Discreet by Nicole French

26

Iwas too busy crying to notice the headlights that followed me right down Muzzy Drive instead of left. I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to notice that they followed me all the way around the lake, even down my gravel driveway. It wasn’t actually until I had parked near the stairs, was bent over the steering wheel trying to suck in deep breaths, and a pair of knuckles were tapping lightly on my window, that I realized the old orange Toyota was parked next to me.

I jumped at the sound, swallowing back my tears and my pride as I caught sight of Will’s face. Hurriedly, I rolled down the window while swiping under my eyes. Will leaned down, his face filling most of the window.

“Lil,” he said quietly.

“Um. H-hi,” I mumbled.

“Why did you leave?”

I sniffed. “Well…you didn’t say anything. You were pretty clear.”

“You didn’t let me answer.”

“I…I guess I thought that was your answer.”

Minutely, so small it almost wasn’t a movement at all, Will shook his head. “If I answer you, Maggie,” he said. “You’ll know it. I’ve got plenty to say. It was just more than I wanted anyone to overhear.” He stepped away from the car, opening the door to let me out. “Can I come down and talk?”

I stepped out and nodded. “Oh—okay.”

I strode down the hill, jogging the stairs one by one. Will was a silent shadow behind me, a wall of strength and fear that made me feel strangely protected and threatened at the same time. He waited patiently while I popped into the house to check on Mama, who was snoring lightly in her bed. Then he followed me over the deck, in front of the main house, and around the point to where the shack stood under a canopy of pine branches while the lake sloshed against the rocky shore.

And it was only when I reached toward the lock that he touched me again. A big hand closed around my wrist, and gently, he turned me around and trapped me against the door of the shack.

“I should stay away,” he admitted as his gaze, hot and fierce, drifted over my face, my exposed collarbone, over my modest curves. “I should have always stayed away from you, Maggie. But we’re here now, aren’t we? I’m in way, way too deep, too tangled up…Lily pad.” His voice tripped slightly over the nickname, the dimple appearing once more in the side of his face before disappearing again. “I couldn’t stay away from you if I tried.”

His palms wrapped around my upper arms, sliding up and down lightly before they cupped behind my neck and then my face. His thumb stroked lightly over one cheek. The shadows of the pines cut strong lines across his face and made his green eyes seem almost slanted in profile. He looked nothing like the warm, kind man I had woken up next to every day this week. Here, with his hands on me, he looked almost dangerous.

But that wasn’t why I was scared.

His fingers threaded into my hair, which was almost as curly as it used to be. He pulled slightly at the roots, tipping my face up to his. And then, finally, he kissed me.

It started out gentle. Tentative. It was the kiss of someone who knew he’d fucked up on some level, someone who was testing his limits. His lips moved lightly, then more insistently, fitting our mouths together in that jigsaw fit I’d only ever experienced with him. Instinctually, I opened to him, allowed him to swipe his tongue inside, taste me completely, then hungrily until a loud, long groan erupted from deep in his chest.

He sounded in pain.

“Will!” I gasped as his lips traveled down my neck, licking and nipping at the hollow where the sensitive skin dipped under my collarbone. I shivered. “Will, we still need to talk.”

He was always going to do this, I realized. Where words would never quite come quickly enough, our bodies spoke instinctually. I reacted to him as naturally as breathing, every nerve I had brightening with each insistent touch, every cell in my body perking toward him. His hands molded to my shape like he had made me himself. I couldn’t think straight when he touched me, when he kissed me like this.

And maybe that was his goal.

“Stop,” I said, summoning a bleak effort to push him off. “Sex isn’t going to fix this, Will. This isn’t going to work like this. We aren’t going to work like this.”

With visible effort, he raised his mouth. His full mouth that touched my skin for the first time without the tickle of a beard accompanying it. It took everything I had not to urge him back down.

But then he blinked. “Is that what you really want, Maggie?” he asked. “Do you want there to be a ‘we’? An ‘us’?”

“Yes!” I erupted, angry at him even as my body was angry at me for stopping. “Of course that’s what I want. Why do you think I was crying all the way here, you idiot?”

