Dan shifted, his back stiffened. 'There's something I need to know, Lizzie. When I was in hospital. After the accident. Why didn't you come and visit me?'
Lizzie stilled. Her arms goosebumped and she rubbed them quickly, grinding fine grains of sand into her skin, abrading it. She knew without looking that Dan's gaze was on her. She stared out at the waves.
'I was working, Dan. I figured the best way to help Ry and Julia, and you, was to hold the fort at the pub during all those weeks.' Sure she'd kept the pub ticking over, but she'd dropped into bed every night in tears, frightened, confused about why she was worried sick about a man she barely knew.
'And what about all those months I was here, last spring? Until you brought me some food from the pub, you never once came and saw me.'
This felt like a test but Lizzie had no idea about the criteria against which she was being judged. 'Would you have let me in?'
Dan thought for a moment. 'I don't know.'
'There are only so many door slams a girl can take, you know.'
Dan turned, fully facing her now. 'And you're doing it again. Putting a distance between us.'
'Dan, it's not-'
'There's something I need to know. What happened between us that night at the pub?'
God, this really was twenty questions. Was he making a list in his head of all the reasons he should stay away from her? Lizzie had enough of her own, without breaking her heart by thinking of all her failures when it came to Dan.
'You mean the night when … '
'Yeah. That night.'
'You don't remember any of it?' Lizzie drew her legs in close, hugged her arms around her knees.
He shook his head, and a lock of his dark hair, half dry now, flopped onto his brow. He flicked it off his face with a frustrated shake of his head. 'I remember the first time we met, that night we had dinner at the pub. Me, Ry, Barbra, Julia and you. You'd just got your promotion and we'd won approval from the board to go ahead with Windswept. I thought you were kinda cute.'
'Cute?'
'Yeah cute, with your baby blues and that hair. That is, until you told me you thought we were fucking up the place by building Windswept.'
Lizzie turned her head to him, her chin held high. 'So you remember calling me a naïve hippie when I objected to your plan to build five hundred new homes down here?'
'I remember that. You clearly didn't want anything to change in your beloved Middle Point.'
Her beloved Middle Point.
It had been changing all around her, she realised. Under her very nose and she'd been blind to it until recently. The waves washed in new people, like Ry and Dan. Others like Julia and Joe came back, like messages in bottles, finding their way back to the beach eventually.
'That probably means you don't remember that I apologised when I found out the truth. About how beautiful it's going to be, and all the things you're doing to make them homes for real people, not bazillionaires.'
'Did you?' He shook his head, pursed his lips. 'I'm buggered if I know why, but all I remember about that night at the pub … ' He reached out for Lizzie's hand and she let him hold it in his strong grasp. ' … is your face.'
Lizzie held on to his words, squeezed her eyes closed to keep them in her memory.
'Your blue eyes. That golden blonde hair and that sassy mouth with red lipstick. That's all I remember.' He stopped, thought about something. 'You need to tell me, Lizzie, because I've been trying to figure it out. Did I do something stupid, something to piss you off? Was I a total arsehole to you? Is that why you never came to see me?'
'God, no,' she sighed, entwining her fingers in his. 'You didn't do anything stupid. As a matter of fact, you … '
Where to start in the story of that night? Every little detail of it was embedded in her memory. When Dan had swaggered into the pub, she'd been drawn to him immediately. She felt it again, how fast her heart had thumped when he'd caught her checking him out, and when he'd flashed her a sexy smile in return. Even then, there was something about the way he'd gazed into her eyes that made her tense, edgy, on high alert. She still felt that way, especially right now, this close, talking this way.
' … you didn't do anything to piss me off. I was still working behind the bar and you walked in. We ended up playing matchmaker to the two lovebirds next door. Things were looking hopeless for those two, so I'd made sure Julia was there, sitting by the fire, all cosy with a glass of red wine.'
Dan had only ordered a soft drink that night, as he'd been about to jump in his car for the hour-and-a-bit drive back to Adelaide. It wasn't very far, but the roads weren't lit by city streetlights, and they twisted and turned darkly through the hills like a slithering snake.
