She forced her eyes down to the half-melted bar in her hands. Chocolate was one of those foods she tried to avoid. Something she liked a little bit too much. Something that challenged her hard won willpower. But Marc was ordering her to eat it, and she was feeling so weak, so. what to do …?
She took a small bite.
She forced herself to go slow, not to wolf it down, although her blood and her brain screamed at her to. It was part of her process. If she gave in on something small, then what chance did she have over something big?
This was where the downward slide began. Her eyes went to the pack of supplies.
‘Okay, come on.’ Marc stretched out his hand to her, mumbling around the last crumbs of his muesli bar. ‘If you don’t get up again, you’ll seize up and be here all night.’
The thought of rising was horrible. She groaned and stared at his extended hand. ‘I can’t …’
‘She needs us, Beth.’ His gentle words pushed every guilt button she had. Beth looked over to the dark mass half-submerged in the even darker waters of dusk. It may be cooler now that the sun had set—significantly cooler—but the whale wasn’t in a position to wet her own skin. Or drag herself back out to sea.
And maybe taking a break was actually the start of the slide—insidiously disguised?
Beth forced herself over onto her side and then pushed painfully to her knees. It was the least elegant thing she could remember doing. Marc took her hand in his callused, strong one and pulled her the rest of the way to her feet. She stumbled against his neoprene hardness before steadying herself and pointlessly shaking the worst of the beach sand off her soggy sweatshirt.
His hands were high on her bare thighs, brushing more sand off before either of them realised what he was doing.
A rush of heat raged up her skin where his fingers touched and she leapt back with a speed she couldn’t have found if he’d begged her. Marc stiffened and a pink flush showed itself above the collar of his wetsuit. God, that was one hundred per cent habit from the good old days. The days before gender was an issue. Now, having his hot hands on her icy skin was absolutely an issue. For both of them.
It had to be.
‘Okay,’ he said, clearing his throat and straightening to his full height. ‘Back in the water.’
Beth willed her legs to follow him back down to the surf. How many hours had passed since she’d stumbled down the dunes this morning? As bad as she felt—and she couldn’t remember a time she’d felt worse, even in the depths of her withdrawal—they’d achieved a lot. The whale was still alive, its skin was in reasonable shape, and they had implemented the first part of Marc’s plan to refloat her.
Sure, tensions were high between them and, yes, maybe she’d rather be curled up by an open fire right now watching reruns of Pride and Prejudice, but she was hanging in there. She felt vaguely hydrated now that the scorching sun had eased off and the chocolate was doing its job and feeding energy directly into her cells. Their conditions could be much, much worse. That thought gave Beth’s spine the tiniest of reinforcement.
And then the sun set.
THE moon was high in the bitter night sky by the time Beth risked further conversation. She poured the last mouthful of the fresh water into the endurance powder Marc had nagged her to have and shook the pouch thoroughly, knowing he was monitoring her from the water to make sure she drank it. She managed not to gag—just—as she chugged the chalky banana-flavoured mix. Then she turned to look at Marc, still sloshing the whale.
That little moment on the beach had been a major slip. For both of them. She’d had two hours of dark silence in which to go over—and over—the events of the day, looking for the moment when something had shifted between them. The moment when time had unwound just a tiny bit and taken them both back to a place that meant Marc could make a mistake like touching her. A woman he barely knew any more. He barely liked.
It was the peeing thing. As though seeing her so reduced in front of him had gone some way to settling old hurts. Maybe the loss of dignity had won her a measure of forgiveness?
Lord, if that were all it took, she’d be in serious credit by the time the night was out. Embarrassment over a bodily function was just a patch on the hits her dignity had taken in the years since she’d last seen him. He’d be delighted if he knew.
She chewed her lip. Maybe that was what he needed to hear—that she’d suffered? Impossible to know—he was as mysterious to her these days as the darkening ocean all around.
She stumbled back to the water. ‘That was quite possibly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted.’
Marc answered as though it hadn’t been hours since she’d last spoken. His twisted smile was reluctant. ‘You get used to it. It’ll keep you going.’
‘I can see why they call it survival food. You’d really want to be lost at sea before you cracked open supplies.’ She turned her eyes to the dark, still shadow further down the beach. ‘Do you really think that was her calf?’
‘Yeah, probably.’
‘Did it die because it was so young?’
‘It’s not that much smaller than Mum. It wasn’t a new calf, I’d say. Some whales last days, others only hold out for hours. Just like people, some are tougher than others.’
A deep sadness snaked out and tangled around her heart. She could identify with an animal that turned out not to be as tough as it might have thought. ‘Poor baby.’
Slosh … slosh …
‘You never had kids? You and McKinley?’
Beth was unprepared for the bolt of pain that question brought her. She turned her face away from him and busied herself around the whale’s small parched eyes. It had finally occurred to her that a marine animal wouldn’t object to having salt water around its eyes.
Marc’s question hung unanswered in the night silence. He patiently watched her.
‘No. No kids,’ she whipped out.
‘You didn’t want them?’
I didn’t deserve them. And they sure as heck didn’t deserve to be born into a life as wrong as hers and Damien’s. ‘Not particularly, no.’
Let him think whatever he liked.
‘Funny.’
That was it. Just that one word. She sloshed away for a bit longer, but then curiosity got the better of her. She straightened. ‘What’s funny?’
‘I always pictured you as a mother. Deep down, I thought that might have been the attraction with McKinley. He seemed like he was raring to get straight into the family and kids thing.’
Beth snorted softly. He was raring to get into one part of it, at least, like most teenage boys. If he struck strangers as family oriented, it could only be because he’d grown proficient at maintaining the same illusion as his own parents.
‘No. Damien didn’t really have any drive regarding family.’ Any drive at all. Except for drinking. When things had first started going wrong in their marriage, she’d briefly considered children, something to bring them together. But, as it got worse, she’d secretly made sure that was never possible. Even when she was in the deepest reaches of the abyss, she’d somehow managed to remember to protect herself against pregnancy. Not that the issue arose very often by that point.
Slosh … slosh.
‘What did you end up doing?’ Marc asked casually. ‘For a career.’
Her