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

As if it was her rightful place.

Skin rubbed against skin periodically as Marc’s body followed hers down and back up. His breath was warm against her bare neck. The sensations she’d been numb to for several hours came roaring back—making her tingle, making her remember. Making her—for once—ache for something more than a drink. A neglected part of her longed to peel his wetsuit right down to his waist, to see in detail and up close just how much of a man Marc Duncannon had grown into.

But she’d have to settle for feeling the topography of his body against her back instead.

‘Does it feel good?’ Marc said, low and almost unwilling against her ear.

She gasped and half turned in his hold. ‘What?’

‘Addiction.’ She could feel his tension against her back, she didn’t need to hear it in his voice. ‘I figure it must for so many people to do it.’

Beth thought long and hard about that. About the rush, about how it felt when it was gone. Or denied. About why he wanted to know. She twisted back around in his arms and continued sloshing. ‘It’s not a choice you make. For me, it wasn’t about how good it felt when I was drinking. It was about how bad it felt when I wasn’t.’

‘Describe it to me. Both feelings.’

She swallowed the lump of tears that suddenly threatened. Even though she knew this was more about his mother. There was the Marc she remembered. He wanted to understand.

‘Were you ever infatuated with someone?’ She forced the words out. Between the cold and the strong arms cocooning her, it was amazing she could speak at all.

‘Like love?’

‘No, not love. Obsession. Did you ever have a massive crush on someone inappropriate when you were younger—someone you could never be with?’

Marc stopped sloshing. ‘Maybe.’

Tasmin? Except that he’d finally prevailed with her. They’d started dating in the final months of school.

‘Do you remember how it possessed you? How it took over your days, your nights, your thoughts? You can’t remember it starting but then it just … is. It’s everything. It’s everywhere. Like it’s always existed. Like it could never not exist.’ She stopped sloshing in his hold. ‘Have you ever felt something like that?’

The tightness of his voice rumbled against her back and birthed goose bumps in its wake. ‘Go on.’

‘It’s how it was with me and my addiction. I didn’t recognise how it consumed me when I was deep inside it. I arranged my day around it. I made allowances for it. It became so normal. I learned to function around the compulsion. Just like the most concentrated of adolescent infatuations. And every bit as irrational.’

She felt him shake his head and she tensed. ‘Is that no, you don’t remember how it feels,’ she asked, half turning back towards him, ‘or no, you don’t understand?’

His lips were enticingly close to her face. His breath was hot against her cheek. He swallowed hard. ‘I remember.’

‘Then you know how it can take you by stealth. The passion. The fixation. The feeling that you’ll die if you don’t have it in your life. And you don’t even feel like it’s a problem.’

Those arms tightened. ‘It feels that good?’

‘It feels great because you’re love-sick. And all those endorphins feed your obsession. And it’s hurting you but you don’t notice. You don’t care. Nothing matters as much as the feeling. As the subject of your passion. It’s like a parasite. Built to survive. The first things it attacks are the things that threaten its survival. Judgement. Willpower. Self-awareness.’

Marc’s silent breathing began to mesmerize her, his warmth sucking her in. She couldn’t tell whether her words were having any impact on him. ‘And being denied it physically hurts. It aches. You become irrational with the pain inside and out and you lash out at people you care about. And the more they intervene, the more you begin to imagine they’re working to keep you away from the thing that sustains you. And that’s when you start making choices that impact on everyone around you.’

She felt him stiffen behind her and knew he was thinking about his mother.

‘But adolescents learn to deal with infatuation,’ he said. ‘Or they grow out of it.’

Or they give in to it. She wasn’t surprised to hear condemnation in his voice, but it still saddened her. How many people saw addiction as a sign of moral weakness. A character flaw. ‘Mostly because life forces them out of it. Classes. Structure. Discipline. Financial constraints. Exposure to new people. Cold reality has a way of making obsession hard to indulge.’

