Discreet by Nicole French

29

Splat.

My footsteps fell heavy on the ground, sending water in all directions as I jogged down the seventy-three steps that led down the hill to my mother’s house. I felt like I was falling, lost in an avalanche, tumbling down the hill with no control.

The sudden summer storm had arrived moments before, opening with thunder and gushing torrents everywhere. It fit, really—in the space of a few minutes, my own life had felt like it was gushing open, full of talk, of people, of stares, of questions. Two seconds after the newscasters had uttered their questions, I had one of my own:

Who in the fuck was “Fitz Baker”?

Before leaving, I had sat in the Forsters’ kitchen, slowly numbing, turning the question over in my mind again and again, until Lucas forced me to drink some orange juice before I passed out. Then he stayed with me, not saying a word, just keeping me company while I continued to process. Continued to figure out…what next?

There was a bang at the entrance. A nasty knock, followed by a dozen more, and incomprehensible shouting. The guests in the lobby were silent, their glances ricocheting between me and the knocking. But before anyone could answer them, the big double doors of the inn flew open, and at least twenty different people carrying cameras, microphones, and notepads toppled inside, filling the tiny lobby with chaos.

They found me almost immediately. One tripped and had to roll to the side to avoid being trampled by the others.

“Maggie!” they shouted. “Maggie, did you know? Maggie, where’s Fitz? Come on, Maggie, give us a smile!”

“Will.” I turned to the Forsters. I couldn’t feel my knees. I couldn’t feel anything. “Where’s Will?”

But Lucas just shook his head, his eyes wide, stunned in the litter of flashes, and Don, who had come in for a coffee refill, had basically the same expression as his son.

“Lucas! Don!” Linda’s sharp voice jerked the men out of their daze. “Get the poor girl out of here!”

With remarkable presence of mind, Linda sprang to the front door and locked it, while Don barred the entrance to the kitchen as Lucas shepherded me out the back and into his truck.

“I’m guessing you’ve got a five-minute head start,” he said as he started it up. “Maybe ten if we can get out early enough that no one follows. You’re lucky—Ellie’s place is kind of hard to find.”

And so, for the second time in just over a month, I was on the run. It was the last thing I ever thought I’d be running from, but here I was, scrambling down the side of the hill while Lucas waited in the truck up top. I’d pack up whatever I could as quickly as I could, and he’d take me away from the madness until his parents gave word that the cameras and reporters—whoever they were—had left. Then I could retrieve my car and go…somewhere.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the only one we had to get away from the chaos. For now.

For eight years, I’d chased this kind of attention, the kind that had swarmed me at the Forsters’ house. I’d moved to New York with dreams of making it big. Hopes that one day, I’d catch my break and be allowed to play my music in front of the world, and they’d all sing along with me.

What a fool I was.

Flower. The word echoed through my mind, reminding me in my misery of my tormenter, the man who had ruined my chances at that future. The man whom I thought had ruined me.

And then I’d met Will.

Intense.

Evasive.

Just as damaged as me.

His combination of strength and vulnerability had captivated me from the start, even when I was furious at him (which happened a lot). Little by little—or maybe it was all at once—we had fallen for each other, until just a month after I arrived back in this place, I found something resembling hope that my future might belong to me after all.

Now my brain was fogged over with the deception. The knowledge that for four weeks, I hadn’t been falling in love with a hermit, a self-banished recluse who simply preferred to be away from others because of some strange phobia of crowds. It all made sense now. Every time he ran away. Every time he shouted “pine cone.” Unbeknownst to me, I’d been falling in love with one of the most famous faces in the world, hidden from me and everyone else behind a thick beard and a wild riot of blond hair.

Not just a writer.

Not just a neighbor.

A secret freaking movie star who had faked his death to escape the trappings of fame.

And idiot that I was, I hadn’t sensed a thing.

I still couldn’t see straight. The flashes from the wall of cameras that had been waiting for me when I finished the triathlon still made me see stars, even in this horrific weather. I practically had to feel my way down the last steep flight, terrified that with one misstep, I might go toppling down the deck and break my arm.

“Maggie!” my mother’s voice croaked from another night of alcohol-fueled dreams through the open screen door as I dashed by. “Maggie Mae, are you all right?”

I ignored her, beelining for the outdoor shower on the other side of the house. I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want to see anyone right now. I had just had my heart split open in front of a hoard of cameras, had my heartbreak and gullibility broadcast across the entire world.

I could still see them—Lucas, Jenna, Katie, and their parents, Linda and Don, circled around me in the kitchen of their inn while guests peeked through the swinging doors. Everyone watching me while I watched the vapid, surgically enhanced faces on the television screen gossip about the fact that the man I had been seeing, the man I had fallen desperately in love with within the span of only a few weeks…wasn’t that man at all.

