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

Despite the warmth seeping in from behind, Beth’s teeth started chattering again. Marc convinced her to pull her barely dry jeans on again as some protection from the wind and she took the brief on-shore break to wolf down the muesli bar she’d had tucked away. Her body immediately started converting the grain into desperately needed energy and warmed her briefly from the inside. It wasn’t a patch on the blazing warmth of Marc’s skin.

She was too cold to worry about pride as she slipped back into the surf and then tucked herself shamelessly back into his body. He received her with the practice of years, not hours.

As if it was her rightful place.

Skin rubbed against skin periodically as Marc’s body followed hers down and back up. His breath was warm against her bare neck. The sensations she’d been numb to for several hours came roaring back—making her tingle, making her remember. Making her—for once—ache for something more than a drink. A neglected part of her longed to peel his wetsuit right down to his waist, to see in detail and up close just how much of a man Marc Duncannon had grown into.

But she’d have to settle for feeling the topography of his body against her back instead.

‘Does it feel good?’ Marc said, low and almost unwilling against her ear.

She gasped and half turned in his hold. ‘What?’

‘Addiction.’ She could feel his tension against her back, she didn’t need to hear it in his voice. ‘I figure it must for so many people to do it.’

Beth thought long and hard about that. About the rush, about how it felt when it was gone. Or denied. About why he wanted to know. She twisted back around in his arms and continued sloshing. ‘It’s not a choice you make. For me, it wasn’t about how good it felt when I was drinking. It was about how bad it felt when I wasn’t.’

‘Describe it to me. Both feelings.’

She swallowed the lump of tears that suddenly threatened. Even though she knew this was more about his mother. There was the Marc she remembered. He wanted to understand.

‘Were you ever infatuated with someone?’ She forced the words out. Between the cold and the strong arms cocooning her, it was amazing she could speak at all.

‘Like love?’

‘No, not love. Obsession. Did you ever have a massive crush on someone inappropriate when you were younger—someone you could never be with?’

Marc stopped sloshing. ‘Maybe.’

Tasmin? Except that he’d finally prevailed with her. They’d started dating in the final months of school.

‘Do you remember how it possessed you? How it took over your days, your nights, your thoughts? You can’t remember it starting but then it just … is. It’s everything. It’s everywhere. Like it’s always existed. Like it could never not exist.’ She stopped sloshing in his hold. ‘Have you ever felt something like that?’

The tightness of his voice rumbled against her back and birthed goose bumps in its wake. ‘Go on.’

‘It’s how it was with me and my addiction. I didn’t recognise how it consumed me when I was deep inside it. I arranged my day around it. I made allowances for it. It became so normal. I learned to function around the compulsion. Just like the most concentrated of adolescent infatuations. And every bit as irrational.’

She felt him shake his head and she tensed. ‘Is that no, you don’t remember how it feels,’ she asked, half turning back towards him, ‘or no, you don’t understand?’

His lips were enticingly close to her face. His breath was hot against her cheek. He swallowed hard. ‘I remember.’

‘Then you know how it can take you by stealth. The passion. The fixation. The feeling that you’ll die if you don’t have it in your life. And you don’t even feel like it’s a problem.’

Those arms tightened. ‘It feels that good?’

‘It feels great because you’re love-sick. And all those endorphins feed your obsession. And it’s hurting you but you don’t notice. You don’t care. Nothing matters as much as the feeling. As the subject of your passion. It’s like a parasite. Built to survive. The first things it attacks are the things that threaten its survival. Judgement. Willpower. Self-awareness.’

Marc’s silent breathing began to mesmerize her, his warmth sucking her in. She couldn’t tell whether her words were having any impact on him. ‘And being denied it physically hurts. It aches. You become irrational with the pain inside and out and you lash out at people you care about. And the more they intervene, the more you begin to imagine they’re working to keep you away from the thing that sustains you. And that’s when you start making choices that impact on everyone around you.’

She felt him stiffen behind her and knew he was thinking about his mother.

‘But adolescents learn to deal with infatuation,’ he said. ‘Or they grow out of it.’

Or they give in to it. She wasn’t surprised to hear condemnation in his voice, but it still saddened her. How many people saw addiction as a sign of moral weakness. A character flaw. ‘Mostly because life forces them out of it. Classes. Structure. Discipline. Financial constraints. Exposure to new people. Cold reality has a way of making obsession hard to indulge.’

She turned back towards Marc again. The unexpected move brought her frigid jaw line perilously close to his lips as he leaned in for a slosh. The hairs on her neck woke and paid attention. ‘But imagine that you’re of legal age with ready cash, no particular structure to your day,’ she whispered, ‘no restraints on whether or not you indulge it. A husband who makes drinking a regular part of his day.’ And all the reason in the world to want to numb the pain. ‘No reason at all not to allow the great fascination to continue. Why wouldn’t you?’

Steel band arms circled around her and held her still. Close. Her eyes fluttered shut. He spoke close to her ear. ‘Because it’s killing you?’

‘By then, you are so hooked on the feeling you just … don’t. care.’

He turned her in his hold and looked down on her, a pained frown marring his face. ‘You didn’t care about dying?’

She shook her head. Hating herself. Hating the incredulous look on his face. Not that she couldn’t understand why, after everything he’d been through with Janice. She could feel it in the tension in every part of his body.

‘Because you truly fear you’ll die without it,’ she said.

His frown trebled and he pulled her towards him. Into his warmth. The kind of moment she’d lived for back in school. It was old Marc and old Beth from a time that the two of them could have conquered the world. From inside the crush of his arms, she could feel his chest rising and falling roughly. He was struggling with everything she’d just told him. And why not? It had taken her two years to finally recognise where her addiction seeded. And when.

Emotional and physical exhaustion hovered around her. She struggled to keep her eyes open, leaning her entire upper body into his. So tired, the only thought she had about the two perfect pectoral muscles facing her was what a comfortable pillow they’d make. His hand slipped around her back to better support her.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said, voice rough.

‘There’s nothing you can say,’ she murmured thickly. ‘It’s enough that you know.’

‘Thank you for explaining.’

‘I’m glad you understand now.’ Her words slurred. Her eyes surrendered to the weight on them and closed. She leaned more heavily into him.

His voice was only a murmur but it echoed through the chest she pressed against. ‘You want my understanding? I thought it was forgiveness you wanted?’

Nodding only rubbed her cheek against his chest. It was perfect friction. She did it twice. ‘Both. I don’t want you to hate me.’

Marc’s thumping heart beat hard against her ear. Five times. Six times. ‘I accept your apology, Beth.’

Something indefinable shifted in her world. Like the last barrel of a lock clunking into place releasing a door to fling open. And out rushed all her remaining energy like heat from a room, finally freed from her determination to win his forgiveness. Marc was the last of her list. She’d focused on those names for so long she’d never really given much thought to what lay beyond them. A dreadful unknown spread out before her. Something she had to brave without help.

Later. When she wasn’t so warm and tired.

She found her voice. ‘Thank you.’

He took her face in his hands and tipped it up to his. She forced her lids to lift. Hazel eyes blazed down onto her. ‘I think I’ve been angry at you for a really long time.’

She blinked up at him, barely able to drag her lids open after each close. Knowing these words came straight from his soul. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ She laid her face back against the pillow of warm muscle and sighed as the heat soaked into her cold cheeks.

‘Why couldn’t I let it go?’ he murmured.

I don’t know. The words came out as an insensible mumble as her lips moved against his skin. His arms tightened around her, held her up.