Wrapped Up in You

by Talia Hibbert

  “You should be in bed, Abbie-girl,” he said, soft as a kitten’s paw.

  “You’re not my father, Will Reid,” she bit back, as if sharp words would hide the thickness in her throat, the threat of tears.

  Sometimes her husband talked about Will—but only after a few beers. “Did you ever fuck him, Abbie, back in the day? Just tell me. You can tell me. I can see you fucked him—you don’t need to lie. And I don’t even blame you. Look at the bastard. But God, just tell me.”

  “I hate him, you know,” Will said. “I fucking hate him.”

  She blinked back to the present. “Who? Dad?” Will had never met her shiftless father, so that seemed a bit strong.

  “No,” he murmured, and then he came to the sofa and bent and kissed—

  He kissed her forehead. He kissed her forehead, but not the way concerned lifelong friends or pseudo-brothers usually did. No; this forehead kiss was a quick and desperate press of his lips that seemed to say, Don’t go, or if you have to, come back whole, like she was heading to war.

  Maybe she was. But it had occurred to her, as she ghosted through this warm and wonderful Christmas, that no one could make her go back to the war zone.

  “Will,” she whispered, and looked up, but his head was still bent down, and their lips were too close. They should never be this close. Yet she must have moved closer because they—

  Touched.

  Abbie sucked in a breath, slammed herself back against the cushions, as far from that forbidden mouth as she could get. An electrical charge crackled through her veins, fizzed beneath the fine skin of her wrists, but didn’t burn.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  Will straightened slowly as if in a dream and stared down at her as he brought one ever-so-slightly shaking hand to his lips. As if she’d hit him and he couldn’t quite believe it. “Abbie—” He sounded like a dying man.

  And she felt—she felt—

  “I’m sorry,” she blurted. “That was an accident. Sorry.” She stood and squeezed past the huge statue he’d become, and went upstairs to lie, stunned, in bed beside her snoring mother.

  Abigail Farrell filed for divorce on New Year’s Eve.

  * * *

  Abbie woke up with a snake of panic curled low in her belly.

  Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

  She lay on her back, staring wide-eyed at the darkness, jumping every time a cat meowed or hissed or knocked something over somewhere in the house.

  Which was really fucking often.

  After roughly three hours of trying to sleep while maintaining a ruthless grip on her own memories, Abbie gave it up as a bad job and grabbed her phone. It lit up the room, revealing a pair of round, glowing eyes watching her from the windowsill.

  “Christ,” she gasped, then squinted into the shadows. “Dumpling?”

  The chubby black cat took his name as an invitation and leapt halfway across the room to land on her bed.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Abbie muttered, even as she stroked that special spot between his ears. “Fine. Whatever. As long as you stay away from Will’s room.” Dumpling loved Will. Almost all of the cats loved Will, actually—probably because he respected their many strengths and protected their vulnerabilities and tolerated their sharp claws and rough tongues. Probably because he didn’t mind prickly affection, not when he knew it was the best they could give.

  Dear God, she really had to stop thinking about this stuff.

  Tapping in the passcode to unlock her phone—since it never recognised her face without eyeliner, which was incredibly fucking rude—Abbie found a text from Chitra that had apparently been sent ten minutes ago. At 12:43 a.m.

  Chitra: Do you ever think about the fact that foetuses are kind of like parasites draining your resources to promote their own survival?

  Abbie released a deep, deep sigh before responding.

  Abbie: No, and neither should you. Why are you awake? Everything okay?

  Chitra: Kid won’t stop kicking. Am proud of her violent tendencies but concerned by her lack of loyalty in deploying them.

  Abbie released a huff of laughter and sank deeper into the softness of her pillow. Then another text arrived, one that had her wide awake and edgy again.

  Chitra: Why are YOU awake?

  Abbie’s subconscious provided an answer before she could craft a nice, sanitary excuse for herself. I’m awake because every single thing I said to Will today was safe but wrong.

