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

She drew in a massive breath for strength. ‘You filled my heart in high school, Marc, and I think you filled it right through my marriage, except I couldn’t bear to acknowledge it. One day I just … forced you out of my heart to protect myself.’ She laid a hand on the whale. ‘But then I crashed into the water with you yesterday and discovered you were still the same loyal, generous, brave person who I loved back then. You haven’t changed.’ She dipped her eyes, then forced them back up. Took a deep, deep breath. ‘My feelings haven’t changed.’

His silence screamed.

Mortification waited greedily in the wings but she held it back. ‘I don’t expect anything in return—’ much as she wished for it ‘—I just wanted you to know. That you’d changed my life. That you’d saved my life. That our stories are connected.’

His neoprene chest heaved up and down, his eyes blazed hot and hard into hers. The hundred variations of things he might say whispered through her head. Then he finally spoke and it was laced with agony.

‘I’m not a crutch, Beth.’

Her stomach plummeted. What? ‘No, I—’

Sudden shouting from the direction of Marc’s car split the quiet of the pre-morning. A dozen figures appeared at the dune tops, silhouetted against the dawning sun. They carried coils of rope slung over their shoulders and more blankets. Beth should have cried with relief that the cavalry had finally arrived but she wanted to scream at them for just five more minutes. It felt vitally important that she have just a bit more time alone with Marc.

She swung her eyes back to him.

His voice was hard. Hurried. ‘I can’t be the thing that sustains you, Beth. You can’t swap one fixation for another, put that kind of responsibility on me. I lived with that for years.’

His mother … She opened her mouth to try and explain again as people started streaming down the dunes towards them. Euphoria that assistance had finally arrived crashed headlong into the sudden shot of urgent adrenalin surging through her body. In that moment she felt the best she had all night.

And the absolute worst.

Marc lay his shredded, saturated towel along the whale’s broad back for one last time. Then he pinned her with his gaze. ‘Me accepting that you’re sorry for what happened a lifetime ago. Are you expecting that it will change anything? Other than for you?’

‘I …’ Was she? What did it really change, other than to mark the completion of her list? One more step in her road to healing.

‘Because it doesn’t change anything for me, Beth.’ He cast her one final tired look and then dragged his exhausted legs out of the water.

The earth shifted under her feet. In all her imaginings, it had never occurred to her that Marc would accept her apology but that he might not truly forgive her. Realise the depth of her feelings but not value it. Each was meaningless without the other.

Her heart pounded. ‘I thought, maybe if you understood …’

‘I understand more than you know.’ His tired eyes rested on her. ‘It’s been ten years, Beth. Any feelings we had are nothing but a memory. We’re both different people now. If I helped you to get over—’

Could he still not say the word?

‘—everything, I’m glad.’ His eyes lifted. ‘But I’m not some kind of lucky charm to keep you sober. And telling me you were alcoholic doesn’t go any way to restoring the lost trust between us. Did you honestly expect it would?’

An awful realisation dawned with the sun that suddenly peeked its warmth above the sand dunes. She had expected that, yes. That her cosmic reward for finding him and confessing her shame—her many shames—would be a beginning as blazing and new as the sun climbing over the horizon. That the man who had played such an important role in her recovery would be given back to her and they could have a fresh start.

Strange hands were suddenly all over her, pulling her gently back from the water as two wetsuit-clad bodies slid into her place and plunged fresh blankets into the water. Beth ignored them and reached out to urgently snare Marc’s hand as he left the water, desperate not to become separated even for a moment. Something in her knew that if that happened she’d never find him again.

His eyes dropped to where her fingers twisted amongst his with white-knuckled urgency. When they lifted, they were tragic. ‘I can see that you’ve done it really tough since we parted, Beth, and that brings me no joy at all. But drunk Beth wasn’t the one who tore our friendship apart that day behind the library. Dumping me for someone better was a choice that you made stone cold sober.’

The awful, sinking reality hit her. No matter what her motivation, how honourable, she had ripped apart their friendship in cold blood. She’d let his mother drive a wedge between them, and then she’d let Damien exploit the gap. She’d done nothing to stop any of it. Then and now. She still couldn’t bring herself to tell him why she’d really let him walk away that day.

‘But you accepted my apology …’

‘I believe that you’re sorry.’ His words grew harder. Shorter.

‘But our friendship …?’

His eyes were flat and pained. And as unmovable as granite. ‘I’ve lived without it this long …’

Pain ripped through her as the first shards of light speared across the sky. Why had she expected more? Every part of her wanted to shut up tighter than a clam. Protect herself. But that had got her nowhere so far in life.

‘Wait!’ Her desperate voice broke, drawing him back as he turned towards two approaching men in Department of Conservation uniforms. ‘What happens now?’

Marc’s face was haggard, tragic as he shrugged. She loved every line. ‘I go home. You go home. I appreciate your help with the whale but, as far as I’m concerned, we’re not connected any more. Our story’s over.’

Not connected?

‘But … you kissed me.’

His eyes were tragic. ‘Yeah.’ He stared long and hard at his oldest friend. ‘You’d think I’d learn, huh?’

Beth stumbled backwards in the sand as he walked away.

A gentle female voice murmured near her ear—buzzing in her throbbing head—and supported her up the beach as others draped thick blankets around her shoulders. Her eyes streamed from the sudden onset of morning light after so many hours of darkness. Dawn should have brought a bright new beginning for their friendship, not this awful gaping chasm. This was like losing him all over again. The impossibility that he could literally not want her back in his life in any form. That he could forgive her past but not her present.

She sank down into the sand as someone thrust an energy bar and Thermos of tea at her. Voices throbbed in her spinning head and she let herself be tended to like a child as they tuttutted over the open blisters on her hands and the sunburn on her tight skin. Her head cranked around to follow Marc’s progress as he dragged his feet up the beach with the wildlife officials, deep in conversation.

Someone was asking her where she was staying and she felt her lips responding, identifying her motel. Then capable hands lifted her to her feet and supported her as they moved up the beach, up a different track to the one leading to Marc’s car. Her head cranked around to catch sight of him as he disappeared up the far dune.