Will remained still, bent over my shoulder, so close that I could see a muscle ticking in his jaw, but nothing else. Then, with a long, frustrated growl, he pushed off the wall and paced around the small clearing for a moment before turning back to me, his arms crossed in front of his chest.

“What do you remember about that concert at Irving Plaza?” he asked suddenly.

I frowned. Whatever I thought he was going to say, it wasn’t this. “I…mostly just my own performance. I didn’t stay until the end, as you know.”

Will rubbed the back of his neck in that way I was starting to recognize. He did it when he didn’t like what he was going to say. When he thought I wasn’t going to like it either.

“I…it was my fault, what happened that night,” he said. “I was fucked up back then.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I know. You already told me this, Will. About your history with drugs and everything—”

He just shook his head. “It’s not just that.” He worried his jaw for a second, mulling. “Maggie, I used to—I just used to be in circles where—we used to get a lot of attention.”

“Well, you worked for Benny Amaya,” I replied. “That’s not exactly surprising. The guy has some really famous clients.”

Will’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “Famous. Yeah. Well, anyway, that night, we were up in the VIP for the show. We had done…shit. I don’t even know what we had done. We were up there, getting ready for the main show. I was high as a fucking cloud, just doing my best to drown out all the noise. My life back then…Maggie, it was so loud. Too many people. Talking. Shouting. Flashes and picture and—anyway, I could never make any sense of it. All the time, I was only ever looking for quiet.”

I leaned against the shack as he started to pace around the clearing. I wanted to probe more, ask exactly what he meant by noise, why things had to be so crazy for him. But I knew enough to know that the entertainment industry was crazy for just about anyone truly immersed in it. Even if he had only been on the sidelines, it would have been enough to affect someone of his age, back then only twenty-four, twenty-five.

But instead, I waited for him to tell his story.

“We had just taken, I don’t know, some fucked-up cocktail of molly and coke, and probably some other shit that should have killed me but somehow didn’t. I just remember looking up at the ceiling and wishing I was dead. People always wanted things from me, to the point where I never knew who I could trust. My life was so empty. There was nothing in it. Nothing at all. And then I heard you.”

I couldn’t speak, and for a moment, it seemed that neither could Will. We were so far from New York, from the noise and litter and crowds that made up a city that turned some dreams into reality and brutally crushed others. Will leaned against the big boulder that faced the front door of the shack and watched me taking in his story.

“Your voice was the purest, most beautiful thing I had ever heard in my sad, sorry life, Lily,” he said softly, his words practically floating away over the water. “I felt it then, just like I did that night you played by the fire. For the first time, everything was clear to me. I knew what I had to do.”

“What was that?” I whispered, reaching behind me to clasp the door handle. I needed something to hold me steady.

His eyes zeroed in on me. “Find you.”

He had spent the rest of the set away from his friends, watching me intently from the balcony of the VIP loft at the club. Irving Plaza wasn’t a huge venue, but it regularly hosted major acts. That night I had been booked as a last-minute opener to Gillian Keller. It was the night that Calliope had officially become my manager. The night my entire career had started and ended at the same time. Because that was also the night Theo had first seen me too, although we didn’t formally meet until months later.

“After you were done, I had to meet you,” Will said. “My friends thought I was crazy. We didn’t leave the VIP area—ever—because of—of the people we worked with.”

“Famous people?” I prompted.

His eyes flickered. “Um, yes. But I had to. You were this magnet. I could feel your strength, your goodness, your, I don’t know, your light from across the room, Lily.” He pushed his hands across his face and groaned. “I sound crazy, don’t I?”

I blinked, not knowing what to say. Was he crazy? I wasn’t sure I cared.

“I do sound crazy,” Will reiterated. “But when it comes to you, maybe I am.”

I gulped. He continued.

“I left, fought my way through the crowd to get to the backstage entrance, but I was high with a certain amount of tunnel vision. To be honest, I’m not exactly sure what happened next. The guy at the club said I punched him first—I remember him pushing me. But I do remember feeling trapped. Like there was this sea of people determined to keep me from you. They all wanted to keep me away. And in the end…it was too much. I cracked.”

