He laughed, a low, comforting chuckle. “I love the way you talk.”
“Be serious.” Please. I’m not what you think I am. Abbie knew very well that she came off as cold, but the truth was she had always been on fire and would do anything to hide it. Releasing a little more warmth was a personal goal of hers these days, but if she went too far, she’d burn her own knickers off, and then where would she be? Knickerless in an Asda car park, that’s where. So she stayed strong.
Will sobered a little, because he always listened to her when it mattered. “Abbie, come on. The way I feel isn’t … whatever you just said. I’ve—” He hesitated, which was unusual for him. There was something like determination in his voice when he continued, “I’ve been thinking about this for a while.”
A while. But probably not twenty years. “This is the first time we’ve seen each other in forever.”
“I know,” Will said quietly. He didn’t add, When has time ever mattered between us? because they both knew it never seemed to.
“I was married before that.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth. “I know,” he said, and she felt a familiar pit of guilt settle at the bottom of her stomach.
“And you’ve … you’ve never been attracted to me before,” she said, which was a lot easier to force out than some of the questions swirling in her mind. Questions like How long is a while? and How exactly do you feel? Questions that would show how much she gave a shit, that would leave her vulnerable, out on a ledge, revealed to him in a way she didn’t think she could bear.
Careful, careful, careful. She had to be careful. She knew very well how deep vulnerability could cut when it was thrown back in her face.
“How do you know?” he asked, his voice like midnight embers.
“Know…?” Her trains of thought were more like silk threads right now, slipping through her fingers.
“That I’ve never been attracted to you before? You’re very attractive, Abbie.”
“Well—” She swallowed. “Yes, I realise that.” She wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but she liked the way she looked, and plenty of other people did too. “We are both decent looking, and you enjoy women, and I enjoy men, and so it’s not surprising that this might happen, but in terms of actually being specifically attracted to me, it seems unlikely. Whereas you being generally attracted and currently horny is more—”
“Abbie,” he interrupted. “Careful. Or you might piss me off.” He was so close now that she could smell him, the scent that never changed, cedar and the strawberry flavour of his shakes. So close she could see the faint ghosts of his freckles, the glint of the fine chain he always wore beneath his clothes, the hint of humour in his eyes, and of frustration.
She glared, irritated. “I’m just saying.”
“And I,” he replied, “have no idea how we went from Will just wants to fuck me to Will barely wants to fuck me, but I’ve decided to ride this rollercoaster, so here we go. Right now, I am this close to poking you with my dick at the side of a supermarket like some kind of neighbourhood pervert. I am doing that, Abigail, because when I am with you, all I have to do is look at your face and listen to your voice and maybe smell your hair a bit, and suddenly it’s easier for me to get hard than it is for me to control myself. That is because I find you majorly fuckable, and actually, I think about your fuckability quite often, and always have, and probably always will. So yes, I am very specifically attracted to you.”
Abbie’s body was suddenly possessed by two very distinct desires. First, the urge to slide down the wall and crawl away, commando-style, from this conversation, because one of her key barriers had just been firmly eroded by Will’s matter-of-fact and incredibly arousing description of his attraction to her.
Second, the urge to grab him by the arse and taste that defiant lower lip, for much the same reason.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
“Now we’ve got that settled,” Will continued, because Will was a smug prick, “I’d like to repeat that I’ve not been flirting with you because of your fuckability. I’ve been flirting with you because…”—he pressed gentle fingertips to her chin and tilted her head up, as if he knew she’d do anything to avoid his gaze right now and he was going to cut that shit out for her—“because, again: I. Like. You. It looks like that’s confused you, so let me explain. It means I think you’re great and I would like to take you places and give you things and watch TV with you and let you know how I’m enjoying my latest audiobook, and I would like to do all those things because you make my heart beat very fast just by saying my name.”
“Will.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Like that.”
“I—you—you cannot be this straightforward with me,” she choked out, truth sneaking from her lips. “It’s very—unnerving.”
“Trust me,” he said, sounding unreasonably amused, “I’m doing my best here, Abs. I really am.”
No; he was making her want to feel things for him with her entire heart, instead of only a secret hidden part, and that wasn’t—it wasn’t right, and it wasn’t safe. He had no idea he’d brought a knife to a gun party, and if she slipped up and showed him all the explosive shit she was packing, he’d be overwhelmed and he’d back away and then she’d be left alone with oceans full of useless love—God, don’t say it, don’t think it—and he’d be gone before this thing had even started.
She had to make him see reason before he fucked everything up.
“You can’t casually date someone you’ve known forever,” she told him quickly, “someone who’s all tied up in your family—”
“I’m not trying to casually date you. I’m trying to seriously date you.”
“We live completely different lives” was her next line, reeled out with something like desperation. “You’re a celebrity. I’m an office manager, and I like it. You live in LA, which seems like a literal nightmare, by the way, and I live here—well, home, and again, I like it. We’re from different worlds.” Wasn’t that always what they said in films and tragic novels?
