Falling Away (26 page)

I turn from him, because the green in his eyes burns my heart at its core. I focus on the ocean. It’s what I know. And it knows me. How I feel. What I need. And it lessens the pain.

With spring warmth in the air and the crackling fire on the dune, I suddenly want to swim. This sparkling onyx sea is exactly what I need. Since Dad died, and Jack left, I haven’t felt the arms of the ocean cradling my soul. And I need it so bad. If I can’t have Jack, I need to feel the sea.

“Come on, Em. Let’s swim,” I say, lurching into the bucking waves in my tight red dress. I don’t give a single thought to the fact that it’s night time, there’s a strong ripping undercurrent running south along the beach, or the fact that there could well be sharks.

“Are you crazy?” Em calls as I wobble further out. “You’re drunk, Sam. This is
not
a good idea.”

I turn to face her, and notice Jack step forward, closer to the sea. The disturbed expression on his face I don’t think I’ve seen before. But I don’t care. He doesn’t want me. “Come on, Em! It’s warm in!” I call, gently toppling over at the slosh of a wave.

“Sam, don’t be stupid!” Em yells. “You’re drunk and you need to come out. Right now!”

“But it feels so
good
!” I reply, calling to her over the rolling waves. “Come in!”

I dive under a wave and feel the pull of the rip. The one I hadn’t noticed before. In the daylight I would’ve seen this. Without alcohol I might’ve too, even at night. But the pull is so freeing. So liberating. It’s just what I need. To float away under a shadowy sky.

Just a little swim, and then I’ll come back …

I look back at the beach which is drifting further away. Emily’s screaming now and there’s a crowd gathering around her on the wet sand. Riley hollers something I can’t hear, and Jack’s there, stripping off his shirt. I wonder what he’s doing, because Jack never, ever swims. Hasn’t for the longest time. For three years now. Hasn’t surfed, swum. Nothing. Not since Charlie died. So what
is
he doing?

I watch him hesitate at the water’s edge. And Ben’s beside him now, yelling for me to swim. Not to fight the rip, just go with it. Which is what I wanted in the first place, anyhow.

“Sam!” calls Jack. The first word he’s spoken to me in over three weeks. “Sam!”

My foggy head is trying to process this, but when Jack runs headlong into the ocean and dives under a thickly curling wave I feel it. His need. I’m snapped back to reality. Because even with the tequila that courses through my veins I know what this means. Because Jack is in the sea. The sea that stole his brother’s life. And now that I look at my own predicament, it could possibly steal mine.

I watch the muscles in his arms as he powers through the waves. I can see them from here. And he’s a good swimmer. A
really
good swimmer. But what
is
he doing? This doesn’t make sense. He struggles through the force of the sharply ripping water, ducking beneath the twisting currents. Flowing with them. Determined to reach me. It’s written across his resolute face. And each time I wait for him to surface is a painful living hell, not knowing where he is, and if he’ll get here. If he’ll
ever
get here.

Wave after wave begin to crash over my head, and each time I rise for air I search for him. Desperate to find him, here with me in the sea. Because he shouldn’t be here. This is
not
what he does. And I’m tired. So very tired. And I start to cry, because this treading water caper is not that easy. If I just had my surfboard I’d be fine. I feel myself falling. Falling away. Falling below the inky surface of the sea. Because I can’t do this anymore. My legs won’t kick. And I can’t get enough air in the breaks between each suffocating wave.

He edges closer, falling in with the rip that’s taken me from the beach. And he swims it. Swims with the rip to reach me. And the look on his face screams anger, hurt, distress, worry and
maybe
even love.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” he calls breathlessly when he’s in earshot, almost at my side. “You’re a bloody idiot! Are you trying to drown yourself?”

I shake my head in drunken wonder. “No. That wasn’t the intention,” I call to him over the coiling waves.

“Jesus, Sam,” he says when he makes it, wrapping an arm around me under the water to hold me up. “I’m not sure I can get us both in.”

