Discreet: The Discreet Duet: Book I

by French, Nicole

  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.

  26

  I was 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.”