First Love, Second Chance: Friends to Forever / Second Chance with the Rebel / It Started with a Crush...

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘I don’t believe that’s why you thought I’d fall for your apology.’

Her colour started to rise. ‘I just want to know that you forgive me for what I did.’

And here we go … ‘Ah, now we’re getting to it. So, in addition to accepting your apology, you want forgiveness? What is this, some kind of twelve-step programme?’ He’d studied up on those back when he was researching his mother’s condition. Back when he still gave a damn. ‘Make good for all the people you’ve burned in life?’

It was Beth’s turn to sway away from the whale. He crashed onwards, too worked up to give much care for her enormous eyes. ‘Where did I fall on the list, Beth? How did I fare against your other screw-ups in life? I hope I was at least in the top half.’

Her eyes blazed and it was beautiful and awful at the same time. Now that he was faced with opportunity, hurting her was not quite as satisfying as he’d imagined back when he was seventeen and holding all those feelings close to him.

She stood and stared, her head tilted, her eyes glittering magnificently. ‘Thank you, Marc. This actually makes it easier.’

He was already frowning into the sun too much to do it further. ‘What?’

‘In my head you were still the old Marc—gentle and concerned about people. I was really anxious about facing that man. But the new Marc is just a sarcastic pig and much easier not to give a stuff about.’

He snorted. ‘Story of my life.’

She shook her head, disgust all over her face. ‘Oh, boo hoo …’

Only one person on this planet had ever spoken to him like this—cut-throat honest. Getting straight down to the bones of an issue. And here she was again.

He gave as good as he got. ‘Last time I saw you, Beth, the only thing you wanted from me was a goodbye. Well, you got it. Don’t kid yourself that I’ve been mooching over that all these years. It was a good lesson to learn so early in life. It toughened me up for the real world. It drove me to succeed at school and in life.”

She forced her tiring body to scoop up more water and sloshed it all over the whale, but never took her eyes off him. ‘Fine. Here it is, Marc. I’m sorry that I hurt you back in high school. I made the wrong decision and I’ve come to regret that in my life. I’m sorry that I bailed on our plans for uni, too, and that I might have contributed to you not going—’

Pain lanced through him. ‘Don’t flatter yourself.’

She persevered. ‘But most of all I’m really sorry that I came to find you today. Because, up until now, you were the person I held in my heart as the symbol of everything I wanted to be. Clever, loyal, generous. I’ve spent years wishing I was more like you and—finally—I see the truth. Beneath all those new muscles you’re just an angry, bitter, small man, Marcus Duncannon. And I’ve been wasting my energy feeling so bad about what I did.’

She stood up straighter and looked around her. This was where she should have stormed off. He could see she was dying to—making that kind of spectacular scene just wasn’t complete without a flounce-off. But she had nowhere to go and a whale to save.

He blinked at her. There was absolutely nothing he could say to an outburst like that, which was fine because he was having a hard time getting past one small part of the significant mouthful she’d just spewed. It clanged in his mind like a chime.

You were the person I held in my heart … Every part of him rebelled against the impact of those words on his pulse rate. His mouth dried up and he could feel his heart beating in his throat.

Ridiculous. Unacceptable. She didn’t even know she’d said it.

But it burned like a brand into his mind.

They stood staring at each other, chests heaving equally. Then all the fight drained out of him. ‘Don’t dress it up, Beth. Tell me what you really think.’

She glared at him but couldn’t sustain it. The tiniest of smiles crept through. ‘It’s taken me a decade, but I’ve learned to say what I think. I don’t pull any punches these days.’

‘You never had any trouble with confidence as far as I remember. You were always brash, always willing to go headlong into something with me. With anyone.’

But particularly with me … Those days were some of the best in his life. Back when Marc Duncannon and Beth Hughes were interchangeable in people’s minds. There was nothing she wasn’t willing to try once.

Fearless.

Marc frowned on the realisation. No, she hadn’t been fearless. There were things that had definitely scared the pants off her, but she’d done them. With him by her side.

She looked up at him earnestly. Pained. ‘That is not something I count under my virtues, Marc. Being an enthusiastic follower is not the same as thinking for yourself.’

