Indiscreet by Nicole French

31

It had been a long time since the residents of Newman Lake had heard a siren anywhere close to the water. Sure, cops showed up from time to time, but usually for domestic disputes. Maybe a boat crash or two. They usually parked silently outside the houses nestled in the trees and allowed people the ability to keep secrets as best they could.

Still, it didn’t take long for word to get out that the Newman Lake sheriff had sent an ambulance and three deputies to our house, their red and blue lights blinking through the trees at the top of the hill. It took hours while they collected Theo’s body; even longer when Calliope, Benny, Will, and I were all driven to the station in the back of the squad cars to give statements, followed by Hakeem in the SUV. But in the end, everyone was allowed to leave. There were three witnesses who could verify what had happened that night, not to mention the simple fact that I had been stalked here by a man previously convicted of raping me. No one was going to argue that Will shouldn’t have defended me, especially not after the police took photos of the bruises and scrapes left all over my body. Theo and I both had remnants of each other’s DNA under our fingernails, evidence of the fight. That he had drowned after losing consciousness was just an unfortunate side effect, or so Will said. And the deputies agreed. The pang in my stomach said otherwise.

He was pronounced dead at the scene. His father was notified, and we listened from the other side of the station as Max del Conte screamed through the tinny speakers of the deputy’s desk phone. He threatened again and again to charge someone, anyone for murder or worse. Privately, Benny said we needed to get a lawyer, and quickly, but no one seemed that alarmed by the threats. Theo del Conte was a known felon who had also broken the terms of his parole by crossing state lines without permission. He had a long history of harassing me, and I had the documentation to prove it. My restraining order might have been overturned, but in the end, the only person who had killed Theo del Conte was himself.

By the time Hakeem parked at the top of the hill leading down to my house, the sun had already slipped past the trees, and the sky was the dusk color of lavender fields in spring. Benny and Calliope got out quickly.

“We’ll go down to the house, make sure everyone is cleared out for the night,” Calliope said, and they left.

Will came around to my side of the vehicle. We’d been kept mostly apart while the police had conducted their interviews. And there were a lot of things for us to say.

He opened my door to help me out, but stopped when I placed a hand on his wrist.

“We need to talk,” I said softly. I didn’t want to do it down at the house, where prying eyes would track our every move.

Will shook his head, concerned only with shuffling me out of the back of the car. “Later,” he said. “We need to get you inside. That ankle…” He pointed at my swollen limb, which had been twisted in the scuffle on Moon Rock.

“But, Will—”

His hand floated over my shoulder, around my hip, and paused over my stomach, covering the almost flat expanse with his wide palm. He stared at the spot for a long moment.

“You are not allowed to feel bad about what happened,” Will said quietly.

I shook my head. “But—”

“No,” he said vehemently. “Maggie, he was going to—if I hadn’t—he wanted to—” He dropped his head, as if the force of the unfinished statements was too much to handle, then squatted down and laid the side of his face on my belly. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “So fucking sorry I wasn’t there earlier. But I won’t feel bad for protecting you. The both of you.”

Without thinking, I threaded my fingers into his hair, stroking the soft waves while Will’s eyes squeezed tightly shut.

“But you did come,” I said. “And if you hadn’t, I’d be—”

“Don’t say it—”

“Dead.”

The word hung in the air for a few more seconds, like a gong that had been rung.

Will stood up, and for the first time I noticed a few tiny creases at the sides of his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept for days.

“I love you so fucking much,” he said, his voice ragged and torn. “If anything had happened to you, to…” He gestured toward my stomach. “I swear to God, Maggie, I would have followed you right to the grave.”

I blinked, but my body trembled. A breeze shook the trees above us, and a few pine needles flew down, landing on Will’s shoulders and my dress.

I brushed them off. “Come on,” I said weakly. “Let’s go down.”

I slid from the car only to find that my ankle was still too bad to walk on.

