I couldn’t breathe. Every cell in my body wanted to celebrate his words—wanted to welcome him back and show him that I felt the same way. And I wanted all these people to leave immediately so I could do it right.
“Will, you can’t possibly be this naive.” Tricia pulled our attention back to her. “I don’t even recognize you right now. I didn’t raise you to throw away your career. I didn’t raise you to be stupid. And I certainly didn’t raise you to align yourself with every desperate little thing that gloms onto you.”
“You didn’t raise me at all,” Will growled. “Or did you forget? Five different nannies. Four separate tutors. Every single director I ever had. Too many production assistants to count.”
Tricia’s wide green eyes, with their strange lack of anything resembling age, widened. “You ungrateful brat. You always were, too. Who do you think was the one carting you around to auditions while your father wasted his life away on that stupid boat? Who do you think paid for headshots? Networked and schmoozed and did whatever it took to make you a star. It should be my name on the Walk of Fame, not yours. You would have nothing if it weren’t for me. Nothing.” She started to pace, and we all watched her, as if we were entranced by the rhythm of her heels on the parquet. “You’d be some smelly fisherman, just like your father, with high blood pressure and a bad heart, talking about nothing but flounder and lobster while battling the bottle. They’re a dime a dozen, Will. You’d be common. That’s it.”
A slight accent emerged the longer she spoke, belying a working-class history underneath Tricia Owens-Baker’s picture-perfect exterior. And in that moment, I knew her secret. Tricia Owens-Baker was a woman who, deep down, hated herself. Hated the town she came from. Hated her lack of manners, education, or refinement—the little things that marked a person who grew up with money from someone who grew up without. The hair, skin, nails, teeth, clothes, jewelry—all of it was a mask, things used to hide a woman who, deep down, was as common as her late husband. As common as me, or anyone else.
But there was something else that struck me in her little speech: the casual use of Will’s name. I hadn’t heard Benny call him Fitz either—then again, he hadn’t really called him anything at all, except maybe “F,” which sounded more like it was to get under his skin. Will was telling the truth—he was Will, at least to anyone that mattered.
“Common,” Will said quietly, “would be better than fucking miserable. But I never got the chance to choose? Did I…Mom?”
Tricia opened her perfectly painted mouth, then closed it tight before whirling around to Benny.
“And you,” she hissed. “You knew about this the entire time, didn’t you? I should sue you for fraud, you ungrateful little shit! My son and my assistance made your career. You’d have absolutely nothing if it weren’t for me, and then you had to steal away my most important asset.”
“Come now, Trish, let’s all take a breath,” Benny said smoothly, holding his arms out like he wanted to give her a hug. “I did what my client asked, from the time he was eighteen and allowed to make those decisions for himself. You can’t really blame me for that, can you? It’s not my fault he didn’t want his mother to manage his career any longer.”
He smirked, like he was really enjoying this. Tricia looked like she wanted to tear his head off.
“That’s all I was anyway, wasn’t I, Mom?”
It was amazing, really, the way with just a few words, all the attention in the room went right back to Will. I was willing to bet that more than anything else, that was what had made him a star. No amount of headshots or auditions could give someone that kind of presence. They called it the “it” factor. Star power. You either had it or you didn’t.
“An ‘asset,’” Will repeated acidly. “I wasn’t a person. I stopped being your son the second you signed my life away to that fucking television show. You want to know why I disappeared? It was that. Right fucking there.”
Tricia’s mouth dropped. “What?”
Will sighed. “What do you want, Mom?”
Tricia examined him again, took a deep breath, and smoothed her hair.
“To start,” she said. “I wanted to see you. See if you were real. That you were—that you were actually alive.”
Will swallowed again, and when he spoke, his voice was thick. “Well…here I am. What else?”
She looked him over once more. “You look like you’ve been living in a dumpster for four years. Honestly, Will, didn’t they have clothes where you were hiding? What have you been doing out there all this time?”
