Page 47

Congressman Cam

In Boston on the 6th for meetings. How is the early afternoon?

I tense, staring at Fitz as he slips on a pair of pajama bottoms, stretching his arms above his head. August 6 is Fitz’s first preseason game down in Tampa. I try to do the math, but I know it’ll be next to impossible to get to kick off in time. My heart sinks. I’ve waited weeks for Camden to come up to Boston to meet with me and Abby, and now? Now I’m screwed because my wifely duties will be compromised by trying to do the right thing. And maybe, I might’ve felt different about that weeks ago. But now? I want to show up for and support my husband. I also need to do the right thing. It’s just not the easy thing, especially after such a wonderful weekend.

It might’ve not been a mini-honeymoon. But it was everything we needed. We might’ve stayed out too late at the dance and had to stay horizontal most of the next day, but Fitz and I found something during this weekend—each other.

“Italian?” Fitz asks. “I’ll order now.”

“Sure.” I wait for him to leave before returning my attention to my phone.

You’ll need to come to me.

I’d feel more comfortable meeting Cam at home than I would in public, and I’m sure Abby would too. She deserves to be heard in this. But before I tell her to mark it in her calendar, I have to do one thing. It just happens to be one hard thing I can’t quite explain over dinner, which I just push around my plate an hour later.

“If you’re not hungry, I haven’t worked you out hard enough,” Fitz says, playfully palming my ass as he walks by me in the kitchen.

I put away the carbonara I’ve hardly touched into Tupperware while he rinses our plates at the sink. Snapping the lid closed, I take a deep breath, watching him load the dishwasher. This weekend felt so magical and easy and normal. My heart pounds against my chest as my stomach twists with nerves. Part of me is dying to tell Fitz everything, but I don’t want to burden what the light air between me and Fitz with heaviness. That’s putting it mildly. I once thought my past was heavy. Now, it’s like a dead weight.

I carry that deadweight into the bedroom, changing into pajamas and then using the bathroom when Fitz is done to brush my teeth. When I finish, he’s already in bed, relaxed but wide eyed.

“Come here.”

Fitz’s lazy smile calls to me. I want to. So much. I want to crawl into bed, nuzzle myself against his chest, and forget absolutely all of this.

But I can’t. Because Sarah looked out for me. And I have to look out for her.

Fitz pushes up on his elbow. “What’s going on?”

I sigh, staring at the door and wondering if I could just keep this a secret to protect Fitz a little longer.

“Parker. If you want to use the lock tonight, you can.”

I wince. Fitz is sweet, too thoughtful. Every night we’ve shared the same bed, he always says the same thing. And most nights I did. But the door is the last thing on my mind.

“It’s not about the lock.”

It’s never been about the lock.

After a few deep breaths, I make my way over and climb onto the bed. “I have to tell you something.”

“Parker, you can tell me anything.”

My shoulders shake as I try so hard not to cry.

Fitz reaches for my hand. “What’s going on? What happened?”

So much . I feel it—the weight of everything past and present on top of my shoulders, pushing me down. I want that weight off. But I don’t want to shovel it onto Fitz.

“There’s nothing you could do that would make me love you any less.”

Love . It hasn’t been a word Fitz has kept secret, but one he doesn’t use as often as I know he wants to. It’s a word I’m worried I don’t know the meaning of. But maybe, slowly, Fitz is showing me. Whether he continues to do that after tonight, I’m not so sure.

“Your preseason game is on the sixth, right?”

Fitz nods. “In Tampa. Kickoff is at four.”

I sigh. “How heartbroken would you be if I missed it?”

“Heartbroken?” Fitz asks. “I’ll hardly play.”

Maybe I didn’t hear him correctly. “What?”

Fitz laughs. “Parker, preseason games, they’re meant more for the second strings and below. I’ll take a few snaps, but they try not to get the starters hurt before the season starts.”

Well. That takes care of one of my issues, but not all of them, and Fitz clearly can see that. “Is it the campaign?” he asks. “Did your mom call?”

“No, no, it’s just…I have to see Cam.”

Fitz’s eyebrows wrestle with the thought for a second.

I hold up a hand. “I swear, at the reunion, nothing was going on between us, not like that.” I take a deep breath. “I need his help with something. And no, it’s not campaign related unless, well, it ends the campaign.”

Sitting up straight, Fitz leans forward. “What are you talking about?”

I slip off the bed, wiping my face with the back of my hand as I turn on the light in the closet, heading to the back of it for the cookie tin. Fitz sits up against the pillows when I hand it to him.

“What’s this?”

I think back to the day that started it all, and how all I could give Fitz was what he could see. Shutting my eyes, I remember lifting my shirt off in my Atlanta apartment, spinning to give him my back. I didn’t have to say much. What I showed him told him everything he needed to know.

In the box is the rest of it.

I blow out a heavy breath. “I… It’s really hard to talk about. So I can’t tell you. But I can show you.”