“Dammit,” I muttered as I tried and failed to stand up again.

“Your ankle?” His smile was crooked, and I loved and hated how it tugged at my heart the same way it tugged at his cheek.

Shaking, I nodded my head. “Y-yeah.”

Suddenly, I was swept up into Will’s very strong, very solid arms. My hands wrapped naturally around his shoulders as he cradled me close.

But I couldn’t look at him still. I knew—I knew—that he was here in part to make amends, along with the traumas of the evening, but there were still so many things that I wasn’t sure how to fix. I didn’t want to spend my life hiding. And I didn’t want to hide my child either.

“I can walk,” I said.

He snorted and carried me toward the path that led to the house.

“Let me help you home,” he said quietly. But instead of starting the walk around the property to the house, he stopped before the stairs and sat down on another big rock, keeping me securely in his lap.

“Will—” I started to move, but he just squeezed me to him tighter.

“Please,” he said. “Give me a second before I have to face the crowds again.” I watched his face, which was etched with frustration.

“Will,” I tried again.

It was too far away to see, but I could hear the clamor of people. Even after sitting at the police station, talking about Theo’s death for hours, I still had a reception to finish, apparently. A mother to mourn. A house to let. A day that would never end.

But Will only held me tighter, keeping me securely on his lap, and pressed his nose into my hair.

“I didn’t do it,” he said finally. “I didn’t take anything at that party, Lil.”

“I know.” He had been telling me that for hours, but generally, I’d been too shell-shocked to respond. “But you were on something.”

He blinked, surprised. “How do you know that?”

I shook my tired head. “Theo actually fessed up to it. He and Amelia apparently were working together. She slipped some Rohypnol in your drink. Amelia and Tricia were supposed to keep you occupied while Theo, um—”

“Son of a bitch,” Will gritted out. “That fucking snake roofied me?”

“Amelia or your mother?”

“Both.” He shook his head. “Time to call another lawyer.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what that will do without any kind of evidence. Right now it would be my word against theirs. Theo’s g-gone.” It was still hard to believe. I closed my eyes, and the vision of his body, floating face-down in the water, immediately appeared. I knew it would be a long time before I’d ever be rid of it.

“Yeah, well, there are other ways to blacklist someone in that town,” Will said darkly to the trees. “Privilege of being Hollywood’s prodigal son.”

“No, don’t.”

I laid a hand on his arm. Despite the fact that I was sitting in his lap, it was the first time I had voluntarily touched him. Will looked at my hand for a moment, his gaze softening before it met mine.

“Why?” he asked. “You can’t expect me to do nothing here, Lil.”

“Will, you just—” I didn’t want to say it. But I had to.

“Killed a man.” His voice was tight, but matter-of-fact.

I exhaled. “You punched him. He fell. You were protecting—”

“The love of my life and my child.”

I gulped. “Well, y-yes. But this would be different. Don’t—don’t ruin Amelia’s life out of vengeance. Don’t attack your own mother. It will eat you up inside. Will, I think you have to learn to forgive.”

He looked at me for a long time. “We’ll see.”

“Will, please.”

“Maggie, these people conspired to keep us apart. To ruin you, to ruin what we have. Don’t tell me to forgive what’s fucking unforgivable.”

In the end, I let it go, in part because I understood it. Underneath my shock, there was a small ball of fire that burned when I considered what all had been done to us. If I was asking Will to forgive, I’d need to do that myself. And if I was being honest, I wasn’t sure I could.

We sat there for several more minutes. It was clear that neither of us wanted to return to the land of people. There would be more questions, more strangers. The prospect of facing a room full of people hanging around mostly for the gossip potential was disheartening, to say the least.

Particularly considering what still lay between Will and me.

He placed a hand over my stomach. He’d been doing that all afternoon.

“Please,” he whispered. “Baby, please let me back in.”

The uncut pain lacing his voice broke me all over again.

