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

‘So your drinking was Damien’s fault?’

Her clumped hair screened her face as she shook her head. She’d never blamed her problems on anyone but herself and she wasn’t about to start now. No matter how tempting. ‘I made my own choices. It took me a long time to realise that, though.’

‘So what finally made you stop?’ The deepness of his voice rumbled in the night.

‘I realised I was halfway through my twenties and I’d done nothing with it. I had a job but not a career. I had a marriage but not a family. I had a husband I didn’t like and friends who only came over if I was buying. I had no interests.’ She shook her head. ‘I was a drunken bore with no achievements to my name, married to a man I didn’t love. So I packed an overnight bag and I left.’

That made her sound stronger than she’d actually been, cowering in the shower, sobbing, but the last thing she wanted from Marc was more pity. Or to lose any more face.

For long minutes the only sounds were the repetitive sloshing of water on the whale’s hide and the heaving of their lungs. And the tick-tick of Marc’s brain as he got his head around her speech.

‘What happened with McKinley?’

‘Nothing. He didn’t even try to stop me leaving. I wasn’t the only one that was miserable. We both made the mistake.’

‘You’ve cut all ties?’

‘He signed the divorce papers without even getting in touch. I haven’t seen him since.’ Although she did hear about him from time to time. Those stories were always peppered with sadness for the man he should have been and relief for the woman she’d so nearly become.

‘How hard was it—getting through the recovery?’

Was that more than just curiosity in his voice? Beth immediately thought of Janice. Sugar-coating wouldn’t help him. She straightened her tortured back and met his eyes. ‘You slog your guts out getting through the physical addiction and then you’re left with the emotional dependence.’ As hard as that was to admit. ‘But you can get through it. I did. Until, one day, you’ve been stronger than it for longer than you were addicted.’

Until curve-balls like today swing into your life.

‘You did it alone?’

‘My parents wanted to help, of course, but I. It was something I’d done to myself. I felt like I needed to undo it myself. To prove I could.’

‘So what got you through?’

You did. The memory of Marc. The idea of Marc. She chose her words carefully. ‘A dream of what I wanted to be.’ Who I wanted to be like. ‘And a strong AA sponsor.’

Marc was silent for a long time. He shook his head. ‘I feel like I should have been there for you. So you didn’t have to turn to a stranger. I should have been strong for you.’

Her heart split a little more for the loyalty he still couldn’t mask. Despite everything. ‘No, I had to be strong for me. Besides, it wouldn’t work if Tony was a friend. The emotional detachment is important.’

‘We’ve been pretty detached this past decade.’

It only took a few hours in his company for that to all dissolve. She lifted her eyes back to his and held them fast. ‘Do you feel detached now?’

His silence spoke volumes.

‘Will you be someone’s sponsor one day?’

That was a no-brainer. ‘Yes. When I’m strong enough.’

‘You seem pretty strong now. The way you speak of it. Like a survivor.’

Warmth spilled out from deep inside at his praise. She was still a sucker for it. ‘I have survived. But every day presents new challenges and I’m only just beginning to realise how sheltered I’ve been.’

Confusion stained his voice. ‘As a child?’

‘My parents shielded me from unpleasantness for the first half of my life and my drinking numbed me to it for the second. I’ve never really had to make a difficult decision or face a stressful situation. They were there for me. Or you were. I’ve always followed instructions or someone else’s lead. Or avoided painful situations completely. I still have a lot to learn about life.’

He regarded her steadily. Was he remembering all those years where she’d tagged along with him, his partner in crime? Or the way she’d cut him from her life when things got too tough behind the library? When the going gets tough, the tough go drinking.

‘You sought me out. That can’t have been easy.’

‘No. It wasn’t.’ But she had an unspoken and barely acknowledged incentive—seeing him again. He’d come to mean as much to her as alcohol. A yin to its powerful yang. That scrap of paper in her wallet a talisman. The painful ball in her chest made its presence felt. ‘But I’d chew my leg off to have a drink right now. Do you call that coping?’

He flinched at her raw honesty. Pain washed into his eyes. But hiding who she was wasn’t sustainable. He might as well see her, warts and all. For richer or poorer. In sickness and in health. Presently, sickness. But one day.

‘It’s been a rough night …’

The understatement of the century.

‘If the flask washed up at your feet right now, would you open it?’

Her chest started heaving at the image. As though his words magicked up the little vessel, filled to overflowing with the liquid escapism she’d relied on for years.

No pain. No shame. No past.

No future.

Sadness flooded through her. ‘Would you believe me if I said no?’

His deep silence brought their discussion to a natural close. She’d run out of story and courage. Her attention drifted back to how cold and how wet she was and she sagged against the whale as the after-effects of her monumental confession hit her body.

Marc frowned at her. ‘I’ll ask you one more time. Will you go back to the car?’

It hurt her to say no, but she’d promised herself she wouldn’t leave him down here alone. And if she gave in on just one thing. She shook her head. A particularly icy shock of wind chose that moment to surge across the beach. She gasped at the savage, frigid gust and her skin prickled up into sharp gooseflesh.

Marc swore and glared at her. ‘Don’t say I didn’t give you a choice … ‘ He grabbed up his decrepit towel and ploughed out of the water and around to her side of the whale. Then he stepped in behind her and wrapped his whole body around her like a living, breathing wind-breaker. Her body sang at the close, hard contact, the port in this storm his strong arms represented. A moment later, the slight warmth bleeding through his wetsuit also registered.

She sighed and convulsively shivered.

Marc swore and pulled away for an icy instant. She heard the zip of his wetsuit opening, the gentle brush of his fingers pulling her wet hair to the side, and then the blissful brand of his hot chest straight against her barely covered back. Skin on skin. Fire on ice. It soaked in like a top shelf brandy.

‘Christ, Beth. You’re glacial.’

He took her hands in his and crossed his arms around her, closing her more fully against his warmth. Her numbness leached away like ice melting and exposed a shelf of complicated emotions she’d been doing her best to muffle. She stiffened immediately.

‘Don’t argue, Beth. You had your chance. Let’s get back to it.’

Their two bodies formed a hypnotic rhythm—bend, scoop, slosh … bend, scoop, slosh—half the speed they’d been going before the sun had set. His towel dripped on Beth’s arms as she bent to refill the two-litre water bottle she was now using to wet the re-stranded whale. If not for the awful truths she’d just shared, their position would have been downright sexy. A half-naked man glued to a half-naked woman. As it was, it was just plain uncomfortable. For both of them.

And it went on for an eternity.