Page 62 of Tangled Up In You
“Yeah, I—” He pushed up onto his elbows, skin prickling with nerves. “It was one thing to share a room before then, but in the same bed…I worried I’d wake up wrapped around you.”
Her cheeks flushed again. “Fitz.”
“I mean…am I off base here?” Putting himself out there was terrifying, an emotional rope bridge over a yawning canyon, but he shoved the words out. “That wasn’t a normal kiss, Ren.”
“It wasn’t?”
He laughed out an incredulous “No way.” Swallowing, he took a breath and threw himself into the void. “Are you feeling this, too?”
“You mean, am I feeling like all I want to do is be near you every second?”
He nodded, choking out a relieved “Yeah.”
“Yes. I’m feeling it, too.”
All of a sudden, he realized how this probably looked to her: Fitz inviting himself in, lounging on her bed. “I don’t want you to feel pressured. Shit—I can go back to my room. This isn’t about kissing or whatever. I mean, it is, but it isn’t just about that. I promise I won’t try anything.”
She shook her head, biting back a smile at his babble. “I don’t want you to go back to your room.”
He exhaled a long breath. “Then go shower. I’ll find us a movie to watch.”
Fitz had made a lot of bad choices in his life. He’d lied, he’d borrowed a few things that didn’t belong to him, he’d talked his way out of trouble or into places where he should never have set foot. The first time he clearly remembered breaking a rule was in the second grade. He’d just been placed with Mary. His pants were too short, his ears were too big, he’d been to three different schools that year alone and was just plain lonely. Bullies can smell that kind of desperation, and Fitz absolutely reeked of it.
When a couple of older kids sat next to him at lunch, he was starstruck. He hadn’t yet mastered the art of indifference and was immediately and clearly on board with whatever it was they had in mind.
Turns out what they had in mind was that it would be funny if they all pulled the fire alarm. It wasn’t the kind of thing Fitz would do, normally—he’d bounced around the foster system for four years by then, and if anything, his vibe was more to fly under the radar whenever possible—but it seemed like a worthy price to pay to gain a few friends. Unfortunately, when the siren blared and everyone began filing into the halls, Fitz was the only one left standing near the alarm. His wingmen had left him holding the figurative bag and fled to their respective classrooms, where they would be accounted for. Fitz was suspended for a week.
But there was an unintended consequence. The fire department came, and everyone got to go home early. He was in trouble, sure, but suddenly he was also cool. People wanted to be his friend. He learned a lesson that day that has served him well: Sometimes bad decisions can turn into something very, very good.
In the clear light of morning, he wondered if coming down to Ren’s room should be lumped in with this brand of bad decision. Because waking up curled around her, with his hand beneath the hem of her shirt and resting against the warm, soft skin of her stomach, all he wanted was to bail on every other plan he’d made for the week—for his life—and stay in that bed with Ren forever.
The instinctive thought pushed in, that he should call his father, that he was off track and a few minutes on the phone with the elder Fitzsimmons’s disappointed silence and passive-aggressive advice would remind Fitz exactly why he was on this road trip in the first place. Robert Fitzsimmons wasn’t responsible for Fitz ending up in foster care, but he was the reason Fitz had lost the only real home he’d ever known. If his father taught him anything, it was that the only person Fitz could depend on was himself. Ren made him want to forget all of that. He couldn’t afford to.
But then she rolled over, sleepily humming into his chest, and every other thought evaporated into the ether.
He’d been on his best behavior last night, though at the time it felt like it might kill him. They watched a movie, then brushed their teeth in the new side-by-side routine they’d fallen into. They climbed into bed, and he kissed her only once. Just a simple peck. When she pushed up, wordlessly asking for more, he admitted he was worried it wouldn’t end there.
“Is that bad?” she’d asked.
“No, of course not,” he’d told her. “But you only get these firsts one time. We shouldn’t blow through them.”
“You mean I shouldn’t blow through them,” she’d said into the darkness.
“No, I mean we. These are firsts for me, too.”
He hadn’t known what she’d thought of that, because she hadn’t said anything else. He didn’t even know what he thought because he didn’t give himself time to examine it too closely. It felt too soon to say it, too heavy, but Ren had only ever been fully herself with him, and so he tried that type of bald honesty on with her like a borrowed coat. It felt good. It felt so good that they’d both fallen asleep the way a match goes out, a gentle, soundless surrender into darkness.
When the sun streaked across the foot of the bed, though, Nashville called, only a handful of hours away. Fitz felt the pull of two directions again: forward to the next step of his plan, and down, rooted to the bed and the promise of things he’d never let himself hope for. He wasn’t sure how to handle the way this new, hungry feeling mixed with the sour cocktail of all his old ones, so he did what he did best: He pushed forward.
“Wake up, Sunshine,” he told her, kissing her neck. “We gotta hit the road.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
FITZ
It was only when they pulled up in front of the hotel in Nashville that Fitz remembered how he’d splurged on this one, anticipating the way doubt might creep in at the last minute before his internship interview, hissing in his ear that he wasn’t law firm material, that a kid like him couldn’t begin to hang in the world he hoped to conquer. It wasn’t the Ritz, but it was a heap of steps up from where they’d stayed so far, and he could see the intimidation flood Ren’s posture the moment she stepped foot in the lobby.
Everything was marble, crystal, brass. The atrium had towering ceilings, with a glass dome far up in the air. To one side was an imperial staircase, on the other was a cluster of plush seating areas. There were urns spilling fresh flowers everywhere, uniformed employees hovering near every wall, ready to jump to service. The lobby was full of guests, too, chatting in small groups, greeting each other across the space, embracing. The park outside was full of booths and tents and chaos that spilled into the hotel. There was definitely some sort of event happening, that much was clear.