I was shrieking by the end, and a spray of pigeons flew off one railing as my voice hit fever pitch.
“What was I supposed to do, Lil?”
Will’s voice was even, but shook slightly with a quiet passion—the kind I knew belied much stronger currents running beneath the outward stolid facade. He stretched out his shoulders, then sat back like he was settling in for a long story. Instinctively, I sank back into the cushions of the opposite couch. I was tired, so tired.
“I started working when I was four. Four years old. That’s when my mother booked my first commercial, and it took less than a month for me to become the official spokeschild for some shitty sugared cereal.” Will sighed and pushed a hand through his hair. “I was working eight-hour days before I even had the chance to start kindergarten. I booked a TV series, Bailey’s Life, when most kids are playing Little League.”
I pulled a pillow into my lap and held it to my chest. “I remember that show,” I said. “I was little, but I remember thinking the main character was cute.”
Will’s mouth quirked slightly, but he didn’t reply. He was opening up. I didn’t dare say more for fear he would stop.
“My mom was my manager, working with a bunch of agents and publicists I hated. I had a tutor on set and rotating chaperones or nannies or whatever the fuck you want to call them. And when I wasn’t on set, I was at photo shoots. Movies. Ad spots. Whatever.” He sighed. “I had no siblings, no friends. The closest thing to another kid I knew growing up was my costar, Emily Parker, who played the teenager on the show. But she was actually sixteen when the show started. I was seven. We weren’t exactly playmates.”
I laid my head on the pillow as I listened. I knew all about the show by this point, of course, as well as his explosive film work after it ended. It was one thing to read about it on the internet—scan his extensive filmography, read the list of dates and names and wonder how he could have ever done that in twenty-five short years. But it was another thing completely to hear about the isolation. The strange effect a life like that would have had on a small child who would have probably enjoyed playing Legos as much as anything else.
“I worked on that show for five years,” he continued. “It was filmed in the city, so my family didn’t have to move out of Connecticut, and we continued to stay there when I started getting film work after that, with trips to LA or wherever else filming occurred, of course. But I don’t remember a time when we didn’t have bodyguards. When we didn’t live in a gated house or community of some sort, with the exception of my dad’s old house in Stamford. I don’t even remember being able to play at a public park. With other kids. Ever.”
He continued through the memories, recounting the years when he started to break out, first as a teenage heartthrob on Disney-style comedies that catered to the preteen masses, and later, as he approached adulthood, the more serious films that started to get him legitimate accolades.
I already knew from my internet searches that this was around the time his fame really blew up, with all of the trappings that went with it. Starlet girlfriends. Embarrassing scandals. And accolade after accolade. Intent on torturing myself, I’d even watched several of his movies, enough to know that he was incredibly talented. If he had already been in a place where having bodyguards was a daily necessity, I couldn’t imagine the chaos that went with being crowned Sexiest Man Alive at twenty-two.
Twice he had been mobbed in Central Park and literally had his clothes ripped off his body. His family’s homes were broken into at least four times. He’d pressed charges against three different stalkers—one of them was still serving time for attempted murder after breaking into his apartment and stabbing him.
“Jesus,” I breathed after he told me that. “That’s…terrifying.”
Will brushed his hand over a spot on his side, where I knew a thin scar sliced across his skin, so faint I had barely noticed it.
“That’s putting it lightly.” His hands gripped his pants so hard his knuckles turned white. “I bought a gun after that. But you know what? Having it under my pillow at night made me sleep worse, not better. Something about knowing there was a weapon in such close proximity that could kill somebody. I realized later it was because I thought way too much about using it on myself.”
I pressed a hand to my chest. “You wanted to kill yourself?”
Will pressed his lips together and gave a tight nod. “I—sometimes. Yeah. My life was a trap, Maggie. I had no one. Nothing. I bought this massive property in Vermont to get away from the city, but honestly, up there I was even more alone, even more scared. Because there were always ways people could find me. I couldn’t run away from this.”
He waved a hand in front of his face, toward the obvious changes in his appearance. The hair, the beard, but also his general maturity. He wasn’t the lanky, youthful sex symbol from the magazine covers, having gained at least another twenty or thirty pounds of muscle living on the lake. It made his face rounder, his neck, shoulders, and chest bigger. In the pictures from before, Will had looked like a man who could break your heart with one smile. Now he looked like he could break your bones too.
He exhaled heavily, and his shoulders drooped, like they were carrying some heavy, invisible weight.
“What about…” Did I want to ask this question? Yes, I realized. I had to. “What about your fiancée?”
Will looked up in surprise. “You know about Amelia?”
My skin prickled. “Yes, I know about her. I have access to Google.”
My chest hurt at the memory of the photos of the two of them––an indecently good-looking couple on countless red carpets looking like American royalty. There was one picture in particular, the one where they had attended the Academy Awards the year before he disappeared. Will was nominated for a Best Actor award; she was clearly along for the ride. But the girl hadn’t been interested in letting Will have the spotlight. She’d basically dressed as a live version of the Oscar statue in a glittering gold bodycon gown that matched her hair and her tanned, sun-kissed skin. In his tuxedo, Will looked like 007, and she was his picture-perfect Bond girl. I hated that picture. She was everything that I, with my unruly dark hair and imperfect curves, was not.
