normal conversation, Gina thought. Excellent.
‘Idaho. Same as when you first knew me, Cal. Some things don’t change.’
‘But you love the beach.’
‘Mmm, but my family and friends are in Idaho. So sure I miss the beach but where I live is a no-brainer.’
‘You always intended to go back?’ he asked, and she felt the normality fade as anger surged again. Deep anger. This water wasn’t cold enough.
‘Strangely enough, I didn’t,’ she told him. ‘Five years ago I came out for a break after Paul left me. Yes, I intended it to be brief, but then I met you. And then I thought about staying permanently.’
‘So you considered deserting your family and friends.’
‘I had hoped,’ she said softly, ‘that in you I might have found both. I was dumb. But I was young, Cal. I’ve learned. So it’s back to Idaho for me.’
‘You must know that I’ll want to see CJ.’
‘I’ll send photographs.’
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘So what do you mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, exasperated. ‘He’s my kid.’
She thought about that for a minute, trying to figure out a response that didn’t involve anger. ‘Do you think,’ she said softly into the night, ‘that because your mother and your father were your biological parents, they had automatic rights over you?’
‘Not rights,’ he said, in an automatic rejection of an idea he clearly found repugnant, and she grimaced.
‘No. They had obligations, which they didn’t fulfil. But rights…You have to earn rights. If you love your kid then maybe you have the right to hope the kid will love you back. You’re at first base, Cal.’
‘He looks like me,’ Cal said inconsequentially, and his words sent a surge of disquiet through her. Like something was being threatened. Her relationship with CJ?
‘So do you love him?’ she managed to ask, and he seemed startled.
‘Hey…’
She kicked up a huge spray of water before her, so high it came back down over their heads. Enough. This conversation was way too deep and she didn’t know where it was going, and she wasn’t sure how she could handle it wherever it went. And she was so tired. She kicked again and then suddenly on impulse she dropped Cal’s hand and waded further out into the sea. Her clothes were already wet. They were disgusting anyway after this night, so a little more salt water wasn’t going to hurt them. The moon was so full that she could see under the surface of the shallow water and…and what the heck.
Walking forward to the first breaker, she simply knelt down and let the water wash right over her.
It felt excellent. Her anger, her uncertainty, the way she was feeling about Cal…the way her hand had felt as if it was abandoning something precious when she’d released Cal’s. The waves had the power to soothe it all.
This had been some day. The trauma of the baby, and then the accident, and Cal as well. It was simply, suddenly overwhelming. Now her brain seemed to have shut down as her body soaked in the cool wash of the foam. She knelt and let wave after wave wash over her and she just didn’t care.
She didn’t know where to go from here.
She wasn’t sure how long she knelt there, how long was it before she surfaced to the awareness that Cal was still with her. He was kneeling behind her. A wave washed her backwards and his hands seized her waist so that she wasn’t washed under.
Maybe he’d sensed that she’d reached a limit where it was no longer possible to support herself, she thought dully in the tiny part of her mind that was still capable of thought.
Or maybe he needed contact, too?
It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter, for there was no space in her tired mind to make any sense of anything. She was grateful that he was here and she leaned back into him but still her focus was on the water, on the wash of cool, on this minute.
‘The sea’s great,’ Cal murmured during a break in the waves, and she thought about answering but another wave washed up against her and she had to concentrate on getting her breath back. She spluttered a bit and thought, Well, that served her right for trying to think of something clever to say. Of anything to say.
‘Where do you go in Idaho when you feel like this?’ he asked some time later, and that was a reasonable question to ask, she decided. There was no danger down that road.
‘I drive,’ she told him. ‘The night Paul died I got in the car and I drove and drove. A friend took CJ home with her for the night and I think I drove five hundred miles before I stopped.’
‘I wish I’d known.’
‘Do you?’ she asked. She tried to shrug but his hold on her waist tightened.
‘Believe it or not, yes, I do,’ he said softly.
‘Your friend Hamish said you were really good at picking up the pieces,’ she murmured. ‘He also said you didn’t know what to do with them after you’ve picked them up.’
‘He’s got me tagged.’ But he didn’t sound angry. He sounded defeated.
‘I guess he’s a friend.’
A wave or two more washed over them and they had to wait for a bit before they could talk again. But she was feeling the tension in him and it wasn’t going away.
‘Does Hamish being my friend give him permission to talk about me?’ he asked at last.
She thought, No, this wasn’t about Hamish. But she answered him all the same.
‘It gives him permission to worry about you. Like with kids, commitment gives rights.’
‘Hell, Gina…’
‘Just leave it, Cal,’ she said wearily. She tried to pull away but another wave, bigger than usual, propelled her harder against him. His arm tightened even further.
‘I don’t think I can,’ he said unsteadily.
‘We need to go back to the hospital.’
‘We have unfinished business.’
‘I can’t think what.’ She tried to sound cross—but it didn’t come off.
‘Gina…’ Things had changed suddenly. The feel of his hands. The feel of his body…
Once she and Cal had been lovers and suddenly the feel of his hands touching her had brought it all flooding back. The way she’d once felt about this man.
The way she still did.
Cal. He was her Cal. She’d fallen desperately in love with him five years ago. She’d spent five years trying to forget how he felt but now all he had to do was be here, touch her, and it was as if those feelings had started yesterday.
No. Not yesterday. Now.
And he could feel it, too. She half turned and he was looking down at her in the moonlight, the expression on his face something akin to amazement.
What was between them wasn’t one-sided. It was a real and tangible bond, and five years hadn’t weakened it one bit.
‘Cal, don’t,’ she whispered, but it was a shaken whisper.
‘How can I not?’
She should have struggled.
Of course she should have struggled. She didn’t want this man to kiss her.
She mustn’t let him kiss her. To rekindle what had once been…
But she was so tired. The part of her brain that was