Page 135 of The Americana Playbook

She takes a deep breath. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I hate that I ruined the night when it meant something to you.”

“That’s what you don’t get, Parker. You.Youmean something to me. You’re what”—I pause, rubbing my temple with my free hand—“I don’t know who you think I am. But I’mnotlike them. I’m not like your family who doesn’t give a shit about you or where you are except when they need you.”

“I know.”

I put my glass down on the coffee table and tilt up her chin. “I don’t think you do. I also don’t think you have the slightest clue about how I feel—how I’vefelt—about you. Because if you did, you probably wouldn’t be here right now. You probably would’ve left and gone who knows where.”

Part of me wants to soften the grip I now have on her chin. But I’m angry. I’m fed up.

“How I feel about you,” I begin, dipping my head closer. “It scares the shit out of me. Back then, when we were kids, you could’ve called it a crush, sure. Me thinking I’d never seen a prettier girl, never met a funnier or more interesting girl, yeah, go ahead and call it a crush. That’s probably the best word to use in that situation when the other doesn’t feel the same way. Now, we’re all grown up. And my biggest mistake in all of this isn’t agreeing to marry you. It’s not telling you that back in high school, I spent an ungodly amount of time wondering if, one day, if you went from my crush to my wife, if it would feel the same way.”

Her lips tremble just inches from my fingers. “Does it?”

“No.” I drop my hand. “It’s better. It’s better for me, even though I know you don’t feel the same way. But that’s on me. That was my mistake, not yours. You were right. I’m in too deep. And Iknowyou won’t save me.”

I leave it at that, turning to head up the stairs when Parker grabs my arm.

“I never thought you were like them,” she begins, wiping away a tear that’s fallen onto her cheek. “Iknowyou’re not like them, Fitz.”

I shake my head, looking down.

“And I know you don’t believe me right now,” Parker says. “But there’s only one person I’ve ever really trusted and that’s you. And you proved that to me tonight.”

I don’t know what I proved to Parker this evening apart from the fact that I’m a jealous, overprotective husband, even when it comes to my fake wife.

She lets go of my hand steps away to get her bag. Opening it, she pulls out the name tag I left beneath the bleachers and passes it to me.

But then Parker puts something else into my hand, and I never realized how something so small and insignificant could bring everything together. I shut my eyes, fisting the name tag and the missing puzzle piece she’s been carrying around this entire time.

“You were the only one who ever looked for me. Not just when I was gone”—Parker places her hand over mine that’s shaking—“but when I was still around. You’vealwaysbeen there for me. And I believe you. I believe you’ve always loved me.”

Slowly, I open my eyes, looking at our hands together. “I was going to kiss you that night.”

I’m hit with the smell of the freshly cut grass, the scent that floated off Parker’s hair. I can feel how her pulse raged beneath the thin, delicate skin of her wrist as I held it while we ran for cover. Her fast heartbeat matched my own. That night, Parker’s heart raced because of the adrenaline. And mine raced because of Parker.

“Why didn’t you?” she asks.

Bringing my eyes up, I lock them on hers. “I was afraid you didn’t want me to and then I’d ruin everything.”

“If I kissed you now,” Parker whispers, “would I ruin everything?”

The pin of Parker’s name tag pierces my hand as I fight against the urge to be the one who does it. But I can’t tonight. Not after putting it all on the table. Not after all of her pretending.

“Only if it’s not real.”

It’s not when Parker lifts her head and presses her mouth to my lips that I know it’s real. It’s the moment her free fingers wind with mine that hang at my side. It’s in her delicate wrist I feel it—the wild racing of her pulse that matches the beat of my heart.

The softness of her pillowy lips feels like a swipe of velvet against my own, and I let myself linger, appreciating without pushing for more. I want Parker to take it. And when she presses her mouth to mine, punctuating the end of the kiss, I worry I know what false hope tastes like.

But in the next breath, she pounces, and somehow it seems like this is our firstrealkiss.

I abandon the delicate hand-holding. The name tag and puzzle piece fall to our feet, and even though they’re precious, there’s nothing else in the world more important to hold than Parker. But I know how intensely I hold her doesn’t matter. Parker shows me she isn’t going anywhere in the way she jumps up, wrapping her legs around me, in the way her nails scrape at my scalp with one hand and the scruff on my cheek with the other. She’s here, clutching and clawing, and trusting me.

I palm her ass more firmly, drawing a delicious rock of her hips against my middle that sends the blood rushing and pooling below.

“Fitz.”

Parker keeps saying my name over and over, making me determined to hear it out of her mouth at every level of her voice—a whisper, a scream, a moan like the one she releases, which I swear I feel in every part of my body. To prove it, I lower her so my hard, swollen tip rubs against the apex of her thighs.

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