There was a funny look on Will’s face, like the idea of me looking him up on the internet physically hurt.
“Don’t believe everything you read,” he said finally.
“Were you not engaged?”
“No, we were,” he said bitterly. “I got down on one knee and everything, gave her a rock the size of Kansas. Is that what you want to hear, Lil? Right under the Hollywood sign, so that when we sold the pictures, we’d be guaranteed a nice chunk of change and Amy would get her pick of designers at the Oscars, not to mention the scripts to follow. I kissed her right in front of all the fans that just happened to be on the trail that day, and everybody clapped, like a goddamn movie.”
His words stabbed. I had seen that picture too. I had printed it out in Calliope’s apartment and stared at his mouth on hers, his hands around her impossibly tiny waist and her stupid foot popped off the ground, for a solid hour. And then I had torn it up into about fifty pieces and threw them all out the window.
Will worried the hem of his shirt between his hands, looking like he wanted to tear it up himself. “We were set up,” he said. “My mother. Benny. Amy’s agent. They put the whole thing together after she requested a date with me. They knew I’d never make a move on anyone. I never had the guts to do anything like that.”
That, at least, was believable. I knew Will enough to know how hard it was for him to trust anyone.
“I never knew…” He paused for a moment while he stared out at the skyline. “Whether it was real. She made me believe it for a while, and I wanted it to be. Enough that when I asked her to marry me, I thought it was my idea. But really, she chose the ring, Maggie. She imagined our life. The first time I asked, it was over dinner in my apartment in New York. Amy had me do it again in the Hills for the photo-op.”
“But you loved her.” I couldn’t help it. There was one element in his story that couldn’t be faked for the press or anything else.
Will looked at me ruefully. “I thought I did,” he said softly. “Until I met you.”
Oh. I couldn’t pretend his words didn’t have an effect. Instead, I looked away as I swiped an errant tear sliding down my cheek. Yeah. Well. I loved him too. That was why this hurt so much.
Will sighed and continued his story.
“And then we had a split, a nice fucking messy one where pictures of me talking to a production assistant were used to make me look like a cheater. Right at the time when Amy was promoting a movie and launching her own awards campaign. That was when I realized it was all for show. And then I really started to spiral.”
I’d heard some of this from him before discovering who he really was. Will had disclosed once that he’d struggled with a drug problem, one loosely related to his former “job” working in the industry. For Benny. I snorted. There was something significantly wrong with that configuration.
Again, Google had filled in the blanks. Inevitably, after the articles detailing his split with Amelia, came the clichéd pictures of a playboy in the throes of a crisis. Stumbling out of nightclubs with his arms around two, sometimes even three women, cigarettes dangling from his perfect lips, skin covered with the sheen of intoxication. He was arrested once for cocaine possession, another time for public drunkenness. Both charges were eventually dropped, and it wasn’t until the night at Irving Plaza, the concert for which I had been the opener for a much larger act—that strange night where our paths had nearly crossed the first time—that his life had really fallen apart.
“I didn’t lie about that,” Will said as he came to when, high and frustrated and losing control of his own life, he’d heard me sing.
According to Will, my voice had been a beacon. The rest of the chaos had faded away, and he had wanted only to find me and meet me. But the crowds—his fame—all got in his way, and Will absolutely lost it. Havoc erupted in a crowded club, one man was trampled, and several others landed in the hospital, including Will’s father when he suffered a heart attack following the news that his son had been arrested…again. Soon after, wracked with guilt and anger, Will crashed his boat on the coast of Maine and abandoned his life of prestige for a four-year journey of isolation. Which, in the end, led him to me.
When he told me that, only a few weeks ago, I’d said I loved him. Now I wondered if it was too good to be true.
“I had to leave,” he said. “I had to get out. And okay, so maybe crashing my boat and disappearing wasn’t the best thing in the world to do, but I didn’t do anything illegal. There aren’t any rules against disappearing and giving a friend power of attorney over your money. There are no laws banning me from crashing my own boat and having it cleaned up after. And nothing says I have to stay in touch with my parents.”
“You really trust Benny that much?” I wondered about that. I didn’t really know the guy, but he seemed like kind of a schmuck with his pocket squares and light-bulb-bright apartment.
“With my life,” Will said. “Literally.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Listen. The last four years at Newman Lake…that was the first time in almost my entire life I didn’t have a gate and a guard, Maggie. That I didn’t have to live inside a cage.”
“You still lived in a cage,” I replied. “You just made it yourself.”
“I had no security. No one watching me. I was lonely, yeah, but I made a place where I belong. With you. Please, Maggie. I want to go home. I want to go back to where we both belong.”
But there was the key issue. Right there.
“I don’t know where I belong,” I said, no longer able to fight the rest of the tears. “I go home, but it’s right back to the same old shit I grew up with. I come back, and all the crap I left is waiting here too. I’m pathetic, this sad little puppy who doesn’t know where she’s supposed to go, and now I have a broken heart on top of all of it. Back to where we both belong? I don’t know where I belong, Will!”