Lizzie bit her lip. 'When it looked like he wasn't going to show, you called Ry, told him the pub was about to run out of beer. So, he drove over, shitty as hell, and you basically pushed him in Jools' direction. They wouldn't be as loved up as they are – and about to get married – if it wasn't for us.'
Dan sat for a long moment, clearly thinking about what she'd said.
'There's more, isn't there.'
Lizzie remained silent. What good would it do to tell him the truth? That the last thing he'd done that night was kiss the back of her hand, softly, slowly, pin her an intense and meaningful stare, and then walk out the door with a sexy look over his shoulder that said later?
'C'mon Lizzie, I've seen you naked.' He bumped her shoulder. 'Surely you can tell me the rest.'
She'd been trying so hard to forget the whole naked thing. Great idea, but to date, extremely poorly executed. She'd defy anyone to forget the sight of him, bare and beautiful, to put out of her mind how it had felt to be kissed by him, to have his hands all over her body, to stop thinking about how skilfully those fingers had made her come.
Lizzie swallowed at the memory. 'We talked a while, did the matchmaker thing. And then you drove off.'
Dan couldn't believe what he was hearing. 'That's it? I drove off and left you there in the bar?'
'Yep.'
'Man, that was stupid. You sure I didn't even try to sleep with you?'
Lizzie dropped her head into her arms. 'God, I wish you had.'
'So … you wanted to sleep with me but then you avoided me for months? You're screwing with me now.'
Lizzie lifted her eyes to his. 'Don't you get it? If I'd only kept you there, offered you a cup of coffee. Something.'
'Lizzie, I can guarantee you one thing. I might have said no to coffee but I would never have said no to having sex with you.'
'If I'd got you to stay one more minute, maybe even thirty seconds more.'
'What's thirty seconds got to do with anything?'
'Maybe it was all you needed, don't you see? Thirty seconds later and you wouldn't have been hit by the truck that night.'
'You think what happened to me was your fault?' His words came out ragged, torn at the edges.
What was she saying? Lizzie, who looked out for everyone, thought she'd failed him that night? The realisation hit him like a punch to the gut. The accident had happened to her, too. He'd wished a thousand times that it hadn't happened to him. Or to other guy driving the truck. He'd wished it every night for months, when he'd tossed and turned, in pain and in panic. But right there and then, for the first time since that night, he realised he wished that for everyone who cared about him. He wished that for Lizzie.
'Don't you get it? I could have stopped it, if I hadn't been so stubborn. Playing with you the way I did.'
'Weren't you the one who told me that shit happens because it happens? That you can drive yourself crazy by asking why?' Dan gritted his teeth, remembered her words: the perfect son, the perfect best friend. They swirled around in his head like sand in the wind. Maybe it was something in the tone of her voice when she'd said them. They'd felt like an accusation rather than an observation, that he thought himself to be some kind of golden boy.
That nothing could touch him or break him.
Something clearly had. And he wasn't sure he'd ever get over it.
'Tell me something, Lizzie. Why aren't you taking your own advice?'
Had she become as transparent as cellophane? Everyone was seeing right through her. More than a month ago, Joe had picked something going on between her and Dan. Harri had been prodding her with meaningful questions about him and now Dan was doing it too.
Tears clouded her vision. 'Because no matter how hard I try, Dan, how much I twist myself into knots, I've never been able to help anyone. Especially myself.'
'But haven't you spent most of your life helping other people?' Dan's voice was full of emotion. 'Your grandmother, your mum. Harri. Julia and Ry. Joe. This town.'
Lizzie shook her head. No, no, no. What had she done for any of them that had made a difference? Cancer had taken her grandmother, claimed her mother too. The same emotion had driven Joe away from his family when Lizzie was still so young. She hadn't been able to help herself in London, nor in the years after. And she hadn't been able to stop Dan from almost losing his life. That's why she hadn't wanted to get roped into Operation Dan in the first place. Despite her better judgment, she'd allowed herself to be pushed into it. Ry and Julia had believed she was the only one who could help him. And what had she done?