She turned back towards Marc again. The unexpected move brought her frigid jaw line perilously close to his lips as he leaned in for a slosh. The hairs on her neck woke and paid attention. ‘But imagine that you’re of legal age with ready cash, no particular structure to your day,’ she whispered, ‘no restraints on whether or not you indulge it. A husband who makes drinking a regular part of his day.’ And all the reason in the world to want to numb the pain. ‘No reason at all not to allow the great fascination to continue. Why wouldn’t you?’

Steel band arms circled around her and held her still. Close. Her eyes fluttered shut. He spoke close to her ear. ‘Because it’s killing you?’

‘By then, you are so hooked on the feeling you just … don’t. care.’

He turned her in his hold and looked down on her, a pained frown marring his face. ‘You didn’t care about dying?’

She shook her head. Hating herself. Hating the incredulous look on his face. Not that she couldn’t understand why, after everything he’d been through with Janice. She could feel it in the tension in every part of his body.

‘Because you truly fear you’ll die without it,’ she said.

His frown trebled and he pulled her towards him. Into his warmth. The kind of moment she’d lived for back in school. It was old Marc and old Beth from a time that the two of them could have conquered the world. From inside the crush of his arms, she could feel his chest rising and falling roughly. He was struggling with everything she’d just told him. And why not? It had taken her two years to finally recognise where her addiction seeded. And when.

Emotional and physical exhaustion hovered around her. She struggled to keep her eyes open, leaning her entire upper body into his. So tired, the only thought she had about the two perfect pectoral muscles facing her was what a comfortable pillow they’d make. His hand slipped around her back to better support her.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said, voice rough.

‘There’s nothing you can say,’ she murmured thickly. ‘It’s enough that you know.’

‘Thank you for explaining.’

‘I’m glad you understand now.’ Her words slurred. Her eyes surrendered to the weight on them and closed. She leaned more heavily into him.

His voice was only a murmur but it echoed through the chest she pressed against. ‘You want my understanding? I thought it was forgiveness you wanted?’

Nodding only rubbed her cheek against his chest. It was perfect friction. She did it twice. ‘Both. I don’t want you to hate me.’

Marc’s thumping heart beat hard against her ear. Five times. Six times. ‘I accept your apology, Beth.’

Something indefinable shifted in her world. Like the last barrel of a lock clunking into place releasing a door to fling open. And out rushed all her remaining energy like heat from a room, finally freed from her determination to win his forgiveness. Marc was the last of her list. She’d focused on those names for so long she’d never really given much thought to what lay beyond them. A dreadful unknown spread out before her. Something she had to brave without help.

Later. When she wasn’t so warm and tired.

She found her voice. ‘Thank you.’

He took her face in his hands and tipped it up to his. She forced her lids to lift. Hazel eyes blazed down onto her. ‘I think I’ve been angry at you for a really long time.’

She blinked up at him, barely able to drag her lids open after each close. Knowing these words came straight from his soul. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ She laid her face back against the pillow of warm muscle and sighed as the heat soaked into her cold cheeks.

‘Why couldn’t I let it go?’ he murmured.

I don’t know. The words came out as an insensible mumble as her lips moved against his skin. His arms tightened around her, held her up.

‘Why couldn’t I let you go?’

His voice swam in and out with the lapping tide and, ultimately, washed clear through her head and out again as she slipped into sleep, quite literally, on her feet.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A HIGH-pitched shriek dragged Beth from a deep, uncomfortable slumber. A musty smell filled her nose and she shifted around uncomfortable rocks that had somehow found their way into her bed.

Her eyes cracked open. Not a bed … the back of a car. And the shriek was a Wedge-tailed Eagle that, even now, circled the dim skies in search of breakfast. The rocks were the detritus that littered the back of Marc’s four-wheel drive, cutting into her back and thighs where she lay on them. And the mustiness was a mix of the skanky old blanket that wrapped tortilla-like around her and the salty moisture of her clothes, her hair. Dry yet damp.

God damn it, Marc!

Fury forced her upright and every seized muscle in her body protested violently. She should have kept moving. She should have kept helping. Not sleeping comfortably—or even uncomfortably—while Marc froze his butt off alone with the whale.

She lurched like a caterpillar towards the rear doors of the wagon and used her bare feet to activate the internal handle. Icy-cold air streamed in as she pushed the doors with her legs and her skin prickled all over with gooseflesh.

