Indiscreet by Nicole French
3
Twenty minutes later, I found myself in an elevator of a building somewhere in Midtown Manhattan. It was one of the high-rises that peered over the city from beside the West Side Highway. The elevator soared up the side of the building, and through the glass wall I watched as the dank streets of Manhattan fell away, leaving me alone with the sky. And Will.
The elevator stopped on the top floor and opened into a spacious penthouse apartment that was almost entirely chrome and white. I was almost scared to walk inside, worried that my Converse might track dirt onto the immaculate floors.
Will, however, stomped in like he didn’t look like Pig Pen. It took him until he was on the other side of the massive living room to realize I hadn’t immediately followed. He turned around.
“Is—is this yours?” I stammered from my spot in the foyer.
It was so unlike the Will I knew. His house on Newman Lake was nice, sure, but it wasn’t terribly big or anything, and everything in it, from the furniture to the clothes to the floors, while of good quality, was definitely used regularly. This place, on the other hand, between its gleaming parquet floors, the all-white furniture, walls, cabinets, and counters, and the bright metal fixtures that had nary a fingerprint, looked like a showroom, not someone’s actual apartment.
“Oh,” Will said, clearly reading my face. “No. It’s Benny’s place, not mine.” He wrinkled his long, straight nose. “He’s barely here. Otherwise, I don’t know how he could live in such a damn refrigerator.”
I don’t know why, but I did find it soothing that Will didn’t like the cold, sleek interior. The apartment was all angles and shiny surfaces. I was afraid even touching the couch would leave a mark.
“Come on,” Will said, jerking his head to the right. “The stairs are this way.”
I followed him past a row of closed doors until we reached a spiral staircase at the end, which we climbed up to the top of the world.
Well, not really. But this was one of the tallest buildings in this part of Manhattan, and from its roof we had a panoramic view of the entire city, the Hudson River below us, across the water to New Jersey, and beyond.
Benny had filled the roof with furniture, a wet bar, even a pool in one corner—all of it meant to host an army of people. But right now, it was only Will and me, sharing no walls in a city where everyone shared at least one. We were out of sight—without even a building close enough to house telephoto lenses from across the street. We were truly alone.
Will strode to the edge of the deck and braced himself against the iron guardrail, making his shoulders and back flex ostentatiously through his t-shirt. He stood at the edge of the building for a long time, surveying the city like a king while the wind whipped strands of hair loose from its messy knot.
But I was too upset to ogle. I was angry, and so was he. And more than that, he looked…tortured. His eyes closed tightly, and a few small lines appeared across his forehead. It was everything I could do not to reach out and smooth them away.
Instead, I sank down into one of the couches assembled around an unlit fire pit. Will stayed at the railing for another minute or two, then stood back up. When he located me, he crossed to the couch and stood in front of me, giving me a good look at his long legs.
“Can I sit next to you, or will you run again?”
There was no trace of resentment in the question. He was asking, honestly. My resolve melted a bit.
“Sit,” I mumbled, scooting over a little, though there was really no need. This couch was almost as big as my bed.
We sat there together in silence. Will had never been the type to volunteer much conversation—he kept things bottled up until they had to come out. Big things. Things like his real name. His real identity.
But for once, I didn’t want to say anything either. I crossed my arms over my chest and concentrated on breathing. Not the fact that I felt so incredibly lost. Or the fact that I had no idea what was going to happen to me tomorrow, or the next day. I focused on breathing. Inhale. Exhale. And again.
“You didn’t let me say sorry.”
When I turned, Will was watching me with an expression that was halfway between curious and apologetic.
“I just want to know why,” I said quietly.
“Why what?”
“Why you didn’t tell me.” The pain of his betrayal zigzagged through my chest, making it hard to breathe again. “I told you everything about me. Everything. All my worst secrets. All the things about me that I’m ashamed of, that I wouldn’t want anyone else to know. About my mom. About Theo—”
My voice broke over the name, and I twisted back to stare at the city skyline. My heart felt like it was breaking, and I couldn’t fix it because it wasn’t currently in my possession. Instead, it belonged to a stranger, to a man I’d truly believed wanted a future with me. Wanted an “us.”
