Indiscreet by Nicole French

14

We practically tumbled down the stairs, fumbling at each other’s clothes as we clattered past the house, onto the deck, down the second set of stairs, and toward the dock. We were like a tornado, barely even conscious of where we were going until we were almost falling over the edge.

“Whoa—” Will chuckled as he caught my waist, keeping me from toppling into the lake. The sound held me still. Will so rarely laughed––even now, I didn’t think I had ever heard him completely fall apart in joy. Honestly, he’d only really laughed once, and that was when he was so upset, there was nothing else to do.

It reminded me of so many things I had never seen him do—mostly related to being free.

I stepped back. We were both breathing hard, our chests heaving, bodies poised to pounce. Will grinned, his teeth flashing like the stars flickering above. Then he caught my hand, and I watched, a little reluctantly, as that carefree grin disappeared, swallowed by something much more intense.

“Lily.”

The word echoed off the water. I swallowed thickly. Will reached up and wiped a bit of sweat that had condensed on his brow. His open shirt fluttered in the breeze, and the smooth contours of his chest and abs flexed slightly in the moonlight—row upon row of tight, corded muscle that had only become that much more refined with the last few weeks of intense training.

I felt ashamed. He might have looked a little different. Smoother. Sleeker. But he was still mine. Still my Will. And suddenly, I couldn’t have cared less where we were. We were surrounded by the night, and the lake was quiet. And I needed to feel that connection, that one that spoke to me deep in my bones, before he left again.

“Will,” I whispered.

And like sparks caught to a flame, we lunged at each other all over again. And fell into the water with a loud splash.

“Ahhh!” Will cried as he resurfaced.

“Shit!” I wiped water and hair out of my eyes.

We found each other again across the glimmering ripples.

“This way,” I said, my voice nearly getting lost as I bobbed beneath the surface.

Will bit his lips as he tread, clearly wanting to grab at me all over again. But instead, he nodded.

He followed me, tickling my feet as I swam around the point to a slightly more secluded area, out of sight from the house. I guided us toward the rock—Moon Rock, my favorite spot on the entire property. I placed my palms on the flat slab and hoisted myself up. Seconds later, we were peeling off our wet shoes and clothes until we lay side by side, stretched out on the still warm granite in nothing but our underwear, looking at the stars. Will’s long body glistened. The starlight bounced off the drops of water still clinging to his skin.

“I don’t want to go back,” he murmured.

I shivered. I didn’t want him to go either, but I knew he had to. We both had to bear the next few months so Will could start his life free—or as free as he could ever be.

He took my hand, and for a moment, we listened to our breaths while blinking up at the quiet night sky.

“Lil.” Will pulled me to him, uncompromising and strong. Full of the intention I needed. “No more running away now.”

And then he kissed me. Not with the fury he had on the stairs or the bumbling need of the dock, but full of a longing that trembled through him from head to toe. His lips were open and insistent, but patient, waiting for me to meet them, kiss for aching kiss. He was afraid, just like I was, that in the short time we had been together, we weren’t enough to make it through everything that wanted to tear us apart.

Fame.

Industry.

Ghosts from both our pasts.

Will’s arm slid under my neck, tugging me close with the crook of his elbow. The other made fast work of my underwear and his, taking away every barrier until our bodies could press together, naked and wet. He rolled over me, caging me in the night. His knees nudged mine apart, and instinctively, my hips arched toward him, though in my mind, more alarm bells went off.

“Will,” I whispered in between kisses that grew increasingly rough. It was becoming harder and harder to think.

“Shhh,” he said. “I need this, baby. We need this.”

The tip of him slipped inside me. Still I was ready for him, ready and dying.

“Oh my God, Will.” I yanked on his hair, forcing him to look at me.

His full mouth fell open, panting slightly.

“Someone might see us!” I said in a loud whisper that could have been heard anywhere.

“They can’t see you, Lil. I’m covering you up.”

