Page 32

As excited as Fitz was to travel on Air Force One, he’s been awfully quiet since he woke up this morning on the floor.

Our day started early—too early, considering I hardly managed to sleep, and judging from the shuffling coming from the ground, Fitz didn’t either. When I woke and came out of the shower, I half expected him to tell me he’d return to Boston. Instead, I found him making the bed and laying his clothes out before he scooted past me to shower with nothing more than a simple good morning . But he didn’t make it into the bathroom before I watched his eyes peek at the secondary lock I placed on the door. Since then, he’s hardly said a word.

If we’re still selling the same story, we’re going about telling it a different way now.

“While I have the two of you here,” my mother says, approaching our seats, “I’ll no longer be able to attend a rally tomorrow Governor Stetson is holding. I’ll send the two of you on your own. We’ll prepare everything. Fitz, from what I understand, that should work with your schedule.”

It does work for Fitz’s schedule since he does have an open calendar for a few days before he leaves for camp. But it doesn’t work for our schedule. Tomorrow, we’re flying to Vegas with Josh, Lo, and a few other of his teammates and their significant others.

But I doubt something came up for my mother. She’s sending us to this event because it’s something not important enough for her to go, but she wants to show good faith.

“Since,” she continues, “it’s in Massachusetts, Fitz certainly would be very welcome.”

“He’s not a show monkey,” I snap. Fitz freezes in the lush, cream seat across from mine, but my mother’s face remains unbothered by my snark. “Where is it?”

Mom tucks a piece of perfectly blown out blonde hair behind her ear. “Out in the Berkshires. We’ll chopper you in and out from Boston.”

My mom just doesn’t want to trek to the boonies. “Where?”

“Brookdale.”

Hard fucking pass.

“We’re busy,” I tell her as Fitz narrows his eyes. He shouldn’t, because technically, you know, we are planning on getting married tomorrow night. But it’s clear he’s picked up on my tone. I go back to flipping through the magazine I’ve stuffed between my thigh and the armrest.

“Busy?” Mom asks. “Doing what, exactly?”

Fitz’s eyes call mine.

“No, I lied. I just don’t want to go.” I flip through the glossy paper before I turn my head up to her so there isn’t any confusion. “We don’t want to go.”

The air thickens and I feel Fitz’s eyes calling mine.

“You don’t want to?”

I shut the magazine. “Isn’t that what I said?”

“Could you give us a second?” Fitz asks, but apparently, my mother can’t afford to because she carries on.

“We had an arrangement, Parker.”

I fling my head back to her. “Yes, and would you like to tell the twenty campaign staff members here about it?” I challenge. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you go ahead and tell them why I won’t go to Brookdale? Or maybe I should, you know, just to clear the air.”

I stand and move around Mom to go to the bathroom, but she reaches out, grabbing my arm, taking two strong steps in the opposite direction, toward the presidential quarters of the plane. The few aides around us turn and lift their heads as I dig my heels into the carpeted floor while my mother hisses under her breath, “Parker, stop making a scene.”

I try swinging my body for leverage, but I come into contact with Fitz’s back as he’s now stepped between us.

“I think it would be best if you get your hands off my wife.”

He makes no move to put his own hands on my mother, not even when, from over his shoulder, I see the challenging tilt of her head. But when an agent I don’t recognize rises from his seat toward the front of the plane, I place my hand on his back, where I feel his tense muscles. His presence is sobering, and I realize I don’t want him in the middle of my battles.

He takes a step closer to my mother. “Madam First Lady, with all due respect, you shouldn’t be worried about Parker making a scene. You should worry about me . Now Let go of her.”

Mom drops her hand, the tendons in my arm rebounding now that it’s free. “God help you, Fitz. If she ever gets the chance to be your wife, you’re going to need it.”

I stare her down as she walks toward the back of the plane, disappearing into a side door that leads to the presidential quarters.

“You alright?”

I didn’t even realize Fitz had turned around. He’s boiling, I can feel it.

I try to nod, but I can’t.

Fitz grabs my hand, and even though his hold is so different from my mother’s, I twist out of it and sink back into my seat, slipping off my heels and pulling my knees up to my chest.

“Parker,” Fitz whispers. “What was that about?”

I bring my head toward the window. “Nothing. We can’t go anyway. We have plans . Or at least, I think we do.”

At this point, given how cold he’s been, I wonder if Fitz is about to break the news that he’s backed out of this altogether.

But his iciness is cut by his frustration. “What’s the problem with Brookdale?”

My eyes squeeze shut. For a minute, I think I’m shaking from the vibrations of the plane’s engines, but then I realize I’m the one shaking.

“There’s nothing in Brookdale,” I say, rotating my head toward him. “Nothing except hell.”

An explosion erupts in Fitz’s eyes, a tornado of anger from what my mother just did, frustration with me, and confusion. It would be beautiful—the way the colors swirl together as he tries to piece everything together—if it wasn’t so tragic.

“Sorry for the interruption, but I’m afraid we can’t arrange transport back to Boston tonight.”

I look up at one of my mother’s aides. “You can’t?” I snap. “Or you won’t?”

“Inclement weather. It’s been storming all day in New England,” the aide offers.

I point at Fitz. “My fiancé has a meeting he needs to get to first thing in the morning.”

That was the plan—Fitz would attend his last offensive meeting before the holiday, and then we’d head to the airport.

“The president and First Lady will send you home tomorrow,” the aide says, dodging the question. “You’ll stay in the Residences for another night.”

Slowly, I drag my head away from her to Fitz.

“Your mom didn’t make it thunder, Parker.”

She did though. The storm is just in me.

* * *

“This is the White House,” I grit out, tapping my phone. “You’d think there wouldn’t be a service issue.”

