First Love, Second Chance: Friends to Forever / Second Chance with the Rebel / It Started with a Crush.... Nikki Logan
knew which way her mind was going. ‘Is that a choice you could make, Beth? Because I couldn’t.’
No. When it came down to it, neither could she.
He called out again. ‘We’ll try and twist her your way so you’re pulling in the shallows. I’ll take the deep end.’
‘Oh, great, so I’ll get to watch you be eaten by sharks instead. That’ll be nice!’
She gritted her teeth and plunged into the deeper water. The adrenalin did its job and fed her a steady stream of power. They didn’t waste any time, pulling their ropes hard and closing in until they stood side by side—mountain by waif—up to Beth’s waist in water. It was a lot by her standards but not much for a whale. Hopefully, it would be enough. The manoeuvre pulled the snatch strap tight around the whale’s bulging mid-section. Marc moved them slightly to one side so that their rope wouldn’t impede the thrust of her powerful tail.
‘Ready, Beth?’
She wasn’t. She never would be. But it seemed life was determined to plunge her back into the real world with a vengeance. She found his eyes, drew strength from them and nodded.
‘Pull!’
She put her entire, insignificant weight behind her and leaned back hard on her rope. Marc immediately made more progress, his side of the rope vibrating above the waterline enough to give off a dripping, high-pitched whine. The whale groaned in harmony.
Beth’s already damaged hands screamed as her end of the rope bit into them and she stumbled forward at the pain, losing purchase and crying out.
‘Wait!’
Marc let his rope loosen and the whale heaved a sigh. Beth quickly stripped off Marc’s drenched sweatshirt and wrapped it around her hands to protect them and then pulled her rope tight again. The salt water sluiced into open blisters, stinging badly.
‘Okay … go!’
They heaved again and the whale slid slightly sideways, adding her remaining strength to their far less significant pulling power. But it was movement. And, after thirteen hours in the sand, that was not a small achievement.
‘She’s moving!’ Beth squeezed out unnecessarily. No way would Marc not have noticed. ‘Keep going!’
Adrenalin roared now through her body, warming her and giving her a capacity she never would have believed she had. She leaned hard on the rope and pulled with all her remaining strength, twisting her body and virtually walking—inch by inch—out into deeper water, up around her armpits, towing the enormous beast.
Marc was right there beside her, his neoprene muscles bulging with the force of every pull. Neither of them was suffering quietly and their roars of effort merged with the whale’s to disturb sleeping creatures for a kilometre. The whale suddenly twisted so that she was side-on to the beach, her tail now fully submerged, her body more torpedo-shaped in the water than it had been on the sand. Still rounded where the strap held her firmly. Beth and Marc changed their positions, widened out so that they could contribute to the whale’s slow sideways thrash into deeper water. If the sharks wanted either of them they’d be easy pickings right now. The water lapped at Beth’s breasts.
The whale battered her tail violently, slamming on the water for added purchase. But the miracle of buoyancy meant it was easier to tow half a ton of whale flesh. They did—slowly, painfully. And then—
‘Beth, run!’
Marc dropped his rope and surged away from the manic animal. Beth stumbled and went under as her rope suddenly went slack and Marc hauled her up after him, her throbbing legs pushing against the pressure of the deep water.
The whale twisted and surged and turned the quiet shallows into a spa of froth and bubbles. The rope zinged out of its eyelets with an audible crack and the snatch strap dropped harmlessly away. In the time it took Beth to suck in a painful breath, the whale was free, half submerged, then fully submerged. And then—finally—it sank like an exuberant submarine, surfaced once to grab a euphoric lungful of air and then disappeared silently under the deep, dark surface.
Beth screamed her joy as she ploughed through the water, and then she lurched sideways as something harder and warmer than the whale slammed into her. Marc swung her in a full three-sixty, hoisting her up in his arms and hauling her backwards out of the waist-deep water, whooping his elation. But their momentum and fatigued legs couldn’t hold them and they stumbled down together into the shallows, Marc sinking to his knees and bringing Beth with him.
Tears of pain and exhaustion streamed freely down her face and she pushed uselessly against his body to right herself. But the natural chemicals fuelling her body drained as fast as they had come and left her shattered and shaking. The strength she’d miraculously found just moments ago fled. She sagged back against Marc’s strength, useless.
He collapsed unceremoniously onto his bottom in the ankle-high surf and he dragged an insensible Beth between his wetsuit-clad legs. His hands pulled her more tightly against him. She crawled up into his rubbery shoulder.
‘We did it,’ he repeated hypnotically, as though reassuring a child, stroking her dripping hair and pressing her hard into him. As though she belonged there. Beth squeezed her streaming eyes shut and soaked up the gorgeous feeling of being this close to him. After so many years. She nuzzled in closer. A bad idea, no doubt, but impossible not to. Every accidental touch they’d shared as kids flashed through her mind and she saw, clear as day, how she had evolved from comfortable touching to flirtatious touching and finally experimental touching. Stretching boundaries. Testing boundaries. Testing him.
Their gasping breath was the only thing now disrupting the silence. Marc’s murmurs softened further and started up a senseless whisper against her ear. Not even real words, just sounds. But they did their job; she sagged harder against him and let the trembles come. Elation this time instead of fear or anxiety or—worse—the DTs. A much better kind of tremor.
But they transported her exhausted mind immediately back to a perfect spring day behind the library when Marc had kissed her for the first and only time. His body wasn’t this hard then, or his shoulders this broad, but he’d been on the verge of filling out to the potential she’d always known he had. She’d clung to him then just like this; as if he was saving her life with the hard press of his mouth on hers. The touch of his tongue against hers. And she’d shaken afterwards exactly the same. Except that time she’d been completely alone. The kiss was the last time they’d so much as looked at each other.
The cold water soaking into her body offered a splash of reality. That was a lifetime ago. Before the alcohol. Before she’d abandoned him.
He doesn’t care, she reminded herself. She straightened slightly and went to pull away.
He resisted her pull. ‘God, I’ve missed you, Beth.’
The words were so simple, so brutally whispered hard up against her ear, she wondered if he’d even meant to say them aloud. But he had, and his words screamed for acknowledgement. She let her body sag back into him and wriggled up until her face rested in the crook of his neck, her arm slung around his neck.
He wrapped his arms more firmly around her and just held her, cold and shaking, against his body. Rocking in the icy surf.
It didn’t matter that she’d never been with him like this before—that she’d never let herself be vulnerable like this with anyone—it felt very, very right.
‘I’m so glad you were here,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t have even begun to manage this alone.’
He chuckled but even that seemed to hurt his aching body. It morphed into an amused groan. ‘If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have been here in the first place.’
She lifted her head and looked at him seriously. Eye to eye. Their faces so close. Water still dripped down her skin. ‘I could say the same.’
If not for her treatment of him in that all important final year of school, would