And it was true. Will was so much bigger, so much taller than me, that any onlooker would see my bare legs, and that would be it.

But that was only me.

“They can see you, though,” I said. “They can see all of you out here.”

Will frowned and shook his head. “Let them see,” he growled. “Let them watch if that’s what they want.”

His mouth closed over mine, and he shoved inside me fully, seating himself with one long, hard thrust. My spine arched toward the glittering sky, pushing my entire body up along with my spirit, and my cries flew upward in some kind of strange, primeval call to the heavens.

“Will!” I screamed, uncaring that half the lake could hear me if they opened their windows to listen.

My body shook around him, but he didn’t relent, driving forward, harder, faster, tasting, licking, savoring my mouth, neck, collarbone, breasts, as he thrust, again and again, with a punishing pace that drove every worry, every fear from my poor, helpless mind.

His hands cupped my face, thumbs stroking lightly across my cheeks.

“God,” he whispered, eyes full of love as he stroked forward again, and again. “How do you do it?”

I swallowed. “Do what?”

Thrust. Pull. Thrust again.

“Be the air I need and take my breath away all at once.”

I swallowed, and then inhaled deeply, like his words robbed my own ability to breathe. My hands slipped around his neck and folded together, pulling him down so his lips hovered over mine.

Will paused, our only movement the slight pulsing of his considerable length. For a moment, we held each other, naked in the moonlight. The whole of the world could look down on us if they liked, but like him, I no longer cared. They could have us as long as we could be together.

His lips touched mine gently, pulling my bottom lip, then the top between his teeth before slipping his tongue around mine as he began to move once more. I opened even more, spreading my legs, my heart, my soul to his merciless drive. It was like the rest of me knew that despite his size and intrusion, Will belonged. That being together, bodies mingled, meant we were home.

“Lil.” His breath grew ragged as his hips found a more insistent rhythm. “Do you feel that, baby? Do you feel everything that passes between us?”

I knew. I did. I arched closer, willing him to find the deepest parts of me and plant himself within them. The truth was, all my anger, all my frustration, had only been rooted in the fact that without him, I was incomplete. In such a short time, Will had become essential.

“I’m close,” he said, his voice guttural as he pressed his face into my neck. “P-please. Oh fuck, Lily, I can’t hold it back—”

I grasped his face, held it still and close to mine.

“Then don’t,” I whispered. “Let it go.”

And as I kissed him, he did. A tortured, ruined groan erupted from his throat, and he collapsed over me as every muscle in his beautiful body seized. My legs wrapped around his waist, squeezing him closer, and at the end, as he gave one last push, my body finally joined him. There in the dark, under the stars and the eyes of the whole world, the friction and heat and utter angst of the moment became too much to overcome. So I didn’t. I let go too.

* * *

Slowly,once we were able to pick ourselves back up, we stumbled back to my shack, grinning like fools as we hung our sopping clothes up on the clothesline and fell into bed together. It was cool and empty—I hadn’t slept there for several days, a fact Will noticed when he saw none of my belongings.

He turned to me, unfazed by his nakedness as he stretched his body and yawned. “You’ve been staying at my house a lot.”

It wasn’t a question.

I shrugged as I turned out the light. “Sometimes. You knew that, though.”

“I did.” He rolled me back to face him. “I like it.”

I relaxed and nuzzled into him. “Good.”

We lay there together, breathing. I knew I should go to sleep—I had another long day tomorrow at the inn, and I needed to go to the Goodwill to get some furniture for the outer cottages. But my eyes stayed open as I sucked up the last few drops of Will’s presence.

Will checked his watch. “I have about three hours, but the plane needs to take off by one if I’m going to get to the set at five.”

He was going to have to leave in a few more hours, and I had never wanted him to stay more.

“There isn’t a single part of you that’s enjoying this at all?” I wondered.

He sighed. And there was a very long pause. My heart sank.

