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

‘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.

Knowing she’d done it for Marc had never really helped. Having the approval of both their parents had never really helped. But physical separation combined with a sixteen-year-old’s natural talent for selective memory had made it possible to move on.

After a while.

The whites of Marc’s eyes glowed in the moonlight. ‘You didn’t have to marry him just because you slept with him.’

She knew he’d see the truth in the sadness of her smile. ‘I’ve always accepted the consequences of my actions. Regardless of what else you think of me, that hasn’t changed. I chose to do something contrary to the values my parents taught me. My church.’

Marc shook his head. ‘McKinley was a jerk. It always surprised me that he married you at all. That he didn’t stop chasing you once he.’

His words dried up and Beth swallowed the hurt. ‘Once he had what he wanted? Go ahead, say it. Everyone else did.’ Marc frowned. She straightened her shoulders. ‘I hadn’t planned to sleep with him but once I did, turns out I was a. natural student.’

The irony wasn’t lost on her. She’d spent all year trying to come to terms with the blossoming feelings that Marc was beginning to inspire in her, yet she’d barely touched him. But she’d slept with the boy she was physically immune to.

Or maybe that was why?

‘And he was naive enough to make that kind of life decision based on one girl?’ Marc asked.