He snorted. ‘You’re not trying to tell me you were an innocent accomplice?’ He wasn’t ready for another woman in his life blaming everyone around for her problems.

‘I was a completely willing accomplice. I lived to follow you into trouble. I was fully up for any crazy idea you had.’

‘Then what.?’

‘I hadn’t learned yet to ask for what I wanted. To put myself first.’

His stomach sank. McKinley. ‘Don’t tell me. You developed that sense right around the final year of school.’

She stared at him. Hard. ‘On the contrary. It took me nearly a decade.’

Somewhere in there was some hidden meaning he should probably have been seeing. He felt like he always used to with Beth, as if he was operating on seven second delay. Always the last to get it. Always needing things spelled out. He’d forgotten what that felt like. He used to think that he was just not bright enough for her but now, with adult eyes, he wondered if it wasn’t just that she tended to be cryptic.

He blew out a breath. ‘Okay, as much as I’m enjoying our little trip down memory lane, it’s not helping this whale. I want you to take over on the wetting; I’m going to try something.’

‘Wait! What?’

‘You’ll see.’

Beth shifted nervously. ‘No, I… Will it take long?’

‘Probably. Why?’

‘I need to … ‘ She looked around. ‘Despite the heat …’

Understanding hit him. ‘Oh. Well, you’re in the ocean. Go here.’

The look she gave him was hysterical. ‘I’m not going to pee in the water while you’re standing in it. And while a whale’s lying in it.’

‘What do you reckon the whale does, Beth?’

‘I’m not a whale!’

True enough. She was slight enough to be the krill that whales liked to feast on. ‘Look, the tide’s running diagonally from the south, so if you go over there—’ he pointed to a spot about ten metres away ‘—then the whale and I will be safely upstream.’ He grinned. ‘As it were.’

Beth turned and looked at the spot, then back at him. ‘I can’t.’

‘Bashful bladder?’

‘You’re not helping, Marc.’ She started to search around the shore for another alternative.

‘Before you even suggest it, the dunes are not safe. Tiger snakes. Up beach might be okay but it’s a lot more exposed and it’s probably safer if we stay fairly close together.’ If you stay close to me. ‘Besides, a swim first will cool you off.’

‘Oh, my God … ‘ She looked around one more time, desperately, as if a Portaloo might materialise on the beach if she willed it hard enough.

It was difficult not to find that panicked expression endearing. Despite everything. He tightened his jaw. ‘Come on, Princess. When did you get so precious? The quicker you get out there the quicker it’ll be over.’

‘Are you laughing at me?’

He forced his face into a more neutral expression. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘I’m sure you’d have the same concern if you were in my situation.’

‘I was in your situation, Beth. About an hour ago. I just didn’t make a fuss about it.’

It took her about two seconds to realise he hadn’t left the water. Or his wetsuit. She lurched away from the whale—and him—and waded hastily away. ‘Oh, my God. Men are so disgusting!’

He just grinned at her, the years falling away. ‘It’s human,’ he cried after her as she kept striding up-beach, slowly into deeper water. He kept poking, in the painfully reasonable tone he knew she hated the most, calling after her fleeing shape. ‘We all do it.’

Her cheeks had flamed from a heap more than windburn. Watching the mighty fall should have brought him more satisfaction. But Beth’s prudishness only served to remind him of the vast gulf that lay between them. That always had. In school, she’d always had an aura about her, a subtle kind of quality that set her apart from everyone else. Definitely from him. Her brains certainly had. She was by far the brightest person he’d known, but she didn’t hang out with the brains. Or the geeks. Or the beautiful people—until the end—though it was where she and her luminescence had truly belonged.

She’d pretty much hung out with him. Rain, hail or shine. And he’d pretty much lived for that back then.

When he was younger, he hadn’t thought to wonder about it. It wasn’t until he was about fourteen and some helpful jackass had pointed out the social differences between poor Marcus Duncannon and rich girl Elizabeth Hughes that it had started to niggle. But she’d been unwavering in her friendship, uncaring about the condition of his mum’s ancient car, the shabby hems on T-shirts he’d been wearing for two years. Or the fact that she had to ride buses to hang out with him. Some deep part of him had feared she might bail on him like everyone else when his father’s life insurance money had run out. But she hadn’t.