Will frowned. “Is that all?”
Tricia sighed, then took a deep breath. “No. No, it’s not.” She took a step forward, and when she reached out again, Will flinched, leaning away from her fingers.
“I’m sorry I slapped you,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Still nothing. Slowly, like she was reaching toward a wild animal, she tried again, and placed a hand lightly on his cheek—the same hand that had hit him earlier, now fitting its fingers to the red print splotched over his skin. Will closed his eyes, as if the touch caused him more pain than anything else. Her fingers lingered for a moment, and then he pulled away, taking a half step behind me.
Tricia started, like the tenderness caused her legitimate shock. Almost as if she was less in control of her actions than when she had physically hit her son.
“Dinner,” she said abruptly. “I want dinner. I deserve that at least, Will. At least.”
I wanted to tell her no. That there was no way in hell Will was going to spend an hour sitting across from a woman who had assaulted him at the first opportunity. I didn’t need more than fifteen minutes with Tricia Owens-Baker to imagine what had driven Will to fake his own death. The woman was positively awful.
But right as Will opened his mouth to respond, Benny’s phone rang.
“Yeah,” he answered. “Hey. Yeah, we’ll be there soon. Okay, sure. Yeah, bye.”
He stowed his phone back in his pocket and turned to Will. “Broker’s waiting. They are going to show the apartment to someone else if we don’t get over there now.”
“Apartment?” Tricia’s green eyes were wide, innocently blinking, like a lost puppy’s. “You’re staying in New York? Can I come?”
Gone was the furious, intense woman whose first reaction to seeing her son again had been to slap him across the face. It was clear that Will had also inherited his mercurial nature from her––her emotions changed on a dime. One minute she was ready to slap him again, the next she wanted to be close. Was she moody or sociopathic? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
Will studied her for a long time, and she waited patiently, as if she knew it was only a matter of time before he broke down. I didn’t like the feeling. Not one bit.
“No,” he said finally, as if the one word cost him most of his energy. “No, I think we’ll do this one on our own, Mom.”
Fury bloomed again on Tricia’s face—you could practically see her temperature rising. For a second, I thought she was going to slap her son all over again. My fist flexed involuntarily. I wanted her to get the hell away from us.
But then she took a deep breath, reached back to fluff her hair, and exhaled.
“Dinner, then,” she snapped, already flouncing toward the elevators. “Eight o’clock. Le Corbeau. I’ll tell them to have the back entrance open for you, like always. Don’t be late, and don’t go disappearing again.”
The elevator opened as soon as she pressed the button, and the three of us watched as she sauntered into the car. After the doors shut, Will shuddered, then slid down onto the couch and bent over, dropping his head into his hands.
“Will,” Benny said, checking his phone again. “I’m sorry, but we need to go, man.”
“I need a minute,” Will said, his voice shaking slightly.
I sat beside him and slipped a hand over his shoulders, a feeble gesture of comfort. He turned and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me onto his lap with no
regard for the fact that we had an audience.
“Don’t leave me again, Lil,” he whispered as he buried his face into my neck. “I can’t do this without you.”
We rocked silently together, ignoring Benny’s pacing, ignoring the way the rest of the world already seemed to be closing in on us.
“I love you.” His voice was muffled by my skin, but the words were clear enough. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d needed to hear them again until they were out there. Maybe they were said in desperation, but I was feeling pretty desperate myself these days.
He loved me. Fitz. Will. Whoever he was, whoever he had to be, that simple fact hadn’t changed.
“I’m here,” I said as I stroked his hair. “I’m here.”
Slowly, Will’s shoulders relaxed, though he didn’t move his face for several more minutes. It was only when his heartbeat, pounding next to mine, reached a somewhat normal cadence that he finally released me from his stone grip and blew a long breath out between his teeth.
“Okay,” he said with closed eyes. “Okay, let’s go.”
