Page 33

“Parker. It’s locked.”

I jump when the light turns on behind me. Fitz now sits on the bed, running his fingers through his dark hair already sticking up every which way. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. He was tossing and turning on the floor, where he’s now had to sleep for another night, and after getting up to check the door half a dozen times, I haven’t made that easier.

“Sorry.” I slide back beneath the duvet, facing away from him. “I won’t do it again.”

I’m talking about the door and the fact that hours ago, I stripped naked in front of Fitz and put myself on the table only to have him decline.

“I promise,” I add. It’s a futile promise for only half of what I apologized for. I’m already itching to check the door again.

The mattress shifts, and I assume he’s gone back to the floor until I hear a shuffling of the blankets before the weight of the bed shifts again. “I’m sorry too.”

I freeze when his warmth invades beneath the blanket.

“About the pool?—”

“You don’t have to apologize,” I tell him. “Actually, take it back entirely, please, and try to forget it ever happened.”

I yank the duvet tighter under my chin, hoping it might restrain me. For a second, I debate hiding beneath it. But no shield can protect me from what’s in my own head.

“The hardest part is I know,” I whisper as my legs rub together. “I know it’s locked.”

“It is. That’s why I’m sorry. I made a hard day harder for you and”—he pauses, sighing—“I want to make things better , not worse.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, but my brain only lets me do that for a second before I open them, pressing against the mattress to push myself up. But before I manage to do so, Fitz stops me. I feel the warmth of his hand through the blanket half-covering my shoulder.

“Do you want me to go and see if there are any cards in that library down the hall? We could play a few games of War.”

“I’m already playing war in my head.”

The sound of hopelessness in Fitz’s sigh is awful. “We can play Go Fish. Anything to distract you.”

My brain halts its overreacting and focuses on something else. On Fitz. On me. On us together nearly every night on the living room floor.

“Is that what you’ve been doing with the puzzles? Trying to distract me?”

Too much time to think , he had said that night. It’s now I realize how much he was thinking about me that leave a ball of emotion in my throat.

“I thought it might help,” Fitz admits as his hand falls from my shoulder. “To try and take your mind off things.”

It did , I think as my heart swells in my chest.

“We could just talk,” he offers.

I fidget, my body restless. I don’t know if I want to get up and check the lock again or break down the door and scream.

“Is there a bunker here?”

“Like for nuclear war?” I ask. “Yes. But I doubt I’m on the list.”

“Parker.” A deep laugh rumbles from his chest. “Family isn’t a members-only club.”

But that’s what Fitz doesn’t understand. My family, it is a club. You pay your dues. You’re selected. Your membership can be terminated at any time.

The urge to check the door strikes me again.

“Wait.” This time when Fitz reaches out, the blanket has already slipped off me and his hand now cups my bare skin, only a sliver of it covered by the thin strap of my tank top. He gently guides me to turn and face him. “I’m trying to distract you here.”

“Maybe don’t talk about places you can be locked inside of, then,” I tell him. “Because a bunker sounds good right now as long as it was just you and me in it and the only way out is a password that only we know.”

“Like rebel?” Fitz suggests, raising an eyebrow and some of the unease in my body that’s been strangled by invasive thoughts releases with a small laugh. “It’s just you and me in this room. And the door is locked. No one is getting in. And if the impossible happened and someone did, I’m with you.”

I’m with you .

“I’ll keep you safe,” Fitz promises and I wish I could convince myself to believe him because I see in his eyes—how intensely they hold mine—that he means it.

“It’s not the same. I know you don’t get it.”

“I wish you’d explain it to me so I could at least try,” Fitz says. “There’s more than one piece missing to this puzzle.”

With the light on, I see the hurt etched into Fitz’s face. His dimple I love is invisible because of the way he softly frowns. I know that unloading everything now will only make his frown deeper and leave me, well, worse.

“I know I’ve boxed you out.” I admit. “And I’m sorry I’m doing that.. But I can’t talk about it now, not at night.”

Fitz’s hand stills on my arm. “I just want to make sure you know you can trust me.”

I hate I’ve made him feel otherwise. “You’re the only one I do trust, Fitz.”

He resumes sweeping my arm. I watch the thoughts circle through his irises, and it takes all I have to refrain from asking what’s going on in his head. I don’t have that right. But Fitz is just so good, so trusting, he tells me anyway with no strings.

“About the pool.” Fitz stills his hand above my elbow. “I care about you, Parker. Too much…you’re my?—”

“Friend,” I cut in. “I’m your friend.”

“You’re more than that and you know it.”