Will clearly wasn’t impressed, because he rolled his eyes. “We’re from Forest Fields, and I only left because I had a better chance at making money from my face than I did from my so-called brain.”
Abbie narrowed her eyes, distracted from her current turmoil. “Don’t talk about yourself like that. The fact you made such calculated career decisions and ruthlessly exploited your own strengths is using your brain.”
“I know,” he said softly. “You taught me that.”
She blinked at the tenderness in his voice and at the fact that—well, technically he was right. She did remember telling him something like that, when they were young. That using what you had to get what you wanted was the smartest thing a person could do. She couldn’t believe he still remembered that, or that he’d taken it to heart.
It really shouldn’t make her breath catch like this, the idea that he’d taken it to heart. But it did.
It also drained all the panicked, cornered-animal fight out of her, and once that was gone, all Abbie had left was harsh reality and the root of her issue.
She shouldn’t be this scared right now.
Shouldn’t feel this much panic, or this much hunger, because a man had shown interest in her. The stakes shouldn’t be this high, this soon, based on this little, and the fact that it was Will made things even worse. She’d started relationships before, and while you could argue she’d done them wrong, they had been easy. But this would not be remotely easy. This was already terrifying, and if easy had ended up a nightmare, where would terrifying take her?
“Will,” she said, her voice a ghost in the cold air. “I … I can’t do this.”
The words thudded between them like birds shot from the sky. He took a breath, and his eyes slid shut. When he exhaled, his hand slipped away from her face, and he straightened, and suddenly there was space betwee
n them. Not a lot. But enough that he was no longer all that she could see.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and her voice cracked, for some reason, some terrible, embarrassing reason.
“It’s okay, Abbie,” he said quietly. For a moment, the expression on his face was enough to slice her heart into tiny pieces. Then he smiled, and that was even worse, because the smile was so fucking sad. “I’m sorry. I think I fluffed this up from start to finish, but—as long as we’re still friends?”
God. She very nearly almost collapsed to her knees. Somewhere in an alternate universe, some incredibly different version of herself was saying, “You will always be my friend, Will Reid, before you are anything else, because I have loved you for what feels like all my life, and when I loved you first, it was for the friendship you gave me.”
Abbie, unfortunately, wasn’t capable of saying shit like that. Fear of her own emotions tied her tongue and locked her jaw and made her flinch away, which was good and smart and safe—or at least it had always felt that way, until this very fucking moment.
“Of course,” she said, feeling as if she’d just ruined her own life somehow, sometime in the last five minutes. “Of course we’re still friends, Will.”
“Good,” he replied, and his smile was so beautiful and so honest, she could almost ignore the shadows in his eyes. “Alright then. We better hurry up with this shopping before we end up snowed in at a supermarket.”
She tried her best to laugh.
* * *
Will knew he’d royally fucked up somewhere down the line, because it was only 11:30 a.m. and he’d not only revealed his entire plan and been thoroughly rejected, he’d also made Abbie cry.
Well, not exactly. There had been no actual tears; Abbie didn’t do that. If she had, he might’ve called an ambulance. But outside, in the cold, when she’d said, “I can’t do this,” there’d been a ragged edge to her voice and a flash of sadness in her eyes that gutted him. No matter how little time they actually spent together, he knew this woman. He knew her well. And the look on her face out there—Yeah, she might as well have shed a tear.
Now Will was frantic over the only question that mattered: Why?
Somewhere inside him was a howl of vicious pain, the kind you couldn’t focus on until you were entirely alone because otherwise you might break down in public. So he forced his leaden muscles to move, chose a trolley, and snuck a sideways glance at Abbie instead. She’d packed all her emotions neatly away and was studying Asda’s giant, flashing Christmas trees with fake interest that anyone else would consider one hundred percent real. But Will, as always, knew where to look. This time, his gaze dipped to her hands and found them clasped tight, pale little halos forming where her fingertips pressed too hard into the skin.
He’d known Abbie might not be ready for … romantic stuff, not with anyone, never mind with him. She’d been through a lot. She’d always taken time to process her emotions, and judging by the way she’d kept her whole family at a distance these last two years, she was still doing that. But she was so fucking confident and put together and badass, it had never occurred to Will that Abbie might actually be scared—not until that moment between them outside. That moment when he’d seen a flash of fear besides the sadness.
“I … I can’t do this.”
There wasn’t anything this woman couldn’t do. He absolutely believed that. But it was looking like she absolutely believed otherwise, and realising it felt like two hands twisting his stomach in opposite directions. He’d freak the fuck out about losing her—about never fucking having her—some other time. Right now, he wanted to make her smile. Wanted to be a friend first, because she’d needed that this last couple of years, and she still needed it now.
This decided, Will pulled the baseball cap and fake moustache out of his back pocket, slapped them both on, and slapped a few mental bandages on the gaping wound in his chest for good measure. He’d deal with that later.