I try reloading the Amtrack website as I pace up and down the hall of the Residences. Fitz sighs from the couch in the sitting room as I pass.

“I’m not sleeping in a train car, Parker. Forget it.”

I think about Mr. Foller cornering me during the party. I don’t want to give him another reason to even try that again, but Fitz is right. He probably won’t be much use to anyone after sleeping sitting up.

I stomp into the kitchen and take a wine glass from a cabinet, putting it down so hard on the counter that the base shatters.

Cursing under my breath, I reach for a bunch of paper towels to throw it away.

“I just…” I drop the mess into the trash can. “I need to get out of here.”

Fitz leans against the countertop beside me, folding his arms. “Do you want to go to a hotel?”

Bless his heart, he still doesn’t get it. We can’t walk out of here as easily as we drove out of the parking lot at the school that day. We’re behind enemy lines with no way out until we get permission .

My fingers ache from how hard I grip the sink. Suddenly, I feel like I’m a teenager again, having been sent to my room, reprimanded for cutting school that day, for coming home smelling like weed. That was better than this. At least back then, I had a window to climb out of. None of the ones in the White House open.

“Look, I get that?—”

“You don’t get anything.” I let go of the sink and move to step around him.

Fitz reaches for my arm. “I can’t if you won’t come out from the other side of that wall and talk to me.”

Hanging my head, I stare at Fitz’s gentle hold. I think back to the day at Captain’s Cottage, how grounding his presence was. But now, here , it’s not.

I want to run.

But this time, I’m taking Fitz with me.

“What are you—” Fitz thankfully doesn’t drag his legs and hurries along with me out of the Residences and to the elevator. “Where are we going?”

“To cause problems.” The elevator chimes, and I look at him. “We’re rebels, right?”

The tenseness in Fitz’s jaw begins to break when a breathy laugh escapes from his mauvy pink lips. And when I hold my hand out for him to take, the rest of it goes.

I tug him into the elevator. “Let’s go be a little rebellious.”

* * *

For a few minutes, as Fitz and I run barefoot through the quiet White House, taking wrong turns and running into locked doors, I swear we’re no older than seventeen, sneaking onto Thacher’s closed campus and climbing a fence. The only real difference is this time, there aren’t security guards, but Secret Service agents who catch us. But apart from their curious stares, they say nothing.

The late evening air is warm but light and does more than welcome me. I feel baptized by it, cleansed. But still in the mood for some fun.

“Where are we going?” Fitz asks as he follows down a dimly lit dark path. He sighs when we make out the yellow lights of the cabana.

We’ve been back from the event for hours, and the first thing Fitz did was change out of his suit and into a pair of joggers and a sweatshirt. Clearly, I was too busy pacing to care. The end of my dress sways in the warm breeze as I lead him onto the grass, letting go of his hand when we make it to the pool.

“For a swim.” I bring my hands to the bottom of my dress to lift it and Fitz quickly spins me around.

“ That’s called skinny dipping.” When he pulls the fabric from my hands, his fingers graze my thigh, and I jolt. “Not swimming.”

I knit my brow together. “I was planning to keep my underwear on.”

It’s still dim, but Fitz’s face is highlighted just enough.

“Does that disappoint you?” I ask, tipping my head to the side.

His chest rises and falls slowly three times before he speaks, “Parker?—”

I step out of reach, lifting my dress over my head again. “I should be a good wife and make you happy.”

Before the fabric clears my body, I realize I didn’t entirely think this through. I was imagining a more stripping off our clothes as we ran and jumped into the pool scenario. Not this. Not Fitz’s eyes darkening as he scans up and down my body, leaving a trail of goosebumps on my exposed skin, lingering on the delicate areas still covered by my taupe-colored bra and thong. It’s a look just as powerful as the one he gave me outside during the engagement party.

I ran from that look.

But this one? It touches a different part of me and doesn’t let go. I’m held in place by the desire in Fitz’s eyes, the want, the need, like they’re thick vines of English Ivy.

“There are probably ten cameras down here,” Fitz hisses when I toss my dress onto a chair, baring more of my body to him.

I slide down the straps of my bra. “Let them look,” I say. “Your eyes are the ones that matter.”

My words are true, as true, if I’m being honest, as my kisses were yesterday, despite denying it.

I toss my bra to the chair behind Fitz. With his sweatshirt sleeves pushed up, the clip of it skims his forearm.

“Do you always do that?”

I’m confused by his question for a million reasons—his intense stare, the tight pull of my nipples in the cold air, the gruffness of his voice. “Do what?”

“Match them.”

My hands find the lace band of my underwear. “Do you like that?”

His throat swells with a swallow, his Adam’s apple protruding. The rhythm of his chest rising and falling picks up and I can tell his breathing changes. In this moment, as my mind races and my pulse ping-pongs through my veins. I want to say good riddance to trying to remain levelheaded and unproblematic when it comes to our friendship. That’s not who I am. I’m flooded with this intense desire to do what I shouldn’t.

“I know what I said yesterday. But what if, just once”—I lick my lips—“would it really be so bad?”

There’s little light, but I don’t need it anyway. It could be pitch black and I still would feel the potency of Fitz’s eyes tracing me, sliding from my face down to my breasts. There’s heat in his stare, and even though we don’t touch, it leaves a molten path in its wake.

I press my thighs together.

My breath hitches when he reaches and yanks his crewneck sweatshirt by the back of the neck, lifting it over his head. Now my breathing matches his. I’m drawn to the span of his broad chest, entranced by how it tapers down to his waist. I can remember the feel of him pressing me into the bed, squirming against him because I had nowhere to go but also nowhere else I wanted to be.

I’m so focused on Fitz that I don’t even realize he’s moved closer until I flinch when he lifts the sweatshirt over my head.

“Yeah.” He tugs it down so my body is covered. “It definitely would.”