“There is,” he admitted. “But it’s—it’s not the part you think.”

I didn’t say anything. I wanted him to talk, but I knew it had to come from him.

“The attention, the costumes, the maintenance…” Will drifted off, gesturing up and down his body irritably. “Look at me. I look like a fucking mannequin.”

I giggled into his chest. Now that he pointed it out, there was a distinct lack of hair there. Will had never been particularly furry, but it was a little odd to see absolutely nothing.

“It’s not that bad,” I said.

“They waxed my chest, Maggie. I don’t even want you to see me on set, when I have ten tons of makeup on. You’d probably mistake me for a Ken Doll.”

“A Ken Doll? Really? Even with all that equipment you’re packing? I’d at least upgrade you to GI-Joe.”

Will snorted, but I could tell it was with pleasure.

“Well, maybe not Ken,” he said. “He-Man. Maybe a Power Ranger. That’s better.”

“Much,” I said. “You’ll have your own action figure soon anyway, won’t you?”

I was joking, but by the way his chest sank, I could tell my words rang true. And not with particularly good news.

“That’s what I mean, though,” he said. “That shit. It’s so fake, Lil. They gotta primp me and style me and make me look…like this. So a bunch of people in China can make shitty toys for rich American kids who will look at me on screen and want to be just like an illusion that doesn’t exist. And they’ll sell that illusion to a hundred different audiences in a hundred different ways. Fuck…” He rubbed his face. “It’s fucking chaos, is what it is. A web of goddamn lies.”

We fell silent again until his heart rate calmed. Will brushed his fingertips over my shoulders meditatively, as if the motion soothed him.

“But…” I was still waiting for the part where he said what he liked.

He remained quiet for another minute or so.

“But…” he repeated. “It’s…it’s hard to explain.”

“Try.” I pressed his chest. He wasn’t getting away with this.

“It’s like…okay, so earlier this week, I had this monologue. This script is corny, typical superhero writing, you know? But it’s not all bad. And I had to do one of the big scenes, an emotional one, where I tell the girl—”

“Amelia,” I put in, ignoring the twinge in my chest at the name.

Will squeezed my shoulder. “Amy. Yeah. Well. Do you really want to hear this?”

I nodded. “I do. Keep going.”

Will sighed. “Okay, so, I’m doing the scene. And in the middle of it, finally, I get totally caught up in the words. Not like I felt the way the character did, but I felt, I don’t know, the real emotion the writers themselves had to invest in the scene to make it work. A great script does that all the way through, but it can still happen with the worst of them. Put you in someone else’s mind. Make them feel exactly what they feel. And it’s…it’s addictive. Electric.”

I burrowed into his chest. “I get that,” I murmured. “It’s the same way I feel when I hear a great piece of music.”

Will hummed, gently stroking up and down my back. “I wish you could be there. I wish you could see it.”

I wondered if Theo would be there. If he would show up now that he wasn’t required to stay away from me, Will’s contract be damned.

“Lil, what is it?” Will’s uncanny ability to read my state of mind appeared yet again.

I sighed and rolled onto my back. “The hearing. It was today.”

His response was immediate as he popped up onto his forearm so he could look down at me directly. “Shit, that’s right. Dammit, I should have remembered. What happened?”

My face must have shadowed, because immediately, Will frowned. “What? What is it?”

I pulled my sheet tightly up around my chest, refusing to look at him. “It was…everything…e-everything was overturned.”

“What?”

I rose to get dressed. For some reason, I didn’t want to have this conversation naked. “It was the dinner in New York. The one with his dad. The fact that I was willing to sit down with him and didn’t leave or call the police or anything. They took it to mean I was no longer scared that he was a credible threat, and the judge overturned the restraining order and the injunction.”

I finished pulling on a t-shirt and a pair of underwear, then plopped down at the foot of the bed. I’d managed not to think about it all day. Will came to stand in front of me in his birthday suit, completely oblivious to the fact that looking at him like that was more than a little distracting.

