One Last Chance (6 page)

Griffin Benson.

Her heart thumped in her chest as she scrolled down further. They’d been engaged for three months. She checked the date of the article.

June 14. Last month.

She stared at the screen. That explained everything. Why he was single. His last-minute booking of the reunion. His focus on his career. And why he was even talking to her.

“
How long?”

Claire looked up, startled.

Griffin loomed over her, his dark hair slicked back, his wet body glistening in the sun. She swallowed back down her heart.

“
What?” She hit the home button on the phone and dropped the device on the sand like it was on fire.

He sank down next to her, spritzing her with salt water. It felt good on her heated skin. “Your ankle. How long before it feels better?”

Was she really going to lie to him? Make up some random time period? Because she hadn’t had a chance to look.

“
It depends,” she hedged.

He nodded, his gaze focused on the ocean. “Yeah, probably. Depending on how bad you twisted it.”

“
Well, yeah,” she said. She scooped a handful of sand and sifted it through her fingers. “But it also depends on whether or not I actually looked it up.”

He turned to her, his eyebrows raised. “You didn’t?”

She shook her head.

“
Why not?”

“
Because I looked up you instead.”

“
Me?” Griffin’s voice almost squeaked.

She didn’t say anything.

“
You looked me up?” He grinned. “Really?”

Claire gave an almost imperceptible nod.

“
Why?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I wanted to see stuff you’d written, I guess.”

It was a half-truth, she knew, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him that she’d been looking for more. She’d been looking for everything.

He laughed. “Oh, I get it. You didn’t believe me. That I wrote.”

“
That’s not true.” She shifted in the sand, trying to get comfortable. “I just wanted to see
what
you wrote.”

“
I would’ve shown you,” he told her. “I have most of it on my computer. Files and stuff.”

“
OK.” She changed the subject. “How was it?”

“
Amazing.” His smile encompassed his face, his eyes wide and bright. “I wanna get you out there. When you’re better. If we ever find out when that will be.”

She smiled. “Don’t think it’s going to be better by five o’clock.”

“
Five o’clock?”

“
When we head back to the ship,” she reminded him. “We’re at sea all day tomorrow. And then back home Monday morning.”

“
I know, I know,” he said, his voice laced with irritation. “So we’ll do it when we get back.”

We? She couldn’t find her voice to speak so she just nodded.

There hadn’t been a “we” with Griffin Benson in ten years. Ten years ago, it had been the best “we” she’d ever known. Better than any relationship she’d had in college, better even than her brief marriage to Jared. Their friendship had blossomed effortlessly into a romance. A relationship. And then he’d gone and broken her heart. Claire wasn’t sure she’d ever recovered.

A high-pitched scream startled her. Her gaze shot to the water. Emily was floundering in the waves, about fifteen yards out.

Griffin leaped off the towel and raced toward the ocean, diving headfirst into the surf. Claire watched as he cut clean strokes through the water, his arms like knives as he sliced through the surf toward Emily. She threw her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. He swam back with one arm, his other looped securely around her. They got to shore and he scooped her into his arms. A crowd of onlookers had gathered by the water’s edge.

“
Is she OK?” Molly, Emily’s best friend, was in a panic.

“
She’s fine,” Griffin said. He set her down on the sand, a few feet from Claire. “Stepped on a shell.”

“
And saw a shark!” Emily said, her eyes filled with tears. “And it was a sharp shell. Just look at my foot!”

She held out a perfectly pedicured foot. Claire craned her neck to see. A thin slice dissected less than an inch of her heel. It looked no deeper than a paper cut.

“
You’ll be fine,” Griffin told her. “But you probably wanna stay out of the water. And get some antibiotic cream on it when you get back to the ship. Just in case.”

She nodded. “OK. Thank you.” She looked up at him and Claire was certain she saw her flutter eyelashes. “For rescuing me.”

“
You were chest-deep, Em,” he said. “You didn’t need rescuing.”

“
I could have died from shock,” she said. “From the shark.”

Griffin shook his head. “I’ve surfed these beaches for years. No sharks here. Out in the open blue? Sure. But they don’t come in to shore. Trust me.”

Claire watched as Emily pouted. She should have been an actress.

“
I really thought you’d have more sympathy for me,” she complained. “The way you fawn all over
her
.”

Griffin glanced between the two women parked on the beach. “Uh. She sprained her ankle. And she’s sharing my room.”

“
Yes, I’m aware she’s staying with you,” Emily said, frowning. “But it’s not like you guys are together. I mean, that didn’t even work out back in high school.”

Griffin’s expression clouded and he turned to Claire. “We should maybe get you back to the ship.”

“
Why? We don’t leave for like…”

“
The heat,” he said. “Might not be good for your ankle.”

“
I’m fine, Griffin. We don’t have to…”

But he’d already gathered their things into his backpack and his arms were already lifting her off the sand. He made sure she was upright, shook the sand from her crutches and put her arm around his shoulders. “The crutches won’t work in the sand. Just hang on to me.”

His hand wrapped around her waist, his fingers touching her bare skin and her stomach did that old familiar flip-flop.

Emily’s mouth puckered from an invisible lemon. “I can walk back with you guys. And, you know, help or something.”

