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“I can’t believe you did this,” I whisper, tracing my handwriting right above his hip. I feel Fitz’s stare and look away from the ink.

He shivers beneath my touch. “Is it weird to know you branded me in some way?”

“No! No, it’s not weird. It’s…” I pause, trying to think of the right words. But from where I’m supposed to find them, I’m not sure. These two beneath my hand, ones which make sense to only us, they’re enough for me because their place on Fitz’s body during the time we’ve been apart means I’m enough for him.

“You didn’t make me think I matter,” I tell him. “You made me believe it.”

It must be the weight of the sadness in my voice that forces Fitz’s face into a frown. He tugs gently on my arm and I inch up toward the pillow he lays his head on. He scoots over so we share it.

“You don’t just matter, Parker. You matter a lot. You always have.” Fitz sighs. “I wanted you to see that tonight. And I’m sorry?—”

I rest my hand lightly over his lips. “Don’t. You don’t have anything to be sorry for. I didn’t make it easy for you.”

Fitz huffs against my skin.

“I’m the one who’s sorry,” I tell him. “Nick mentioned the tattoo and I felt like maybe, I don’t know…”

“You don’t know what?” Fitz asks, smoothing my hair back when I nestle deeper against the pillow. “You can tell me anything.”

A sharp pain seizes my chest. The truth is, I don’t know where to start. Hypocrisy lines the inside of my mouth. Fitz didn’t tell me everything. How can I be mad? He only gave me a taste of my own medicine. It tastes awful.

I reach down and trace the letters again. This time, Fitz doesn’t hiss, doesn’t make a sound. He just waits for me.

But I give him nothing. Because I can’t get the words out. If how he feels about me is based on the old Parker, would his feelings stand strong with the new me?

“I wish I had told you that night under the bleachers. I was planning on it,” he says. “But I was chicken. That’s the truth. If I had known I was going to lose you the way I did, I would’ve tried anyway.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. Fitz has no idea the extent he lost me. That’s what’s so heartbreaking.

“You’ll never know how I wish I could’ve been braver. I can’t change what happened, even though I’d give anything to do that. It’s my greatest wish to go back and do what was right.” His warm breath tickles my lips when he sighs. “I’d like to give a go at the future with you. You know this already. But I need you to believe it. And maybe I don’t know what you went through, Parker. But I know it was a lot. And if you need forever to talk to me about it, I’ll give it to you.”

Bringing my hand up, I find his cheek before I open my eyes. “I don’t need forever,” I say quietly. “But I do need a little time.”

It’s the truth. I need time for the Griffen family’s lawyer to look through what I sent him. I need to talk to Cam and see how he can help and what that might mean for me when it comes to my plans for the convention.

But I need to give Fitz something now. “And I want to try too. I mean it.”

“Good.” He presses his lips to mine. “But I have conditions.”

An astronaut could see the playfulness on Fitz’s face from the moon.

“Name them.”

Fitz rubs his hand up and down my waist. “You’re going to homecoming with me.”

My eyes widen. “Homecoming?”

He hums. “Yes, homecoming. I go back every year for it.”

“The dance?”

“The game.” He laughs. “I think if I started showing up to high school dances as an adult, someone would call the cops on me. But damn, if I had the chance to take you, I would. I’d love a re-do.”

“A re-do? What do you mean?”

“I guess it’s not a re-do since we never had a first time, but I tried.” He smiles at the clear confusion on my face. “I always wanted to dance with you. And maybe junior year I got a week’s worth of detention because Mr. Gibson caught me stuffing the ballot box.”

I gasp. “Is that the reason I won?” Honey had died only two months earlier. It was the beginning of my spiral. I showed up blasted to the dance. “Did you steal the election for me?”

Fitz laughs. “No. I knew you’d already win. I was trying to rig it for me to win.” He moves moving my hair over my shoulder, sticking his face into my neck. “I would’ve done anything to dance with you. You being my wife now has solved a lot of my teenage trauma.”

