Discreet by Nicole French

25

“Charades!” Linda cried out. “Come on, everyone, it’s my party, and I want to play charades.”

It was the end of another successful event thrown by the Forsters, once again proving their status as the undisputed social royalty of Newman Lake. Their barbecue, which had consisted of a lake-wide potluck, four separate grills for burgers, ribs, and corn on the cob, and two kegs of Bud Light donated by Curly’s, was a rousing success. It had started just past four and was still going strong at nearly ten at night.

After a week of suffering apologies from my mother, working my ass off helping the boys install the new drywall, sanding, priming, and painting the interiors of the cabins with Lucas and Will, and training for tomorrow’s race, I was ready to go home and let the lake rock me to sleep in the comfort of my shack. Carb load, drink a gallon of water, and get a good night’s sleep before I had to be up around five thirty to arrange my things at the Forsters’ the next morning.

But there was no escaping Lucas’s puppy dog eyes when, day after day, he continued asking me if I planned to come, disregarding Will’s open glares or the way that Mama had been avoiding him all week. And really what choice did I have? The guy was single-handedly making a future possible for my mother. An appearance at a family barbecue wasn’t going to hurt.

Mama, unsurprisingly, chose to stay home with a cocktail, muttering that she’d rather have her own party than deal with the catfights that inevitably happened whenever she spent time around Linda and her gaggle of friends.

Will had also declined to come, though the visual daggers he shot at Lucas on his way out that night told me he struggled with the decision, regardless of his phobia of crowds. The connection between us had just continued, despite Lucas’s obvious disapproval. We spent every night together in my shack, more to assuage my guilt over what happened with Mama than because Will really felt more comfortable there. In the mornings, he almost always woke up frantic, as if startled by sleeping in a strange place. If he needed a little time on his own, I couldn’t blame him. I did wish he had a phone, though. It felt a little mushy, but I wanted to hear his voice before I went to sleep that night before the race.

A chorus of half-hearted groans met an equally loud round of whoops and hollers around the fire pit at Linda’s suggestion. The group that still lingered were the usual suspects: Linda’s kids and their significant others, a few of their friends, plus some of the older crowd that made up the Forsters’ circle of friends. Only a few guests of the inn were hanging around—most of the people who had come for the triathlon were safely in bed already.

Which was where I needed to be too.

“Mom, come on,” Lucas put in, gesturing with the half-finished bottle of Bud Light in his hand. “No one likes charades.”

“Lucas, what are you talking about?” Katie demanded. “You love charades. You never pass up an opportunity to be the center of attention.”

Lucas shrugged, like that had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, and sank down on one of the big logs that circled the fire. Lindsay, of course, clung to his arm like a magnet, and he was responding in a way that made me think things had progressed beyond just friends for the two of them. I wouldn’t have cared except for the way Lucas kept staring at me, as if to say how do you like that?

“Come on,” Lindsay egged him on, her blue eyes twinkling. She cuddled up in his arms, and sent me a daring look. “I want to see your skills, Lukey.”

Beside her, Katie rolled her eyes. I didn’t even care about Lucas and Lindsay’s whatever-it-was, but the name “Lukey” made me want to vomit.

“We can’t,” he protested more weakly this time. “We don’t have even teams.”

“We do if he plays.”

Everyone turned to follow Lindsay’s pointed finger. To my utter shock, Will came loping out of the shadows of the big yard, a dark, tall form in jeans and an unassuming navy blue hoodie that covered his hair and most of his face. He stopped short when he saw everyone looking at him, but when he found me, his shoulders relaxed.

I just grinned.

“Hey.” I stood up and walked to him, ignoring Lucas’s glare.

“Hey, beautiful,” he said. The firelight danced in his eyes, and he revealed a small smile, only for me.

As much as I wanted to, I didn’t kiss him in front of Lucas and his family. Will frowned at the lack, but relaxed more when I did take his hand. I turned to the rest of the group. “Everyone, you remember Will. Linda, Don, this is Will Baker. He lives just across the lake from us, over by Sutton Bay.”

“Nice to meet you, hon.” Linda shook his hand, followed by her husband. “Can I get you somethin’ to drink?”

Will shook his head stiffly. “No, I’m all right. Thanks for having me. I’m sorry I’m a bit late to the party.”

“You can have a beer if you want,” I said. I worried sometimes he didn’t drink at all because he thought it made me uncomfortable.

He just smiled at me. “It’s fine. I don’t need it.”

“We’re just getting going, so you came at the perfect time.” Linda winked, then started writing down categories on a piece of paper. “Now then, Lucas. You and Lindsay need to divide up the teams, all right?”

