Page 147 of The Americana Playbook

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 notallof 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?Baddoesn’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’swithme.

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 thatplace—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 wasfree, 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.

---