He opened and closed his fists several times, as if they were recalling the memory of that terrible night along with him.

“I remember hearing about a fight after,” I said when it seemed he couldn’t speak. “I left pretty soon after my set, but Calliope—she was my manager—she told me about it. She said some actor and his posse were at the show, and they went to town on a bunch of people in the crowd during Gillian’s set. Something like five people ended up in the hospital. And that everyone was arrested. That—” I paused as the magnitude of this revelation settled over me. “That was you guys?”

Will nodded forcibly. His eye glimmered, like he was about to crack all over again. His breathing seemed strained. I knew mine was.

“They wouldn’t let me come to you,” he said through clenched teeth, and I could practically see the intensity shimmering off him as he spoke. “I had everything. I had money, fa—fortune. I was the biggest fucking VIP in the place, but I couldn’t get to the one person I wanted.” He turned back, and his eyes caught mine. “You, Lil. It was always you.”

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. I was like one of those heroines caught in the thrall of some supernatural creature. A sailor drowning in the song of its siren.

“Your client must have been really mad,” I said. “That you got him into all that trouble.”

Will frowned. “Who?”

“The actor. You worked in his ‘posse,’ right?”

Will blinked and looked out at the water. “The actor. Oh. Yeah.”

I tilted my head, waiting for him to tell me who it was. It could have been anyone. Zac Efron to Leonardo DiCaprio. But Will didn’t reveal any names, and really, how would I know anyway, considering I’d been living in a music-made hole for so long?

Will sighed, long and low.

“That was the night that almost killed my dad,” he said quietly. “He bailed us out after the arrest, and he was ashamed. So fucking ashamed at what a piece of shit son he’d raised. And that night, when I was lying in bed, still trying to figure out how I was going to get back to you, he had his first heart attack.” He pushed his hands over his face, which was suddenly riddled with pain. “My mother blamed me for it. She had every right. I knew she’d never look at me the same. We never got along in the first place, so it didn’t really matter to me what she thought. But my dad…I killed him. That life…all those people…the photographers, the studio-heads, the agents, the publicists…all of them turned me into a fucking worthless piece of shit. And that’s what killed my father.”

He slumped against the rock, folding his hands behind his neck in pain. I wanted to go to him, but I sensed he needed the space to decompress. Telling stories like this required some space for the catharsis, for the pain of purging pain. I had a feeling it had been a very long time since Will had told anyone his secrets.

“So I left,” he said with a resignation that broke my heart. “I took everything I could with me…and I left. And came here.”

“Why here?” I wondered. It was so far from New York. A tiny town that no one had ever heard of.

Will shrugged. “Why not? I just got in my car and kept driving. This was where I ended up.”

“Was it worth it?” I asked, my voice small in the night.

Will looked up, his eyes full of sorrow. “I miss my dad,” he admitted. “I never did say goodbye to him. But otherwise…” He trailed off, thinking, then set his jaw with a determined look. “Sometimes I think it was. Because all I wanted was to find you again. And then I found a place I knew no one would ever find me…and you appeared. I didn’t know it was you until you played for me that one night, but when I did…holy shit. What are the fucking odds, you know?” He chuckled. “If that’s not fate, Lil, I don’t know what is.”

I couldn’t help but smile with him. When he said it like that, it did sort of seem like we were supposed to be together.

“But, Lil?” The somberness of Will’s tone pulled me back. “I am never going back to that life. I might write for fun, but the screenplays just sit there. Because that world. That fucking poisonous world isn’t worth any amount of money I could ever want. I’m done with it. Do you understand that?”

I swallowed. I wanted to ask why. Why was it he was so utterly against a world he had only been adjacent to? Or how, maybe, he had come to those conclusions? I understood the fear of crowds now—the man had practically been trampled at a nightclub, and that combined with the shock of it, in his perspective, had cost his father’s health…sure. I understood.

But the look on Will’s face told me it wasn’t the time for those questions. He’d opened up enough for the night, had revealed more secrets in the past ten minutes than maybe he ever had. There was honesty between us now. And there would be time for more.

