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

‘Still competitive?’

There was no way she was going to abandon him another time he needed her. But there was no way she was going to tell him that either. She forced her body to double its pace.

‘You got me.’

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_6722f54e-ff31-5fc8-a961-eca49b417ff0)

BETH had long given up trying to control the violent shaking of her frozen body, but the advancing ice-age finally showed in the loud chattering of her teeth. Not surprising, given she’d lost Marc’s fleecy sweatshirt to the dark depths of the ocean during the refloating. It meant she only had her flimsy blouse to keep her top half warm. And nothing on the bottom.

Marc had eventually accepted she wasn’t going to go back to the car and leave him alone with the dying whale, but he didn’t like it. Exhaustion had even wiped the frown off his face. But her loudly clattering teeth seemed to break the last of his tolerance.

‘Beth, you’re freezing.’

Both their bodies were well into survival mode now, her own barely conscious of what was going on around it. Neither of them could do more than lean on the whale for support and drag arm-after-painful-arm from the water to slosh onto the animal to keep it wet.

‘You have to get out of the water,’ he said. ‘You need to warm up.’

Her chill caused her voice to vibrate. It hurt even to speak, so tight was her chest. ‘It’s warmer in the water than out of it. And I’m not leaving you, Marc. You’d have to work twice as hard and you have nearly nothing left now.’

‘I’ll feel better knowing you’re safe and dry.’

‘I’m not leaving.’

She couldn’t see his glare in the darkness but she could feel it.

‘Fine,’ he finally growled. ‘Give me a second.’

He spread his dripping towel out on the whale’s hide and splashed slowly ashore. Beth lost him in the darkness after he passed her. It seemed like a lifetime, alone in the dark with the whale, but he finally returned.

‘Take this,’ he said bluntly, thrusting the last muesli bar at her.

Too exhausted to eat, she tucked it into the hip of her knickers. Too exhausted to protest, he just watched her do it.

‘Now this,’ he said, and thrust something else at her.

Beth reeled back and almost lost her footing, catching herself at the last second against the whale’s cold body. Her mind lurched out a preventative no! a split second before her body hummed an eager yessss!

‘It’s whisky. Dry, but it will warm you up a bit.’ He raised the silver flask right in her face and it glinted in the moonlight.

Her stomach roiled. Her blood raced. Her body screamed with excitement.

‘Get it away from me.’ She didn’t mean to shove him so roughly, didn’t even know where she found the energy, but the flask fell from his hands into the salt water. He scrabbled to pick it up, frowning in the moonlight.

‘Take it, Beth. You need to have something.’

‘I’ve been drinking water.’

‘That’ll keep you alive but it won’t stop you getting hypothermia. If you won’t get out of the water, then it has to be this.’

‘I don’t drink.’

Her ridiculously weak protest actually made him laugh. ‘Well, you’re going to have to make an exception, Princess. Survival comes first.’

He shook the water off the flask and held it out to her again.

Her chest heaved and her eyes locked on it. She could just reach out and—

‘I can’t, Marc …’ I can’t break down in front of you.

‘It won’t kill you.’ He unstoppered the flask and took a healthy swallow, wiping his hand across his sticky lips when he finished to make his point. Beth had never felt more like a vampire. She wanted to hurl herself at those lips and suck and suck.

Shamed tears sprang into her eyes. ‘Please, Marc. I can’t.’

I can’t show you what I really am …

His eyes narrowed but he was relentless. ‘It’s this or the car, Beth. Your choice.’

What was a bit more salt on her already crusty face? She ignored the two tears that raced each other down her cheeks. ‘Do you want to see me beg, Marc?’

His frown practically bisected his face. ‘I want you to be warm, Beth. I want you to drink.’

She forced her back straighter. ‘And I won’t.’

‘For crying out loud, woman! Why are you so difficult?’

Old Beth and new Beth struggled violently inside her. Old Beth just wanted to throw her alcoholism in his face to punish him for forcing her hand like this. For putting her in the position of having to defend herself. To expose herself. To him, of all people. The man she’d already let down in a hundred ways. The man whose good opinion seemed to matter to her more than anyone else did. New Beth understood that using it as a weapon would only hurt him horribly and, ultimately, disappoint him more.

She knew she couldn’t say nothing, either. But saying something didn’t have to mean she was beaten. She could trust him with the information. Like she’d trusted her AA sponsor with all her deepest secrets. Couldn’t she? Never mind the fact that he’d just told her his mother was an addict and made it painfully clear how much that disgusted him. This was Marc. He’d see she had her addiction under control. He’d see how hard she was working. He’d understand. He always had.

She laughed, low and pained. God, now she was lying to herself! Who was she kidding? This was Marc. She deserved his disgust for what she’d done and how she’d been.

She stared at the determination in his face. He meant it when he said drink or car. A numb kind of fatalism came over her. Whatever he did—however he reacted—it couldn’t be worse than the wondering. Than fearing what might happen if she was revealed to the world. To him.

But her heart still hammered and it pounded into the miserable ache that filled her chest. Why was it easier to trust a total stranger with the truth than the man who’d been her closest friend?

It was hard to tell where the cold-trembles stopped and the terror-trembles started, but she thrust out her violently shaking hand towards him and raised defiant eyes and said the words aloud she’d been saying twice a week for two years.

‘Hi. I’m Elizabeth and I’m an alcoholic.’

* * *

Marc’s stomach tightened right before it dropped into a forty-storey free fall. His breath seized up and his skin prickled cold all over. He dropped his towel on the whale and turned away from Beth without so much as looking at her trembling outstretched hand. He marched off into the darkness, ignoring the shocked mortification on her face. He couldn’t trust himself not to.

I’m Elizabeth and I’m an alcoholic.

His heart hammered. People made those jokes all the time, but the degraded, pained tone in her voice and the bleached courage in her eyes told him she wasn’t kidding.

Beth was an alcoholic.