The relief of his arm around me is intense. I want to cling to him, never let him go. Because here in the sea, Jack is with me. And Emily’s taunt flashes briefly into my mind.
Prove to me just how much Jack
doesn’t
care.
Perhaps she wins the drunk dare after all.

The crowd on the beach watches, signalling for us to go with the rip. With Jack holding me up, and my breathing now in short jagged bursts, we do that. We drift out further, nearer to that elusive murky horizon, and then south along the beach, until eventually it dumps us further down on the sand, a fair distance from the point. Jack drags me from the water, his arm around my waist, and collapses us onto the sand.

“Fuck,” he says breathlessly. “Just look what you made me do.” He holds me so close I don’t think he will ever let me go. And this is where I’ve wanted to be. So much. And here on the sand I feel him and what this means, while our breathing hitches in short, shallow gulps.

I close my eyes and lay my head on his heaving chest. “You swam.”

“Under duress,” he says grumpily, except a smile breaks out on his face and he runs his hand over my hair, dragging me in closer. “You fuckin’ scared me, Sam. I stood there, and there was no choice for me. None at all. I had to go in. I couldn’t lose you too. Not the same way I lost Charlie.” He brushes his lips across mine and he’s filled with emotion, and for one brief second I think I see a teardrop fall vertically onto the sand. Falling for Charlie. For the one he couldn’t save.

EPILOGUE

One Year Later

Jack holds me nestled in his arms in the biggest, comfiest bed I’ve ever been in. It’s all gauzy white in sunlight reflected from the bright glittery skin of the river.
Our
bed. In
our
house. The weatherboard fisherman’s hut on the river below the sweep of the Singing Bridge. The one he pointed out to me so many times. From the ferry, from his boat. The one he wanted to buy. And I’ve never been happier than I’ve been these past few weeks.

At the mark of one year since my father’s death I bloomed. It took
that
long. Life with Jack has been my comfort. Nourishment for my no-longer-empty soul. With Jack, it’s like there will be no ending, and perhaps there never was a beginning, either. Because it feels like he’s always been here. For me. For us. And our hearts have mended from crumbled ruins to pillars of beating strength, the scraps and pieces left behind. Every second that I’m with him we heal. All of me is for him. He’s all I see now. All I want. All I need.

And the best news is that Gemma healed too. Took a while, but she beat that thing, and she’s now in remission. She doesn’t work or party so hard, but she’s different now. Like a shiny new Gem. All of her frailties exposed, and no longer brash. But this new Gem? I think that’s what she was like underneath all along.

I often think back to my first date with Jack. That night with the Baileys under the wide blanket of stars. I think of the life advice he gave. To find something I love, and something I’m good at, and then combine them. So next year I go to university to study. Part-time correspondence so I still have time for the things I love. Surfing. Running. Being with Jack. It’s only now that I feel ready for this. That this is
my
choice.
My
path in life.

***

We’re disturbed by knocking at our newly painted red front door. Red for love. Red for hearts. Red for sunsets in the sky. Jack wakes, hugging me tighter against him and kissing me like he hasn’t seen me in days. I roll reluctantly from his perfect arms and pull on a robe.

“Don’t be long, babe,” he says, rolling over and smiling that smile.

I lean over to press my lips upon his before heading for the front door.

“Hey, hey!” says Ben as it opens. “Coming for a surf?” He grins like that silly cat in Alice in Wonderland, and I wonder why he does this.
Always so early.

“Grrrr. Go away, Ben,” I say, attempting to shut the door on him.

He jams his foot in and pushes his way inside. “Come on, grab Jack and your board. You’re missing some pretty decent surf. I’ve already checked.” He successfully bowls through the door with Lily behind him. She hugs me, smiling as she passes.

Jack has risen with the commotion, stumbling out bare-chested wearing only his boardies, reminding me of last night. How beautiful it is every time. With
my
Jack. The way he …

Jack gives me a knowing smile and we lock eyes.

“Morning, you two!” Lily says brightly, glancing from me to Jack and then back again.

“Come on, mate. Where’s your board? We’ll see you down there,” says Ben tugging Lily toward the front door.