Will pushed off the boulder and approached me.

“So I have to ask you this,” he said. “Do you still want to be with me, knowing I’m that kind of man? I didn’t even know you back then, Maggie, and I was ready to kill about ten people who were trying to keep me from you. Now…” He shook his head, shaking off the memory. His green eyes were full and deep. “I’d kill a hundred,” he said softly. “A thousand. I’d kill anyone who tried to keep us apart, Lil. Who tried to do you—us—harm.”

I gasped lightly, my breath caught in my throat. I should have been scared by his words. But all I felt was lust, or something beyond that. Awareness. Acknowledgment. The terrifying realization that deep down, I wasn’t scared of his feelings because…I felt the same.

“Now’s your chance,” Will whispered, just inches from my face. “If you say go, I’ll go. And you should, Lily pad. You really should.”

I licked my lips. Will’s pupils dilated visibly, and his breathing grew heavy.

“I won’t go back to that life,” he said as he caged me against the wall. He clasped my face between his hands and stroked one cheek with his thumb. “But being with you…Lil, I don’t want to be alone anymore either. I want to live my life again. With you. If you’ll…if you’ll teach me how.”

Even as he pressed his forehead to mine, his eye glimmered with that fear I was starting to recognize earlier and earlier. That fear to step out. To be vulnerable. Will still hadn’t shared completely with me where his phobias came from—and maybe I didn’t need to know, because in an odd way, we were the same. For years, well after the traumas that had occurred had supposedly been accounted for, but with one foot still in my nightmare.

Will woke me up.

“Me too,” I whispered. “But, Will…you won’t be alone. I’ll be there with you. We’ll have each other.”

“Always?” His gaze was mournful. Hurt, even, for reasons I didn’t understand.

I cupped his face too. He started, then leaned into the touch.

“Always,” I said. I wasn’t even sure what that meant…but somehow, I knew it was true.

Will looked at me for a long time, that deep, turquoise stare of his seeping through me just like water.

“All right,” he said finally as he pulled me close. His lips sealed over mine, firm and warm, a hint of forever lingering in his kiss. “Prove it.”

We kissed for what seemed like hours, pressing like one body instead of two against the cold wooden side of the shack. But eventually, Will snaked a hand around my back to open the door, and I allowed him to guide me inside, where he kicked it shut and made quick work of removing both of our clothes.

“Lie down,” he commanded, pushing me gently backward onto the bed.

I fell lightly, a smile already playing over my lips, but instead of falling on top of me, Will knelt on the ground and tugged my legs forward so they dangled over his broad shoulders.

“I want you to come,” he ordered, his breath hot and heavy on my skin. “I’m going to lick your pussy until you do, gorgeous. I want you to scream my fucking name.”

It wasn’t the first time he had done this, but it certainly felt like it. This time there was no beard scratching my thighs as he buried his face between them, nothing impeding his lips and tongue as they explored the most sensitive regions of my body. I fell onto the mattress, and his tongue proceeded to worship me for several minutes, driving me into a frenzy, bringing me close, and then letting me fall before starting the whole process over.

“Will,” I gasped as he slipped one finger, then two inside me. His mouth was doing some kind of voodoo I’d never experienced before, and the combination of that with the insistent pressure of his curved fingers had me hurtling toward that familiar edge in no time.

“Hush,” Will said before pressing kisses to my inner thighs. “Just take it.”

He hummed as he worked, a low rumbling that I could feel through my entire body. The effect of the added vibration was instantaneous. I exploded.

“Oh God!” I shouted, my arms shooting over my head to brace myself against the wall. My body started to shake violently, but Will’s other hand kept me pinned firmly to the mattress until he fulfilled his promise and made me scream his name.

“Will!” I cried, again and again. Loud, then softer, until finally, with one last flick of his tongue, it was only a whimper: “Will.”

He sat up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand with mischievous glee.

“You make me a fucking animal,” Will said as he crawled over me, fitting himself between my legs. “I don’t act like this with anyone else.”

“That’s because you’re never around anyone else,” I said in a half daze after he engulfed me with another ferocious kiss.