Will followed me back around the fire where we could sit down next to each other on a big log. It was then he finally pushed the hoodie back, revealing his hair tied in its characteristic knot at the back of his neck and a face that was almost—not quite—clean-shaven. There was still a layer of scruff, but it was close enough that I could see the skin below it.

Everyone else was too busy chatting and arguing about teams to pay a newly beardless Will any attention. I, however, gasped.

“Oh. My. God!” I whispered. “You shaved!”

Will smirked, his eyes twinkling merrily, and I was a puddle.

“I didn’t shave. I buzzed. And you better shut that pretty mouth of yours, Lily pad,” he said in a low voice that made my skin tingle. “It kind of makes me want to stick something in it. Like my tongue. Or something a little bigger…like I did last night.”

I shivered, but somehow I managed to press my lips shut temporarily, squeezing my thighs together. Because really, now that I could see Will’s entire face, it was really hard to fight the bodily instincts to open whatever part of me this guy wanted. Will was so unassuming most of the time, but when he growled at me like that, it was hard to think about anything else than ripping his clothes off without a care where I was.

He smiled wider at my reaction, and the first thing I noticed was that he had much bigger dimples than I’d seen before. The more I stared, the more Will’s shy smile grew, and two deep impressions appeared at the sides of his full mouth, now evident without the thick blond-brown pelt to cover them.

The second thing I noticed was that the guy seriously did have a jaw that could cut glass, and right now it was glittering in the fire, the light glinting over the stubble in a way that made him look like he’d been cast in gold. Holy shit. Will was one thousand percent gorgeous. And, I realized, he was mine.

He looked at me again, and his green eyes shone with pleasure. With a quick glance around the party, he leaned in and pressed a lightning-quick kiss on my mouth, which had somehow dropped open again, slipping in a bit of tongue for good measure before pulling back.

“Told you to shut your mouth. And don’t get used to it,” he said with a wink that practically made me faint. “After this I’m not cutting anything for six months.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but found that, in a way, I didn’t want to. Even as I looked around the firelight, just about every woman there was sneaking covert glances in Will’s direction—even Lindsay, who did a double take when she caught sight of Will smiling at me. Hmmmm. Maybe I preferred being the only one who knew just what was hiding under that beard. Maybe I wanted him to save these moments for when it was just the two of us.

Feeling a strange possessiveness that was completely new for me, I realized I wanted to hide him away. Protect him from whatever demons he’d been running from.

“I like it shaved,” I told him. “But I like the beard too. Do whatever you want. I like you just the way you are.”

A layer of nerves fell away from Will’s face, and he grinned, a smile that was brighter than the fire playing in front of us. My heart felt like it stopped for a split second, like the power in that smile was too much for it to handle. Seriously, it was like looking into the sun.

“Lil,” he warned, though clearly he was enjoying this. “Shut. Your. Mouth.”

I clapped a hand over it. Will chuckled hard—it was almost a full-throated laugh. Almost.

“All right,” Lucas sharply interrupted my daze. “We got teams, and only because Mom wants to. Everyone has to play. That includes newcomers too.” He quirked an eyebrow at Will, as if trying to dare him to back out.

Will just shrugged as he wrapped a long arm around my shoulders. “Sure, why not?”

Immediately I relaxed.

The game started out slow, then picked up as people jumped up to take turns. Linda tore up her list and put the crinkled papers into a bag, and several people started acting out things like catch phrases and film titles. Will, with his massive movie collection, was very good at guessing the film titles, though he would murmur them in my ear so I could call them out. I was pretty sure he was doing it to drive me crazy. The brush of his lips over the top of my ear every time he did it was unnerving, and half the time my voice would shake when I yelped the title aloud. But we were right, every time, and soon our team started to rack up points.

“Okay.” Lucas jumped up for his turn, hopping from foot to foot like he was about to run a race. He held up two fingers.

“Two words!” called Lindsay.

Lucas nodded, and started acting out…something. He raised his thick arms over his head, then brought them down by his sides and started stepping from side to side before standing still.

“Soldier!”

“Rocket!”

“Jumping bean!”

The guesses from Lucas’s team came furiously—mostly from Lindsay and Linda—but none of them were right. Lucas became more and more visibly frustrated, shaking his head vehemently as he continued his same strange dance with his arms occasionally held akimbo, but generally thrust down at his side.

“Telephone pole!”

“Pencil!”

“Ruler!”

“Penis!”

The group exploded with laughter, with even Will chuckling when Lucas fell onto the ground with disappointment as his dad, the official time keeper, called out time.

