First Love, Second Chance

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?’

The look he gave her took her back a decade, too.

‘Okay, other than practice, obviously. I can’t believe you went to Tasmin. I mean she’s nice and all, but … What was wrong with me?’ And why on earth was this hurting so much?

That brought his head up instantly. Hazel eyes blazed sincerity. ‘Nothing was wrong with you, Beth. But we were friends.’

She thought of all the girls at school who turned their snooty noses up at Marc because of the way he lived and dressed. As if they would ever find a finer person. Her estimation of Tasmin rose a notch because she wasn’t one of them, even if it also meant that she’d spent half their childhood with Marc’s tongue down her Olympic throat.

Then something else hit her. ‘Who were you practising for?’

He tipped his face back down to the whale, sloshed harder. Resolutely ignored the question. Beth waited. Silently. Her heart pounded. How far had she truly come if she was this frightened of finding out?

‘It’s old news, Beth. Hardly important now.’

Her frown threatened to leave permanent grooves between her eyes, encrusted in the salt. ‘I thought I knew everything about you back then, Marc. It’s thrown me.’

He waved his shredded towel. ‘I just wanted to get the whole first kiss thing out of the way, Beth. Can we just leave it at that?’

She looked at the tightness of his lips, the shadow in his gaze. She softened her tone. ‘That library kiss was pretty accomplished. You guys must have practised a lot.’

The corner of his mouth lifted. ‘Good times.’ Then he looked back up at Beth, his eyes guarded. ‘Anyway, I thought that day was off-limits. Moving on …’

Right. Moving forward. The past was in the past. ‘Next question.’

It took Marc nearly two hours to hand-dig a deep enough trench a metre on-shore of the whale and reinforce it with driftwood to hold back the collapsing sand. In that time, the blazing afternoon sun dipped its toes into the ocean on the horizon and the most magnificent orange light coated everything around them. Her artist’s eye memorised the colour for future use. Beth sighed as much as the whale did as the scorching heat suddenly eased.

In the dying light of dusk, Marc laid the strap out and then asked Beth to take one eyeleted end. She mimicked his bent stance, her prune-skin hands pressed down to the shallow ocean floor and her back screaming its protest. Then they started sawing the strap under the sand, towards the whale.

Push. pull. Push. pull. A slow, agonising rhythm.

Beth felt the moment they got close to her because, exactly as she’d suspected, the sand compressed into a rock-hard mass under the whale’s weight. But Marc’s idea worked, though slowly. With every wave that ran in, the suck of the water rushing back out between every one of a million grains of sand loosened it just a tiny bit and they were able to saw the strap, inch by agonising inch, beneath the giant mammal. The tide had crept in so much and they bent over so far that Beth’s lowered face was practically touching the rising water. Her muscles trembled with exhaustion, screamed with frustration, but she wasn’t about to complain to Marc, even though every part of her felt as if she’d been hit by a truck.

Her back. Her skin. Her feet. Her arms. Even her head thumped worse than any hangover she’d ever earned.

Marc grunted as loud as she did. The whale did nothing but blow the occasional protest out of its parched blowhole. Finally, just when tears of utter exhaustion pricked, he called a halt.

Standing upright nearly crippled Beth after the abuses of the day and she cried out as her muscles went into full cramp, stumbling back onto her knees in the rising water, wetting the bottom half of Marc’s fleecy sweatshirt. It galled her to go down in front of him, but how much did he expect she could take? She caught herself before she sank completely down onto her bottom but she was incapable of getting back up. She froze in an odd kind of rigor where she was. Her hands shook as if they were palsied. Her head drooped.

Marc was with her in seconds, his strong arms sliding around her middle to keep her up out of the water. ‘Beth, grab on to me …’

Tears came then. Angry. Embarrassed. Relieved. It had been so long since she’d last felt any part of Marc against her and it felt so right now. Safe and strong. Welcome and long-missed. Where she was bone and long hollow muscles, he was solid and smooth and rooted to the earth. Even in the water.