Not for three years. On the other side of that day, it had all looked more sinister. Maybe slumming with the poor fatherless kid gave her some kind of weird social cachet, some intrigue. Maybe he propped up her ego daily with his sycophantic interest. Maybe she was just biding her time until someone better came along.

Or maybe she just outgrew him. She’d said as much. He just never would have picked McKinley as the sort of chump she’d grow towards.

At seventeen he’d thought about ditching school immediately. Lord knew his mother needed the extra income back then. And he certainly could have done without the daily taunts of the beautiful people that his Beth was now one of them. McKinley’s Beth, in fact, but always his Beth deep in his heart.

And now the Princess of Pyrmont High was peeing in the ocean. In public.

There was a certain satisfaction in that. No matter how belated. He hadn’t let himself go over these memories for years. Call it a self-preservation thing. He didn’t like the person he’d become in those final months of school.

Beth’s discomfort at being so debased only birthed a raw, shining affection deep in his gut—a feeling he hadn’t allowed for a long, long time. He laughed to dislodge the glow deep within, to sever the golden filaments that threatened to re-establish between them.

He laughed to save himself from himself.

Then he locked his jaw and forced his attention back onto the only female out here who deserved his sympathy.

The ocean was full of water. What were a few drops more? And Beth was incredibly overheated. The idea of taking a quick swim before. Well, it wasn’t the worst idea in the world.

She waded out into the deeper water, waist height, and peeled off Marc’s oversized fleecy sweatshirt before bundling it high above her head to keep it dry. Then she slowly lowered her body up to her neck in the cold Southern Ocean. The frigid kiss of liquid on parched skin made her shiver. Cool ocean water rinsed away dried sweat. She tipped her head all the way back until cold water washed around her ears.

Bliss.

‘Turn around!’ she shouted back to Marc, onshore. Yes, it was pointless but it felt very necessary. He complied, busying himself with the whale, but she was sure his whole body was lurching with laughter.

Sure, laugh at the spectacle. Nice. Her humiliation was probably a gift to him.

She swapped the sweater into a raised hand, carefully unfastened her jeans with the other and tugged them down single-handed, muttering the whole time. There was no way she was going to repeat Marc’s wetsuit trick. She may have done some low things in her life but there were some barrel bottoms even she wouldn’t scrape.

Getting her jeans down single-handed was one thing but getting them back on when she was finished, wet and underwater.

‘Oh, no.’ Beth looked urgently between Marc and the great expanse of nothing around them and realised there was no way—nowhere—she was going to be able to get out of this water with dignity.

‘Come on, Beth. I’m doing all the work here,’ Marc complained from his side of the whale.

For crying out loud! She wriggled left and then right and eventually stepped free of her adhesive jeans, trapping them on the ocean floor between her feet and standing fully up. Then she slid Marc’s enormous hoodie back on over her cotton blouse. Its thickness cut out some of the sun’s glare and pressed her wet blouse more tightly to her, cooling her even more. With one hand, she held the sweater high of the waterline and then she hooked her jeans up out of the water with a foot, into her free hand.

Then she started wading back to shore, barelegged. Her underwear was no worse than a bikini bottom, after all. Just because it was flouncy …

Just because it was Marc.

Her heart fluttered wildly, imagining his reaction to her stick-thin legs. The last decade and the abuses she’d put her body through really hadn’t done her any favours. She stiffened her spine and trod ashore as though this had been her plan all along, letting his sweater slip back down to mid-thigh, and then laid her wrecked jeans out to dry on the sand high above the tide mark next to their bag of supplies. Her eyes instinctively fell on it, knowing what lay within, pulsing like a dark heart. And what lay within what lay within.

Walk away.

The thickness of the sand hid the unsteadiness of her gait. Not that Marc would have noticed; he was looking everywhere but at her long bare legs. The whale. The horizon. The sky. The extra delay probably irritated him if he couldn’t even meet her eyes.

That didn’t help her mood any. ‘Okay. I’m back. What was so urgent?’

He waited until she got behind the whale before letting his eyes rest back on her. Then he cleared his throat. ‘I’m going to try and dig a trench around her,’ he said, indicating the now dangerously still whale. ‘If I can get my snatch-strap around her, maybe we can drag her out a bit further.’