“It was Forrest Gump!” he shouted to the sky. “I was being a tree! Not my friggin’ junk!”

“Ohhhhh!” His group all chanted their sudden awareness altogether, producing another round of laughter.

“Lucas, do your Forrest Gump impression,” Lindsay said. She turned to her friends. “Have you guys seen him do this? He sounds just like him. Like, close your eyes when he does it.”

Lucas didn’t need more than that to start. He clambered back to his seat, and with a grin, turned to Lindsay.

“Life is like a box of chocolates…” he started to drone.

I rolled my eyes. I had heard this before. It wasn’t actually that good of an impression—Lucas just effected a mild Southern accent and talked like an idiot, just like everyone else did when we were kids and our parents would put on that movie. It came out when I was about two, but every person I knew grew up with a DVD or even a VHS of that thing in their house. Everyone knew it.

Beside me, Will snorted.

Lucas looked up, irritated. “What?” he said. “You think you can do better, Bon Jovi? Good impressions are actually really hard.”

Will shrugged, but the arm around me tightened. “It’s all right.”

Lucas smirked at Lindsay, as if to say, Look at this fool.

“But you got the accent all wrong,” Will said like everyone else understood what he meant completely. “You sound like you’re from Texas, not Alabama.”

I turned and blinked at him. What? How would he know that?

“Oh, boys. Let’s keep it civil, now,” Linda warned.

Lucas crossed his arms. “Oh? What’re you, some Southern accent specialist? Aren’t you from somewhere back east or someplace like that?”

Will’s jaw tensed, and I could practically feel the gears turning in his head. The hand over my shoulder clenched into a fist, and for a second, I thought he was going to get up and punch Lucas or something equally terrible. I was the only one here who had ever seen that temper, and though I hoped Will wasn’t about to go throwing Linda’s hand-carved camp tables into the lake, I wasn’t completely sure he wouldn’t. There was always that part of him that seemed completely unpredictable.

And he was. Just not in the way I ever expected. Of course.

All at once, Will removed his arm from my shoulder, scooted about a foot away from me down the log, and sat up. His entire body language and positioning shifted, though the changes were so subtle, it was difficult to tell what he had done. But in a second, he went from being closed-off Will Baker to being someone…else. Someone completely different.

Then he opened his mouth, and I knew exactly who he was: “Those must be comfortable shoes.”

The whole group went silent. My mouth dropped, along with a few others’.

“I bet you could walk all day in shoes like that and not feel a thing,” Will continued. “I wish I had shoes like that.”

He stared at me, like he was waiting for me to say something. It took me a while, but eventually, I figured it out as the famous scene came back to me.

“M-my feet hurt,” I said, and everyone laughed lightly, then dropped into silence again as Will continued.

For my part, I could do nothing but stare, enthralled, as he continued through the opening monologue to Forrest Gump. The messy blond hair, the muscles that bulged through his thin sweatshirt, the sculpted face and penetrating green eyes—all of it disappeared under the body language and absolutely pitch-perfect rendering of the Alabama accent Tom Hanks had used. Will Baker no longer existed. I was sitting right next to Forrest Gump, listening to him talk about shoes, people, all the things he could remember about them. I was on the set of the movie, watching him play with his nonexistent tie, shuffle his feet together, and there was practically a feather floating in the air next to him—that was how convincing he was.

By the time he got to the final line where the scene melts to a child in leg braces, Will turned to everyone else, and fairly shouted it, sounding exactly as it had in the movie: “Mama said they’d take me anywhere!”

As if on cue, everyone there, even Lindsay and Lucas, burst into sudden applause, whooping and hollering as Will scooted back to his place next to me, slipped his arm back around my shoulders, and pulled me into his side.

“Holy shit,” I murmured as he glanced down. His cheeks were flushed, but it seemed to me to be as much from pleasure as from embarrassment. The dimples were out in force. “Where did that come from, Baker?”

He just shrugged and pressed an absent kiss to my shoulder. “Everyone has a few hidden talents, I guess.”

“You should be acting or doing improv or something,” I told him. “Seriously, you were amazing. You looked like you were a trained performer, Will.”

He shrugged, visibly uncomfortable. “It’s just a bit of fun. Let’s drop it.”

“Really, though,” I continued. “Did you ever see any of those improv groups in New York? You were way better than those guys.”

“Maggie, I said drop it.”

His words cut through my excitement, and then I realized that he was shaking. Physically shaking. And immediately, I felt terrible. Will didn’t like attention, and here I was, singling him out in front of everyone.

“Well, honey, I don’t know how you’re going to top that,” Linda was telling Lucas, who was looking a bit put out. “I think you’d better stick to De Niro.”

