Discreet: The Discreet Duet: Book I

by French, Nicole

  Will shrugged. “She was making coffee. I let her know you were here and left for the store.”

  It took me a second to realize what he meant—or why he would have gone to the store this early. My eyes popped open, and immediately I swiveled around, looking for the shopping bag.

  He chuckled and shook his head regretfully. “No luck, beautiful. Cathy—that’s her name, right?—was pretty interested in why I was loitering around the personal hygiene shelf, though. ‘No one is that interested in Pepto-Bismol,’ she said.” He shrugged, tucking his hands behind his head. “She’s right.”

  I flopped back into the pillow and laughed, encouraged when Will chuckled again with me. I liked that sound. A lot. My thighs relaxed too—I hadn’t even realized they were clenched at the idea of continuing what we’d started.

  “Seriously, though, Maggie,” he said as he turned onto his side to face me. He moved his hand up my waist and stroked the side of my arm. “Last night was…”

  “If you say that was a mistake, I will slap you,” I said. “No kidding, Baker. You don’t get to hermit up on me now.” I was holding onto enough of my own guilt over being here. I didn’t need him to add to it.

  Will’s mouth dropped in surprise, and when it closed, that crooked smile returned. “I was going to say it was fucking amazing,” he said softly. “I’d like to do it again. Soon.”

  We lay there together for a few moments, just watching each other as his invitation sank in. I reached over and stroked his beard. Will remained still as I brushed the coarse hair down, then pulled at one side of the tangled dark blond waves hanging over his shoulder.

  “Yeah,” I agreed finally. “It was amazing. You’re amazing.”

  Will blushed. As in full-on, head-to-toe, pink-nosed blushed. It was the most adorable thing I’d ever seen, and I immediately tackled him for it with a kiss.

  But what started out as a barrage of joking smacks quickly morphed into something much deeper as a steel arm slid around my waist and another one took a larger handful of my flesh. I groaned into his mouth. Will grabbed harder.

  When, to my disappointment, he finally broke away and released me, Will cleared his throat. “You should probably come over again tonight. Expected, this time.”

  I pushed back up on one elbow so I could look down at him clearly.

  “Baker,” I teased, reaching around to play with a strand of his hair. “Are you asking me out on a date? One where you’re not jealous of my ex-boyfriend? Where it’s going to be just you and just me? If I’m here, you can’t run away again, you know.”

  An expression I didn’t quite understand flashed across his face. A tightness. Maybe a little bit of fear. But the longer I looked, the more it fell away, replaced in the end by some measure of the relaxation he’d had before.

  “Eight o’clock,” he said as he pushed up, beckoning me to kiss him again. “I’m counting on it.”

  * * *

  I drove back to my house some time later, lost slightly in the haze of the night before as I made my way down the long stairs. I felt lighter, like something had been lifted. For so long, I had always belonged to someone else. I was “Ellie Sharp’s poor kid,” and then I was “Lucas Forster’s girl,” and then “Theo del Conte’s girlfriend” in New York. But with Will, even with his grouchy, misanthropic ways, I only felt like myself. Or maybe being his felt like the same thing as being mine. He didn’t want to stifle me or judge me. He didn’t want me to be anything other than what I was. And that feeling was amazing.

  It was just an added benefit—a major added benefit—that the man happened to be that talented with his tongue. I mean, damn. A girl could get seriously addicted to that kind of treatment.

  So I opened the door in an uncharacteristically sunny mood that was immediately clouded when I found Mama curled up on the couch, staring out the windows toward the lake. Crying.

  My mother never cried.

  “Mama?”

  I crossed the open room to her quickly, dropping my purse on the counter. She jumped, held her coffee close, and quickly wiped away her tears.

  “Oh, Maggie. I didn’t know you were here. Don’t worry ’bout me. I just have a case of the sniffles.”

  “Mama.” I sat down next to her on the couch. “What’s wrong?”

  The question seemed to make her cry harder.

  “It’s that damn man,” she whimpered, curling more into herself.