He sighs and my insides melt, making me feel like I’m sinking into the mattress.

“What are you thinking?” Fitz asks against my neck.

“Just about us,” I say as he pulls back. “And how much I want to make it work.”

“Parker, if you divorce me, don’t think I’m not above asking you to marry me again.” We lock hands, resting them in the small space between us. “But if you want that, if you want the dating and the pining and all the”—he pauses to think for a minute—“the relationship stuff, you already know I’m game. I’d never say no to wooing you.”

If Fitz thinks for a second he hasn’t wooed me, I worry about what the next round might be like.

“You don’t have to try so hard,” I tell him. “If anything, I should be the one wooing you.”

“Well,” he begins. “You’ve got to let me live out some of the teenage dreams I missed out on. One of them kind of happened tonight.”

Narrowing my eyes, I think back to the classroom. “Hooking up in the science wing was on your bucket list?”

A playful smirk lights up Fitz’s face. “Maybe.”

“Oh, so it’s a naughty teenage dream list. What else is on there?”

Fitz doesn’t say anything.

“Tell me.” I nudge him playfully.

A deep laugh rumbles from his chest. “No.”

“Tell me.”

Fitz shakes his head

Straightening, I push him onto his back and straddle his stomach. “Tell me.”

Fitz holds his hands up, one on each side of his head. “That’s not fair. You can’t ask me to tell you while you’re naked and on top of me. That’s coercion. There are laws against it.”

I brush my hair to the side before I lean forward, pressing a kiss to his neck. “Please,” I whisper against his ear.

“Fine.”

I immediately pull back and straighten. “That’s it? One kiss to your neck and you’re singing like a canary? Remind me to never commit a crime and tell you about it. You’d hang me out to dry.”

“I don’t have to testify against you in court though.” He holds up a finger. “Spousal privileges.”

My eyes haven’t even rolled all the way to the side before I do when Fitz flips me over, hovering above me and caging me in with his arms.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Not anymore. I’ll woo you without your help.”

Fitz nibbles on my neck.

“Alright, fine. Twist my arm.” My voice cracks.

He lingers in the crook of my neck for a good minute, alternating between nuzzling the space with his nose and brushing his scruff against it. “You and me in a classroom.”

“Mmmhmm,” I mumble.

Fitz lowers his body, his full length hard and alert and pressing up against me. My breath hitches in the back of my throat.

“Doing this with clothes on.”

Slowly—and careful not to slip inside me—Fitz starts gliding over my center.

“O-okay,” I stutter after the third or fourth pass when I’m finally able to find my voice.

Fitz pulls away from my neck, finding my lips. “Kissing.”

The strength of his mouth pulls mine open as his tongue waves inside to link with mine. I clutch at the back of his head and squeeze my legs together to keep him in both places.

I whimper when he pulls away, sitting back on his knees.

I push up on my elbows. “ And ?”

“No and . Those things. Together. Fully clothed.”

I bite my tongue to keep from laughing. “You want to dry hump while we make out?”

Fitz’s head tilts to the side, sighing. “A kid can dream, can’t he?”

I lick my lips. And while I’m not sure I’ll be able to get Fitz back into the classroom to tick off another naughty item on the nostalgia bucket list, I wonder if I can take him back to the past while still living out the things he once dreamed about in a different way.

* * *

“Oh!” Lo claps her hands. “That is beyond cute.”

I hop out of the car, tucking the poster under my arm.

“What isn’t cute is that you smell like manure,” she says, wrinkling her nose.

“I was just at the barn. I’ll shower and change before tonight,” I promise. I shut the door with my hip. “Did you get the final count?”

Lo pulls out her phone. “We have yes from every guy on the fifty-three man roster and twelve from practice squad. And plus ones. You have no idea how excited everyone is.”