“Whatever,” Lucas grumbled.

Will chuckled, but froze when he looked up and caught sight of Lindsay’s phone pointed our way,

“Did you—did you record that?” he asked, a little too gruffly. I squeezed the hand resting on my knee, willing him to calm down a little.

Lindsay frowned. “What? No. Linda asked me to take some pictures of everyone to remember the night.” She held her phone back up. “Want one?”

Will shook his head even as I leaned in to smile at the camera.

“No,” he said. “I’m good.”

I turned. “Why not? What’s wrong?” He was afraid of pictures too?

“Come on, you grouch,” Lindsay jeered as she held her phone up again. “It’s just for memories, I promise. Don’t you want a picture together as a couple?”

She was trying to rile up Lucas, and on the other side of the fire, I could see it was working. Lucas polished off the other half of his beer in one go while staring daggers at Will. His gaze flickered between us a few times, taking in the casual body language. He knew we were seeing each other, of course—he’d been around us all week, even after the blowup last weekend. But this was the first time either of us had been openly affectionate around him. Will was being territorial. And I was somewhat guiltily enjoying it.

Lindsay continued to prod. I didn’t want to push Will, but I couldn’t deny the appeal of having some kind of memory of the two of us. For whatever reason, this still didn’t feel quite real. We could make all the proclamations we wanted to each other in private, but there was something about having a record of ourselves, something to show others, that made me feel more like this was real. That others could see it too.

“I’d kind of like one,” I murmured into his chest. “If—if you don’t mind.”

Will looked down at me with softened eyes. Then he sighed. “I really can’t say no to you, you know that?” he murmured. Then he turned back toward the camera, setting his chin on top of my head. “You sure you didn’t record anything?”

“Yes!” Lindsay practically shouted. “Jeez. Paranoid much?” She held up her phone, swiping to the right app. “Man, it’s really hard to get the lighting right. Maggie, you do kind of sink into the darkness, right? Must be hard.” She sighed, and I did my best to ignore her comments. Beside me, Will growled low.

“Okay, you guys, smile,” Lindsay said after she was finished fiddling with the controls. “You too, mountain man. One, two, three—cheese!”

A flash went off, bright enough that I could see stars for a moment.

Beside me, Will had gone stock-still. As soon as I could see clearly again, I turned to him. He was still staring at Lindsay, who had since turned to snap photos of others.

“Hey.” I tapped his cheek. “You okay?”

He blinked furiously. Every muscle in his body suddenly shifted, strung as tightly as one of my guitar strings. Like if I touched him, pulled him in any way, he’d shoot in the opposite direction.

“I have to go,” he muttered, standing up so suddenly that I was practically tossed off his body. Without even saying goodbye or thank you to any of the guests or the Forsters, he practically jogged into the blackness.

“Here we go,” Lucas remarked with a roll of his eyes.

But I was already jogging past him, preparing for another confrontation with the man I was dangerously close to falling in love with, if I hadn’t already. I was confused. Embarrassed. Abandoned. And really, really pissed off.

Because this was ridiculous. I wasn’t going to live my life walking on eggshells because of a man’s neuroses. I was done with that, and this…whatever this was…was never going to work if Will ran away like a scared animal every time some random trigger set him off. If this was ever going to work, truths needed to be said. Cards needed to be laid. Things had to change. Starting now.

By the time I reached the parking lot, Will was already opening the door to his truck in quick, jerky movements that betrayed his panic.

“Hey!” I shouted, my voice echoing through the darkness. The joviality at the fire was behind us, only a faint echo swallowed in the night air.

Will froze at his car. “Let it go, Lil.”

“What the hell?” I ignored him completely, reached around to slam the door shut, then pulled on the front of his hoodie so he had to face me completely. “Are we really doing this again? Is this going to be your M.O. every time someone does or says something that makes you the slightest bit uncomfortable?”

Will’s face twisted in a dark frown. “I don’t need to explain myself to you, Lily. I don’t want my fucking picture taken.”

I scoffed. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me? You just left me stranded in front of all my friends, looking like an idiot. Are you mad about having a freaking picture? Or that I wanted to be there and you didn’t? I never said you had to come, Baker.”

“And I didn’t want to be there!” Will burst out. “For a lot of reasons. But I sat there, twiddling my fucking thumbs in my office, and realized I’d be a dick if I let you sit here by yourself all night. I don’t like your friends, Maggie. I don’t like people making semi-racist comments to your face and talking to you like you’re nothing. You can’t expect me to enjoy listening to these small-minded bitches degrading my girl! Lindsay. Lucas. Your own mother, for Christ’s sake. I don’t want to hear it, and neither should you.”