* * *

My bedroom door, which I shut to give Fitz space and privacy, opens only thirty minutes later. That’s all it takes for Fitz to read everything, which seems surprising considering I printed the articles about Sarah and Horizons and her initial lawsuit filing, and there are pages of my letters—if you could call them that—written out neatly in order. Between the few that were on napkins, or written with dry pens, most of the originals were almost illegible, but I placed them in small Ziplock bags so Abby’s lawyer would have everything.

Fitz holds up one of the bags and begins to read the mess of my words. “Dear Fitzy, Today is day 229. In five days, I’ll be free. I haven’t been writing because there’s nothing else I can tell you now. I decided after Sarah left, that I’d just take it day by day to get out of here. Everything I told you that happened still happens. And everything that didn’t happen before” —he grimaces— “happened after. Because with Sarah gone, I have no one. No one to talk to. No one to dream about riding with. No one to protect and be protected by.”

I cover my face with my hands as I remember the male orderly returning to the bathroom, the way he leaned against the sink as he watched me shower. It happened another six times before my last day.

Fitz continues, “I’ve never felt so alone. But the scarier thing is? I’m not sure I even care. I hate saying that. I know you, I know Honey, would be so upset. Please forgive me for not fighting back and getting out of here sooner. I’m too scared. I’m too tired. I’m too far gone to come back to who I was. And even though I don’t write, I do think. A lot. I think I care about you too much to ever send you these. I think I couldn’t stand to see you—so good—painted by something so bad.” His voice cracks. “Me.”

I start sobbing, and Fitz drops the letter onto the table and rushes to my side, dropping onto his knees in front of the couch. He pulls my hands away from my face, kissing them. “You aren’t bad, Parker. What they did to you? Bad doesn’t begin to describe it.”

I can’t say anything. I just cry more than a decade of tears. I let a river of it all flow from me. And when the tears slow—but don’t stop—I lean up to look at him. I want to see his face. I want to memorize the way his scruff curtains off his hidden dimple, the two things the perfect balance of Fitz the boy, who I never knew I gave my heart to, and Fitz the man, who I realize I wish would never give it back.

I’m terrified he’ll return what’s left of it—as is his right. Because here I am, making things difficult. And maybe that moment will come in the next breath, the next second or minute or in an hour. But for now, he’s holding me. He’s with me.

Fitz rubs his hands up and down my back, bringing them to rest on my shoulders. “How I feel about you now is the same as back then,” he tells me. “And how I feel about this—and that place —now? I would’ve felt the same back then. I would’ve come for you if I knew, I swear.”

In my mind, I see the writing he added on the bottom of the bleachers and part of me wishes he could’ve done that. But the other part of me can’t ignore that what he has now, as a professional athlete, isn’t even close to what he had going on then.

“Parker. What happened to Sarah?”

My shoulders shake beneath Fitz’s hands. “S-she died.”

Fitz’s hold on me tenses and I lean my forehead against his bare chest.

“She died,” I repeat with a hoarse voice. “And she didn’t have to. All this time, I just imaged she was free , you know? And when I got out, and I looked at the sun and there was no one to tell me my fifteen minutes of outside time was done… I didn’t want to look back at any of it. I didn’t want to find her. But I didn’t know what really happened until now. She’s Abby’s sister.”

Taking a deep breath, I lean back from his chest.

“Abby’s family never appealed the wrongful death lawsuit because their lawyer felt they didn’t have enough evidence. I know the exact days she was sick. I told them I’d testify if they filed a new lawsuit.”

His face remains unchanged. “And?

I take a deep breath. “And I’m involving Cam in it. Because two years ago, he cosponsored a bill in Congress about institutional child abuse. It got held up in a committee and died. I asked about it at the reunion. That’s why I was so insistent on going even though I originally didn’t want to. I was afraid if I tried to arrange meeting him through his office my parents would find out. I wanted to know from him what it would take to get that bill back to Congress.”

Fitz’s jaw tenses, as if he knows the answer before he’s even asked the question. “And what’s that?”

“Me.” I swallow. “Testifying in front of Congress.”

A storm brews in Fitz’s eyes. “Do you trust him?”

“I trust him wanting to make a name for himself, and this would be it. The soonest he could get it through would be in early September, which is after the convention and I have a feeling I can’t go through with that if I promise to work with Cam. He needs to meet to review everything we have. Your season will have started by then. I never wanted this to touch you. If you want…if you need an out?—”

Fitz drops his face to mine, and his voice is accompanied by an angry breath. “Do you think that ’s a reason for me to run from you? You trying to do the right thing?”

“It would be a big deal, Fitz,” I tell him. “And selfish, because?—”

“Making yourself vulnerable with purpose is selfish ?” He shakes his head. “It’s the most selfless thing you can do. I’ve gone to war for people I don’t love an iota of how much I love you ,” Fitz tells me. “I’d never hold you back from something like this, Parker. I’d hate you if you didn’t because of me.”

A typhoon of relief whooshes out of me.

“I’ll be with you,” he promises. “Every step of the way.”