  A photograph fell to the floor—a wrinkled picture of her and Alan, looking happy with their arms wrapped around each other. It was small, like something she might have carried around in her wallet.

  “Oh, Mama,” I whispered, picking it up. “Why did you keep this?”

  She sniffed, but didn’t take it back from me. “It’s hard to let go sometimes. I know I shouldn’t, but I do miss him. He took everything, but I still wake up in the mornings and wish he was here. I go to bed at night, and I stare at the little divot in the mattress he made.”

  I rubbed a hand on her back. I understood more than she knew. It was like there was something wrong with us, something that went deep. Something that made us love men who were bad for us, even when they were gone.

  I used to feel that way about Theo. It was why, time and time again, I’d let him come back. Even if I had bruises on my face. Even before the blood was even dry.

  “He didn’t like it when I drank, did you know that?” Mama asked.

  I kept staring at the picture. “No, I didn’t know.”

  She nodded. “He—he said he liked me better without it. Said I was more beautiful without it.”

  It was the first thing I’d heard about the guy that made me like him. I looked back at her. “Well, it’s the truth. I like you better that way too.”

  For a moment, the truth of what we were doing hit me. There was so much work still to do on the property to get it ready to be let out. But after that, what? Was it really reasonable to expect someone like Mama, who had a hard enough time holding down her part-time job as a hairdresser, to run a bed and breakfast? What was I going to do—run it with her?

  “You could do it, Mama,” I offered as hopefully as I could. “I could help you stop.”

  Mama cradled her head in her hands for a moment, sniffling back a few more tears.

  “Oh, Maggie Mae,” she murmured as she squeezed my hand. “Don’t you think I’ve tried? Baby, you remember. I been to those AA meetings or church groups. They don’t work. And besides, it’s only a problem if you can’t pick yourself up after. I can deal with a bitty headache from time to time. A few drinks never killed anyone, much less me.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her she was wrong. That her drinking had hurt me and alienated me most of my life. That a ten-year-old girl shouldn’t know how to check her mother’s pulse or to turn her on her side when she slept. That she shouldn’t know the best way to remove vomit from upholstery or have an armory of excuses prepared every time her mother missed yet another parent-teacher meeting. She shouldn’t go most of her life without sleeping through the night, knowing she needed to check on her mother to make sure she was still breathing. Or with the fear that one day again, her temper might turn worse than a quick slap on the cheek or a rough grab of the wrist.

  I feared the kitchen implements for a long time, considering how often, under a haze of gin or vodka, they were yanked from their drawers and hurled across the room in my general direction.

  “It just hurts,” Mama whispered. “I had a man. I had a home. Everything was finally right, until he left and took damn near everything with him.” Her eyes were wide, and her voice took on that crazed tone I recognized immediately—the one that made her reach for the bottle, even at 8 a.m. “Can you blame me for needing something to take the edge off, baby? All my life, I’ve been alone. No one, not even my own daughter, wants to stay around me.”

  I opened my mouth to argue. But she wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t stayed. I hadn’t even been back since I was twenty, when I’d laid down the choice for her. Her
drinking and the people that came with it, or me. She chose the drink.

  And I couldn’t promise I would stay either. While I was no closer to figuring out my own future, at least I was helping with hers. But that was all I could promise at this point. I had come home to lick my own wounds, figure out what was next for my life, and help Mama get hers together too. There was a reason I had yet to apply for a job, content to live off the very last of my savings and Glinda’s eggs for as long as I could. A job meant I was here for good.

  “He didn’t take everything,” I said as I rubbed her shoulder. “You have the property. And me. And…Lucas and W-Will.” I shook away the stutter. I hadn’t even started to process what had happened last night, and if she were in a better mood, Mama would have jumped on that like a bear on honey. “In a few more weeks,” I continued, “everything will be up to code, and you’ll be able to start running the place the way you want.”

  Mama leaned into me, still wiping tears from her eyes. I rocked her slowly, a perverse inversion of what mothers and daughters were supposed to do. But it was natural, because I had done it my whole life.

