Cara Colter - First Love, Second Chance

Used with a capital U.

‘Damien was harmless enough …’ At the beginning. ‘We were kids.’

Okay, it was a hedge. Maybe her courage was as dried out as the rest of her. Her heart hammered hard in her chest. The anticipation of where this conversation might lead physically hurt. What he might think. What he might say. She just wasn’t good at any of it. She licked dry, salty lips and wished for some tequila to complement it. Then she shuddered at where her thoughts were taking her.

After all this time.

You wanted forgiveness. Maybe that started with a little understanding.

He shook his head. ‘You weren’t like other teens, Beth. You were sharper, wiser. You were never a thoughtless person.’

The use of the past tense didn’t escape her. How could a tense hold so much meaning? She sighed. ‘I was overwhelmed, Marc. Damien made such a public, thorough job of pursuing me, it turned my head.’ And I was desperately trying to recreate what I’d had with you. What I’d lost.

Marc was silent. Thinking.

She beat him to the punch that was inevitably coming. ‘That day behind the library. When I told you. When you kissed me. You accused me then of selling out to the popular crowd.’

A flash of memory. Marc’s hard young body pressing hers to the wall. His hot, desperate mouth crushing down on hers. Terrifying. Heaven-sent.

He assessed her squarely. ‘I was an ass. I accused you of being desperate for affection.’

Surprise brought her head up. ‘You were angry. I knew that.’ Eventually.

He studied her, his mind ticking over. ‘That explains why you dated McKinley. Not why you married him.’

The very thing she’d asked herself for a decade. Even before times got really tough. She frowned into the darkness. ‘Damien was like two people. At school he was a champion, a prefect. His parents rushed him into growing up.’ The specialised tutors, the pressure to achieve at sports, the wine with dinner. ‘But he was still just a teenage boy with the emotional maturity to match. Once I agreed to date him, he seemed to expect me to cave automatically in. other areas.’

And expect was the operative word. She’d never met another person with the same kind of sense of entitlement as her ex-husband. She swallowed past a parched tongue and remembered how desperately she’d tried to wipe the blazing memory of Marc’s kiss from her mind. How she’d thrown herself headlong into things with Damien to prove that all kisses were like Marc’s. Only to discover they weren’t. How much leeway she’d given Damien because she knew she had used him and feared she’d done him some kind of wrong by kissing Marc. By liking Marc’s kiss. How Damien had taken that and run with it.

How she’d just let him.

She shrugged. ‘I married him because I slept with him.’

Marc’s lips tightened and his hands scrunched harder in the wet towel that was becoming as ragged as her own whale-washer.

‘And because he asked.’ She let out a frayed breath. ‘And because there was no reason not to, by then.’

And because she’d had no inkling about the kind of man he was about to become.

Beth held what little air she had frozen in her lungs. Marc had honoured her request that he not speak to her again after the day behind the library. His absence had ached, every day, but it made it easier for her to bury what she’d done. Both hurting him and kissing him. And to forget how that kiss had made her feel. The awareness doorway it had opened.

Knowing she’d done it for Marc had never really helped. Having the approval of both their parents had never really helped. But physical separation combined with a sixteen-year-old’s natural talent for selective memory had made it possible to move on.

After a while.

The whites of Marc’s eyes glowed in the moonlight. ‘You didn’t have to marry him just because you slept with him.’

She knew he’d see the truth in the sadness of her smile. ‘I’ve always accepted the consequences of my actions. Regardless of what else you think of me, that hasn’t changed. I chose to do something contrary to the values my parents taught me. My church.’

Marc shook his head. ‘McKinley was a jerk. It always surprised me that he married you at all. That he didn’t stop chasing you once he.’

His words dried up and Beth swallowed the hurt. ‘Once he had what he wanted? Go ahead, say it. Everyone else did.’ Marc frowned. She straightened her shoulders. ‘I hadn’t planned to sleep with him but once I did, turns out I was a. natural student.’

The irony wasn’t lost on her. She’d spent all year trying to come to terms with the blossoming feelings that Marc was beginning to inspire in her, yet she’d barely touched him. But she’d slept with the boy she was physically immune to.

Or maybe that was why?

‘And he was naive enough to make that kind of life decision based on one girl?’ Marc asked.

She swallowed around the large lump in her chest. ‘We both were. Except that Damien grew up a lot in the following few years,’ she went on. ‘Discovered that other women could be good in bed, too. Extremely good, if you knew where to look. And my one piece of power vanished.’

And hadn’t he let her know it.

‘So you left him?’

Beth stared. ‘No. I didn’t. Not until two years ago.’

He gaped. ‘You cannot be serious.’

Heat chased up her icy skin. ‘My vows were serious. I was determined to make a go of it, certain he’d grow out of his … phase and maybe we could turn things around.’ Determined not to lose any more face with her family. Her few remaining friends. Having screwed up so much in her life. ‘Then, somehow, years went by. Empty, pointless—’ passionless ‘—years.’

Only it wasn’t somehow. She knew exactly how, but she wasn’t about to go there. Not with Marc. Telling a room full of strangers was one thing. Telling the man who’d been your closest friend.

He growled, his eyes darkened. ‘Hell, Beth.’

Her laugh was bitter. ‘I thought you’d be thrilled I reaped what I sowed.’

He blew air out from between his lips in a fair imitation of their whale. ‘Look, Beth. Yes, at the time I was pretty much gutted that you chose that moron over our friendship. But I never would have wished that on you. No matter how angry I was. I …’ His eyes flitted away. ‘I cared for you. You deserved better.’

She straightened up, not ready to hear him defend her. Not ready to hear how short a time he’d been impacted. Not ready for all her angst to be for nothing. ‘I think I got exactly what I deserved. Like I said, I always was prepared to accept the consequences of my actions.’

‘For years? Wasn’t that a little extreme?’

She stared at him warily. Better he thought her a martyr. ‘Some lessons take longer to learn than others.’

She shrugged off the comment and the conversation. ‘So … what did you do after we went our separate ways?’

Marc made busy with the sloshing. ‘Kept a low profile.’

Super-low. He might as well not have existed. Which was pretty much what she’d asked of him.

He’d walk through fire if you asked him to …

‘The national skills shortage hit during my summer job up north, right after graduation, and suddenly I was pulling in a small fortune for an eighteen-year-old. It set me up beautifully to buy an old charter boat the next year and refurbish it during the off-season. Now I have three.’

‘So it worked out okay, then—even though you didn’t make it to uni?’ Relief washed through her.

His smile wasn’t kind. ‘Trying to decide how high up the list you need to put me?’

Her make-good list. If she was going to finish the job she’d come for, she had to be thorough. Confession time. She found his eyes and held them, took a deep breath. ‘Top half.’