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

‘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 (#ulink_98a81d26-c650-5946-9b16-c968afcc81ae)

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.’