But before I could reach out and distract him back, my cell phone lit up on the nightstand with a message.

Thanks for the dinner, Flower. It meant more than you’ll ever know.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, I began to shake.

Will picked up the phone and stared at it for a long time, the blue screen casting a ghostly glow across his face.

“This is from him?” he asked after a few minutes.

I nodded. “Y-yes.”

“Has he been texting or calling at any other times?”

I shook my head. “N-not since the triathlon, no.”

Will pulled his upper lip between his teeth and closed his eyes, like he was searching for patience with a small child. Then, without speaking, he walked outside and hurled the phone as hard as he could against the boulder outside my front door.

“Hey!” I cried out, jumping to the door.

“I’ll buy you a new one,” he cut back. “With a new number too.”

He pushed by me into the shack, then snatched his underwear off the floor and shoved them back on before he grabbed my empty duffel in the corner and started throwing whatever small belongings he saw into it.

“Will, what are you doing?”

“Packing.”

“Why?”

He stopped. “Maggie, you can’t possibly think it’s safe for you to stay here with that maniac stalking you. You’re coming with me to LA.”

“What?” I sighed and flopped down on the bed. “Will, it’s fine. It was just a text.”

He looked at me like I was missing a bunch of brain cells. “Baby, I saw the look on your face when you thought he was in that crowd waiting for you. When you saw him sitting at the table. And don’t forget, Lil, I’ve been in your shoes. It’s never just a text when it comes to a fucking stalker. Especially one who did what he did.”

“Will, I can’t leave my mom here again. Look at what happened when I was gone!”

“That’s not what I’m suggesting.”

“What, then?”

Will stopped, duffel in hand. “Where’s Ellie tonight, Lil?”

I swallowed. “You know where she is.”

“It’s getting worse, isn’t it? Every time I ask you that, you say the same thing. Curly’s. Some bar. Out with her friends. She’s a fifty-something woman who lives like she’s twenty-one. What the hell is that?”

I punched lightly into a small throw pillow I held in my lap. “I know that. I know that, okay? I know that she’s getting worse.”

It was the first time I had admitted it out loud. Whenever Lucas gave me knowing looks or other people mentioned seeing my mom at a bar, I would only shrug, act like it was nothing. But with Will, I couldn’t keep secrets like that.

“Did you tell her about the video?”

My hands stopped. “Not yet.”

“Lily, why?”

Will tipped my chin up so he could look at my face. I pulled it away and stared at the pillow in my lap.

“Maggie, she needs to know. Theo could release that thing at any time. She needs to be prepared. She needs to know what her disease is going to do to her. To you.”

I flopped back into my pillow. “So, what are you suggesting? Some kind of intervention?”

Will pressed his lips together. “Call it that if you want. If watching yourself give your daughter’s rapist a BJ isn’t a wake-up call, I don’t know what is, Lil. And if she doesn’t want to change after that…I don’t know, Maggie. Maybe it’s time to let her go.”

That was the difference between us. Will had long ago reached a point in his life where he had no problem giving up on the people who truly disappointed him. Which, for him, was many. I was the opposite—I’d only had one. And I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to write off my mother.

But eventually, I nodded. This was the only path I could see forward. For me. Or for her.

Will watched me process his thoughts for a bit, then looked at his watch and tapped the screen. Immediately, a gruff, male voice came through.

“Will. You almost ready?”

“Hey, Gar. Change of plans. I’m staying here tonight. Will you guys stay in the truck, or do you want to set up a camp down here?”

I listened to him jockey for a minute with his bodyguards, who clearly did not want him staying anywhere other than a plane back to LA, but in the end, they came to an agreement, and Will turned to me with a smile.

“Now it’s settled,” he said. “Tomorrow, we intervene, and then we talk LA.” He pulled me back to the bed and into his arms. “Tomorrow, Lil, tomorrow. We figure it out. Together.”