  In my pocket, my phone buzzed. I pulled it out, one half of me hoping it was Calliope, calling to find out how my date went last night. But the other part knew who it was before I ever looked.

  You might as well tell me, Flower. I’ll find out where you are anyway.

  I stared at the message for a long time before I tucked the phone away without answering. While my mother cried about her ghosts, I ignored one of my own. They were only as real as we allowed, I told myself. Only as powerful as we let them be.

  “Shhhh,” I said as I stroked her hair. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

  And, God help us, she believed me.

  19

  I spent the rest of the day working with Mama on the property, trying to cheer her up and make her forget about the photo that I “happened” to toss in the garbage. It was Saturday, so Lucas and Will were both absent—Lucas working at the inn and Will because he had said he was going for a hike today. But a giant delivery of drywall, enough to redo the walls in both outer cabins appeared sometime past noon, apparently having been ordered by a Mr. William Baker. I would have called him to protest the massive gift, or at least question how in the world he could pay for it (no matter what he said he had tucked away from his advertising business). But since he didn’t have a phone, I just grinned the entire time I signed for it, and directed the men to leave it in the cabin at the top of the hill.

  “My, my,” Mama said as we watched them finish. “Well, if that’s not sweet on you, I don’t know what is.”

  “I know,” I said. I felt strange, like jumping up and down for joy, but also like maybe I should run a mile.

  “Be careful,” Mama said. “It’s the biggest gifts that always have the greatest costs.”

  Before I could ask her what she meant, she turned around to grab the gardening tools. Today we were cleaning up the front yard. Clearly there was no more time left for that kind of talk.

  The summer days were heating up. We were well into June, and the triathlon was two weeks away, during the Fourth of July weekend. I was entered to do the Olympic, not having had enough time to train properly for the full marathon portion. The recent heat wave had meant training mostly in the early mornings or the evenings, and after skipping a few days, I was desperate for a swim and a run, with or without Will.

  So it wasn’t until a swim and a run that evening that I found myself in the bathroom getting ready for my second date with Will. One that was official. And at his house.

  Mama was overjoyed for me, all traces of her earlier suspicions vanished with the help of a drink. She was going over to Barb’s for dinner, so thankfully I didn’t have to worry about her that night. She liked Will, which should have turned me in the opposite direction. She had always liked Lucas too, but it was a preference that had come slowly over the years, given the fact that the Forsters were powerful members of a community that had often berated the two of us. Will was like her—a bit of an outcast, with a bunch of demons he was battling. Of course, maybe that was why I liked him too. Darkness was all too familiar.

  So it was somewhat fitting, as the sun was starting to set, that I drove to Will’s house, parked my Passat behind his truck, and slipped. I had actually dressed up a little, much more than I normally would for anywhere else here. I had pulled out a short black dress I used to save for stage appearances, and tamed my hair into long waves down my back. My curls were returning again, more and more every day. Soon I wouldn’t be able to brush it without going full Diana Ross, but for now, they were still manageable.

  I caught myself just before hitting the ground and chuckled as I stood back upright. His porch light was off, of course. All I needed was for Will to come out and make some smartass comment about me breaking down again in front of his house. I laughed louder. I would actually like that.

  I approached the door, smoothing out my dress and balancing precariously in my heels, more from nerves than because I wasn’t used to them. Butterflies stirred in my stomach. I hadn’t felt this way in years.

  I knocked on the door. No one answered. I knocked again. Still nothing. For a moment, I stood there on the dark, unlit porch, rubbing my arms through my cardigan sweater. That was the thing about Spokane—during the day, it could be as hot as a desert, and at night, the temperatures would drop to near freezing.

  Where was Will? I tapped the toes of my patent-leather pumps on the scuffed wood porch. They looked so out of place here—no one in Spokane dressed like this unless they were going to one of the few clubs downtown, and even then, not really. Suddenly I felt silly. Ridiculous even.