“You…you said you didn’t want to be a father,” I whimpered into his shoulder. “And then, Will, I was standing in that church, and you blocked me out. You wouldn’t let me in!”

“Maggie, I’m so sorry for that. More than you know. But, baby, you walked away. You keep walking away. You left LA knowing that you were pregnant, didn’t you?”

I sniffled. He was right, and we both knew it.

“I understand why,” he said as his hand came up to stroke my back. “But…fuck, Lil. It hurts. It really, really hurts.”

“And what would you have done?” I asked. “Every time things get a little bit crazy, you check out. You run away too, Will. So much more than me. First it was literally running, and then it turned to liquor. Even if Amelia and your mom hadn’t slipped you a pill, can you honestly say you hadn’t thought about it? I watched you look for the escape, and like you said, it hurts.” I shook my head, allowing my curls to fall around my face. “Will, I grew up with a parent who wasn’t ever really there for me. I was scared, all the time, because the person who was supposed to be there no matter what so often wasn’t, whether it was because sh-she was literally missing or was so far d-down the bottle she might as well have been gone. I won’t do that to my child—I won’t!”

“And you won’t have to!” Swiftly, Will pulled my face to his, cupping my cheek so I was forced to see his wild, anxious eyes.

“Will, I just lost a parent to addiction.” My voice choked, and now tears fell freely. “I…I can’t deal with losing you too. We can’t deal with losing you too.”

“Lil, you’re never going to lose me.” He pushed my hair away from my face, pressing his lips up and down my cheeks, all around my eyes. Kissing away the tears. “Do you hear me?” he whispered fiercely. “It doesn’t matter how many times you try to push me away, Lily pad. You can run all you want, but I’m done with it. The first thing I did when you left LA was find a therapist and sign up for AA.”

I hiccuped. “You did?”

Will nodded. “I’m done running, Lil. I won’t run to the bottle. Not to pills. And not to the road. And, Lily pad, I will always come back for you. You, and one day, this little person in here––I. Belong. To. You.” He pulled my face back so he could focus all of his energy on me. So I could see the depth of us in those big green eyes. “All I am. All I’ll ever be. All of it belongs to you.”

His eyes drifted down, like he wanted to kiss me, but he held still, held me still, until I was ready to respond.

One last time, I wondered if I should say no. My soul was torn apart by the people in my life who I’d loved. Theo. My mother. Here stood a man who had torn it up more than most, who had the power to ruin me in every way possible if he so chose. If I stayed and he left me again, I’d never recover. Maybe I wouldn’t ever recover now as it was.

But Will’s gaze was unwavering, and the currents of love and devotion I saw there matched the intensity of his words. He was mine, he said. And in my heart, I knew I belonged to him as well.

There was never really a choice to leave. Not when it came to him.

“Okay.” My voice, my breath, everything shook with the emotion that had been bubbling inside me all day.

“Okay?” The hands on my face softened, and he brushed my cheekbones lightly with his thumbs.

I closed my eyes for a moment, overcome. But when I opened them, he was still there. Still watching. Still waiting.

“Kiss me, Will,” I whispered. “Kiss me, and don’t stop.”

His green eyes popped open, hungry. Maybe even starving.

“Never,” he said before his lips crashed into mine.

Kiss wasn’t strong enough to describe it. Will kept me on his lap, one hand cupping my face, the other around my waist while he devoured me, tasted me, drank from me like an oasis spring, and he quenched both our thirsty, barren souls.

Because I was equally parched. I grabbed at his hair, pulling him closer, urging his lips to my neck, my chin, my ears, my chest. Our tongues grappled, bodies smashed in a desire to get closer, so much closer than we could ever really achieve. Sob after sob erupted from my throat each time I broke for breath, but Will swallowed them all, taking my pain and burying it with everyone else we’d lost. Replacing it with his love and devotion in every touch of his lips.

