She’d pretty much hung out with him. Rain, hail or shine. And he’d pretty much lived for that back then.
When he was younger, he hadn’t thought to wonder about it. It wasn’t until he was about fourteen and some helpful jackass had pointed out the social differences between poor Marcus Duncannon and rich girl Elizabeth Hughes that it had started to niggle. But she’d been unwavering in her friendship, uncaring about the condition of his mum’s ancient car, the shabby hems on T-shirts he’d been wearing for two years. Or the fact that she had to ride buses to hang out with him. Some deep part of him had feared she might bail on him like everyone else when his father’s life insurance money had run out. But she hadn’t.
Not for three years. On the other side of that day, it had all looked more sinister. Maybe slumming with the poor fatherless kid gave her some kind of weird social cachet, some intrigue. Maybe he propped up her ego daily with his sycophantic interest. Maybe she was just biding her time until someone better came along.
Or maybe she just outgrew him. She’d said as much. He just never would have picked McKinley as the sort of chump she’d grow towards.
At seventeen he’d thought about ditching school immediately. Lord knew his mother needed the extra income back then. And he certainly could have done without the daily taunts of the beautiful people that his Beth was now one of them. McKinley’s Beth, in fact, but always his Beth deep in his heart.
And now the Princess of Pyrmont High was peeing in the ocean. In public.
There was a certain satisfaction in that. No matter how belated. He hadn’t let himself go over these memories for years. Call it a self-preservation thing. He didn’t like the person he’d become in those final months of school.
Beth’s discomfort at being so debased only birthed a raw, shining affection deep in his gut—a feeling he hadn’t allowed for a long, long time. He laughed to dislodge the glow deep within, to sever the golden filaments that threatened to re-establish between them.
He laughed to save himself from himself.
Then he locked his jaw and forced his attention back onto the only female out here who deserved his sympathy.
The ocean was full of water. What were a few drops more? And Beth was incredibly overheated. The idea of taking a quick swim before. Well, it wasn’t the worst idea in the world.
She waded out into the deeper water, waist height, and peeled off Marc’s oversized fleecy sweatshirt before bundling it high above her head to keep it dry. Then she slowly lowered her body up to her neck in the cold Southern Ocean. The frigid kiss of liquid on parched skin made her shiver. Cool ocean water rinsed away dried sweat. She tipped her head all the way back until cold water washed around her ears.
Bliss.
‘Turn around!’ she shouted back to Marc, onshore. Yes, it was pointless but it felt very necessary. He complied, busying himself with the whale, but she was sure his whole body was lurching with laughter.
Sure, laugh at the spectacle. Nice. Her humiliation was probably a gift to him.
She swapped the sweater into a raised hand, carefully unfastened her jeans with the other and tugged them down single-handed, muttering the whole time. There was no way she was going to repeat Marc’s wetsuit trick. She may have done some low things in her life but there were some barrel bottoms even she wouldn’t scrape.
Getting her jeans down single-handed was one thing but getting them back on when she was finished, wet and underwater.
‘Oh, no.’ Beth looked urgently between Marc and the great expanse of nothing around them and realised there was no way—nowhere—she was going to be able to get out of this water with dignity.
‘Come on, Beth. I’m doing all the work here,’ Marc complained from his side of the whale.
For crying out loud! She wriggled left and then right and eventually stepped free of her adhesive jeans, trapping them on the ocean floor between her feet and standing fully up. Then she slid Marc’s enormous hoodie back on over her cotton blouse. Its thickness cut out some of the sun’s glare and pressed her wet blouse more tightly to her, cooling her even more. With one hand, she held the sweater high of the waterline and then she hooked her jeans up out of the water with a foot, into her free hand.
Then she started wading back to shore, barelegged. Her underwear was no worse than a bikini bottom, after all. Just because it was flouncy …
Just because it was Marc.
Her heart fluttered wildly, imagining his reaction to her stick-thin legs. The last decade and the abuses she’d put her body through really hadn’t done her any favours. She stiffened her spine and trod ashore as though this had been her plan all along, letting his sweater slip back down to mid-thigh, and then laid her wrecked jeans out to dry on the sand high above the tide mark next to their bag of supplies. Her eyes instinctively fell on it, knowing what lay within, pulsing like a dark heart. And what lay within what lay within.
Walk away.
The thickness of the sand hid the unsteadiness of her gait. Not that Marc would have noticed; he was looking everywhere but at her long bare legs. The whale. The horizon. The sky. The extra delay probably irritated him if he couldn’t even meet her eyes.
That didn’t help her mood any. ‘Okay. I’m back. What was so urgent?’
He waited until she got behind the whale before letting his eyes rest back on her. Then he cleared his throat. ‘I’m going to try and dig a trench around her,’ he said, indicating the now dangerously still whale. ‘If I can get my snatch-strap around her, maybe we can drag her out a bit further.’
‘Will it hold?’
‘It pulls my Land Cruiser; it should tow a small whale.’
Beth frowned. ‘Is digging under her safe?’
‘I’ll trench in front, then we’ll try and saw the strap through the sand beneath her.’ His hands mimicked the action, the cords in his wrists and forearms flexing with the motion. It briefly flitted through her mind that those bulging muscles could probably tow the whale to sea all by themselves.
Beth shook her head. ‘No way. She must weigh half a ton. That sand will be too compressed.’
For a tiny moment he looked at her with a hint of admiration. Pleasing him had always pleased her. Even now. The slightest of glows leached out from somewhere deep inside her. But then he dropped heavy lids down over his eyes and the connection was lost.
‘I’ve been thinking about that. If we can time it with the suck of the wash back out to sea it might loosen the sand just enough. It’s worth a try. But we need to be ready for high tide.’
‘What happens then?’
‘We try and refloat her.’
‘By ourselves?’ Her voice sounded like a squeak, even to her.
‘If we get lucky, the cavalry will arrive with a boat to tow her back out.’
‘And if we don’t?’
Steady eyes regarded her. ‘If we don’t, I hope you’re stronger than you look.’
SHE wasn’t. Not nearly. But she was getting better.
It had been a long, uphill road recovering