  I didn’t know what to think. Twelve hours ago, he had asked me to come here. He knew I was planning to run around sunset to avoid the heat, and he had confirmed he would be gone today too. It was now a few minutes past eight, and his truck was in the lot. Was he not expecting me anymore?

  But the house was dark. Maybe he had forgotten. A shiver traveled down my back; the butterflies turned heavy, iron wings of dread. Maybe last night hadn’t meant as much as I thought.

  I turned around to go, feeling like a fool. I’d have the house to myself. I could curl up in the shack and watch a movie on my tablet, forget about this night, maybe even forget about Will. Refocus myself on the important questions about my life and my mother’s that still needed answering.

  Go, I thought. Just go.

  And that was when I heard it—a cry sounding from the bottom of a hill. It was a howl—visceral, piercing, almost primeval. I would have thought it was an animal—maybe a coyote or something like that—except just after the cry, I heard a choked string of profanity.

  “Fuck!” cried Will, just before a loud crash. “Fuck!”

  I sprang to action, jogging down the stairs to the water before I could stop to think. Will’s pain echoed up the hill with every crash, every shout. All I could think was that I needed to be there. That he needed me.

  “Goddammit!”

  Just as I reached the bottom of the stairs, Will came charging out of the trees, carrying a small wooden table, the kind that might have come with the big wooden chairs sitting on his deck. He wore a button-up shirt and a tie—a tie! I thought to myself, noting that at some point, he had thought to dress up too—but his hair was falling out of its knot, and his eyes were crazed, the visible part of his cheeks tear-stained.

  “Fuck!” he shouted as he hurled the table at the side of the boathouse, hard enough that it splintered into multiple pieces upon contact. I froze. Breaking something solid like that was no small feat.

  But it wasn’t his only conquest. The small clearing was a mess. Two of the three wooden chairs had been completely wrecked, and an ax was lodged in the trunk of a nearby pine tree. He turned around, shoulders heaving like some kind of primordial monster, and stilled when he caught sight of me stepping into the clearing.

  “Will?” I asked, my voice small, uns
ure. What was going on? “Are…are you okay?” He didn’t say anything, and after a moment of silence, I took a few more steps toward him. “Will, what’s wrong?”

  He wilted, big body sagging toward the earth.

  “Everything,” he croaked, staggering toward me. “Every fucking thing.”

  In the glare of twilight, I could see clearly that his eyes were bloodshot—from pain, not substance. Before I could respond, ask why, try to offer some form of comfort, he attacked me with the same ferocity that he’d used on the chair. His mouth claimed mine, tongue diving deep, sucking my lips, almost like he was fighting with me instead of the furniture. Another loud groan emitted from deep in his chest, and suddenly, he bent down, grabbed under my knees, and pulled my legs around his waist as he walked us back into the trees. He took three more steps and slammed my back against the wall of the boathouse while his mouth continued its onslaught.

  “Fuck,” he whispered as his hands found my ass.

  He tore at my underwear, ripping through the flimsy lace I’d chosen so carefully for the evening, then yanked down the elastic top of my dress and bra, not even pausing to look at my breasts, pale and almost white in the dim light, before he clamped his mouth around one nipple as viciously as he’d taken my mouth.

  “Will,” I gasped, banging my head against the wood, unable to keep up with what was happening. We needed to talk—he was clearly not in his right mind—but at the same time, his unfettered touch was doing things to me that, on some level, I’d been yearning for since we met. He was letting go, and it was unbelievably hot. The harder his mouth worked, pulling, biting, sucking, the more ready I got.

  “Will!” I tried again.

  He released the nipple with a pop.

  “Shut up, Lily,” he growled into my mouth once more as he ground into me.

  He was big. I knew this, of course, but right now I could feel it through his pants, just as if we were both naked. He wasted no time in unzipping them, then fell against my thigh, a heavy weight of pure desire. My legs still wound tightly around him, urging him on as he continued kissing me in that way that was making it difficult to think at all. But it wasn’t until I felt the head of him pressed against my slick entrance that I managed to tear my mouth away.