  Shit. She’d noticed some hideous thought creeping at the edges of her mind for several hours, but she really hadn’t wanted to face it head-on. Now she had faced it, and in the space of a few seconds, it grew bigger and bigger. So big, in fact, that it uprooted the entire landscape of her mind and blew all her careful compartmentalising to shit.

  Suddenly, all she could think about was Will.

  Slowly, she typed out a message.

  Coming to terms with the fact that I said goodbye to that therapist too soon, and it’s probably time to say hello again. Also, trying to decide on the line between being smart and sensible and being too scared to risk anything ever. So far, making zero progress.

  She stared at those words for a few long moments before deciding they were not an appropriate thing to send an exhausted, heavily pregnant lady in the middle of the night. So she deleted them and sent something else.

  Abbie: Too much mocha before bed. BTW I really love you.

  Chitra: DO you? Enough to reconsider my three-way co-parenting idea?

  Abbie: … Well, no. Not that much. You and Charlie are on your own.

  Chitra: Worth a shot. I really love you too, by the way.

  Abbie: I know. Now go to sleep.

  Chitra: Fine. Night night.

  If only Abbie could “night night” her way into unconsciousness as well. But with everything on her mind right now, she couldn’t. So getting up and making herself a cup of tea would have to do.

  * * *

  When Will had decided to move to the US, his mum had sat him down for a very serious chat. “I’ve seen what happens,” she’d said, “to ordinary boys who make lots of money and move far from home.”

  Will had listened, wide-eyed, with no idea what she might say next.

  “They catch sex diseases and die of cocaine,” Mum told him.

  Will had bitten the inside of his cheek to prevent a smile. “Oh. Right. Yeah, don’t worry, Mum. I won’t do that.”

  He’d meant it, too—not just in an I won’t have unprotected sex and do too many drugs sort of way, but in an I won’t try to be numb when I’m lonely sort of way. He’d taken that promise very seriously over the years.

  Hopefully, getting wasted on Ms Tricia’s secret gin stash after the household had gone to bed didn’t count as breaking it. After all, he was back home in Britain, and he wasn’t lonely so much as devasted. Because locking his feelings away today, trying to act natural, had only made reality a thousand times worse when he finally allowed it to hit.

  He raised his glass to the full moon beaming through the kitchen window. “Sorry, Mum. I tried.”

  The moon glowed back disapprovingly.

  He sipped his gin.

  Will wasn’t entirely sure how he’d ended up here, when this time yesterday he’d been lying in bed across the hall from Abbie, giddy with hope. Looking forward to a year of being near her, of showing her how he felt, of maybe discovering she felt the same way too. He should’ve known better. Abbie was too smart to hide things from, and too perfect to want him.

  Wait. He frowned at the shadowy outline of his gin and shook his head. None of that. No bad thoughts. It was pointless and unhealthy and unrealistic, since Abbie wasn’t perfect at all. No; she was sharp and sarcastic and occasionally harsh. She was hard to read, and he had a sneaking suspicion she lied a lot. She’d leaned into him when
he’d said she was fuckable, but she’d shuddered when he’d told her he adored her. Unfortunately, while all those things made her technically not-perfect, they also made her fucking fascinating and—God, this train of thought was wobbling all over the shop.

  On the kitchen table, his phone lit up and vibrated. Again. He checked the screen and saw it wasn’t Abbie—of course it wasn’t Abbie. Then he had a flash of recklessness and picked up anyway.

  “What?” He was trying to stay quiet, so his voice came out an irritable rasp.

  “Uh…” Kara sounded shocked as shit that he’d answered, but she quickly rallied. “Will. Finally, you picked up.” As always, a little time at home had made her California drawl strange to his ears. “What, did you come to your senses?”

  “I was already at my senses,” he insisted, then frowned. Was that right? Did that make sense?

  “Debatable, kiddo.” Kara snickered. “Listen. I know you’re home for the family Christmas right now—”

  “No,” Will said firmly, and a bit wonkily. “I’m home for good. Hear me?”

  “Are you drunk, Will? Never mind, don’t answer that. I know you’re home now, but how about in the new year, you come see me? We’ll have lunch and talk this through—”

  “We’ve talked it through.”