But how could that be, when one half of the equation had never been real from the start?
“Why did you come back to New York?” Will interrupted my spinning thoughts.
I turned. “What?”
“You said you were done with New York for good, Maggie. Why did you come back here?”
I frowned. “Well, to start, I didn’t want my mom and neighbors to get completely overrun by photographers.”
Will nodded, like he knew exactly what I meant. “Sure. But why here?”
I looked away. Somewhere in this city was Theo, fresh out of jail and newly served papers for the hearing. Just the thought of him caused a blade of fear to run straight through me. I could feel his hands on my knees, wrenching them apart as he forced himself between them. I shuddered, curling into myself. He would know I was here. And really, the fact that I hadn’t heard from him yet was possibly more frightening than if I had.
“There was another text,” I admitted. “It was after you—I—after the race. I came back here to report that he was violating his parole, but that was a no-go. My lawyer says I have to wait until the hearing to request a no-contact addition to the restraining order.”
Will started. “What do you mean, violated his parole? Did he do something else besides that?”
“You mean besides showing up at my race?” I wilted. “Apparently he provided an airtight alibi. He was there, though. I saw him. I know I did. But nothing major will come of it.”
Will stared at his hands in his lap for a long time.
“So when it’s done,” he said slowly. “Can we go home?”
I blinked. “What?”
“Home, Lil.” He stood up, like he was ready to jump on a plane this instant. “Back to the lake, where we can work things out.”
“Home?” The words sounded strange, almost alien in my mouth. “You want to go…home? What the hell does that even mean now?”
Will collapsed back down to the couch. “I meant where we can work things out. Away from here and all this craziness.”
“And what makes you think I want to work things out at all?”
Will gulped. “Don’t say that.”
“No, I’m serious.” I stood up and paced the deck. “What home? You mean the place where I’m nothing but drunk Ellie Sharp’s daughter, good for a pick-up and that’s it? Or do you mean your home? The one where you convinced me you were in love with me and forgot to mention, oh, I don’t know, your real fucking identity!”
I was shrieking by the end, and a spray of pigeons flew off one railing as my voice hit fever pitch.
“What was I supposed to do, Lil?”
Will’s voice was even, but shook slightly with a quiet passion—the kind I knew belied much stronger currents running beneath the outward stolid facade. He stretched out his shoulders, then sat back like he was settling in for a long story. Instinctively, I sank back into the cushions of the opposite couch. I was tired, so tired.
“I started working when I was four. Four years old. That’s when my mother booked my first commercial, and it took less than a month for me to become the official spokeschild for some shitty sugared cereal.” Will sighed and pushed a hand through his hair. “I was working eight-hour days before I even had the chance to start kindergarten. I booked a TV series, Bailey’s Life, when most kids are playing Little League.”
I pulled a pillow into my lap and held it to my chest. “I remember that show,” I said. “I was little, but I remember thinking the main character was cute.”
Will’s mouth quirked slightly, but he didn’t reply. He was opening up. I didn’t dare say more for fear he would stop.
“My mom was my manager, working with a bunch of agents and publicists I hated. I had a tutor on set and rotating chaperones or nannies or whatever the fuck you want to call them. And when I wasn’t on set, I was at photo shoots. Movies. Ad spots. Whatever.” He sighed. “I had no siblings, no friends. The closest thing to another kid I knew growing up was my costar, Emily Parker, who played the teenager on the show. But she was actually sixteen when the show started. I was seven. We weren’t exactly playmates.”
I laid my head on the pillow as I listened. I knew all about the show by this point, of course, as well as his explosive film work after it ended. It was one thing to read about it on the internet—scan his extensive filmography, read the list of dates and names and wonder how he could have ever done that in twenty-five short years. But it was another thing completely to hear about the isolation. The strange effect a life like that would have had on a small child who would have probably enjoyed playing Legos as much as anything else.
