrying a shopping bag in one hand.
Jane was pretty sure Hercules didn’t shop at Whole Foods.
“See why you don’t have to worry about the dress?” said Elise, smiling. “And look at you, you’re going to get out of wearing high heels, too, you lucky girl.”
“What are you talking about?” she said through an aching throat. Maybe Elise would prove more of an ally than Gia had. But no, there was nothing on Elise’s face that Jane could make sense of, that she could grab on to to leverage herself out of this bewildering scenario. Her friend merely smiled like she had a delicious secret and turned back toward the B&B, gesturing for the group to follow her.
Wait. They were going to leave her here with him?
“You asshole!” Wendy shouted, and launched herself at Cameron. Well, at least there was one person left she could rely on. Wendy was small but fierce. As her fists uselessly pummeled Cameron’s chest, Jane almost laughed. Would have done so if she weren’t battling a powerful wave of confusion and betrayal and fear that was making it hard to stand upright.
Cameron just stood there and took the beating Wendy gave him. Jane had never seen Wendy in such a state. Her best friend was known for her potty mouth, and she reportedly turned into a tigress in the courtroom, but Jane had never actually seen her beat up anyone. Eventually, Jay pulled her off Cameron.
Gia leaned over to whisper in Jane’s ear. “You come get me if you need me.”
“Wait!” She reached out to grab Gia’s arm, desperate, in a reversal of their previous roles, to keep Gia rooted in place. But she was too late. Gia slipped away. They all slipped away. Well, Wendy went loudly and with great reluctance, but the rest of them slipped.
Which left her standing face-to-face with Cameron MacKinnon dressed as Hercules.
“I love you,” he said.
That was it. Standing was no longer possible. She sagged back against the retaining wall that bordered the parking lot. He lunged for her, but she held up a hand to stop his progress.
He stopped with his hands in the air, but he didn’t step back.
Slowly, she let herself sink down the wall until she was sitting on the ground. Somewhere along the way she’d lost her shawl, too, so the back of the dress flapped in the wind. So much for dignity.
He waited until she’d hit the ground before saying, “I am completely, utterly, fiercely, surprisingly in love with you. I know you don’t believe in the concept of ‘the one.’ I wouldn’t have thought I did, either, but damned if I don’t want, more than anything else in the world, to be yours. Your one and only.”
What? Each word was like the little pinprick of an acupuncture needle: surprising and painful, then, suddenly, an instrument of relief. Capable of displacing pain. Of replacing it with something else, something unexpected and warm.
She looked up. He was backlit by the sun, the man dressed as a god.
“It scares me, though,” he went on. “You scare me.”
She saw, suddenly, that he had no experience with things going his way, with things going right.
And even more surprisingly? She also saw, suddenly, that she didn’t, either.
A sob escaped.
“Hey, hey, baby. Don’t cry.” He sat down, arranging himself cross-legged across from her. Reached out a hand as if he were going to touch her face but stopped short, like he didn’t have the right. “Kick my ass to the curb, but don’t cry over me. I’m not worth it.”
She wanted to grab his hand and press it against her face, to complete his aborted gesture, but she didn’t dare. She didn’t yet trust the hope that was pooling in her chest. “You are worth it, though. Don’t you see? You are.”
He smiled, a small, almost wistful smile. “I’m trying. Somehow, I can jump off buildings and be on the front lines of a war, but I don’t know how to…” His voice trailed off, and he had to clear his throat. “I don’t know how to let someone love me.”
She tried to speak, but he didn’t let her, just kept talking. “When you walked up to me last night, for that dance, I had a vision of the future. One where I took your hand and followed you out on that dance floor. What happened next? I got to be yours. I got to be the first person to read your books. I got to be your date to Comicon. I got to make you come every day for the rest of my life.”
That last item made her cheeks heat, and she tried to look away, embarrassed, but he moved his head so that he remained in her line of sight.
“In that version of the future, I was the lucky bastard who got all that. The lucky bastard who got you. I could hardly conceive of it, it was so far out of the realm of my reality.
“But what came next? That was the question. That was the fear. I couldn’t—I still can’t, really—imagine a future in which I kept getting to have all that stuff indefinitely. And although I was having trouble telling my head from my ass yesterday, I could tell you one thing with absolute certainty, and that was that I couldn’t have you and then give you up. It would be worse than the PTSD. Worse than being estranged from my family. I wouldn’t survive it, Jane.”
Jane swallowed the lump in her throat and reached for his hand. She did what she hadn’t been brave enough to do a moment ago, which was to bring it to her cheek. She made the biggest eyes-wide-open jump of all as she leaned into his palm and said, “Then don’t give me up. Be my ‘one.’ Let me love you—because I do.”
He rose then, keeping the one hand on her cheek as he used the other to help her to her feet. They stood like that for a long moment, contemplating each other. A smile spread slowly across his face. She had a feeling it was mirroring what was happening on hers.
“I brought you something,” he said, breaking with her gaze to retrieve the shopping bag he’d dropped on the pavement.
“My Xena costume?” she said, pulling out the knee-high leather boots. The flat knee-high leather boots. “What in the world?”
“I have this thing in my head I call ‘goddess mode,’” he said.
Huh? She must have looked as confused as she felt, because he laughed and elaborated.
“Yeah, I’ve seen you a bunch of times lately sort of out of your element, you know? Dangling off the CN Tower and on roller coasters.”
“It has been kind of a thrill ride of a week.”
“But not just those examples.” He lowered his voice and said, “You’re also in goddess mode in bed.”
Her face heated, suddenly and intensely, like he’d pressed a secret on button.
“And after Comicon,” he went on. “When you were dressed as Xena.”
“Xena’s not a goddess,” Jane said, unable to refrain from issuing the correction. “At most, she’s a demi-goddess, as there was one episode that hinted that maybe Ares was her real father, but—”
He silenced her with a quick, hard kiss. “You are such a sexy little nerd.” Then he pulled away and kept right on talking, clearly not done with his speech—his astonishing speech. “My point is that you are the bravest, most kick-ass warrior I know. You do have a goddess inside you. And I for one think she should come out more often.” He nodded at the shopping bag containing her costume. “So I brought your demi-goddess costume to help remind you. Plus, this way, you won’t have to wear that damned dress that has been stressing you out so much.”