Between the power behind his words and the strength of his eyes now returned to mine, I’m stunned silent.

“Parker, if that wasn’t true, thinking about how you feel wouldn’t keep me up at night. And while fucking around by the pool sounds”—Fitz pauses, dragging his bottom lip between his teeth but quickly releasing it—“it doesn’t help you here. ”

I know he isn’t talking about the literal bed, but the space we share between us that goes wherever we do, that feels filled to the max given the length of our friendship, but still seems to magically have room to stretch and grow with us.

When Fitz’s hand leaves my arm to brush my hair back from my face, I find myself hoping I’d be lucky to do that, to grow with the man who was once the boy always at my side, the man who thinks about my needs before I knew what they were.

The pensive look on his face disappearing as he drags his eyes up to mine, “What if I gave you something else to think about?”

At first I think Fitz has inched closer because his breath now tickles the tip of my nose. But then I realize, as I drive my knee into the mattress and scoot, it’s me that’s moved to him, as if my body knows he’s a safe anchor to latch onto.

But I know, with the way he drags his hand down, his fingers searching for mine that we’re both guilty of moving toward each other.

I swallow heavily. “What’s that?”

The moment the fingertips touch, my pulse sprints for the finish line when the race hasn’t even begun yet.

Fitz threads his fingers with mine. “Me.”

The smoothness of his voice makes my eyes flutter closed and my body softens, melting into the mattress.

“It’s just you and me in here, Parker,” Fitz whispers. “You can’t control what or who is out there, but you know you have me here. Just like at home.”

It takes a lot of effort to push out even two small words. “I know. We’ll be home tomorrow.”

He shakes his head against the pillow.

“What?”

“I don’t feel like I’m not at home when I’m with you,” he says, and I swear, I think I hear relief accompany his words, as if Fitz is sitting for confession, as if he’s letting go of a secret that’s weighed heavily on him. “Not even in the beginning.”

“The beginning of all this?”

“No, Parker,” Fitz whispers. “The beginning of us .”

Fitz finds a way to move closer. Our noses touch. My brain tries to search for the moment Fitz is talking about, but it’s hard to stray away from right now. Because I can feel it—this is the moment the entire world is about to change forever.

And I want it to.

There’s a nervous tick to Fitz’s breathing. It pushes the air from his chest faster, hints of his breath tickling my lips. “Parker…”

His whisper is a final warning. But Fitz should know there’s a reason we’re in this situation in the first place. I’ve never been good at doing what I’m told.

I was right. The entire world changes in those milliseconds when our lips aren’t together, that space in time when we gasp for just enough air to keep going. I can’t worry if it might be for better or worse because there isn’t time to think about later when now has never felt more significant.

So I hold onto that, to Fitz, who has become my now , even if it's under false pretenses, who was my then when I had no one else.

It hits me—Fitz has been my always.

Breaking the hold of our hands, I cup his face, my nails scratching at his beard that’s grown out of it’s neat trim for our engagement party yesterday. My fingertips coax something out of him, like I’ve lured a hungry bear from its cave after a long winter. Between swallowing the tail end of his moan and gasping for my next breath, he’s brought a thick, strong thigh on top of mine. The weight of him sandwiches my legs tighter together, teasing me with friction.

“Fitz…”

God, the warmth of his leg nudging mine open heats me from head to toe. Immediately, I clamp down on it, and he hisses against my mouth, the sound some sort of key to an ignition I didn’t know I had been carrying around.

The missing piece , I think to myself.

Fitz glides a hand to my hip, his fingers stretching and slipping beneath the thin fabric of my tank top. When I let out a moan, he curses against my lips before pulling his mouth away and leaning his forehead to mine.

“I want to touch you.” His words are quiet, but the desire that echoes behind them is deafening. “But only if you want it. Only if you tell me it’s okay.”

His eyes are cast down at our tightly packed bodies. I bite hard into my lip—so intensely I might draw blood, but I can’t help it. Watching the way his mouth parts and his eyes darken as I grind into his thigh only makes me throb harder.

Fitz sucks in a hefty dose of air through his nose. “God dammit, Parker. I need you to say it.”

I don’t even realize how intensely I’m circling against him until I feel my pajama shorts gathering and bunching together. I don’t realize how hard he is until I slide higher up his thigh.

“I want you to touch me. I need you to.”

When our lips meet again, they do so openly. Our tongues tangle, playing a game of catch as we toss noises back and forth—whimpers from me, deep groans from him. It’s a vicious and exhausting and yet I don’t want it to end. I only want to broaden the sphere, so I trail a hand down his bare chest and head south. But with a quick reflex, Fitz catches my wrist, leaving only my fingers to dust against his straining length.