“I worked on that show for five years,” he continued. “It was filmed in the city, so my family didn’t have to move out of Connecticut, and we continued to stay there when I started getting film work after that, with trips to LA or wherever else filming occurred, of course. But I don’t remember a time when we didn’t have bodyguards. When we didn’t live in a gated house or community of some sort, with the exception of my dad’s old house in Stamford. I don’t even remember being able to play at a public park. With other kids. Ever.”
He continued through the memories, recounting the years when he started to break out, first as a teenage heartthrob on Disney-style comedies that catered to the preteen masses, and later, as he approached adulthood, the more serious films that started to get him legitimate accolades.
I already knew from my internet searches that this was around the time his fame really blew up, with all of the trappings that went with it. Starlet girlfriends. Embarrassing scandals. And accolade after accolade. Intent on torturing myself, I’d even watched several of his movies, enough to know that he was incredibly talented. If he had already been in a place where having bodyguards was a daily necessity, I couldn’t imagine the chaos that went with being crowned Sexiest Man Alive at twenty-two.
Twice he had been mobbed in Central Park and literally had his clothes ripped off his body. His family’s homes were broken into at least four times. He’d pressed charges against three different stalkers—one of them was still serving time for attempted murder after breaking into his apartment and stabbing him.
“Jesus,” I breathed after he told me that. “That’s…terrifying.”
Will brushed his hand over a spot on his side, where I knew a thin scar sliced across his skin, so faint I had barely noticed it.
“That’s putting it lightly.” His hands gripped his pants so hard his knuckles turned white. “I bought a gun after that. But you know what? Having it under my pillow at night made me sleep worse, not better. Something about knowing there was a weapon in such close proximity that could kill somebody. I realized later it was because I thought way too much about using it on myself.”
I pressed a hand to my chest. “You wanted to kill yourself?”
Will pressed his lips together and gave a tight nod. “I—sometimes. Yeah. My life was a trap, Maggie. I had no one. Nothing. I bought this massive property in Vermont to get away from the city, but honestly, up there I was even more alone, even more scared. Because there were always ways people could find me. I couldn’t run away from this.”
He waved a hand in front of his face, toward the obvious changes in his appearance. The hair, the beard, but also his general maturity. He wasn’t the lanky, youthful sex symbol from the magazine covers, having gained at least another twenty or thirty pounds of muscle living on the lake. It made his face rounder, his neck, shoulders, and chest bigger. In the pictures from before, Will had looked like a man who could break your heart with one smile. Now he looked like he could break your bones too.
He exhaled heavily, and his shoulders drooped, like they were carrying some heavy, invisible weight.
“What about…” Did I want to ask this question? Yes, I realized. I had to. “What about your fiancée?”
Will looked up in surprise. “You know about Amelia?”
My skin prickled. “Yes, I know about her. I have access to Google.”
My chest hurt at the memory of the photos of the two of them––an indecently good-looking couple on countless red carpets looking like American royalty. There was one picture in particular, the one where they had attended the Academy Awards the year before he disappeared. Will was nominated for a Best Actor award; she was clearly along for the ride. But the girl hadn’t been interested in letting Will have the spotlight. She’d basically dressed as a live version of the Oscar statue in a glittering gold bodycon gown that matched her hair and her tanned, sun-kissed skin. In his tuxedo, Will looked like 007, and she was his picture-perfect Bond girl. I hated that picture. She was everything that I, with my unruly dark hair and imperfect curves, was not.
There was a funny look on Will’s face, like the idea of me looking him up on the internet physically hurt.
“Don’t believe everything you read,” he said finally.
“Were you not engaged?”
“No, we were,” he said bitterly. “I got down on one knee and everything, gave her a rock the size of Kansas. Is that what you want to hear, Lil? Right under the Hollywood sign, so that when we sold the pictures, we’d be guaranteed a nice chunk of change and Amy would get her pick of designers at the Oscars, not to mention the scripts to follow. I kissed her right in front of all the fans that just happened to be on the trail that day, and everybody clapped, like a goddamn movie.”
