Page 6 of Second Song

“I left it safely with its mum, but not before it crapped on me one last time.” He must have unzipped his wetsuit to shake that crap off because he closes in on me bare-chested, wetsuit hanging at his hips, and I catch a flash of inky chest hair as he passes while tossing a quick, “Give me a minute,” over his shoulder.

He jogs to his own vehicle, and I’m not so shortsighted that I can’t tell it’s a blue camper van with a white wave decal. It must also have a winch attachment. I hear a motor kick in, winding in that rope, and at the same time, what he said kicks in.

He could have winched me up without risking himself if I’d?—

“Right.” He’s back, only now he wears board shorts and a desert camo T-shirt. He also carries a pack of wet wipes that he thrusts at me. “You can get the worst off with these.” He checks his watch. “Forty-five minutes.” A door slams, and I’m alone beside my car with him in the driver’s seat. He winds down the window. “What are you waiting for? Get in.”

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like? I’m driving you to get your spare glasses.” He taps the face of his watch. “Forty-four minutes. Want to waste another couple by gobbing off some more?”

I don’t.

I get in the car and tell him where I stayed last night. “I booked a place nice and close so I wouldn’t be late.” My chest tightens, only not as a signal of voice-stealing panic. It’s at how pointless all that planning had been, which isn’t funny. However, resisting impulses isn’t my strong suit and neither is reading people. I can’t tell what he thinks when my panicked laughter hitches. I wrestle it down as he starts the engine, and I think I’ve convinced him that I’ve got it together like a normal person until he turns the key again and shuts off the engine.

I know he’s looking at me even if I can’t make myself look back. Then he’s in my space, his hand on my thigh, and the last time I was cornered in a confined space didn’t end well, but today the only order I hear is gruff yet gentle.

“Breathe.” He waits a beat before asking, “You want this job,” in a way that isn’t a question. Neither is the next. “I told you that you’ve got grit. Dig deep for some more of it, yeah? You can fall apart later.” He squeezes my thigh like he did my shoulder on the cliffside, and we don’t have time for this but he repeats a quiet, “Breathe,” and I can. He breathes with me a few times before asking, “Ready now?”

I nod. I also press my lips tight at how many minutes I’ve wasted, but at least we’re off now.

He drives the wrong way along the coast road, taking me further away from the school instead of closer, but I want to believe him when he tells me I still have time to make it. It’s harder to trust when he suddenly slows and then pulls the car over into another lay-by.

“What? Why are you stopping?” The answer is smudged and hazy—another surfer approaches, his wetsuit unzipped and hanging from his hips like?—

I don’t even know his name.

I find out when he winds down the window and this second surfer leans in, his chest heaving.

“Fuck me, Sexy,” he pants. “The hill up from the beach is steeper than that bastard outside Damascus where we hijacked that Hummer.” He peers in at me, his eyebrows raised. “Now you’re hijacking a Ford Focus and a cliff jumper?”

“I didn’t jump?—”

My driver interrupts us. He also passes a set of keys out the window. “I’m not hijacking anyone, Matt. The camper is back there. Pick me up in Porthperrin in a few?” Then he pulls out onto the road again before I can thank the man who sat on a board beside those rocks for me. But then I haven’t thanked the one sitting beside me either, have I?

“Sexy?”

He glances my way, that ghost of a smile back. “Sexton. Liam Sexton. Ex-Sapper, like that wanker.” He must see my incomprehension. “Ex-forces,” he explains. “Army. Royal Engineer.”

“Rowan Byrn.” I don’t add ex-boy band member. I’ve left that fuckwit behind. I still swallow around a lump of what I do need to tell him because I might have a long track record for misjudging people, but there’s no mistaking his help was crucial. “Thank you, Liam. I… I really don’t know what I would have done without you.”

He doesn’t answer. Or at least he doesn’t until we’re heading down the steep hill to the fishing village where I spent a sleepless night staring at a ceiling. I know it’s a pretty place—I saw the bright strings of bunting fluttering between white-painted cottages when I first got here. They waved me goodbye and good luck not long ago. Now all I can focus on is what’s closest to me. Who’s closest. And on how he sounds when I thank him again.

“It was nothing.” He scrubs at the back of his neck. “It was good to feel useful.” It almost sounds as if the words for once are missing, and if I had time, I’d want to know why. I don’t though. The clock still ticks on my second-chance countdown, and he’s in as much of a hurry as I am. He must be. Once we’re parked, he steers me again with one hand on my elbow through the car park.

His touch shifts, coming around me and lowering. It lands on my hip, pulling me close when we take a narrow alley to the harbour. The scent of brine is condensed there, thick like the shadows that are a sudden contrast to sunny brightness. I can’t see a fucking thing and I stumble, slipping on damp cobbles, but once again he’s got me.

I’m pressed to his chest in another second chance, and if the countdown to my interview wasn’t urgent, I’d take it—I’d give in to the kind of impulsive behaviour my last headmaster despaired of. I’m my mother’s son though, and she was always a free spirit, so I’d kiss Liam Sexton for real instead of just thinking about it. Not only because he’s called me pretty. Plenty of people have said that, and look where it got me.

No, I’d kiss him so he knew how much I appreciate him.

I don’t do that, but he doesn’t let go of me either. He could pick up his pace if he wanted, march me along the harbour to the pub where my spare glasses are in my wash bag and a clean shirt hangs in the wardrobe. He does neither, still holding me close. He’s so big and solid. Substantial. Both of his arms are around me, only a packet of wet wipes between us instead of a lamb, and?—

He pulls away before I notice what he must have already spotted.

Movement flickers at the mouth of the alley, then someone passes us with a cheery greeting that Liam returns before his hand is back on my hip, steering me safely to the harbour.

I squint. The pub where I stayed last night is just visible. “There’s the Anchor. I can take it from here.”

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