Discreet by Nicole French

28

“You ready?” Will asked next to me.

We stood together at the water’s edge, where the lake met the wide lawn that spread out from the Forster Inn.

The Forsters’ campaign had been successful—there were at least a hundred people here to compete in the first ever Newman Lake Triathlon. Their inn, not to mention vacation houses all around the lake and adjoining areas, was filled to capacity with the competitors and their families. The public beach on Muzzy Cove was jammed with people, all milling about in anticipation of the race.

I’d gotten there early, set up my bike and running equipment at the designated transition points around the inn, and then found a quiet place by the water to wait with Will for the race to start. I pulled one foot against my butt, stretching out my quad muscle before switching to the other side.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said. “It’s just an Olympic-length. Iron Mans are way worse. I’ll be fine.”

“‘Just an Olympic.’ Yeah, that sounds completely tame, Lil.”

“The swim isn’t even a mile, the bike ride is less than a lap around the lake, and we ran ten miles last week together. The triathlon length is only six point two.”

Will did not look convinced as he glanced covertly around the crowd. I was still amazed he had even come down to the start with me, considering how many people were huddled by the water. There was still a thin layer of fog settled over the lake, which was chilled through and gray. Will had his hoodie pulled up over a baseball cap, the brim shadowing a pair of aviator sunglasses. He was the only person in the crowd wearing sunglasses in this weather, but no matter how many times I teased him about them, he wouldn’t take them off.

“You should go home and change into all black,” I said. “Then we could be Spy vs. Spy.”

Will pulled his sunglasses down briefly to give me a dirty look. “You’re fucking hilarious, you know that?”

I shrugged and grinned. “Not as hilarious as you, Inspector Gadget.”

“Ha. Ha. Ha.”

“Someone needs to give you a hard time, Columbo,” I said, switching legs. “Or should I call you Iceman? Because of the aviators, get it?” I turned my face up to the sky and started singing “Highway to the Danger Zone.”

Will just rolled his eyes and pretended to look annoyed. It only made me sing louder. He didn’t protest, though, like he understood that half of this act was coming out of the nervous energy I had coursing through me. Nerves for the race, for which I’d only had a month to train and hadn’t practiced at all for the transitions. Nerves because of Theo’s messages and what they might mean. Nerves for whatever we were going to do about my mother after this was all over.

“Do you need help writing the number, hon?”

Will started and shoved the sunglasses back up his nose. Then he turned to Linda, who was holding out a permanent marker for me to write my number on my arm and leg.

“Upper right calf and right shoulder, they’re saying, sweetie.” She nodded at Will, though she was visibly cool. “Hello, there.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Will took the proffered marker and squatted down to write on my leg. “What’s her race number?”

“Eighty-eight,” Linda said, folding her arms while she watched. “Ellie coming to the race today, Maggie?”

“N-no,” I said, unable to stop the stutter when Will’s broad hand wrapped around my ankle while he wrote with the other. I shivered. Even when I had a stomach full of nerves, his touch didn’t fail to excite me. It was ridiculous I ever tried to fight it.

“It’s a b-bit early for her schedule,” I managed to get out.

Linda nodded knowingly. “Ah. Well, no surprise there.”

Will’s hand drifted up my leg, hip, and arm as he stood to write the number on my shoulder. I blushed.

“Something on your mind, Lil?” he murmured with a smirk.

“I take it back about Iceman in those stupid glasses,” I retorted, though I couldn’t shake the goose bumps his fingers left in their wake. “You look like Goose.”

“Goose was the best one. Should I serenade you later?” Will grinned. “Have you lost that lovin’ feeling?”

I rolled my eyes, then tossed the marker back to Linda, who was now watching us with a smile on her face as well.

“‘You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips…’” Will continued singing until Linda walked away chuckling. He wasn’t lying when he said he was tone-deaf.

I tried to smack his shoulder, but he just pulled me close and laid a thick kiss on said lips.

“You closed your eyes for that one,” he said when he was done.

“You’re trouble,” I said.