And he was her friend. At least he had been. Once.

He might have been stronger but he was just as tired as she was, it seemed. He needed her cooperation to get her back on her feet. Hours ago, he could have lifted her single-handed. ‘Come on, Beth, pull yourself up,’ he said, low against her ear.

If she turned her head just a bit she could breathe in his intoxicating scent. ‘I’m sorry …’ Her vision blurred.

His strong fingers tucked around her waist, burned there.

‘Don’t be. You did well. We got the strap around her.’ His voice was tight as he steadied her back onto her feet but she let herself lean into him until the last possible second. He smelled of salt and sweat; an erotic, earthy kind of scent that elicited all kinds of tingling in her. Nothing like the over-applied, cheap colognes Damien liked to mask himself with.

She turned her face more closely into Marc and breathed in deep.

He pulled her out of the water, supported her long enough that they got up on the beach to where the supplies were. She collapsed down onto the sand, knowing she might never get back up but knowing she couldn’t keep standing.

Even for him.

‘Take a break, Beth. We’ve been at this for seven hours. No wonder you’re exhausted.’

He didn’t join her on the sand. Instead, he snagged up the supply bag and fished around in it until he retrieved two muesli bars, a chocolate bar, a banana and an unfamiliar packet of powdered mix. He offered her a choice. As hungry and tired as she was, the thought of putting food in her stomach did not appeal. There was only one thing in that supply kit that had her name on it. And she wasn’t letting herself have that, either. She pushed his hand away.

‘You have to pick one, Beth.’

She shook her head.

‘Fine.’ He tossed the chocolate bar at her. ‘This will give you immediate energy and potassium for the cramping, but in one hour I want you to have this.’ He waved the pouch of powder.

‘What is it?’

‘Sports mix. Endurance athletes use it. Just mix it with water. You need the fats and carbs if you’re going to last.’

Was that a comment about her weight? ‘I thought men liked women skinny?’

He looked at her, appalled.

Mortification soaked through her. Oh, God, Beth. Don’t speak. Clearly, she was too tired to think straight. She shook her head again, incapable of an apology that wouldn’t make things worse. Her mind’s eye slipped to what was left in the supply bag. How had she dealt with this sort of moment before? She couldn’t remember. Excruciating comments didn’t feel so bad when you were blind drunk and so was everyone around you. You sure had less to regret that way.

Had she forgotten even how to feel shame?

‘The powder’s slow release energy, Beth. It’ll get you through the next few hours.’

If she could just get through the next few minutes she’d be happy.

Marc crammed a muesli bar into his mouth on a healthy bite. Where Beth nibbled, he practically inhaled. Then he took one of the endurance pouches and filled it with water, shook and consumed it in a drawn-out swallow. Beth was too tired to drag her eyes off the long length of his tanned throat. How could even a throat be manly? But here she was, ogling it for the second time today.

She forced her eyes down to the half-melted bar in her hands. Chocolate was one of those foods she tried to avoid. Something she liked a little bit too much. Something that challenged her hard won willpower. But Marc was ordering her to eat it, and she was feeling so weak, so. what to do …?

She took a small bite.

She forced herself to go slow, not to wolf it down, although her blood and her brain screamed at her to. It was part of her process. If she gave in on something small, then what chance did she have over something big?

This was where the downward slide began. Her eyes went to the pack of supplies.

‘Okay, come on.’ Marc stretched out his hand to her, mumbling around the last crumbs of his muesli bar. ‘If you don’t get up again, you’ll seize up and be here all night.’

The thought of rising was horrible. She groaned and stared at his extended hand. ‘I can’t …’

‘She needs us, Beth.’ His gentle words pushed every guilt button she had. Beth looked over to the dark mass half-submerged in the even darker waters of dusk. It may be cooler now that the sun had set—significantly cooler—but the whale wasn’t in a position to wet her own skin. Or drag herself back out to sea.

And maybe taking a break was actually the start of the slide—insidiously disguised?

