The look he gave her took her back a decade, too.
‘Okay, other than practice, obviously. I can’t believe you went to Tasmin. I mean she’s nice and all, but … What was wrong with me?’ And why on earth was this hurting so much?
That brought his head up instantly. Hazel eyes blazed sincerity. ‘Nothing was wrong with you, Beth. But we were friends.’
She thought of all the girls at school who turned their snooty noses up at Marc because of the way he lived and dressed. As if they would ever find a finer person. Her estimation of Tasmin rose a notch because she wasn’t one of them, even if it also meant that she’d spent half their childhood with Marc’s tongue down her Olympic throat.
Then something else hit her. ‘Who were you practising for?’
He tipped his face back down to the whale, sloshed harder. Resolutely ignored the question. Beth waited. Silently. Her heart pounded. How far had she truly come if she was this frightened of finding out?
‘It’s old news, Beth. Hardly important now.’
Her frown threatened to leave permanent grooves between her eyes, encrusted in the salt. ‘I thought I knew everything about you back then, Marc. It’s thrown me.’
He waved his shredded towel. ‘I just wanted to get the whole first kiss thing out of the way, Beth. Can we just leave it at that?’
She looked at the tightness of his lips, the shadow in his gaze. She softened her tone. ‘That library kiss was pretty accomplished. You guys must have practised a lot.’
The corner of his mouth lifted. ‘Good times.’ Then he looked back up at Beth, his eyes guarded. ‘Anyway, I thought that day was off-limits. Moving on …’
Right. Moving forward. The past was in the past. ‘Next question.’
It took Marc nearly two hours to hand-dig a deep enough trench a metre on-shore of the whale and reinforce it with driftwood to hold back the collapsing sand. In that time, the blazing afternoon sun dipped its toes into the ocean on the horizon and the most magnificent orange light coated everything around them. Her artist’s eye memorised the colour for future use. Beth sighed as much as the whale did as the scorching heat suddenly eased.
In the dying light of dusk, Marc laid the strap out and then asked Beth to take one eyeleted end. She mimicked his bent stance, her prune-skin hands pressed down to the shallow ocean floor and her back screaming its protest. Then they started sawing the strap under the sand, towards the whale.
Push. pull. Push. pull. A slow, agonising rhythm.
Beth felt the moment they got close to her because, exactly as she’d suspected, the sand compressed into a rock-hard mass under the whale’s weight. But Marc’s idea worked, though slowly. With every wave that ran in, the suck of the water rushing back out between every one of a million grains of sand loosened it just a tiny bit and they were able to saw the strap, inch by agonising inch, beneath the giant mammal. The tide had crept in so much and they bent over so far that Beth’s lowered face was practically touching the rising water. Her muscles trembled with exhaustion, screamed with frustration, but she wasn’t about to complain to Marc, even though every part of her felt as if she’d been hit by a truck.
Her back. Her skin. Her feet. Her arms. Even her head thumped worse than any hangover she’d ever earned.
Marc grunted as loud as she did. The whale did nothing but blow the occasional protest out of its parched blowhole. Finally, just when tears of utter exhaustion pricked, he called a halt.
Standing upright nearly crippled Beth after the abuses of the day and she cried out as her muscles went into full cramp, stumbling back onto her knees in the rising water, wetting the bottom half of Marc’s fleecy sweatshirt. It galled her to go down in front of him, but how much did he expect she could take? She caught herself before she sank completely down onto her bottom but she was incapable of getting back up. She froze in an odd kind of rigor where she was. Her hands shook as if they were palsied. Her head drooped.
Marc was with her in seconds, his strong arms sliding around her middle to keep her up out of the water. ‘Beth, grab on to me …’
Tears came then. Angry. Embarrassed. Relieved. It had been so long since she’d last felt any part of Marc against her and it felt so right now. Safe and strong. Welcome and long-missed. Where she was bone and long hollow muscles, he was solid and smooth and rooted to the earth. Even in the water.
And he was her friend. At least he had been. Once.
He might have been stronger but he was just as tired as she was, it seemed. He needed her cooperation to get her back on her feet. Hours ago, he could have lifted her single-handed. ‘Come on, Beth, pull yourself up,’ he said, low against her ear.
If she turned her head just a bit she could breathe in his intoxicating scent. ‘I’m sorry …’ Her vision blurred.
His strong fingers tucked around her waist, burned there.
‘Don’t be. You did well. We got the strap around her.’ His voice was tight as he steadied her back onto her feet but she let herself lean into him until the last possible second. He smelled of salt and sweat; an erotic, earthy kind of scent that elicited all kinds of tingling in her. Nothing like the over-applied, cheap colognes Damien liked to mask himself with.
She turned her face more closely into Marc and breathed in deep.
He pulled her out of the water, supported her long enough that they got up on the beach to where the supplies were. She collapsed down onto the sand, knowing she might never get back up but knowing she couldn’t keep standing.
Even for him.
‘Take a break, Beth. We’ve been at this for seven hours. No wonder you’re exhausted.’
He didn’t join her on the sand. Instead, he snagged up the supply bag and fished around in it until he retrieved two muesli bars, a chocolate bar, a banana and an unfamiliar packet of powdered mix. He offered her a choice. As hungry and tired as she was, the thought of putting food in her stomach did not appeal. There was only one thing in that supply kit that had her name on it. And she wasn’t letting herself have that, either. She pushed his hand away.
‘You have to pick one, Beth.’
She shook her head.
‘Fine.’ He tossed the chocolate bar at her. ‘This will give you immediate energy and potassium for the cramping, but in one hour I want you to have this.’ He waved the pouch of powder.
‘What is it?’
‘Sports mix. Endurance athletes use it. Just mix it with water. You need the fats and carbs if you’re going to last.’
Was that a comment about her weight? ‘I thought men liked women skinny?’
He looked at her, appalled.
Mortification soaked through her. Oh, God, Beth. Don’t speak. Clearly, she was too tired to think straight. She shook her head again, incapable of an apology that wouldn’t make things worse. Her mind’s eye slipped to what was left in the supply bag. How had she dealt with this sort of moment before? She couldn’t remember. Excruciating comments didn’t feel so bad when you were blind drunk and so was everyone around you. You sure had less to regret that way.
Had she forgotten even how to feel shame?
‘The powder’s slow release energy, Beth. It’ll get you through the next few hours.’
If she could just get through the next few minutes she’d be happy.
Marc crammed a muesli bar into his mouth on a healthy bite. Where Beth nibbled, he practically inhaled. Then he took one