“It’s your fault. You look hot in that damn cat suit. You wore white just to drive me crazy, didn’t you?”

Immediately, I looked down, but my nipples were nowhere in sight—nor would they be. This thing was thick.

“You think you’re so funny, Baker. Let’s see what happens when I get you alone.”

“Hey, I had to get one good dig in there.”

I rolled my eyes. “Get out of here. I’ll meet you on the road after the second transition.”

But Will paused for a second. “Listen, I…” He pulled meditatively at his messy knot. “After the race, can we get out of here for a few hours? You think your mom would be all right by herself?”

I frowned. “Probably. Why?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I just…there are some things I want to talk to you about. I don’t know…I think better when I’m not around people, you know? It’s nothing bad. I just want to be honest with you. About my past. Cards on the table, right?”

Slowly, I nodded. I had a few cards he should know about too. He had seen most of mine, but there were always a few others that probably needed to be shown.

Like the fact that you are fucking in love with the man and want to have his babies.

Well, he knew half of it, I supposed.

“Sure,” I said. “We’ll make it a date.”

Will relaxed, then pulled me close one last time. I tipped my face up for a kiss. Will hummed against my lips while he stroked my face.

“So fucking beautiful,” he murmured. “So crazy fucking beautiful.” His tongue twisted sweetly with mine for another second before he let me go with a resigned sigh. “All right. Finish your warm-up. I’ll meet you here for the last leg, Lily pad. Don’t get tangled.”

* * *

I was never goingto win the race, but I was still surprised by how much it took out of me after not racing at all for close to eight years. Despite training for the last month, I was struggling to keep up with the group by the end of the swim, and by the end of the bike portion, I was completely dreading the six-mile loop I still had to run until it was finished.

The thought of quitting actually crossed my mind as I started jogging down the road from the transition site. I had changed into my running shoes and a baseball cap that protected me from the glare of the sun now that the cloud cover was starting to burn off. The sun was out in force, probably eighty degrees, which felt more like ninety on the pavement.

“Why am I doing this again?” I wondered as I started up the hill on the far side of Muzzy Cove.

“Because you need to.”

I practically jumped at the sound of Will’s voice, answering the question I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud.

“Oh my God!” I cried, holding a hand to my heart. “Where did you come from?”

Will shrugged. “I figured I’d wait on the track instead of at the transition site for you. It was easier if I stayed out of the way. How’re you doing, baby?”

I shook my head, unable to speak very well. I didn’t have the breath to talk while I ran, and I still was hoping for a half-decent time.

So we just jogged quietly together, mile after mile until we rounded the hill and began the downward descent toward the inn.

Weird things happen at the end of a race. Exercise is strangely cathartic, even for the most intense athletes. It brings up emotions you didn’t know you were feeling, makes you come to terms with issues you didn’t know you had.

By the end of the swim, my muscles were burning. By the end of the bike ride, I was a mental mess. And now, coming to the end of the six-mile run, my imagination was definitely getting the better of me. Because somehow, in the last two and a half hours, I’d convinced myself that not only had my ex-boyfriend sent that text to mess with me, but that he was also here.

“Lily?” Will’s voice managed to cut through the cloud of doubt and paranoia clouding my head. “What’s wrong?”

“I just…”

Only one mile left in this stupid race, and I was already on the verge of tears. Theo was waiting for me at the inn. I just knew it. We were on the downhill trek that meandered around the cliffs that rose above Muzzy Cove. Through the trees here and there I could spot the inn below, with the masses of people that had gathered for the afternoon barbecue and to welcome back the competitors.

Will jogged ahead so he could turn around and face me, stepping lightly backwards. He had changed into running gear since I last saw him, though he still wore the baseball hat and the sunglasses, which no longer looked out of place because the sun was actually peeking through the clouds.

“You can do this, baby,” he cheered me on. “Come on, you’re almost there.”

“No,” I whimpered, my face in my hands. “I can’t. Will—he’s waiting for me. I need to go home.”

“What?” Will asked. He looked around like he expected to see someone pop out of the trees. “Where is he?”

I didn’t answer.

