“Well, I hope you come up with something a little more heartfelt than that. I mean, come on, Fitz. You were the boy next door.” Being slightly above average at five-eight, I’m a little more mobile than him in the tight space. I push up onto my knees and lean closer. “This has the greatest love story written all over it.”

Yeah, Parker, I think to myself. You could’ve done way worse.

In addition to the tree trunk legs, Fitz also happens to be stupidly handsome. I don’t need another beer. If I keep staring at the swirl of green in his hazel eyes and the perfect contrast of his pink lips against the dark scruff of his beard, I won’t be able to walk in a straight line.

Fitz tips his head to the side. “It would be kind of funny if this turned out to be the greatest love story of all time, wouldn’t it?”

His words pull me out of my thoughts and further away from him. “It won’t. We’ll always be friends, won’t we?”

“Better ask yourself that.”

“What does that mean?”

He shrugs, looking down at the crumbs we’ve left in the box. “You could take the money and run.”

“I told you. This isn’t about the money.”

“You could still run.” Fitz lifts his head. “You did before.”

“It’s different this time.”

“How?” he asks.

I pause, wondering if I tell him everything now, maybe all bets will be off. But that’s bullshit. I don’t want to tell Fitz what happened because I don’t want him to suddenly look at me and find himself searching for a problem. I’ve got many. I don’t think any of them justify what was done to me. But other people might. He might. After all, people don’t just send their unproblematic daughters away to be tortured.

“This time,” I tell him, “you’re driving the getaway car.”

I’m thankful for his laughter that cuts through the intensity of the moment.

“It’ll be fine. We just have to put it out there. Publicly.”

“Publicly?”

It’s ironic that I worked so hard to escape the public eye for more than a decade. But I realized something—publicity, it offers me protection. They can’t just make me disappear again, not if I’m front and center on the campaign trail, and certainly if I’m not about to be Captain America’s wife.

“We launch this before they even have time to process it. We force them to go along with it,” I decide. “It won’t exactly bode well in the court of public opinion for the president to clearly be at odds with his daughter over a wedding. I mean, that’s what this is all about for them—optics.”