  She spoke blithely over him. “I’ve gotten a ton of scripts for you. Tons. It’s been a while, but you’re still hot with the teenage audience.”

  “I hate teenagers,” Will said, which wasn’t true. But he wanted to see what Kara would do next.

  Her response was smooth as shit. “You wanna go in a different direction? No problem. There’s this little indie flick about a beet farmer who’s searching for a godly woman and finds the devil instead—you wouldn’t be up for the lead, but there’s a supporting role as the beet farmer’s emotionally abusive uncle.”

  Will frowned. “Uncle? I’m thirty-one.”

  “Oh, yeah. The beet farmer is nineteen. Anyway, he finds this girl—”

  “I don’t care,” Will interjected, which was the clearest he’d ever been, or rather, the rudest he’d ever been. He didn’t give a shit. It’d been months since he’d told Kara he was no longer interested in show business, and she’d been like a dog with a fucking bone ever since. “Okay? I don’t care. Stop it. I’m done.”

  She scoffed. “You cannot be serious. All this over—what? A woman?”

  He took another mouthful of gin and let it strip his throat like acid. “Mm-hm.”

  “Like she wouldn’t jump at the chance to marry a famous actor and move to Hollywood,” Kara said, clearly growing desperate.

  Will chuckled. “Nope.”

  When Abbie had rejected him today, the whole Hollywood thing had been more of a negative than a positive—which he’d always known it would be.

  But the biggest negative was, apparently, him. I can’t do this, she’d said, and really, was there a clearer, if gentle, no-fucking-way in all of history? Definitely not. Another imaginary blade slid between his ribs to join the rest.

  “How are you gonna keep this girl,” Kara demanded, “if you have no money?”

  “I have plenty of money,” Will said absently, already losing interest in the conversation. He squinted at the bottle of gin on the counter. Was it a trick of the light, or had he drunk more than the sneaky glass he’d intended? Ms Tricia would skin him alive for stealing her stash.

  “Do you have enough money for—for children?” Kara demanded triumphantly. He had a feeling she was searching her mind for the trappings of romance boring heterosexuals like him preferred.

  But he knew for a fact that Abbie didn’t want children, which didn’t really matter, since she wouldn’t be having them or abstaining from having them with him. So he gave a straightforward answer. “I have enough money for a herd of fucking elephants, Kara. You and me—we grew up in very different ways, you know.”

  “I know, I know. I’m just worried about you, kid. Do you even know what you’re gonna do with your life?”

  Will sighed. “Yeah. I do.” He had it all planned out, sort of. He knew it would be a nice, normal, family-oriented existence, anyway. But it suddenly looked a lot bleaker now he knew for a fact he wouldn’t be doing it with Abbie.

  As if the thought had called her, Will caught sight of a moving shadow from the corner of his eye and turned. There she stood in the doorway, her hair tied up for bed and her body wrapped up in what seemed to be puppy-print pyjamas. If only said puppies were enough to distract him from the contours of her body beneath said pyjamas—but they weren’t, so after a second he dragged his gaze above her neck and kept it there. He couldn’t see her eyes, not in the low light, but a slash of moonlight spilled over the lower half of her face, and he could tell by the set of her mouth—firm, full, tightening at the corners—that something was bothering her.

  “Gotta go,” he said, and put the phone down, cutting off Kara’s squawked “What?”

  “Who was that?” Abbie asked. Her voice was quiet and inflectionless. He really, really wished he could see her eyes.

  “No one.”

  “No one,” she echoed, and came into the kitchen. There was a cat in her arms—Dumpling, he thought its name was—and as she moved, it opened its glowing eyes and leapt gracefully to the floor. Unburdened, Abbie came to join him at the table. Now he could see her face, and he’d been right to think she was annoyed. In fact, her eyes—tired behind her glasses, but dark and dangerous as still-hot coals—said she was angry. “Does no one always make you sound so upset?” she demanded, like if the answer was yes, she’d bash no one over the head.