His words stabbed. I had seen that picture too. I had printed it out in Calliope’s apartment and stared at his mouth on hers, his hands around her impossibly tiny waist and her stupid foot popped off the ground, for a solid hour. And then I had torn it up into about fifty pieces and threw them all out the window.
Will worried the hem of his shirt between his hands, looking like he wanted to tear it up himself. “We were set up,” he said. “My mother. Benny. Amy’s agent. They put the whole thing together after she requested a date with me. They knew I’d never make a move on anyone. I never had the guts to do anything like that.”
That, at least, was believable. I knew Will enough to know how hard it was for him to trust anyone.
“I never knew…” He paused for a moment while he stared out at the skyline. “Whether it was real. She made me believe it for a while, and I wanted it to be. Enough that when I asked her to marry me, I thought it was my idea. But really, she chose the ring, Maggie. She imagined our life. The first time I asked, it was over dinner in my apartment in New York. Amy had me do it again in the Hills for the photo-op.”
“But you loved her.” I couldn’t help it. There was one element in his story that couldn’t be faked for the press or anything else.
Will looked at me ruefully. “I thought I did,” he said softly. “Until I met you.”
Oh. I couldn’t pretend his words didn’t have an effect. Instead, I looked away as I swiped an errant tear sliding down my cheek. Yeah. Well. I loved him too. That was why this hurt so much.
Will sighed and continued his story.
“And then we had a split, a nice fucking messy one where pictures of me talking to a production assistant were used to make me look like a cheater. Right at the time when Amy was promoting a movie and launching her own awards campaign. That was when I realized it was all for show. And then I really started to spiral.”
I’d heard some of this from him before discovering who he really was. Will had disclosed once that he’d struggled with a drug problem, one loosely related to his former “job” working in the industry. For Benny. I snorted. There was something significantly wrong with that configuration.
Again, Google had filled in the blanks. Inevitably, after the articles detailing his split with Amelia, came the clichéd pictures of a playboy in the throes of a crisis. Stumbling out of nightclubs with his arms around two, sometimes even three women, cigarettes dangling from his perfect lips, skin covered with the sheen of intoxication. He was arrested once for cocaine possession, another time for public drunkenness. Both charges were eventually dropped, and it wasn’t until the night at Irving Plaza, the concert for which I had been the opener for a much larger act—that strange night where our paths had nearly crossed the first time—that his life had really fallen apart.
“I didn’t lie about that,” Will said as he came to when, high and frustrated and losing control of his own life, he’d heard me sing.
According to Will, my voice had been a beacon. The rest of the chaos had faded away, and he had wanted only to find me and meet me. But the crowds—his fame—all got in his way, and Will absolutely lost it. Havoc erupted in a crowded club, one man was trampled, and several others landed in the hospital, including Will’s father when he suffered a heart attack following the news that his son had been arrested…again. Soon after, wracked with guilt and anger, Will crashed his boat on the coast of Maine and abandoned his life of prestige for a four-year journey of isolation. Which, in the end, led him to me.
When he told me that, only a few weeks ago, I’d said I loved him. Now I wondered if it was too good to be true.
“I had to leave,” he said. “I had to get out. And okay, so maybe crashing my boat and disappearing wasn’t the best thing in the world to do, but I didn’t do anything illegal. There aren’t any rules against disappearing and giving a friend power of attorney over your money. There are no laws banning me from crashing my own boat and having it cleaned up after. And nothing says I have to stay in touch with my parents.”
“You really trust Benny that much?” I wondered about that. I didn’t really know the guy, but he seemed like kind of a schmuck with his pocket squares and light-bulb-bright apartment.
“With my life,” Will said. “Literally.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Listen. The last four years at Newman Lake…that was the first time in almost my entire life I didn’t have a gate and a guard, Maggie. That I didn’t have to live inside a cage.”
“You still lived in a cage,” I replied. “You just made it yourself.”