Beth forced herself over onto her side and then pushed painfully to her knees. It was the least elegant thing she could remember doing. Marc took her hand in his callused, strong one and pulled her the rest of the way to her feet. She stumbled against his neoprene hardness before steadying herself and pointlessly shaking the worst of the beach sand off her soggy sweatshirt.

His hands were high on her bare thighs, brushing more sand off before either of them realised what he was doing.

A rush of heat raged up her skin where his fingers touched and she leapt back with a speed she couldn’t have found if he’d begged her. Marc stiffened and a pink flush showed itself above the collar of his wetsuit. God, that was one hundred per cent habit from the good old days. The days before gender was an issue. Now, having his hot hands on her icy skin was absolutely an issue. For both of them.

It had to be.

‘Okay,’ he said, clearing his throat and straightening to his full height. ‘Back in the water.’

Beth willed her legs to follow him back down to the surf. How many hours had passed since she’d stumbled down the dunes this morning? As bad as she felt—and she couldn’t remember a time she’d felt worse, even in the depths of her withdrawal—they’d achieved a lot. The whale was still alive, its skin was in reasonable shape, and they had implemented the first part of Marc’s plan to refloat her.

Sure, tensions were high between them and, yes, maybe she’d rather be curled up by an open fire right now watching reruns of Pride and Prejudice, but she was hanging in there. She felt vaguely hydrated now that the scorching sun had eased off and the chocolate was doing its job and feeding energy directly into her cells. Their conditions could be much, much worse. That thought gave Beth’s spine the tiniest of reinforcement.

And then the sun set.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE moon was high in the bitter night sky by the time Beth risked further conversation. She poured the last mouthful of the fresh water into the endurance powder Marc had nagged her to have and shook the pouch thoroughly, knowing he was monitoring her from the water to make sure she drank it. She managed not to gag—just—as she chugged the chalky banana-flavoured mix. Then she turned to look at Marc, still sloshing the whale.

That little moment on the beach had been a major slip. For both of them. She’d had two hours of dark silence in which to go over—and over—the events of the day, looking for the moment when something had shifted between them. The moment when time had unwound just a tiny bit and taken them both back to a place that meant Marc could make a mistake like touching her. A woman he barely knew any more. He barely liked.

It was the peeing thing. As though seeing her so reduced in front of him had gone some way to settling old hurts. Maybe the loss of dignity had won her a measure of forgiveness?

Lord, if that were all it took, she’d be in serious credit by the time the night was out. Embarrassment over a bodily function was just a patch on the hits her dignity had taken in the years since she’d last seen him. He’d be delighted if he knew.

She chewed her lip. Maybe that was what he needed to hear—that she’d suffered? Impossible to know—he was as mysterious to her these days as the darkening ocean all around.

She stumbled back to the water. ‘That was quite possibly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted.’

Marc answered as though it hadn’t been hours since she’d last spoken. His twisted smile was reluctant. ‘You get used to it. It’ll keep you going.’

‘I can see why they call it survival food. You’d really want to be lost at sea before you cracked open supplies.’ She turned her eyes to the dark, still shadow further down the beach. ‘Do you really think that was her calf?’

‘Yeah, probably.’

‘Did it die because it was so young?’

‘It’s not that much smaller than Mum. It wasn’t a new calf, I’d say. Some whales last days, others only hold out for hours. Just like people, some are tougher than others.’

A deep sadness snaked out and tangled around her heart. She could identify with an animal that turned out not to be as tough as it might have thought. ‘Poor baby.’

Slosh … slosh …

‘You never had kids? You and McKinley?’

Beth was unprepared for the bolt of pain that question brought her. She turned her face away from him and busied herself around the whale’s small parched eyes. It had finally occurred to her that a marine animal wouldn’t object to having salt water around its eyes.

Marc’s question hung unanswered in the night silence. He patiently watched her.

‘No. No kids,’ she whipped out.

‘You didn’t want them?’

I didn’t deserve them. And they sure as heck didn’t deserve to be born into a life as wrong as hers and Damien’s. ‘Not particularly, no.’