“Aren’t there sixteen guys on the practice squad?”

Lo sighs. “Foller cut four form the roster yesterday, so a few guys moved up.”

“Yesterday?” I ask. “The season didn’t even start yet. How can he cut anyone?”

“Oh.” Lo snickers darkly. “He can always find someone to cut. Or threaten to.”

I shake my head. I can’t stand the guy.

“Is it almost time?” I ask her.

Lo takes out her phone. “Yup. We have four minutes. They’re done at 11:12.”

“You mean 11:15.”

“No.” Lo shakes her head. “Practice ends at 11:12.”

“Who ends anything at twelve minutes past the hour?”

We begin walking and I peak over at Agent Samuels who steps out of the SUV, trailing me.

“Coach Foller,” she answers, and I’m not sure why I’m surprised at all. “This way, they have forty-eight minutes for minor treatment and showering before lunch and film.”

I shake my head. “Is he running the military or a football team?”

Lo shrugs. “A little bit of both I guess.”

Pulling out the poster I have tucked under my arm, I hold it out, looking over at Lo. “Then let’s go stage a coup.”

This is actually the first time I’ve been to the Rebels training facility, which I only snuck into because Fitz keeps a pass in his car I still drive.

“It’s this way.” Lo waves at a security guard. “Hi, Frank! This is Parker, Fitz’s wife.”

I shuffle the sign awkwardly back under my arm and lift my hand to wave.

“We’re just going to catch them while they walk in. Hope that’s alright!”

The security guard nods curtly. “Go on in, ladies. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Fitzy.”

I snort out a laugh and whisper to Lo, “You know, when I used to break into places, I had to be a little more stealthy.”

“You?” Lo stops. “Break-in where?”

I eye the edges of the practice field we approach and smirk at her. “Football fields.”

Lo cackles. “Oh, you two used to make out under the bleachers during school, didn’t you?”

“I don’t kiss and tell,” I say both because we haven’t, and when we do, I’ll keep that between me and Fitz. “Where do I stand?”

Lo nudges me left. “Over there. They’ll go inside through that door.”

I move off the pavement path and onto the neatly cut grass with my poster board. Most of the players are down field, so I try to stay out of sight, just beside the facility entrance aptly labeled.

REBELS ONLY.

From here, I don’t hear much, just a whistle or two and a few choice, four-letter words streaming out of Coach Foller’s mouth. Lo’s taken up conversation with Frank at the gate, lifting her head toward me to make sure I’m still there, as if I have somewhere else to be. Even if I did, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

“Psst.” Lo gives me a thumbs up. “They’re coming. Put it up.”

I step away from the building, closer to the grass and raise the sign as the Rebels in their white practice jerseys come into view. But my eyes find the one that stands out—the tall, dreamy quarterback in red. My husband .

There are a few bellows of laughter, some hoots and whistles. But there’s no sound coming from Fitz. And yet, the smile on his face says so, so much. He stops a few feet away from me, some of his guys giving him pats on his shoulders as they pass.

“Can I put this down?” I ask. “My arms are killing me.”

Fitz says nothing, and I think for a minute that this grand gesture of mine maybe gifted him embarrassment instead and he’s only smiling because he’s too sweet and kind-hearted to hurt my feelings. “Fitz?”

He shakes his head. “Sorry,” he says. “I was just making sure I remember this.”

I’ve barely lowered the sign before he’s charged at me, dropping his helmet at his feet and lifting me clear off the ground.

“I told you I’d never say no,” Fitz whispers, pressing his cheek to mine. He’s a sweaty mess and I’m sure I’ve got a piece of hay stuck in my hair, but I plant a kiss right on his mouth anyway. “Wait.” He pulls back. “What am I saying yes to? Or where? ”

We both lean down, looking at my sign long forgotten on the ground.

FITZY-

WILL YOU GO TO THE DANCE WITH ME?

I kiss him again. “How does high school sound?”