I swallowed, my anger only slightly stifled by the idea that Will considered me his girl. I liked it. Too much. And I was just about to say it, but Will kept talking.

“I just don’t know why we need to waste our time with these people,” he continued. “I’m better than them. You’re better than them, Maggie.”

“No, I’m not!” I exploded, sending out a spray of gravel when I stomped my foot. “First of all, I’m one of them, Will. Maybe even less than them. I’m Ellie Sharp’s daughter, half her crappy DNA and half some stranger who would screw a drunk woman in a bar without a second thought. I tried to get away from that sad fact for the last eight years, and you know what? I failed. I came back here because I needed to accept it.”

Will opened his mouth, clearly ready to argue, but I held up a hand. I wasn’t done.

“Those people over there? Most of them have done more for me and mine my entire life than you can possibly imagine. I broke Lucas’s heart when I left town, and here he is, literally helping me put my home back together. Linda and Don? They were like second parents to me. So before you go thumbing your nose at the good people who live here, maybe consider your fucking audience, all right? We’re not better than them. They’re better than us.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Will countered lamely. “But, Maggie…I hate hearing you talk about yourself like this. I hate the way you let them do it too. I look at you, and I don’t see someone who should be stuck here taking care of her mother. You should be back out there. Making music. Following your dreams.”

He couldn’t have known the way a statement like that would cut into me, but he should have known enough. After all, Will understood why I’d left New York. He knew, at least a little, about how hard I’d tried, for how long, giving everything I had to a career that, in the end, couldn’t save me.

And that choice hadn’t just cost me everything I had. It had cost Mama her life too.

“I can’t,” I said bitterly, now swiping tears off my cheeks. “My mom buried herself in the bottle for the last eight years because she thought I wasn’t coming back, Will! I’m stuck in Newman Lake because I won’t do that to her again. Ever.”

He didn’t say anything at first. From the fire pit, a few distant peals of laughter cut through the silence, but Will’s eyes didn’t move from mine. We were engaged in another one of his stare-offs, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to break first, even though my stomach was completely tangled in knots. She was far across the lake, but from here, I could see Mama’s body curled up on the bathroom floor, or maybe passed out on a deck chair. I wouldn’t turn my back on these people ever again—not for my own stupid dreams, and certainly not to appease another man.

Will could take me if he wanted. But he had to take all of me. And that included them too.

“Look,” I tried. “You can’t let a few stupid comments determine how you think of an entire community. And you definitely can’t just run away because of a camera flash or a song or whatever sets you off next. I can’t deal with that.”

Will opened his mouth, then shut it. He folded his arms over his chest and didn’t speak.

I blinked. My eyes hurt. They welled a little at the thought of what I was going to say next. But I had to say it. I had to learn to put down limits. If I had learned one thing from my time with Theo, it was that.

“I want you to know me, Will. Know my life. And these are my people, whether you like it or not. You want to live your life alone, that’s…well, it’s your prerogative to do so. But it’s not mine. So…maybe we need to think about this. What this really is. Whether it’s really going to work.”

Will’s eyes closed, and my stomach dropped. That was resignation on his face—he was probably coming to the same conclusions I was. This…connection…or whatever it was between us might have the force of a tidal wave. But in the end, even that kind of power couldn’t overcome fundamental personality differences. It couldn’t overcome values.

Internally, I panicked. Being with Will over the last few weeks had made me feel more like myself than I had in a very, very long time. For the last…had it really only been a week?…I had gone to sleep in his arms, spent my days working alongside him. He had become more than a casual lover in such a short period of time—already, he was something of a rock. Was I really willing to throw that away for an alcoholic mother and a friend who sometimes couldn’t take no for an answer?

The answer, of course, was yes. It could only ever be yes, because that’s what family is, what my mother and the Forsters were to me. Will wasn’t family. Not…not yet.

We stood there for a long time, me looking at Will, Will with his eyes shut tight. Laughter from the bonfire ebbed and flowed, but we were statues in the summer night breeze.

But still he said nothing. And slowly, eventually, that said as much as any single word.

“All right,” I said finally, turning away so he couldn’t see the next round of tears threatening to fall. I shouldn’t have felt like this, but I did. It wasn’t his fault that his paralyzing fears kept him from being around people. Just like it wasn’t my fault that I had people in my life who needed my attention. After less than a month of knowing him, it shouldn’t hurt so much, then, that we probably weren’t going to work out.

But it did. It really, really did.

Will remained silent as I walked to my car, didn’t call out or even try to stop me as I put the keys in the ignition and drove home.