“Will,” Abbie said as they walked through the supermarket’s bright, white entryway. “I … I hope I haven’t hurt your feelings. I do … care about you very much, you know. I always have. You’re—well, you’re one of the best men I know.” Since she was Abbie, she started this speech with her gaze fixed somewhere in the middle distance. But since she was also brave, she turned to look at him partway through, her jaw set and her expression determined. “You’re very special to me, and I hope we—” She paused. Blinked. Squinted at him from behind her glasses. “Are you wearing a fake moustache?”
He smiled. It wasn’t his best attempt, current feelings considered, but it was mostly hidden by the hunk of synthetic hair on his face, so he probably got away with it. “Yep.”
“You are wearing a fake moustache,” she repeated, “over your … actual moustache.”
“I don’t have a moustache,” he said. “I have stylish two-day stubble.”
“Oh my fucking God,” she muttered, but there was a smile teasing at the edges of her lips, and that was all he wanted right now.
“What?” he asked as they wound their way through harried shoppers. “You don’t like it?”
“The dead-mouse look? It’s not your finest moment,” she replied, “but somehow, you’re actually pulling it off.”
Will winked.
She bit back a grin, and her gaze slipped away from him. “I have to tell you, though: if you’re hoping not to be recognised, you might want to go with a better disguise.”
“It’s the week before Christmas, Abbie,” he said confidently. “People have their own shit going on. No one’ll bother looking twice at me.”
She snorted. “If you say so.”
“I’m serious. I haven’t been hot property since, what, 2016? Only fans recognise me, and I doubt we’ll bump into any. This is just a precaution.”
“Noted,” she said dryly. And when she looked at him again, he knew he wasn’t imagining the gratitude in her gaze. A moment of unspoken agreement shimmered between them: it was easier to forget the upheaval and just get on with things, to be the way they’d always been. At least, it was easier for Abbie.
They swerved neatly around a toddler having a meltdown next to a promotional display of Terry’s Chocolate Oranges—Will didn’t blame the kid—and entered their first aisle. “Got the list?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” she muttered, pulling Ms Tricia’s hastily scrawled-on notepaper from her pocket. The handwriting was smooth and flowing and elegant and kind of impossible to read; Abbie had always been the best at deciphering it. “Grandma apparently decided that grouping by categories was unnecessary, so we’ll have to go through each aisle and hope we don’t miss anything.”
“I’ll tell you where we’re at, you tell me what we need. Teamwork.”
“Teamwork,” she agreed, and when he held up his hand for a high five, she rolled her eyes and slapped his hand down. “Dork.”
He bumped her hip. She bumped his back. He tried not to remember that moment outside when he’d said—God, he’d said so much wild shit, pressed up against that unbelievable body of hers, and her pupils had blown behind her glasses and her mouth had dropped slightly open and her breaths had coalesced quickly in the cold air between them, and he’d thought, high as a fucking kite, She doesn’t hate this.
But it didn’t matter if she had or hadn’t hated it. She didn’t want it. So Will shoved the memory firmly from his mind, and when it crept back, he shoved it again, and when it returned a third time, he had very stern words with it and decided it was best if he ignored his entire brain for the rest of the day. He was totally capable of that.
“Grapefruit,” he said, starting things off by blurting the first food his eyes landed on. “I like grapefruit. Grapefruit on the list, Abbie?”
“Mmm…” She frowned, scanning the sheet of paper. “Noooo, but grapes are.”
“Both,” Will said. “Let’s get both.” And then, b
efore his brain could show him more shit he didn’t want to think about, he threw ten grapefruits and a few punnets of grapes into the trolley and moved on. “Mango. I like mango.”
“Christ. We should never have left the house before breakfast.”
Will frowned. “I thought you had breakfast. Didn’t you? Are you hungry?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “You’re hungry.” Her words were exasperated, but she was all warm and secretly fond again, killing him softly. Fuck.
Later, he told the longing in his gut. Later, later, later. And then he put it away, for now.
Five
two years ago
It was midnight, which meant it was Christmas, and Abbie was alone. Alone in a house full of family she couldn’t even talk to because her husband—her own husband—had abandoned her and she was wrapped up in pride and shame. She couldn’t allow anyone to know her feelings because those feelings were foolish and dramatic.
That’s what he told her, anyway. As if she was nuts. As if she couldn’t see and hear and feel him slipping away from her, frantically erasing the pencil he’d written his vows in. This was the second year in a row they’d spent Christmas apart, and when she tried to bring it up, he said, “Stop fucking nagging. You hate Christmas, anyway.” As if holidays like this one weren’t secretly worthwhile beneath the bullshit, as if religious festivals didn’t mean Find your family. As if family wasn’t everything to her.
He was supposed to be hers.
But when she tried to say so, to say it plain, he looked at her with confusion and distaste and that cold, burning anger. Abbie was coming to realise she’d worn her impenetrable mask a little too well before they’d married and taken it off far too eagerly afterward.
She should’ve known she’d be too much for him.
A noise brought her out of her thoughts, and she lifted her head from her hands. Will walked into the room, coloured lights from the Christmas tree slicing into his shadow.
Wrapped Up in You Page 6