“I had no security. No one watching me. I was lonely, yeah, but I made a place where I belong. With you. Please, Maggie. I want to go home. I want to go back to where we both belong.”
But there was the key issue. Right there.
“I don’t know where I belong,” I said, no longer able to fight the rest of the tears. “I go home, but it’s right back to the same old shit I grew up with. I come back, and all the crap I left is waiting here too. I’m pathetic, this sad little puppy who doesn’t know where she’s supposed to go, and now I have a broken heart on top of all of it. Back to where we both belong? I don’t know where I belong, Will!”
“That’s because you belong with me!”
His entire body was flexed. Under his thin t-shirt, hints of formidably lean muscle bulged through the cotton; veins popped at his neck. His hair had long fallen from its topknot like streamers, cast in magnificent disarray by the wind. Slowly, the fire that threatened receded, but he didn’t move, and his temper still bubbled. That was the thing about Will. His moods would rise and fall until finally, they exploded.
“You—you lied to me,” I croaked, viciously swiping across my cheeks. “You lied about who you were. What am I supposed to do with that? How can you expect that we’ll fall right back into what we were?”
I stood up then, unable to remain in one place. The short walk through the Village hadn’t been enough. I paced around the deck, finally stopping at the railing that looked out across the Hudson River. For a split second, I could imagine what made people jump. This trapped, hopeless feeling was intolerable.
“Maggie.”
A tentative hand landed on my shoulder and gently turned me around. I continued to wipe at my eyes. Every emotion I had was percolating up and out.
“Look at me.”
I refused, staring up at the sky.
“Lily, please. Please, baby. Look at me.”
Finally, I did, and saw the entire universe of pain I felt mirrored in Will’s deep green eyes. He was hurting, just like me. His last two weeks had been miserable, just like mine.
“I don’t even know you,” I whispered.
And that’s when, finally, the tears turned to a flood. I hadn’t cried in weeks, but today I couldn’t stop. I’d been sitting around Calliope’s house like a statue, devoid of emotion, devoid of anything. But five minutes with Will, and the waterworks were on, a fucked-up fountain of pain.
“Will—” I started. “I mean, Fitz. I mean—shit, what the fuck am I even supposed to call you?!”
“I’m Will, Maggie.” His voice cracked, and I watched, horrified, as he sank to his knees in front of me and buried his face in my thigh. “I’m your Will, baby. And you’re mine. My Lily pad. Without you…” He turned his face to the side, his eyes closed tightly, his cheeks wet. “Without you, I have no name. Without you, I’m no one at all.”
My breath caught as I watched his brow wrinkle with the stress of the words. I had to fight not to stroke his hair away from his face. He inhaled, and with each breath, he seemed to take more and more of my essence, mingling it with his in that way that had always felt so unexplainably right.
Which was why slowly, surely, I slid down the railing until I knelt next to him. Will cupped my face, his thumbs stroking softly over my cheeks. A subtle gesture that had only ever made me feel one thing: precious. His light touch made me weep even harder, letting out all of the fury and anger and frustration and sadness.
It was then and only then that I allowed him to pull me into his lap. He engulfed me in his strong arms and cradled me against his warm, broad chest, rocking me lightly side to side and crooning ever so softly.
“You know me,” he whispered fiercely in my ear. “You know me, Maggie Mae Sharp. My Lily pad. Better than anyone else on this fucking planet. I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but, baby, I’m still me. Still the same asshole. Still the same Will. It’s just me.”
He said it over and over again: It’s just Will. It’s just me. And eventually, the words began to stick, seeping into my body and soul like the tears soaking into my cheeks. The pain might not fade immediately, but I couldn’t deny the truth. I needed Will, like he seemed to need me. Whatever happened next, we still had that.
“I’m still mad at you,” I whispered as he pressed kisses on top of my head.
One hand wrapped securely around my waist while the other slid up my neck to cup the back of my head and cradle me into his shoulder.
“So be mad,” he said. “Be angry. Be upset. But be mad with me, Lil. Just be with me.”