We rounded a corner, and I stopped. Several runners passed with curious looks at us, but none stopped. At the bottom of the hill, there was an even larger crowd than before. But I barely had time to wonder how the Forsters had managed to get this kind of press coverage for such a small event before I swore I saw something else that put the fear of God back in me. It was barely anything. A face.

Black hair that shone in the mid-morning sun like the polished marble of his floors. Bright blue eyes that twinkled, brilliant as the summer sky above, sharp as the knife I kept in my purse. A mouth pressed into a firm line except for a wicked curve on one side.

Theodore Scott del Conte. Out of prison. Flouting his parole. Waiting for me.

I wobbled on the side of the road, ignoring the way my muscles burned in response to the sudden shift.

“Hey. What’s going on?”

Will stopped beside me, turned toward me and shielded me from the curious looks of the other runners who jogged by.

I pointed a shaky finger toward the crowd. “I s-saw him. Theo. I—in the back of the crowd. Will, he’s here!”

I tried to keep my voice low, but there was no keeping the shakes away. Will stroked my shoulders, willing me to calm with his touch.

“Where?” he asked. “Point to where you see him. We’ll go down there and tell the cops that are watching the crowd.”

I looked over his shoulder, but now the face was gone. I scanned the crowd, which was far enough away that I couldn’t actually make out each individual face. Okay, I thought to myself. So maybe you imagined it.

I shook my head. I was hungry. Tired. Between the swim, the ride, and now the end of a half marathon, I was about ready to drop. I was still worried about the texts I’d been getting. He wasn’t here. He couldn’t be here. It wasn’t possible.

“It’s…okay,” I said as I gulped a few more breaths, leaning into Will’s touch. I focused instead on his strong, solid presence. The way sweat gleamed over his smooth expanse of muscle. The gruff kindness that couldn’t quite be masked, try as he might.

He took off his sunglasses so I could see him clearly.

“Listen,” he said. “You’re tired. I see it, Lil. But I’m here with you. We got this. Together.”

Slowly, I nodded. I wanted nothing more than to stop. But he was right. I had to finish this, finish something. I’d been chasing more than just him all summer, had started this whole process to get back in touch with the parts of myself that Theo hadn’t messed up during our time together. And if I stopped now for fear of his specter, all of that progress would be ruined.

Well. To hell with that.

“O-okay,” I said after swallowing a bit of the water Will offered. “Let’s go.”

Will nodded, and we started jogging around the corner, following a stream of runners all making their way down the final half mile to the inn. Everyone was picking up their pace, cheered by the prospect of the end. Through the trees, I could hear the sound of the people waiting to greet the athletes, the beginning of Michael Grady’s band starting a set to celebrate, the hum of people jumping back in the water to cool off.

“You got this, baby,” Will said as I started to jog faster. “Half a mile to go. Get it.”

I concentrated on my breathing, on putting one foot in front of the other. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Use my diaphragm, not my chest. Heel to toe, even steps. I was almost there.

There was a rustle in the crowd as we turned around the final corner, looking down the short stretch toward the gathering at the base of the hill.

But the crowd looked different now that it was in focus. It wasn’t just the excitement of the end of the race that filled the air. There was a large pocket of the group, all bunched close to the finish line that was clearly filled with photographers. Their cameras weren’t the kind that amateurs might purchase for taking pictures of sunsets and vacations. They were the big kind you might see in a press box at a football game, or in the paparazzi line at a movie premiere. Behind the jostling mass of lenses were several news vans, with cameramen and reporters speaking into microphones while kids made bunny ears behind them. There was a hum in the crowd that wasn’t just about the end of the race. They were waiting for something. Something big.

All at once, the lenses turned our way, and while I couldn’t see exactly who was moving whom, the sudden shift in the crowd toward us was noticeable. I frowned, but continued down the hill, realizing only a few steps later that I was alone.

I turned around to find Will frozen under a large pine tree. As the last few runners ran by, I walked back to him. When he pulled off his sunglasses, now he was the one who looked like he was about to pass out.

“Will? What’s wrong?”