It took longer than it should have, but she eventually scrambled out of the car and tucked the dirty blanket more securely around her against the chill wind. Up here, exposed above the dunes, it was almost worse than down on the shore. The world around her was still muted but tiny fingers of light tickled at the horizon.

‘How long have I been out?’ She didn’t waste any time with pleasantries as she got back to the shoreline. Marc was up to his knees in the rapidly retreating ocean, practically sagging on the whale for strength. ‘Why did you let me sleep?’

He turned his face her way. Haggard but still beautiful. To her. ‘You passed out in my arms, Beth. You were exhausted.’

‘So are you.’

‘I wasn’t the one asleep on my feet.’ Frost rose from his lips with every word.

Beth’s whole face tightened on a frown. Anxiety flowed through her. ‘How are you?’

‘Freezing. Thanks for asking.’

‘What can I do?’

‘You can not give me grief for putting an unconscious woman into my car.’

She bit back her frustration. ‘I’m sorry to be ungracious. I just. You were alone.’

‘I’ve done this before, on my own, Beth.’

‘You shouldn’t be alone.’

Well …! That was a mouthful and a half straight from her sleepy subconscious. The moment the words left her, she knew she meant more than just today. This man deserved the right woman by his side, for ever. A bit of happiness. He’d earned it.

Not that she was the right woman. Beth frowned at the instant denial her mind tossed up. It was a little too fervent.

‘Why are you single?’

He lifted one eyebrow. ‘Why are you asking?’

‘Because you’d be a catch, I would have thought. Even in the country. ‘ Where men outnumbered women ten to one.

‘Thanks for the confidence.’

All the time that had passed might not have existed. They fitted instantly back together. Back into the gentle jibes only friends could make.

‘I’ve had girlfriends.’

Olympic Tasmin for one. ‘Anything special?’

His eyes studied the lightening horizon. ‘Nothing lasting, if that’s what you’re asking. But all nice women.’

‘So what went wrong?’

He glared at her. ‘I hope you’re not warming up to offer relationship advice?’

Despite herself, she laughed. ‘No. I may be a lot of things, but a hypocrite is not one of them. ‘ Her eyes went to the whale. She looked ominously still. ‘How is she?’

‘Worse than either of us. But hanging in there.’ His words were full of staged optimism. As though the giant animal could understand him.

‘You’re not going to give up on her, are you?’

‘Nope.’ He turned to the whale and spoke directly to her. Beth got the feeling there had been several man-to-whale conversations while she was out like a light. ‘I’m not going to let you go.’

She frowned, those words striking a chord she couldn’t name deep inside. They seemed somehow important but she couldn’t place why. The eagle called again, high up in the part of the sky that was still a deep, dark disguise.

‘It says a lot about you.’

His look upward was a question.

‘How hard you’re fighting for this whale. To give her a chance. You really haven’t changed that much after all.’

Marc bit down on whatever he’d been about to say and clenched his jaw shut. Hard. She practically felt the atmosphere shift. Maybe he wasn’t in the mood for conversation after her revelations in the small hours of morning. She fought the heat of shame that rose on that thought and the sinking surge of self-doubt that followed. Then she braced herself against the cold, tossed back the blanket and bundled it into her arms. Before her body could convince her not to, she plunged back up to her knees in the icy wash and sank the blanket under the water; its frigid kiss shocked her into full awakening. She dragged its weighty thickness up and over the whale, shrouding its skin in dampness. The nasty arrowhead scar on its tail was exposed again.

That couldn’t be good. It meant the tide was retreating. If it went much further out it would mean the whale would be high and dry.

As soon as the blanket was secured, she moved, aching, up the beach and collected the empty two-litre container and commenced the bend-fill-slosh ritual all over again. Her body didn’t even bother protesting this time. It knew when it was licked.

Marc watched every move.

‘How are you doing?’ he finally asked. Tension tinged his voice, but it was concern etched in his face. And caution.

Oh.

She stumbled slightly when she realised he was talking about drinking. Or not drinking in the case of this very difficult eighteen hours. And he wasn’t particularly happy to be asking.