6
“No.”
Benny mashed his lips around and pressed a hand atop his close-cut hair. “Is he always like this?” he asked me. “No, don’t answer that. I already know.” He turned back to Will. “You’ve gotten way harder to please living in solitary confinement, my friend. Tell me what the fuck is wrong now.”
Will rapped a knuckle on the double-paned windows of the sixth apartment we had looked at that afternoon. First had been a loft in Tribeca, then a townhouse in the village that was vetoed simply because it had street access. Two high-rise condos in Midtown, and a classic six on the Upper East Side. Every place had been gorgeous. Stunning. The kind of places where, well, a movie star would live.
And every single one Will had nixed almost immediately, much to the increasing irritation of Benny and the broker, Carol.
“It’s the windows,” Will said. “We’re too exposed here. Come on, Carol, there has to be something better than this.”
Benny, Carol, and I all stared out the massive picture windows that provided a panoramic view of Central Park. Several stories below, the trees that carpeted the park rustled noiselessly in the light wind, almost like feathers.
Benny sighed. “Seriously? This again? Who the fuck do you think is going to be looking in here? This is the twentieth floor, my friend, and the only thing you’re looking at is green. It’s twice what you wanted to pay, but it doesn’t get any more private in New York. You know this.”
“Private? Then what’s that?” Will pointed out the window. “Right there, I can see the twentieth floor of another building. And another. And ten more just like it. Where I’m sure about five different cameras are going to rent windows next week. Don’t tell me these fuckers don’t have telephoto lenses, Benny.”
Benny rolled his eyes. “Come on, man. This is New York. Pull the blinds and get over it.”
Will turned to me. “What do you think?”
I shrugged. “I like it.”
But I had liked every apartment we’d seen. John Lennon. Madonna. We’d be joining the ranks of some serious star power on this side of town. Walk-in closets. A view to die for. More space than two people would know what to do with. Truth be told, I thought every apartment we’d looked at was way too much. I would have been happy camping out in a studio for a few weeks, or, for the same price, a cheap hotel.
But a hotel wasn’t going to be good enough for the great Fitz Baker, and without fail, Will found some kind of problem with every place we’d seen.
Will snorted. “I’m being difficult, aren’t I?”
I continued to stare out the window. “I get it. You want to feel safe where you live. You don’t even want to be here to begin with, so I don’t really blame you for being picky.”
Will slipped a hand around my waist and pulled me close. “I want us to feel safe where we live. And I want to be here with you, Lil. So if you don’t like it, that’s important.”
I blinked up at him. I understood why we needed to stay together. On our way to meet Carol, Benny had asked the driver to pass Calliope’s street, which was already horded with cameras. Will was right. I was going to be a target for the press too, and Calliope’s walk-up didn’t provide anywhere near the security I would need.
But there was still a lot to learn about Will. A whole person’s worth of information, actually. There was a part of me that wondered if we weren’t diving in a little fast.
So I shrugged again. “It’s temporary. I don’t really care where we stay. As long as we’re safe, whatever you want is fine with me.”
Will examined me for a long second, then turned to Carol and Benny, who were both standing by the door, impatiently swiping through their phones. “Guys, could we have a minute in the place alone?”
They both looked up with something resembling relief, or maybe hope.
“Mr. Baker,” said Carol. “If this apartment isn’t to your liking, we really need to move on quickly before the last building’s manager goes home for the night.”
“Nah, we don’t have time for that,” Benny added. “You got dinner with Trish in a few hours. It’s this, or we keep looking tomorrow. Choose, Will.”
“We’ll take the apartment, all right? We just need a minute in it together.” Will’s tone turned to steel—one I was beginning to recognize. It was the tone he used to cut through the many voices that seemed to surround him here. Voices that wanted things from him. Voices he wanted to silence.
He took my hand and squeezed. I stayed quiet.