  “Upset?” Will frowned, his thoughts sluggish in his brain. He realised after a second that Abbie had overheard his depressed mumblings and assumed they were Kara’s fault, when actually, he’d been focused on Abbie herself.

  Not that he was going to admit it. He’d had enough of freaking her out with feelings she hadn’t asked for. So he spilled another of his secrets, daring her to tell him what Kara already had: that he was being a fool. “It was my agent,” he said. “She’s pissed because I quit my job.”

  Abbie blinked, looking as shocked as he’d ever seen her. “You what?”

  “Yeah, I quit.”

  He was waiting for some sort of judgement when Abbie took the wind out of his sails by asking with genuine concern, “Is everything okay? Are you okay?”

  He kind of deflated. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “It’s weird. But it was … time, I think.”

  She leaned closer. “What does that mean, time?”

  Will shrugged. “I was done with it.” Done with his latest project, yes. And done with always being on show, done with performing even when he wasn’t on set. Done with being apart from the people he loved, done with the strange schedules and the surreal lifestyle. He was grateful for every opportunity he’d had, and he knew full well that he’d achieved his success because he looked a certain way, fit a certain mould, and had been extremely fucking lucky—but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be tired of it.

  He’d hoped, one day, to tell Abbie how much he’d missed her while he was in America, and how he’d known she wouldn’t enjoy his career any more than he did, and how he’d quit partly with her in mind. He’d thought it might seem a little romantic. Will was beginning to suspect he was a romantic, which was inconvenient, since the woman he wanted to be romantic for didn’t seem to like it.

  “Wow,” Abbie said after a moment. There was a short silence, a silence in which she studied his face, then his glass of gin, then the bottle on the counter. “Wow,” she said again, softly. “Okay. Well. I’m happy for you, and a little sad, too, I suppose.”

  He snorted. “Because I was such a gift to the industry.”

  “Hey,” she said evenly, but there was a familiar protective bite to her words. Protective of him. He’d heard it sneak out before, whenever he
r brothers made good-natured jokes about his very face-and-biceps-oriented career. “You are talented, you know. I watched those Captain X films. You’re a master of camp comedy.”

  He sighed. “Those films weren’t supposed to be a comedy, Abbie.”

  “I know, but the writing is terrible, and I could probably write an essay on how your treatment of it elevated the text and made the first Captain X such a breakout hit.”

  Will faltered. “Er,” he said, suddenly feeling a thousand times drunker. “Could you?”

  “I could.” The words were light, so light as to seem thoughtless. She might have gotten away with that, if she hadn’t kept talking. “I know the last two films didn’t have amazing releases—they were kind of flogging a dead horse, at that point. But you still did a great job. You carried that franchise on your back, in my opinion. Maybe I should write an essay about it—” She broke off with a little huff of laughter that some might find wry, but Will heard embarrassment hidden there and knew she was simply self-conscious. “Well. Anyway. My point is, it’s a shame. But if this is what you want, I respect that. You know what you need.”

  What I need is you. She really couldn’t help it, could she? Being divine, that is. Being sweet in the most unexpected ways, and smart, and unrelentingly sexy. He was doomed. He was absolutely doomed. He sighed into his gin.

  Abbie bit her lip. “You seem … down, though.”

  “Yeah,” he said hoarsely. Surely she knew why.

  Or maybe not, because she told him, “It’ll be okay. You’ll find something else you love, and I assume you have enough money to keep you going while you figure it out.”

  Will raised his eyebrows. “Do you? Because judging by the texts I’ve been getting from Jase, he’s worried I’ve been blowing my salary on yachts and motorbikes.”

  “Jase is an idiot. If you were going to blow it on anything, it’d be gym equipment.” But he hadn’t blown it at all; he’d found someone smart and mathematical to invest it for him—specifically, Abbie and Jase’s brother Noah. The rest of the family didn’t know that, but Abs was looking at him now as if she’d guessed, as if she thought he was smart enough to do something like that. She’d always thought he was smart enough. She’d always expected the best of him.