“That’s because you belong with me!”
His entire body was flexed. Under his thin t-shirt, hints of formidably lean muscle bulged through the cotton; veins popped at his neck. His hair had long fallen from its topknot like streamers, cast in magnificent disarray by the wind. Slowly, the fire that threatened receded, but he didn’t move, and his temper still bubbled. That was the thing about Will. His moods would rise and fall until finally, they exploded.
“You—you lied to me,” I croaked, viciously swiping across my cheeks. “You lied about who you were. What am I supposed to do with that? How can you expect that we’ll fall right back into what we were?”
I stood up then, unable to remain in one place. The short walk through the Village hadn’t been enough. I paced around the deck, finally stopping at the railing that looked out across the Hudson River. For a split second, I could imagine what made people jump. This trapped, hopeless feeling was intolerable.
“Maggie.”
A tentative hand landed on my shoulder and gently turned me around. I continued to wipe at my eyes. Every emotion I had was percolating up and out.
“Look at me.”
I refused, staring up at the sky.
“Lily, please. Please, baby. Look at me.”
Finally, I did, and saw the entire universe of pain I felt mirrored in Will’s deep green eyes. He was hurting, just like me. His last two weeks had been miserable, just like mine.
“I don’t even know you,” I whispered.
And that’s when, finally, the tears turned to a flood. I hadn’t cried in weeks, but today I couldn’t stop. I’d been sitting around Calliope’s house like a statue, devoid of emotion, devoid of anything. But five minutes with Will, and the waterworks were on, a fucked-up fountain of pain.
“Will—” I started. “I mean, Fitz. I mean—shit, what the fuck am I even supposed to call you?!”
“I’m Will, Maggie.” His voice cracked, and I watched, horrified, as he sank to his knees in front of me and buried his face in my thigh. “I’m your Will, baby. And you’re mine. My Lily pad. Without you…” He turned his face to the side, his eyes closed tightly, his cheeks wet. “Without you, I have no name. Without you, I’m no one at all.”
My breath caught as I watched his brow wrinkle with the stress of the words. I had to fight not to stroke his hair away from his face. He inhaled, and with each breath, he seemed to take more and more of my essence, mingling it with his in that way that had always felt so unexplainably right.
Which was why slowly, surely, I slid down the railing until I knelt next to him. Will cupped my face, his thumbs stroking softly over my cheeks. A subtle gesture that had only ever made me feel one thing: precious. His light touch made me weep even harder, letting out all of the fury and anger and frustration and sadness.
It was then and only then that I allowed him to pull me into his lap. He engulfed me in his strong arms and cradled me against his warm, broad chest, rocking me lightly side to side and crooning ever so softly.
“You know me,” he whispered fiercely in my ear. “You know me, Maggie Mae Sharp. My Lily pad. Better than anyone else on this fucking planet. I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but, baby, I’m still me. Still the same asshole. Still the same Will. It’s just me.”
He said it over and over again: It’s just Will. It’s just me. And eventually, the words began to stick, seeping into my body and soul like the tears soaking into my cheeks. The pain might not fade immediately, but I couldn’t deny the truth. I needed Will, like he seemed to need me. Whatever happened next, we still had that.
“I’m still mad at you,” I whispered as he pressed kisses on top of my head.
One hand wrapped securely around my waist while the other slid up my neck to cup the back of my head and cradle me into his shoulder.
“So be mad,” he said. “Be angry. Be upset. But be mad with me, Lil. Just be with
me.”
4
We didn’t talk or do anything else for several hours really but sit and hold each other, as if both of us needed to recharge some precious stores that had been depleted over the last two weeks. Life was so tenuous for us both. Will had a whole host of demons he was going to have to confront after years in hiding, and I had my own share of skeletons that were bound to come out if I was going to have a relationship with a public figure. Because that’s what he was, of course—as public as it got, despite what he wanted. And, I realized, he was scared to death about it.
At some point, after drifting off together on Benny’s couch, under the discreet shade of the canopy, we sat up in a daze, smiling shyly at one another. What next? Where would we go? What would we do? What were the next steps in healing?
How would I learn who this person was sitting next to me?
Will pushed back his hair. As he re-tied it, his gaze flickered over my body. I looked down to find my shirt pulled down a little too far in sleep, revealing a generous amount of cleavage while my skirt had bunched up around my thighs. I didn’t look indecent or anything, but there was certainly some stuff on display.
I made quick work of fixing and adjusting, but when I finished, Will’s expression had turned significantly darker. He sucked on his lip, closed his eyes for a second, then dragged his eyes up my body.
“I missed you, Lil,” he said softly.
He leaned in, and like a magnet, I leaned forward too. Our lips brushed, once, twice before he snaked a hand around the back of my neck and pulled me in for a kiss that I’d been craving for the last two weeks. It started out slowly, like he was trying to protect us, as fragile as we were. But quickly, his resolve melted, his mouth opened, mine right along with it.
Indiscreet (The Discreet Duet Book 2) Page 4