Benny sighed irritably, then turned to Carol. “Let’s step out and look at the paperwork, Carol.”
Carol nodded amiably, seemingly used to the unorthodox requests of high-profile clients. Since she was someone who specialized in showing these kinds of buildings, I wondered how many other famous people she’d met.
The door closed behind them, and Will took my hand and walked me through the rooms again. It was fully furnished—a corner apartment with three full bedrooms, a massive closet, and a huge living space that could probably accommodate a crowd over a hundred. Not that we would ever have that many people in here.
The farther in we walked, the more I shrank. The place was huge, and I was so small. What was I even doing here, in this world? Me, with my scuffed Converse and faded t-shirts. I didn’t belong here.
“Why did you send them out?” I wondered as I trailed a finger over the crown molding of one window.
“Because I was fucking tired of people,” Will said. He pulled me toward him. “And I’m worried about you. You’ve been too quiet.”
He released my hand and leaned back against the wall, then followed as I wandered into a bedroom.
“Would this be—would this be my bedroom or yours?” I wondered. Were we going to live here as roommates? Lovers? We had made up, of course, but I had no idea what this arrangement was going to entail. How do you move in with someone after knowing them—but not really knowing them—for a little over a month?
Will’s brows rose at the question. “You really think I would ever share an apartment with you and sleep in separate rooms?”
I bit my lip. “Honestly? I don’t really know what you want here, Will.”
“I swam a mile to get to you at three a.m., Lily pad. What makes you think I would ever find a couple of plaster walls between us acceptable? Why do you think I really sent out Benny and Carol?”
I blinked at the window. “I d-don’t know. Why did you?”
“Well, for one, I didn’t think they needed to be around when I stripped you naked.”
I swung around. “Wha-what?”
Will smirked, but behind the cocky expression was a bit of empathy. “It’s been two weeks. Two weeks since I touched you. Kissed you. Was inside you.”
My mouth dropped. “Will…”
“A couple of kisses on Benny’s roof aren’t enough, beautiful. Come here.”
I crossed my legs and leaned bac
k against the windowsill. The city was at my back, the light shining from its rooftops behind me. But the only thing in the world that mattered seemed to be in this room. And here I was…frozen.
Will closed the door. There was the audible click of a lock. He paused.
“I swear to God,” he muttered.
“What?”
Will turned back to me. All of the stress, annoyance, and frustration of the afternoon seemed to have concentrated in his deep green eyes—the full extent of which was being fired at me in a very different set of emotions. Need. Desire. Lust.
Each of those fourteen days felt like anchors that Will’s heated gaze was cutting free. Other than today, it had been two weeks since I’d felt him touch me. Had his lips on mine. Felt that…moment…where his subtle domination of my body overwhelmed everything else.
Will made me feel big when the world made me small. And here, in this city, I felt smaller than ever.
“Lily,” he said, his voice low and serious.
“Y-yes?”
The heat on his face faltered slightly at the sound of my stutter, but only slightly.
“I swear, baby,” Will said. “I swear to God. If you don’t get your ass over here in three fucking seconds, I’m going to spank you until you are black and fucking blue.”
My eyes popped open. “Wh-what? You want to spank me?”
Will growled. Or maybe he laughed. I couldn’t really tell.
“Lil,” he said. “Get over here. Now.”
The palpable need in his voice set something free, like a spring that had been released. I didn’t walk. I didn’t run. I flew across the room and into his arms, accepting the kiss that was messy, raw, and practically shouted desperation. The two weeks we’d been apart felt like an eternity, and that Will-shaped space inside me needed to be filled. In every possible way.
The tension between us wasn’t fully resolved. Maybe it never would be. After all, he had deceived me for almost the entire time I knew him, and then, of course, I had left him cold. But even as the walls were closing in around us, both of us knew that this—this—was the only way that either of us would keep a finger on our freedom.
Indiscreet (The Discreet Duet Book 2) Page 6