Let him think whatever he liked.

‘Funny.’

That was it. Just that one word. She sloshed away for a bit longer, but then curiosity got the better of her. She straightened. ‘What’s funny?’

‘I always pictured you as a mother. Deep down, I thought that might have been the attraction with McKinley. He seemed like he was raring to get straight into the family and kids thing.’

Beth snorted softly. He was raring to get into one part of it, at least, like most teenage boys. If he struck strangers as family oriented, it could only be because he’d grown proficient at maintaining the same illusion as his own parents.

‘No. Damien didn’t really have any drive regarding family.’ Any drive at all. Except for drinking. When things had first started going wrong in their marriage, she’d briefly considered children, something to bring them together. But, as it got worse, she’d secretly made sure that was never possible. Even when she was in the deepest reaches of the abyss, she’d somehow managed to remember to protect herself against pregnancy. Not that the issue arose very often by that point.

Slosh … slosh.

‘What did you end up doing?’ Marc asked casually. ‘For a career.’

Her shoulders tightened up immediately, which made the sloshing even more uncomfortable. Embarrassment surged through her. Not because she hadn’t had a perfectly legitimate job but because it wasn’t even close to the glittering career he was probably imagining her having.

‘I worked in retail.’ She cringed at the blush she could feel forming and struggled to make working in a dry cleaners sound more impressive. ‘Customer service.’

He frowned. ‘You didn’t go to uni?’

Just one of the many lifetime goals she’d poured down her throat. She bit back a testy response. ‘No.’

He stopped sloshing to stare at her. Was that satisfaction in his eyes—or confusion?

‘Damien didn’t want me to start a career.’ Lord, how bad had her life become that admitting that was easier than admitting she’d soaked her professional future in alcohol before it began?

‘But he let you work in retail?’

Let. She tightened her lips. ‘I chose to work. I wanted something that was mine. Something that didn’t come from Damien or his family.’ And she’d had it. as long as she could keep a job.

He shook his head.

‘What?’

‘You were so gung-ho about going to uni.’

For three years it had been their shared goal, one of the things that kept them so close together, kept them in the same classes. In the same lunch timeslot. Until the conversation with his mother that had changed all of that.

You’re sucking him into your dreams, Beth, Mrs Duncannon had whispered urgently one time she’d visited the Duncannon household, her grip hard on sixteen-year-old Beth’s forearm. Her voice harsh. He’s not bright like you, he’s not suited to further study. He needs to get a job and start making his way.

That had struck Beth as an odd thing to say about the boy who was already flipping burgers after school to help out financially. Who’d done all the research on the best universities. Picked up all the pamphlets, looked into all the courses. Was making the grades. Who had a plan for where he wanted his life to go and his compass set to get there. But Mrs Duncannon hadn’t bought a word of Beth’s nervous reassurance.

As long as he’s with you, he’ll never go for what he wants in life. He’s not a pet to be trained and instructed. He’d walk through fire if you asked him to, Beth Hughes. And some days I think you really would ask, just to see if he’d do it.

She’d never visited Marc at home after that. The ugly picture his mother painted of their friendship filled her with shame and echoed in every event, every activity that followed. It made her question their relationship. Marc. Herself. She’d tentatively asked her own mother about it and Carol Hughes’s careful answer and sad expression had told Beth everything she needed to know.

Both women thought she was dragging Marc along with her. Both women wanted her to pull back from their intense friendship. For his sake. She looked at the capable grown man standing before her and struggled to see how anyone could have worried about his ability to speak up for himself. Even as a teenager.

The irony was that Mrs Duncannon and her own mother had it all back to front. Beth would have followed Marc into the pits of hell if he’d asked her. Because she trusted him. Because he was like another part of her. A braver, more daring part. The idea of studying biology had never entered her one-track mind until he’d mentioned it, but separating after school never had either. And so she’d thrown herself willingly into Marc’s dream. Adopting his had made up for having no direction of her own. Until the day she’d cut Marc loose and was forced to face her lack of ambition.