‘Will it hold?’

‘It pulls my Land Cruiser; it should tow a small whale.’

Beth frowned. ‘Is digging under her safe?’

‘I’ll trench in front, then we’ll try and saw the strap through the sand beneath her.’ His hands mimicked the action, the cords in his wrists and forearms flexing with the motion. It briefly flitted through her mind that those bulging muscles could probably tow the whale to sea all by themselves.

Beth shook her head. ‘No way. She must weigh half a ton. That sand will be too compressed.’

For a tiny moment he looked at her with a hint of admiration. Pleasing him had always pleased her. Even now. The slightest of glows leached out from somewhere deep inside her. But then he dropped heavy lids down over his eyes and the connection was lost.

‘I’ve been thinking about that. If we can time it with the suck of the wash back out to sea it might loosen the sand just enough. It’s worth a try. But we need to be ready for high tide.’

‘What happens then?’

‘We try and refloat her.’

‘By ourselves?’ Her voice sounded like a squeak, even to her.

‘If we get lucky, the cavalry will arrive with a boat to tow her back out.’

‘And if we don’t?’

Steady eyes regarded her. ‘If we don’t, I hope you’re stronger than you look.’

CHAPTER THREE

SHE wasn’t. Not nearly. But she was getting better.

It had been a long, uphill road recovering from being Mrs Damien McKinley, but she’d found the strength to try. And it appeared that strength begat more strength, because she’d found extra to come here today. To face Marc. Even though ninety per cent of her whispered not to bother. Not to risk it. The ten per cent of her that disagreed was noisy and shovey and refused to be ignored. It remembered Marc. It trusted him.

Looked as if it had just learned a powerful lesson.

Marc Duncannon was not the man she remembered. He’d grown up in so many ways and while his physical changes were an unarguable enhancement, she couldn’t say the same for his personality. Then again, after the decade she’d endured, she was no prize either. Maybe losing his father so young had damaged him irreparably. So close to losing his best friend. And apparently then his mother.

She frowned. ‘So, you didn’t tell me what happened with your mum. You two were so close.’ Each was all the other had left. Even if Beth had really struggled to like Janice by the end.

Marc’s whole body straightened and turned to stone, halting his digging. His mouth set. His eyes darkened dangerously. ‘Did you imagine I’d still be living at home with my mother at this age?’

Scorn like that would have hurt a lot more once, before she calloused up at Damien’s hands. Still, the fact that it still managed to slice down into her gut said a lot about how she still felt about Marc. She took a controlling breath. ‘Obviously I expected you to have moved out of home but I never expected you to have moved out of her life.’

The blizzard in his eyes reached out and lashed at her. ‘You still like to research before you travel, obviously.’

The one trip they’d taken together, when Marc had got his driving licence at the start of their final year in school, had been an exercise in military precision, thanks to Beth’s aptitude for planning. Anything to take her mind off the fact that she and Marc were going to be camping. Out in the sticks. Alone. Right about then, her awareness of him as anything other than her best mate had crashed headlong into adolescent awareness of him as a mate. As in biological. That had been an awkward, confusing feeling that had never quite diminished.

‘I had to start somewhere to find you. Your neighbour remembered me.’ The woman had been very kind and given Beth the information she needed to track Marc down. Albeit with a slight lift to one eyebrow. She tried again. ‘I thought. because Janice was all you had …’

Marc resumed his powerful digging, the chop and slide of his body adding emphasis to his curt words. ‘I hope you’re not trying to convince me that you had warm feelings for my mother. I remember how fast you used to like to get in and out of my house.’

Beth flushed. She hadn’t realised how poorly she’d been covering her dislike of Marc’s mum back then. It hadn’t always been that way. It was just that as Marc grew older, Mrs Duncannon seemed to grow more hostile. Almost jealous. Until that last day.

Marc stood in his trench and eyed her. ‘After school I spent some time up north on the trawlers. When I got back, I thought it was time to get my own space,’ he said. ‘She liked the city, I wanted the country. It’s as simple as that.’

Right. And this whale was made of Jell-O. But if he didn’t want to talk about it.