“No. Show me first,” he says against my mouth. “Show me where you want me to touch you.”

My fingers flex, desperate to find him even though Fitz has my wrist gently restrained. I’ve been touch starved before. But this, the way I’m desperate to feel every inch of Fitz, this is a famine.

Fitz’s face softens, like he’s about to give me what I want before it twists, and he shakes his head.

“No.” He clears his throat after the first word comes out hoarsely and then leans forward, sticking his face into the crook of my neck, dragging his nose up to my ear that he nips at. “This is about you . I”—he pauses—“ we wouldn’t be able to handle that.”

I can’t think about what he means beyond saying no . I whine again.

He leaves a trail of wet kisses back down, letting his tongue trace the shallow valley of my collarbone. “You like to beg, don’t you?”

I throw my head back, giving his tongue all of my neck. I have no words, only a hum, to answer. But for good measure, I manage to beg again. “Please.”

“I’m going to make you sick of it. I promise.” He slides his hand higher, the tip of his finger tracing the bottom curve of my breast. “But not tonight. Tonight, you take what you need without asking.”

I twist my hand in his hold and Fitz lets go, bringing it down to his shoulder. When I pull at him, his lips graze my skin as he shakes his head, sending a stream of chills across my body.

“If I get on top of you, that’s a surefire way to make it about me.” He brings his lips back to my ear the moment he rolls my taut nipple between his fingers.

I cup the back of his head. “You told me to think about you.”

God the feel of his smile against my neck is foreplay all on its own. I grind down, circling my hips against his strong thigh. I’m tense and holding onto him for dear life as he worships my skin with his mouth.

“Fitz, please.”

“No begging, Parker,” Fitz growls, sliding his face from my neck and kissing me. “Just take what you want.”

Still grinding against his thigh, I cover Fitz’s hand now kneading my breast and squeeze it before directing it down against my bare stomach. Our foreheads touch and I watch close up as his eyes flutter shut as I bring it down resting it at the barrier of my pajama shorts.

“I want you to take me.”

His forehead meets mine. “Parker. You can’t say that to me.”

My words and heavy breaths dust his lips, and I swear Fitz trembles as he slides his hand beneath the fabric of my shorts and underwear. Beneath my hand on his shoulder, his muscles twitch, and mine follow the same pattern when one of his long, thick fingers slips inside me.

I’ve never heard a grown man whimper. “Fuck, you can’t be this wet. You can’t…”

But I am, easily letting Fitz slip another finger inside as he brings the heel of his hand flush against my clit. My head falls back, my clutch on his shoulder and around his fingers tightening.

I feel it, how hard he’s holding back as my grinding into his hand turns into frantic bucking. My breathing blooms into a panicked rhythm, my toes curling, the tips of his fingers massaging on every journey they make out of me before they crash deeper again.

His kisses are frantic and rushed, like he’s right there with me, like the way I am in the moment—a beat away from falling apart—is his ultimate fantasy.

“That’s it,” Fitz coaxes, his words punctuated by rolls of his tongue until he parks his mouth at the corner of mine. Inside, his finger curls, beckoning my release. “God, you’re so beautiful when you’re about to fall apart.”

My hips move faster and Fitz lays a delicate kiss at the corner of my mouth.

“Come on my hand. All over it.”

Sinking my nails into his shoulder isn’t enough. I fling my hand down, gripping his length over his underwear. Because I want for him what he does for me. “Only if you do too.”

He’s thick and scorching even though I’m stroking him through fabric, doing what I can to match the pace of his fingers as they fuck me.

“Fuck,” he grunts out. “Fuck, I’m with you, Parker.”

I’m with you .

His words push me over the edge, but I’m still holding onto him. I take him with me.

Panting, sweating, and still clinging to him as his cum seeps through his underwear and warms my hand, I land in a puddle, splashing in a pool of vulnerability, which makes me feel so unbelievably exposed.

It’s not the way my clothes hang off my body or that Fitz feels my nervous heartbeat from the inside before he slips his fingers out of me. It’s that I needed someone. I needed him in this very moment in this room on a different level than I need him outside of it.

I’m terrified I’ll never not need Fitz in this way again. He senses it, and his hold on me shifts, morphing into something soft but protective, even though it’s what’s in my head that terrifies me. And like how I feel about locking the door, Fitz can’t change that. But he tries. God, he’s been trying, and I’m flooded with emotion as I drown in that realization.

“Shh,” he whispers. “I’m with you.”