“Let’s—go—down—” I could barely get out the words as his mouth trailed down my neck. Maybe it was being pregnant, but my skin tingled everywhere—all I wanted to do was feel that healing touch all over. I wanted to shed my clothes like I wanted to shed the past.

“Yessss.” Will growled against my neck, then, somewhat reluctantly, pulled away so he could help me stand back up. “Let’s go.”

But before we could start the rest of the way down, Will’s phone buzzed in his pocket. As he read the incoming text, his face whitened.

“What?” I asked, pressing a hand on his chest. “What is it?” How much more could we take?

He swallowed heavily. “It’s Benny. I—the press. They’re here.” Will closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “They’re all around your house, apparently.” He peered around, and already, I imagined photographers hiding in the brush and trees that covered the hill. A prickle ran down my arms. Will’s dread was palpable, especially in the heartbeat that quickened under my palm.

“It’s okay,” I said, already resigned. “Go. I’ll—I’ll manage it on my own. Callie’s probably already called the police, and they’ll clear the property in no time. You can go.”

There was still time. He could run back up to the road where Hakeem was still parked, escape the chaos that awaited both of us downstairs. Play another shell game, or even fly back to LA, virtually undetected. Without Will there, the photographers would lose interest quickly, and I’d resume the life I’d planned. Alone.

Ignoring my dread at the thought of Will leaving yet again, I tried to stand up, stumbling slightly on my bad ankle. But before I could take another step, I was swept up once more, with one of Will’s strong arms under my knees, the other supporting my back.

“Will—” I protested, but was immediately cut off with a kiss. It started out closed-mouthed, intent, meant mostly to cut off my arguments against his sudden movement. But predictably, it turned into something more, and he and I both poured out the pain, the sorrow, the anger, the confusion of the last few weeks into one kiss. By the time it was over, tears were streaming down my face, and when I pulled back, more than a few trickles fell from his.

He pressed his face against mine with closed eyes. The simple touch, skin to skin, warmed me throughout.

“Walk through fire, remember?” he whispered. “I’m not going to let you face the flames alone, Lil. Never again.”

I opened my mouth, ready to tell him it was okay. That he could go. That I could manage it all on my own.

But I couldn’t. And so, as he descended the seventy-three stairs to the deck that contained the biggest crowd of people this property had ever seen, I only buried my face in his neck. I took solace in the sweet, fresh scent of him, the solid grip of his hands under my limbs, each one of his steps that were more confident than the last.

We were spotted about halfway down and were immediately swarmed by cameras. Hakeem came jogging from the car—likely alerted by Benny once he realized his friend was entering the fray. The big man jumped ahead and cut a path for us the rest of the way down, pushing away photographers, reporters, neighbors, and anyone else who had appeared on my mother’s property.

I shut my eyes as flashes went off, though the questions penetrated nonetheless. Will walked stolidly, his head tucked, but shoulders straight as the onslaught began.

“Fitz!”

‘Maggie!”

“Where have you been?”

“Where’s Amelia?”

“Is it true she broke you up?”

“Maggie, are you hurt?”

On and on the questions, flashes, pushing and prodding as we made our final descent to the deck, where so many other people stood waiting. Lucas. Linda. Katie. Lindsay. Don. And many others I recognized from the funeral and growing up in a small town.

The paparazzi continued to shout.

“Is your mother really dead?”

“Did you kill Theo del Conte?”

“Maggie, were you and your mother running a brothel?”

“Was Theo del Conte a client?”

“Are you an alcoholic too?”

As we followed Hakeem’s hulking form toward the sliding glass entrance, the questions blended with the murmurs of the neighbors.

“Pathetic.”

“Look at her—what do you think they’re about to do?”

“I bet she’s trashed.”

“Like mother, like daughter.”

It was on the last one that Will stopped right in front of the now open door.

“Goddammit,” he muttered, shaking his head.

“Will, don’t—” I began, but he had already turned around and was setting me gently on the deck in front of him. I balanced on one foot as he wrapped his arms around my shoulders, caging me against his body. Protecting me.

