“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.”

With the light on, I see the hurt etched into Fitz’s face. His dimple I love is invisible because of the way he softly frowns. I know that unloading everything now will only make his frown deeper and leave me, well, worse.

“I know I’ve boxed you out.” I admit. “And I’m sorry I’m doing that.. But I can’t talk about it now, not at night.”

Fitz’s hand stills on my arm. “I just want to make sure you know you can trust me.”

I hate I’ve made him feel otherwise. “You’re the only one I do trust, Fitz.”

He resumes sweeping my arm. I watch the thoughts circle through his irises, and it takes all I have to refrain from asking what’s going on in his head. I don’t have that right. But Fitz is just so good, so trusting, he tells me anyway with no strings.

“About the pool.” Fitz stills his hand above my elbow. “I care about you, Parker. Too much…you’re my⁠—”

“Friend,” I cut in. “I’m your friend.”

“You’re more than that and you know it.”

Between the power behind his words and the strength of his eyes now returned to mine, I’m stunned silent.

“Parker, if that wasn’t true, thinking about how you feel wouldn’t keep me up at night. And while fucking around by the pool sounds”—Fitz pauses, dragging his bottom lip between his teeth but quickly releasing it—“it doesn’t help you here.”

I know he isn’t talking about the literal bed, but the space we share between us that goes wherever we do, that feels filled to the max given the length of our friendship, but still seems to magically have room to stretch and grow with us.

When Fitz’s hand leaves my arm to brush my hair back from my face, I find myself hoping I’d be lucky to do that, to grow with the man who was once the boy always at my side, the man who thinks about my needs before I knew what they were.