“
We’re fine,” Griffin said and there was no mistaking his tone. He was dismissing her.

Claire turned away from Emily so she wouldn’t see the smile on her face.

When they were far enough away from Emily, Claire said “We don’t have to go back.”

“
Oh, we’re not.”

“
We’re not.”

“
No,” he said, chuckling. “Your ankle is fine. I mean, I know it hurts. But the sun isn’t doing anything to it. I just wanted to get away from her.”

“
Glad I’m good for something.”

“
You’re good for a lot of things,” he said, grinning at her. “And before you take that the wrong way, I mean that in a good way and not in a perverted, sleazy way.”

She smiled again. She had been about to take it the wrong way. And she really liked that he knew that about her. That he remembered that.

They made their way slowly down the beach, following the shoreline as it curved, revealing a small inlet. The waves lapped gently here, the calmer water a sublime aquamarine.

Griffin looked back over his shoulder. “I think we’re far enough away that she won’t come looking for us. You wanna sit for awhile?”

“
Sure,” she said. She didn’t want to admit how badly her ankle hurt.

He unpacked the bag and spread out two striped towels right next to one another. He helped her settle on to the towel before sitting down next to her.

She eyed him for a long time.

“
What?” he asked. “What did I do now?”

“
Nothing,” she said. “Which is what I’m not getting. I’ve been a royal bitch for the last twenty-four hours and you’ve been nothing but unfailingly nice to me. Why?”

His toes were on the edge of the towel and he dug them into the sugary sand. “I don’t know.”

“
Bull,” she said, pressing. “Why?”

He stared out at the water, the sunlight dancing on the waves. “I’ve just missed you, Claire.”

His stomach lurched as soon as he said the words. He wasn’t sure he’d ever said them out loud in the ten years since he’d seen her, even though they were always in his head. But now they were out there, hanging in the air between them and he couldn’t take them back.

“
Oh,” she said, stammering a bit. “Okay. Well. Thank you. For being so nice to me when I don’t deserve it.”

“
You’ve had a rough couple days,” he said, happy to move away from his personalization of the conversation. “You deserve some niceness.”

She made a face like she didn’t believe him and he couldn’t help but smile. He remembered that look, too. Never believing in herself. Never believing she deserved anything good to come her way. Some things did not change.

“
So I wanna know what’s been going on with you,” he said. “And not the superficial stuff, either. I wanna know what you’ve been doing.”

She shifted her weight on the towel and pretended to examine her toe. He knew he was making her uncomfortable. She’d never been one to open easily, to share her life with her friends. But if he didn’t push, they’d sit there and talk about the weather and their classmates and nothing that mattered.

Which, for him, was her.

“
Why?” she asked.

“
Because I don’t have a clue what your life has been like for the past decade,” he said. And then smiling, he added, “And because I shared with you.”

She took a deep breath and expelled a long sigh. “I’m divorced.”

“
Divorced?” Why in the hell would anyone ever divorce her? Unless they were insane and blind.

“
I knew I shouldn’t have said anything,” she muttered.

“
No, no,” he said. “I was just
…
surprised.”

“
Sounds like you’re judging.”

“
Nope. Not at all.” He smiled. “I promise.”

She sighed again. “OK. So, yeah. Divorced. My marriage was a mistake and I knew it right away and it imploded immediately.”

“
You know, it’s not a disease,” he said. “It’s not like you’ve been diagnosed with divorce and it’s inoperable.”

She smiled. “Sometimes that’s exactly what it feels like. Like everyone tilts their head to the side, gives you this sympathetic look and says ‘I’m so sorry.’”

He nodded.

“
But I’m not sorry in the least,” she said. “I mean, I’m sorry I agreed to get married when I knew it was all wrong, but I’m not sorry to be divorced from him. It’s just one of those things that you don’t think is going to happen to you and then it feels like utter failure when you tell them.”

He wasn’t divorced, but, man, could he relate. That look of sympathy that really meant “Sorry, you failed.” Yeah, he’d gotten more than a few of those.

“
So there’s that,” she said, brushing at her shins. “And I was just fired from a really crappy job.”

“
I’ve been fired from plenty of jobs,” he said.

She smiled, but he thought it was more for herself than for him. “Yeah, but I’ll bet you at least got fired from jobs you wanted.”

She was right. He’d had numerous assignments where he’d just clashed with an editor or never found the voice and was asked off a project. It was part of the territory.

“
You’ve found your niche,” Claire said. “You have a career. I’ve wandered. Which I’m okay with. It’ll show up someday. But in the meantime, I’ve still got to earn a living. Which I was doing
…
as an admin. assistant for, quite possibly, the world’s most vile human being.”

Griffin laughed. He loved hearing her talk. The inflection. The sarcasm. He’d always wondered if he’d ever get to hear it again so it was somewhat surreal to be sitting on a beach with her, listening to her.

“
He ran this company that produces language videos,” she explained, pulling at the towel beneath her. “You know, learn Spanish in like a month. Guy makes a fortune and paid me really, really well for what I was doing. But he was a complete ass. Anything I couldn’t do, he’d immediately hone in on and ask me to do just that. So I’d have to spend my nights figuring out how to do whatever he wanted done just so I could show up the next day and be competent. He loved seeing me squirm, I think. Making me feel stupid.”