But for once, he couldn’t look at me, his eyes instead trained directly ahead—at the odd mob of cameramen and reporters elbowing their way through the runners who had finished. Some of them were starting to jog toward us up the hill, huffing as they carried their heavy equipment. A few even pointed in our direction.

“Who—who are they?” I asked, unable to keep the warble out of my voice. My chest was pounding with something approximating dread—that same feeling you have when you know something terrible is about to happen. You just don’t know what.

Maybe even then, I knew deep down just who Will Baker really was. There had always been something about him that seemed a little otherworldly and larger than life. He tried as best he could to hide it under a mask of overgrown hair, grungy clothes, and a beat-up car. But the reality was that Will Baker couldn’t hide his shine. In that moment, all I felt was the pure, unadulterated panic clearly coursing through the veins of the man I loved as he took a step backward, then another, up the hill.

“Will.” I reached out a hand, trying and failing to take his as he continued to back away from me.

Every muscle in his beautiful body was tensed, like an animal ready to bolt.

Will just shook his head, turning back toward the trees. His glance pinballed between the oncoming cameramen and me, flickering between us at breakneck speed.

“I…God…Maggie, I’m so sorry,” he said with a voice cracked in fear.

“For what?”

He turned to me, and even from several feet away at this point, I could see the way his body vibrated from head to toe.

“So fucking sorry,” he repeated, in a voice that was barely audible above the crowd closing in. And then, with one last sorrowful look, he turned and took off through the trees.

Fuck.

“What the hell…” I murmured.

Slowly, I turned back to the crowd. I couldn’t have told you why, but everything in me screamed to turn around, go back the way I had come. The cameras were closer now, but past them, I could see the table of water bottles they were handing out to participants. Suddenly my muscles ached. I wanted to lie down. I needed to finish the run, and then I could get a ride, or walk, if need be, back to my house to shower, change, and then check up on Will.

So instead of following my instincts and Will into the forest, I continued running my marked path toward the inn.

“Hey, that’s her!” shouted one of the cameramen as I approached. “That’s Maggie Sharp!”

“Maggie!”

“Margaret!”

My name was volleyed through the crowd, and suddenly I found myself swarmed with photographers and reporters.

“Hey!” I shouted, pushing them away when several reached out to touch my arms or grab my hands. “What the hell?!”

But there were no apologies, and definitely no space.

“Are you dating Fitz Baker?”

“Are you sleeping together?”

“When did you find him?”

“Have you known he was here the whole time?”

“When did you know he was alive?”

“Did you help him fake his death?”

“Where’s Fitz, Maggie?”

“What are you talking about?!” I shrieked, shoving another photographer away. I looked around frantically for some kind of shelter. Where was Will? What was going on? Who the hell was Fitz?

But instead of the person I so desperately needed in that moment, Lucas’s solid form barreled through the crowd, cutting a path for his mother behind him.

“Move!” he barked at the photographers and pushed them aside as Linda wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

“Are you okay?” she asked as she ushered me into the inn and locked the door behind her.

I followed her past some of the guests milling in the living room; several looked up and pointed when I passed.

We went into the empty kitchen, where Linda locked the door, and Lucas rummaged for a bottle of water from the fridge.

“We’re going to have to send everyone home,” Linda said bitterly. “Maybe even cancel the banquet tonight! They are absolutely vicious, and it’s not good for the guests. Oh, honey. Did you know this was going to happen?”

“Wha-what are you talking about?” I stuttered after I guzzled half the bottle of water. My entire body was shaking, full of terror I still didn’t understand. “What in the hell is going on?”

“See, Mom?” Lucas said as he set his hat on the counter. “I told you she didn’t know. He fooled her just like he fooled everyone else, the lying sack of shi—”

“Lucas, there’s no need for that kind of talk,” Linda admonished him.

She took a seat next to me at the counter and picked up the remote to the small TV mounted on one wall. The screen blared onto some sort of morning talk show. A picture of me and Will—the one taken at the barbecue just the other night—flashed across the screen.