On a non-committal uh-huh, she let her focus drop back to where her hands continued to slosh the whale with a T-shirt that was now mostly shredded fabric. Ten years was a long time. One-third of their lives. What else could have injured him in that time? A woman? He didn’t have a ring—not even a tan mark; she’d checked that out while he was choking the life out of his steering wheel earlier. But there was no doubt he was harbouring some wounds.

The thought brought her a physical pain that somehow rose above the ache in her lower back. That anyone would have hurt him like that. Bad enough what she’d done.

She dragged a deep breath in and concentrated on what her hands were doing. But silence wasn’t an option either. ‘Ask me a question.’

‘About what?’

‘Anything other than Damien or that day at school.’ Or what I’ve been doing for the past ten years.

He waved his whale-washer in the air and then complied, plucking a question from nowhere. ‘Favourite colour?’

‘Still green. Moss-green, nothing too limey. My whole studio is painted that colour.’

‘You have a studio?’

‘Sounds more glamorous than it is. It’s a partially restored old warehouse belonging to my father. I suspect I’m not supposed to be living in it. Council rules.’

‘What do you do there?’

‘I paint. Oils. My work is all around me.’ For better or worse. The images from her abyss period were dark and dismal. But powerful. Lately, new brighter themes had started emerging. ‘When I changed to B-stream it gave me an art double and I discovered I loved it. And I’m good at it.’

Two confused lines folded across his brow. ‘That’s good. I’d like to—’

… see them? The way he cut himself off made her wonder. They fell to silence. ‘Ask me about my first car,’ she eventually said.

Cars. The great equaliser. He smiled slightly and shook his head. ‘What was your first car, Beth?’

‘Toyota. Right after school. God, I loved that beat-up piece of junk. First thing I bought and paid for myself.’ Until she’d stopped driving it because of the drinking.

‘First kiss?’

She shook her head. ‘Nope. Not talking about that day.’

Marc’s eyes flared. ‘Hold on, sidebar for just one second. That was your first kiss?’

She stared at him. ‘You were my best friend. You don’t think I would have told you the second someone kissed me?’

His eyebrows rose in apparent disbelief. ‘No one ever tried?’

Beth shrugged; the hurts that had meant so much when she was younger were insignificant in the light of everything that had happened since. ‘Guess I wasn’t all that sought-after in school.’

He opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it and then changed tack. ‘Until McKinley.’

‘Right. But that topic’s off-limits too.’ Then something occurred to her. ‘Wait—it wasn’t your first kiss?’ Marc dropped thick lashes down between them. Her mouth fell open. ‘Seriously? Who was it?’

He had to know she was going to keep nagging until he told her.

‘Tasmin Major.’

‘Olympic Tasmin?’ Her voice rose an octave.

‘She was only state level then.’

But a twice Olympic freestyle diver since then. Tasmin was one of the classmates Beth thought of when she was counting her own many failings. Pretty. Gentle. Athletic. Olympic. And now she’d been Marc’s first kiss, too. Maybe more? That thought bit deep down inside. Right down deep where she always considered their kiss behind the library to be special. Even if it had led to the end of their friendship.

Her throat tightened up. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ More importantly, how could she have not noticed? She’d been so attuned to Marc’s every breath.

He sidestepped her outrage. ‘Why would I tell you? It was just a kiss.’ Beth gave him her most penetrating stare, straight out of childhood. ‘Okay, a bunch of kisses, but it’s not like we were dating or anything.’

‘I hope not, because that would mean I really was oblivious to everything going on around me.’ Curiosity got the better of her. ‘Why were you kissing Tasmin if you weren’t dating?’

Marc dragged his eyes off to the horizon. Back to the whale. Anywhere but on hers.

‘Marc?’

He hissed and tossed his hands up. ‘She volunteered.’

Beth blinked. Several times. ‘Tasmin Major volunteered to kiss you? Did I miss some kind of recruitment process?’

Cautious eyes met hers briefly. ‘Actually, we volunteered with each other.’

Beth’s stomach compressed into a hard ball. An insane jealousy surged through her as she realised what that meant. They wouldn’t have been the first kids in school to do it. ‘You went to her for kissing practice? Why?’