He pushed up and scowled, but the dimple that emerged in his right cheek told me he wasn’t totally angry.

“Do you know what I thought when I first saw you, up on that stage?” he asked as he nosed around my neck, nipping my ear, my jaw—anything he could that drew breathy sighs from my chest.

“N-no,” I whispered. “What?”

“Mine.” His teeth bit down on my earlobe, with a delicious pinch of pain that made me squirm against him. His erection, heavy on my hip, quivered. “And again when I saw you in the woods. Scared the shit out of me, but that’s what you are, you know. Fucking mine.”

“Ahh!” I cried as his teeth closed over my neck. “You are an animal!”

“Only for you, baby,” he growled as he nudged my thighs apart with his knee. “Only for you.”

I tensed slightly as the tip of him found my entrance. I was used to it by now, but that first movement was always a shock. The sheer size of him always took a moment to get used to. But as he sucked on my lower lip, my thighs automatically relaxed, stretching to accommodate him slowly, steadily, as he pushed inside.

“Fucking hell, Lily,” he breathed. His eyes closed in concentration, and then mine did too as we lay there together, getting used to the feel of our bodies joining.

“God, you look so beautiful,” he whispered as he pushed in further. His eyes didn’t leave mine as he threaded his fingers into my hair, palming my scalp for leverage.

“Oh Goooooddddddd,” I moaned loudly, certain the neighbors could hear me from across the lake as he filled me completely. My back arched, and Will sat up on his knees, his hands slipping under my spine to support the movement. He bent down again and took one nipple into his mouth, sucking hard as he began to move.

“Fuck!” I shouted as he rammed in, again and again. He was so big; I was so full. I wouldn’t be able to take much more like this, and by the way he slowed a bit, he wasn’t going to be able to last long either.

“Maggie,” he heaved as he pulled my hips up further. His thumb found that spot that he’d been worshipping with his mouth only moments before, and moved over the slick bundle of nerves with the sure practice of someone who was already learning my body better than I knew it.

“Ah!” My head fell back into the pillow, but Will’s other hand, still splayed under my shoulder blades, lifted me easily so I sat atop his thighs

“That’s it,” he said, closing his eyes, almost as if in pain. “Feel it. Take me all. The way. In.”

I couldn’t speak anymore, could only moan and whimper against his lips while he ground into me from below, all the while pressing and flicking and squeezing as I came closer and closer to falling apart.

“Fuck,” he hissed as I squeezed around him involuntarily. “Jesus, baby. I’m—fuck, Lil, I’m not going to be able to last much longer.”

My head fell back as I ground down, taking him deeper than I ever had before. “Will!” I cried out. “Oh, God, I’m so close.”

His teeth found the sensitive spot just under my ear and bit, like the animal he said he was. The hand around my back slipped down to grab my ass hard enough to leave bruises.

“Come with me, baby,” he ordered as his hips moved mercilessly. “Let go, Lil. Now.”

The finger on my clit pressed down and rubbed furiously at the same time that Will rammed upward. He repeated the action, once, twice, and then on the third, I shattered.

“OhGodohGodohGodohGodohGodohGodI’mcomingWillpleasebabypleaseIcan’tOooooooohhhhhhhhhh!”

The words flowed, a jumbled, alien song of deliverance and pleasure that had never sounded so beautiful or so harsh. Will groaned into my shoulder, biting hard enough that I was sure there would be marks as he pumped out his orgasm while he kept me in a vise-lock against his chest. He was big enough that I could feel him pulsing within me, a rhythm that matched my own heartbeat vibrating through my body.

And then finally, together, we came down from our beautiful incomprehension. Our breaths mingled as we both sought the kiss that would temper the ferocity of the moment before—a kiss that spoke not just of passion and desire, but also of the other, more potent emotion that neither of us had the guts to say. Not this soon. Not quite yet.

But it echoed through the back of my mind just the same while Will savored my mouth, my cheeks, my entire face. The word echoed, like it was a part of the primal rhythm we had just established, one that would never completely fade away.

The word was there, though I wasn’t quite ready to hear it.

Wasn’t I?

I closed my eyes and thought it to myself.

Love.