“Maggie, were you cheating on Fitz with Theo?”

“Did you and Theo have a love child?”

“STOP.” Will’s voice, with its deep baritone and natural charisma that could take charge of any room he wanted, stilled the crowd immediately. Mouths clamped shut. Heads turned toward the familiar face, the voice that spoke above the rest.

Another round of flashes went off, but Will didn’t blink. He didn’t even move. Instead of shrinking, he stood taller, rendering himself a beacon in the forest.

“I won’t have it,” he said, quiet until someone shouted from the back:

“What’s that, Fitz?”

“It’s Will!” Will barked. “My full name is Fitzwilliam Michael Baker. I have never in my entire life gone by the name Fitz unless it’s in the film credits or by people who don’t fucking know me.”

There was a flurry of flashes, and I noticed more than one cell phone held up in the crowd.

“Will, come on,” I murmured, pulling on his sleeve. What did he think he was going to accomplish here?

“No,” he said brusquely. “They need to hear this.” He turned back to the crowd. “Everyone needs to hear this. So you can all listen the fuck up.”

If it was quiet before, the deck was now completely silent. Quiet enough that I could hear the rustle of the osprey flying through the trees to catch their dinner in the lake. Quiet enough that the wind swishing through the willow branches floated across the crowd. Quiet enough that the lake, lapping peacefully at the water’s edge, was louder than my own breath.

“You see this woman?” Will asked as he pulled me back against him. “Every day I have known her, she’s been the kind of person who will do more for others than she will for herself. She takes everyone’s complaints, everyone’s baggage, and bears them like a cross. She gave up a career in music for people she loved, despite the fact that she’s one of the most talented people in the world. She is more than anyone else in this life.”

I blushed as several eyes flickered to me. But Will didn’t stop there.

“This is someone who spent most of her life trying to heal people who didn’t want to be healed. Maybe couldn’t be healed. She buried one of those people today and lost another and all you can do is stand here and volley idiotic questions that question her character? Well, fuck you. All of you. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

“But, Fitz—I mean, Will—” began one of the reporters in the back, starting off yet another round of flashes.

“But nothing!” Will roared. “I swear to God, if I hear one more person—one more fucking person—treat her with anything less than respect, you’re going to have to answer to me. And I am not a particularly nice guy. Especially when it come to people mistreating the one person that makes life worth living when fucking vultures like you suck all the joy out of it. You think I’m moody now? Erratic? A loose cannon? You haven’t seen anything compared to what I’ll become if I hear even a whisperthat this woman is anything less than perfect.”

Then Will turned his head slowly, casting a harsh eye across the entire group.

“Lindsay?” he asked with a voice like a drill as he caught the blonde girl standing near the side, trying and failing to hide behind Lucas, who had been watching the proceedings with a somewhat satisfied look.

Lindsay shied, but when Will didn’t look away and many others also turned to find her, she bobbed her head.

“Yeah,” she said. “Of-of course.”

“Ladies?” Will turned again toward the cluster of women near the front. I recognized them from the church—women who had always enjoyed talking about Mama behind her back, and, by extension, me.

“Oh, um, yes, sorry,” one of them answered quickly, and the others murmured their agreement.

Will looked around the crowd, picking out faces one by one, reporters, paparazzi, neighbors—anyone he thought had said a disparaging comment or something similar. Each one cowered under the force of his gaze.

“We good?” Will asked the crowd, watching to make sure that everyone nodded.

From up the hill, there was the sound of a siren—again breaking the silence of the strange night. Will turned back to his audience, his lips pulled to one side in a satisfied smirk.

“Good,” he said. “So now you can let us mourn in peace. That up there is our backup, and anyone left on this property after the next ten minutes without our permission is going to get arrested for trespassing.” He leveled one last glare on the crowd, and several people immediately shuffled toward the stairs. “Now get the hell out.”