There was no Will. There was only Fitz Baker. Playboy. Actor. Drug Addict. Fiancé.

Once in the shower, I unzipped the front of my triathlon suit and yanked the straps over my arms, eager to shed the evidence of the morning. Five minutes. Maybe ten. But I had to get clean before I went anyway. The exhaustion I should have felt after running six miles, biking twenty-four, and swimming one that morning hadn’t hit me yet—I was still reeling on adrenaline. Though my stomach was growling like a beast, demanding replenishment after hours without, I knew that if I tried to eat a thing, it would all come up. Nerves will kill you.

Five minutes. Maybe ten. Hurry, Maggie. Go. The photographers, the tabloids, the news people—it was only starting to dawn on me what Lucas had already figured out when we left. That they all knew my name, so it would only be a matter of time before they figured out where I lived. Found out my story too. That I was a failed musician. The daughter of an alcoholic hairdresser. A bastard child without a known father. Frankly, I was surprised they weren’t already here, knocking at the sliding glass door of the main house, or on the flimsy particleboard entrance of the outer shack I’d claimed as my own. I scrubbed frantically at my skin. If I didn’t finish up, there would be naked pictures of me in every supermarket across the country within an hour.

“Maggie?”

Mama’s voice was creaky, like she’d been shouting all night long, though I recognized it for what it was: battling the remnants of a hangover while she had come out in the rain to make sure I was all right.

I closed my eyes and scrubbed a little too hard at my hair. “What, Mama?”

“Linda called. She wanted to know if you got down all right. She told me all about what happened. Baby, I’m so sorry. What can I do—”

“Pack,” I said abruptly, staring at the wet wood while the shower rained over my scalp.

“Pack?”

I finished rinsing, then yanked the curtain aside enough to see her. “You’re going to have to go stay at Barb’s for at least a few days, Mama, unless you’d like to have about twenty cameramen chasing you all over the property. And I have to get out of here.”

Her tired face screwed up with confusion. “But I—”

“You saw the news?”

Reluctantly, she nodded.

I yanked the curtain back into place, not wanting to see the pity already blooming on her face. It was the same way the Forsters had all looked when I’d turned around in their kitchen. Poor Maggie. Poor sad, pathetic, duped Maggie.

“So you know, then,” I said a little too sharply as I grabbed the soap and a loofa. “We called Calliope on the way here. She says the news broke early this morning. Everyone knows. The inn was absolutely swarmed with paparazzi and reporters, who will probably be here any minute. So we need to get off the property until things die down a little. Or at least until I can get out of town and make sure they’ll leave you alone.”

I shook my head. The idea of leaving all over again was terrifying. I really didn’t know what I was going to do.

“All right,” Mama was saying quietly. “All—all right. I’ll go put some things in a suitcase.”

“Mama?”

“Yes?”

“Lock the door and draw the shades. If they come…don’t let them see you.”

There was a long pause as I supposed what was happening really started to sink in.

“All right,” she said again. “I’ll wait for you up there.”

Her footsteps faded into the rain, and I turned my face up to it, listening instead to the sound of it falling harder onto the lake water, cold water that complemented the hot cascading over my aching limbs.

I love you, he’d said to me earlier that morning. Let’s put the cards on the table.

“Fucking joke!” I shouted, suddenly hurling the soap against the opposite wood shower wall with a terrific thwack. “Aaaaahhh!” I screamed again, letting the noise echo off the boulders and trees that shaded the property.

The sound was quickly swallowed by the downpour. It was the Fourth of July, one of the busiest days of the year, when families and weekenders basically took over the lake with speed boats and jet skis. Later on, when the storm passed and the sun was back, they would be out, and so I was betting, would the press. Who would also quickly realize it might be easier to approach this property from the water than by land.

But for now, Mother Nature was buying me some time. And I was grateful.

A massive clap of thunder sounded over the water. It was a little early in the season for a storm like this but they weren’t unheard of in July. The combination of the hot air greeting the cold in the center of the sky. A violent meeting of opposites. The sky opened, and water flooded through the clouds, pounding through the trees, onto the lake, dock, and pine-soaked earth with the fury I felt inside.

Boom! The thunder sounded again, and in the distance, a cord of lightning lit up the sky. The wind was picking up now. The storm would blow through harsh and heavy, would be over in a matter of minutes, and then the skies would turn blue again. But the rage would be left behind, always threatening just below the idyllic surface.

That rage was just what I wanted.