Her shoulders tightened another notch. ‘Goals change.’ She shrugged. ‘You went up north after school, you said.’

His eyes shadowed over. ‘I lost my. enthusiasm. for further study.’

‘Because of me?’ Or did Janice get in your head, too?

He glared at her. ‘Responsibility for your own actions is fine; stop taking responsibility for mine.’

‘If your goals shifted, then why are you surprised that mine did?’ she asked.

‘Because … ‘ Marc’s eyes narrowed. ‘Because it was you. You could have done anything in the world that you wanted.’

Silence fell. Sloshing dominated. When he did speak again, it was so soft he might have been one of the night sounds going on all around them. ‘So, what was the attraction, Beth—with McKinley?’

He still thought this was about Damien. Why not—it was what she’d wanted him to believe at the time. She had to find a way to cool their friendship off and Damien had been her weapon of choice. She’d used him to put distance between herself and Marc.

Used with a capital U.

‘Damien was harmless enough …’ At the beginning. ‘We were kids.’

Okay, it was a hedge. Maybe her courage was as dried out as the rest of her. Her heart hammered hard in her chest. The anticipation of where this conversation might lead physically hurt. What he might think. What he might say. She just wasn’t good at any of it. She licked dry, salty lips and wished for some tequila to complement it. Then she shuddered at where her thoughts were taking her.

After all this time.

You wanted forgiveness. Maybe that started with a little understanding.

He shook his head. ‘You weren’t like other teens, Beth. You were sharper, wiser. You were never a thoughtless person.’

The use of the past tense didn’t escape her. How could a tense hold so much meaning? She sighed. ‘I was overwhelmed, Marc. Damien made such a public, thorough job of pursuing me, it turned my head.’ And I was desperately trying to recreate what I’d had with you. What I’d lost.

Marc was silent. Thinking.

She beat him to the punch that was inevitably coming. ‘That day behind the library. When I told you. When you kissed me. You accused me then of selling out to the popular crowd.’

A flash of memory. Marc’s hard young body pressing hers to the wall. His hot, desperate mouth crushing down on hers. Terrifying. Heaven-sent.

He assessed her squarely. ‘I was an ass. I accused you of being desperate for affection.’

Surprise brought her head up. ‘You were angry. I knew that.’ Eventually.

He studied her, his mind ticking over. ‘That explains why you dated McKinley. Not why you married him.’

The very thing she’d asked herself for a decade. Even before times got really tough. She frowned into the darkness. ‘Damien was like two people. At school he was a champion, a prefect. His parents rushed him into growing up.’ The specialised tutors, the pressure to achieve at sports, the wine with dinner. ‘But he was still just a teenage boy with the emotional maturity to match. Once I agreed to date him, he seemed to expect me to cave automatically in. other areas.’

And expect was the operative word. She’d never met another person with the same kind of sense of entitlement as her ex-husband. She swallowed past a parched tongue and remembered how desperately she’d tried to wipe the blazing memory of Marc’s kiss from her mind. How she’d thrown herself headlong into things with Damien to prove that all kisses were like Marc’s. Only to discover they weren’t. How much leeway she’d given Damien because she knew she had used him and feared she’d done him some kind of wrong by kissing Marc. By liking Marc’s kiss. How Damien had taken that and run with it.

How she’d just let him.

She shrugged. ‘I married him because I slept with him.’

Marc’s lips tightened and his hands scrunched harder in the wet towel that was becoming as ragged as her own whale-washer.

‘And because he asked.’ She let out a frayed breath. ‘And because there was no reason not to, by then.’

And because she’d had no inkling about the kind of man he was about to become.

Beth held what little air she had frozen in her lungs. Marc had honoured her request that he not speak to her again after the day behind the library. His absence had ached, every day, but it made it easier for her to bury what she’d done. Both hurting him and kissing him. And to forget how that kiss had made her feel. The awareness doorway it had opened.