“Here, honey,” Linda said as she turned up the volume. “You should probably watch this.”

I plopped onto one of the stools and fell forward onto the counter, transfixed as I listened to the overdone faces on the television talking to one another. About me. About Will. Except…it wasn’t Will at all. Was it?

“It’s the biggest news of the decade,” the lady was saying. “This news is everywhere—absolutely everywhere. Fitz Baker, who was believed to have died off the coast of Maine only four years ago, has been discovered alive and well in a tiny town in Eastern Washington.”

“If you’re just tuning in, we’ve got four little words for you, ladies,” the male host continued. “Fitz Baker is alive.”

Another series of pictures flashed across the screen, and if I hadn’t already been sitting down, I would have fallen over. They were of Will, but an incredibly different, un-Will-like Will that I wouldn’t have recognized if they hadn’t already said who he was.

He was still tall, of course, with the same tanned skin, penetrating green eyes, and broad shoulders I now knew intimately. But in one photo, that broad body was covered by an elegant tuxedo while he accepted some sort of award. In another, he wore a beautifully tailored suit while posing on what looked like a red carpet. The tangled blond hair that I had yanked so hard only last night was shorn and combed to the side. His face was clean, completely shaved, without even stubble, revealing an impossibly sharp jawline that was clenched hard enough to reveal a thin vein in the side of his neck and dimples so deep they looked like they’d been pressed in by two fingers. But though the man in the pictures was smiling in a way I had never seen Will smile—bright, almost incandescently—the rest of him was incredibly tense, and his eyes spoke clearly of misery.

“Apparently, he’s been living out there, under the radar, for the past four years. No one even knew it was him!” said the blonde woman.

“How is that even possible?” asked the man with skin that was slightly orange. “How could someone as famous as Fitz Baker just fly under the radar for four years without being spotted? I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it.”

“You’ll believe it when you take a look at this, Pat,” said the woman. “He looks positively feral.”

A picture flashed across the screen, and I sat up immediately when I caught a look at it.

It was Will. And me. Just last night, when we were snuggled together by the fire.

“Shit,” Lucas muttered as he caught sight of the photo. We both knew who had taken it.

To me, Will didn’t look feral at all. Compared to when I first met him, he looked positively dapper. His long hair was pulled back, and his beard, which he usually kept grown out to an inch or two below his chin, had been shorn also, close to his face. I recognized it now for the compromise it was—he knew I wanted to see him clean-shaven, while he preferred a full beard.

Now I knew why.

“Who do you think the girl is?” wondered Pat as he leered at a copy of the photo. “She’s a looker, isn’t she?”

“She’s certainly…different,” sniffed the woman. “I mean, poor Amelia, am I right?”

“Oh, Stacy, you’re so bad,” admonished Pat. “Clearly he’s moved on from her by now.”

“Well, wouldn’t you want to know if your fiancé had disappeared into the woods?” Stacy asked. “The poor girl was absolutely devastated. I heard she paid for private search parties to sail up and down the coastlines for weeks and weeks after they called it off.”

“Yes, but we all know that relationship was on its way out, of course. They weren’t engaged anymore at that point,” Pat said. “If it were me, after what she did to him, I’d have said good riddance too.”

Yet another picture flashed across the screen. One I stared at in horror as I realized it was a very young Will—or Fitz, or whatever the fuck his name was—walking down the street with a very, very beautiful woman whom I recognized as Amelia Craig, a well-known actress who, at least in this picture, had a very big diamond on her left ring finger. This picture had clearly been taken on the street, by photographers like the ones outside. The two of them were tense, unsmiling, and even under their sunglasses, you could see the anger and fear simmering just below his seemingly calm demeanor.

Still, miserable or not, he looked like a movie star. Which, I was slowly realizing, was exactly what he was.

Almost all the blood flowed out of my head at once. I slumped across the counter while Linda rubbed my back. Oh, God. What the hell was happening?

“So now the question is,” Stacy was asking the simpering Pat. “What really happened? He clearly didn’t die in that boating accident. So, what happened?

“What really happened to Fitz Baker?”