I stayed like that for another full five minutes, letting the brief bout of thunder and lightning clap through me until even I felt foolish standing outside in the shower while an all-out storm raged around me. I grabbed the now soaked towel off the hook and wrapped it around my body before shutting off the shower and scampering across the lawn to the shack.

I stumbled into the hundred-and-fifty-square-foot space I currently called home, my footsteps squelching into the carpet as I moved around trying to find something to wear. I tossed half my wardrobe onto the threadbare carpet before finally settling on a pair of pajama shorts and a tank top. Everything else seemed suffocating. Even now, it was like I could barely breathe.

Because it wasn’t just learning that the person I’d trusted with my whole self, the person I’d given my heart to, had turned out to be a complete and total liar. It was also that just moments before, I could have sworn I’d seen the other man I’d once given myself to that way. The man who had taken everything from me that a man could take, including my body, against my will. The man who had made me a shadow of myself for years, whom my lawyer and I had finally vanquished to jail for his crimes. And though I hadn’t seen him since, I could have sworn his face had been in the crowd of people waiting at the finish line. Angry. Vengeful. Theo.

Another clap of thunder sounded, and at the same time, there was a loud, thundering bang at the front door. I jumped about three feet, suddenly wishing I had just stayed in the main house with my mother and borrowed some of her clothes instead of coming out here. I wasn’t safe here.

I grabbed a pillow and held it to my chest reflexively. There was another loud bang on the door.

“Lily!”

I froze. His deep voice practically blended with the thunder, but there was only one person in the world who called me that. And the last time I’d seen him, he’d been hightailing it through the woods as far away from me as he could get.

He’d promised not to run anymore. But then again, who was he to promise anything when he had done nothing but lie to me for weeks? When he had never even told me who he was in the first place?

This time, the flimsy door shook with each loud bang.

“Lily, I know you’re in there! Open the goddamn door before I break it down!”

I swallowed heavily. I knew him. He would do it. I chucked the pillow onto the bed, crossed the room, and flung the door open.

Will stood in the rain, palms braced heavily on either side of the doorframe while water streamed down his face in twisting torrents. He still wore the same set of running clothes from before. Shorts, t-shirt, sneakers, plus a baseball cap over the mass of blond knotted at the base of his neck. All of it soaked through. Yet another clap of thunder sounded, and behind him, lightning flashed through the sky, but he didn’t move, didn’t even blink through the merciless pellets of rain. His green eyes drilled into me while he gasped through the water.

“Did you know?” he shouted through the storm, his voice hoarse, yet still demanding. He sounded like he’d run a marathon himself.

“What?” I shouted back. “Did I know what?”

“Did. You. Know?!” he cried out. “Who I was! Tell me, Maggie, I have a right to know. I have a right to know if the one person in this fucked-up, piece-of-shit, godforsaken world I finally learned to trust again sold me out to those vultures! Was it you who told them where I was? Who I was?”

He was practically shrieking at this point, his face reddened and eyes bulging. He looked like a man straddling the line of sanity, like with one small push, he might topple to the other side, and there was no telling what he might do then.

But I couldn’t focus on that. All I could feel was the pain punching holes through my poor, cut-up heart. The revelations of the morning had shoved the knife in deep, so deep I couldn’t breathe. But this new accusation twisted it further. And oh, but I hated him for it.

“No!” I finally replied, having to shout myself to be heard over the rattle of raindrops pelting the roof. Another clap of thunder sounded, and the sky flashed white before turning a deep, nasty gray. “No, I didn’t know!”

He relaxed, but only slightly. The hands on the doorframe still gripped it so tightly his knuckles were white.

“But, Will?” I pulled his attention back to me.

Like we were in the middle of one of the cheesy movies he must have starred in at some point in his stupid career, the thunder quieted, and the rain lightened a bit. Not completely, but just enough for Will to raise his head, his green eyes searching. Enough where we could speak without shouting.

Suddenly even the lowest whisper seemed like it might be too loud. I felt like one word from him could knock me over.

How could one person feel so many warring things at once? I wanted to pull him to me, assure myself he was real. I wanted to shove him away and slap him across the face. I wanted to know the last four weeks weren’t a dream. I wanted to know that he wasn’t a dream a dream.

“What?” Will asked, his broken voice cutting through my confusion. He sounded wary. Unsure.

Well. At least we still had that in common.

“I didn’t know,” I repeated, keeping my warbling voice louder than necessary, surer than I felt. “But you did—Will. You did. And you never said a goddamn thing.”

And then, before he could answer, I slammed the door shut on Will Baker. Because, in all truth, that man never existed.

All that was left was some stranger named Fitz, and I didn’t want to know him at all.

* * *

To Be Continued…in Indiscreet.

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