The thought of alcohol had not even crossed her mind since she’d woken. That had to be a first. Although it shot back with a vengeance now. Hunger. Thirst. Craving. Needing. They all mixed together into an uncomfortable obsession for just about everything you could put in your mouth.

She feigned misunderstanding. ‘I’m ready for a big plate of bacon and eggs, a big mug of hot tea and a Bloody Mary.’

Hazel eyes snapped to her. ‘You joke about it?’

She sighed. Pushed her shoulders back. ‘Keeping it bound and gagged gives it too much power. Maybe it’s time I started to lighten up about it all. ‘ Take some of the control back. ‘Get back to a normal life.’

‘Fair enough. What will you do now?’ he asked. ‘To make a living? To have that normal life?’

It was a good question. Her dark years were behind her. Her list was done. She had the rest of her future to think about. She blew out the residual tension from their previous question. ‘I have no idea … The past two years has been all about recovery. It’s been a day by day kind of thing.’ She stared at him, blank. ‘I suppose running a bottle shop is out of the question?’

His glare was colder than the water.

‘Sorry. Bad joke.’ Bleakness filled her. ‘I feel like all I’ve done is drink and then not drink.’

‘You have a decade to catch up on.’ He looked hard at her. ‘What about uni? It’s never too late.’

Beth frowned. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Mature aged students are perfectly common now.’

Taverns, parties, temptation. ‘I don’t think I’d be a good fit on campus.’

His mouth tightened as he realised. ‘Online, then?’

Something she could study in the comfort of her own cavernous warehouse. In the silence of her own lonely hours. ‘What would I study?’

‘What do you enjoy?’

She blinked at him.

‘What about your painting?’

She shook her head. ‘That’s something I do for therapy. It won’t earn me a living.’

‘Why not? Maybe you could help others like you helped yourself. Give back.’

Her head came up. Giving back rang all kinds of karmic bells. Art therapy. She hadn’t known such a thing existed until she’d needed it. But it did. And it worked.

Marc shrugged. ‘There’d be no shortage of people needing assistance.’

Purpose suddenly glowed, bright and promising on her horizon. She could give back. Lord knew she’d had her fair share of assistance from others who gave their time. She chewed her lip. ‘I could. That could work. Something simple that will help people.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t want to rule the country any more?’

Alcoholism had taken more from her than just years. ‘If I can just rule me I’ll be happy.’

He stared at her long and hard. Compassion filled his eyes. His voice was low and sad. ‘You’ll get there, Beth. I believe in you.’

A deep sorrow washed through her. ‘You always did.’

Silence fell. Beth shook her head to chase off the blues she could feel settling.

‘What would you change?’ Marc’s voice came out of the dim morning light, tossing her earlier words back at her. ‘If you had the opportunity to do ten years ago over again. What would you do differently?’

Ah. This one she’d pondered plenty and she’d refined it during some of their long silences in the water. She bent to re-soak the blanket and thanked God that she had no sleeve on which to be displaying her heart. ‘I wouldn’t have put so much importance on what others said. I definitely wouldn’t have encouraged Damien’s advances.’

She kept her eyes away from his as she stretched the blanket out across the whale’s back. ‘I wouldn’t have listened to …’ Your mother. But now, more than ever, she couldn’t say that. There was already so much lost between them. Vindicating herself would condemn them. ‘I wouldn’t have shut you out of my life.’

‘You didn’t.’

She looked up. ‘I did.’

He shook his head. ‘I mean you didn’t succeed. I kept a low profile but that didn’t mean I wasn’t aware of everything you did. Where you went. Right up until school ended and I lost you, I was watching.’

Watching. Beth stared. She bled for the near-man who’d been so hurt but still so very loyal. Maybe despite himself. Her voice was tiny. ‘I thought you were gone.’ Present-absent in the way only a teen could be.

‘No. I was still there.’

Her chest tightened. ‘Why?’

He considered her from under lashes crusted with salt. ‘We were friends. Friends don’t abandon each other.’

Beth’s cheeks flamed.

