Page 106 of The Americana Playbook

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 thingsbetter, 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.”

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