Jack just rolls his eyes as he crosses the lime-washed floorboards and stands behind me. He circles my waist with his arms as Ben and Lil jump into the Subaru, and from the bull-nosed veranda we watch as they snake slowly around the meandering river toward Bennett’s.

Jack pulls me in closer so he’s pressing up against me. “So do you want a surf?”

“Do you?” I ask turning in his arms to check in with his gaze. Because it’s still hard for him. Getting in the surf. He does it because he wants to. Ever since that night. The one at Dark Point where he faced his deepest fear to night-swim amongst those sharply ripping waves. It helped. Because now we can lie on Jack’s beach, the one you can only access by boat, and he’ll swim in the crystalline water. And all the time now I catch glimpses of that boy in the photograph with his brother, the one now hanging on
our
wall.
That
smiling Jack? Happy and carefree?
I’ve
got him now.

Jack beams with his irresistible smile all the way to the beach, reaching over to rest the warmth of his hand on my knee. Our boards lie in the back of his old, clattery ute. He parks in the carpark overlooking Bennett’s, a southerly whipping the waves into frenzied hunks. But Ben’s right, because further down in the sheltered southerly corner, with the rising swell moving in from beyond the point, a few chunky ones are rolling to shore.

“You ready, baby?” I ask with a grin.

“Too bloody right,” he answers, brushing his lips across mine as if to draw courage.

The warm spring-time water is seductive, even for Jack, overpowering any fears he may harbour. Ben and Lil are already in, both going for it as a line of swell knolls up. I see him laugh and drop in on her so she falls off the back, giggling the whole time as she surfaces in the whitewashed foam.

Jack and I paddle out together. And this feels good. Feels like life is exactly as it should be. With Jack in the waves here beside me, grinning as we roll across the top of the sunlit peaks. He snags a wave before me, cutting back on the face before riding it almost to shore. And the whole way I hear him. Whooping and carrying on like this is the best feeling in the world. And when I hear this I know he’s happy, and has finally forgiven the sea. Forgiven but not forgotten. Never forgotten. The sea is now an unforeseen friend, even though it stole his brother from him. That fateful day, four years ago now.

And then I catch one too, and we catch it together. This wave of life. And no more devil’s tears do we cry, because for Jack and me, there will always be tomorrow.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you so much for reading
Falling Away
. Sam, Jack and Riley just wouldn’t give me a moment of peace until I’d got this thing down. And even then I was pestered and hassled and sleeve-tugged, which is why Riley gets his very own story.
Coming soon …

Please leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads or your point of sale. It takes but a moment, and means the world to a writer.

****

Since I was a little girl, writing has been my passion. A totally consuming one. My first book was written at the age of seven (featuring a lost little sea-horse in the big bad sea), and I completed my first coastal romance by the age of twenty-two. Thankfully the latter never saw the bright light of day!

First of all, I have two beautiful little girls in my life who never fail to give me their unconditional love and support, and who allow me the space to become temporarily lost in imaginary worlds. Love you guys more than life itself – clichéd but true.

To Cameron, a lifetime of love and thanks for your unwavering belief in my endeavours, and for the nights where baked beans or spaghetti on toast became the tasteless norm. Not once have you questioned what at times seemed like pie in the sky.

Wholehearted thanks to Saskia, who has been there since the beginning. You are an awesome beta, proof-reader extraordinaire, and my number one source of encouragement. Miraculously, you never once complained about the number of times I begged you to read the many versions of this book. You are truly irreplaceable.

Huge thanks to my other betas, Bronwyn and Emily, who read and proofread, and critiqued so insightfully, right up until the very last minute. Your feedback and supportive commentary was amazing. I am so grateful for your time, your valuable input and words of encouragement.

Thanks also to Karen, Eva and Les, whose love and friendship mean the world, and who continue to support me through what sometimes seems like a crazy dream.

Thank you to the amazing Rebecca Berto of Berto Designs, for bringing the cover to life exactly as I had imagined it. It is truly beautiful! Her website is
www.bertodesigns.com
. and honestly, this woman cannot be faulted.