‘I wasn’t having a dig, Beth.’

She shook her head. ‘I know. But it doesn’t change what happened.’ She stared at him. ‘You deserved better.’

You still do. Her tight heart pushed rich pulses of blood around her body and they throbbed past her ears. Her eyes stuck fast to his. She made her decision.

‘I need to tell you something. About my last days drinking.’ She took a second to gather courage by trailing down to the whale’s exposed tail and draping the soaked blanket over it. Water cascaded over the vicious arrow-head wound.

She took a deep breath and then met his eyes again. ‘I forgot you, Marc. When I was deep in the hands of my addiction, I kind of. blocked you out. For years.’

His nostrils flared. His hands stilled.

‘After graduation I thought about you every day. Wondered how you were. What you were doing. Thought about what I had done. I thought about the connection we used to have, the stories we had in common. Every day I tried to recreate with my husband what I’d had with you, and it just wasn’t working. As I slipped further and further into numbness I think I just …’ She swallowed and took a shuddery breath. ‘Remembering you hurt. So I just stopped.’

Those beautiful hands tightened on his towel. Just as they’d tightened in her hair while he’d kissed her. Last night. All those years ago.

‘I can understand that.’ Hurt thickened his already gravelly voice.

She shook her head. Forced herself to continue. ‘One day I woke up and there you were, blazing and persistent at the front of my mind. Like a ghost with a mission. Except I was the ghost. And I realised I’d been. non-existent for so long. I remembered how you used to believe in me no matter what but, this time, instead of that making me sad, hurting, it made me determined.’

She turned her eyes back to his. ‘You gave me strength, Marc. I stopped drinking because of the memory of the boy who had so much belief in me. More than I’d ever had in myself. And because of the goodness in you that I’d always wished was mine. The strength of character.’

His eyes dropped away, which meant she could breathe.

‘I just wanted you to understand the part you played in pulling me out of the morass. I can’t thank you because you didn’t even know it was happening. But I can acknowledge it. And I think I understand it now. What it meant.’

She clamped nervous hands together. ‘Drinking helped me forget how I’d treated someone I loved. How the choices I made snowballed into a lousy life with a lousy husband and a lousy future. That I’d done that to myself. But the memory of my feelings for you saved me when everything was lost. When I was.’

His frown folded his handsome face and his jaw twitched with tension.

She drew in a massive breath for strength. ‘You filled my heart in high school, Marc, and I think you filled it right through my marriage, except I couldn’t bear to acknowledge it. One day I just … forced you out of my heart to protect myself.’ She laid a hand on the whale. ‘But then I crashed into the water with you yesterday and discovered you were still the same loyal, generous, brave person who I loved back then. You haven’t changed.’ She dipped her eyes, then forced them back up. Took a deep, deep breath. ‘My feelings haven’t changed.’

His silence screamed.

Mortification waited greedily in the wings but she held it back. ‘I don’t expect anything in return—’ much as she wished for it ‘—I just wanted you to know. That you’d changed my life. That you’d saved my life. That our stories are connected.’

His neoprene chest heaved up and down, his eyes blazed hot and hard into hers. The hundred variations of things he might say whispered through her head. Then he finally spoke and it was laced with agony.

‘I’m not a crutch, Beth.’

Her stomach plummeted. What? ‘No, I—’

Sudden shouting from the direction of Marc’s car split the quiet of the pre-morning. A dozen figures appeared at the dune tops, silhouetted against the dawning sun. They carried coils of rope slung over their shoulders and more blankets. Beth should have cried with relief that the cavalry had finally arrived but she wanted to scream at them for just five more minutes. It felt vitally important that she have just a bit more time alone with Marc.

She swung her eyes back to him.

His voice was hard. Hurried. ‘I can’t be the thing that sustains you, Beth. You can’t swap one fixation for another, put that kind of responsibility on me. I lived with that for years.’

His mother … She opened her mouth to try and explain again as people started streaming down the dunes towards them. Euphoria that assistance had finally arrived crashed headlong into the sudden shot of urgent adrenalin surging through her body. In that moment she felt the best she had all night.

And the absolute worst.