Nobody but Him

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Book: Nobody but Him by Victoria Purman Read Free Book Online
Authors: Victoria Purman
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, Contemporary Women
to work at the pub and Julia had scrubbed herself into near hysteria. She had to get out, stretch her legs and breathe the sea air. She strangely needed to get a little bit of Middle Point back inside her, pumping through her veins, grounding her to this juncture in her life. It seemed a safe time to head across the road and over the dunes to the sand, seeing as the Handsome Jerk clearly sprang out of bed at the crack of dawn for his exercise. She could walk the beach unseen and unnoticed, which was exactly what she needed.
    The beach was blustery and bleak, with great grey clouds hovering low,threatening rain in the distance. It was so windy even the seagulls seemed reluctant to fly, huddled instead in clumps on the beach, their feathers fluffing in the force of the wind. The tide was high, leaving only a few metres of sand between the waves and the dunes, and Julia stepped up her stride, stomping over the clumps of seaweed and seagrass, dodging the remains of dead fish and driftwood with a physical resolve as well as an emotional one.
    Although Middle Point had grown and changed so much that it was almost unrecognisable, the beach — her beach — was still the same. And thank God for that, she thought. The dunes, covered with green and grey coastal shrubs, hunkered low and tight against the wind and the waves and, in the distance, a few hundred metres up the beach, the rocks of Middle Point sat scattered in the shallows where the coastline jutted into the ocean. The waves had never stopped crashing onto the outcrop, continued ceaselessly today as they had forever. The wind had never stopped blowing, so fiercely in winter that trees stood tall at odd angles, never growing fully upright, leaning like Towers of Pisa away from the blustery weather. The gulls still flew, the sand still felt like quicksand if you stepped too close to the water’s edge, and the Point, as still and solid as a sentinel, continued to watch over everyone and everything.
    Something shifted in her heart when she took it all in. She would soon be saying her final goodbyes to it all. Would this be the last time she walked the beach of Middle Point, looked up to that sky, stared at the waves which receded and became part of the Great Southern Ocean? If it was, it would mean she’d never see another summer either, never feel those one-in-a-million days when the sand melted your feet and the sun shone so brightly on the shallows that the water looked like liquid mercury, blindingly bright. Days when the waves were filled with people and the beach hummed with life and music and beach cricket and families and summer, surfers and bodyboarders, retirees walking their dogs in the sunshine, holidaymakers and young lovers.
    Julia squeezed her eyes shut at the memory of her young lover. Two years older than her, so handsome and funny, as crazy about her as she was about him. It was everything first love should be: joyful and thrilling, throbbing with sexual tension and a simmering 24/7 desire. Lots of sex and promises and forevers. But it hadn’t been enough — for her.
    She stopped, glanced around, wondering if they were still there, some part of her hoping they weren’t. Three stately Norfolk Island pines in a clump behind the dunes marked the spot they used to meet. The place where Ry had told her he loved her, where they’d made love the first time. Three Pines, they’d named it. Their secret place. Julia felt hot and cold in waves and a headache began to throb to life in her forehead. She was standing right there, in almost the same spot, give or take fifteen years and a few million grains of sand.
    Julia turned her gaze back to the ocean, away from the memory, and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. The cold wind always made her nose run and chapped her lips. Maybe it was time to turn back and head home. She changed direction and began navigating the narrow beach back to her mother’s house.
    A tall blonde man was striding towards her.
    She’d

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