Chapter Nineteen – Crew
Sunlight crawls through the old lighthouse window, spilling across the bed in slow gold stripes.
The air smells like salt and cinnamon and her.
I don’t move for a while. Bailey’s head is on my shoulder, her hair a mess against my chest, her breathing steady.
Every time she breathes, it feels like the world quiets a little.
This shouldn’t feel like peace. I’ve spent my entire life in motion—stadiums, airports, cameras, noise.
Peace was always the thing after a win, the silence that came too late.
But this—her weight against me, the creak of the beams, the gulls outside losing their minds over breakfast—is something else.
She shifts, murmurs something half dreaming, and her leg slides over mine. My brain short-circuits. I stare at the ceiling, counting heartbeats. If I move, I’ll wake her. If I don’t, I might combust.
So I lie there and try to memorize it instead. The freckles on her shoulder. The small scar near her elbow. The way her fingers twitch like she’s always chasing something, even in sleep.
When her eyes finally blink open, she looks at me like she’s surprised I’m still there.
“Morning,” she whispers.
“Morning.”
“You’re staring.”
“Trying to figure out how I’m supposed to leave this bed ever again.”
Her soft laugh wrecks me. “You start by moving your legs.”
“Not happening.” I tighten my arm around her waist. “You’re a hazard.”
“Crew Wright, accused of being lazy in bed. Film at eleven.”
I grin. “That’d be the first accurate headline they’ve written about me.”
Her smile falters just slightly, and the reality rushes back in—the gossip, the cameras, the noise waiting beyond the bay. I reach up and brush my thumb across her cheek. “Hey. No one gets to ruin this. Not even them.”
She nods, but her eyes say she’s already building the walls again.
We end up in the kitchen anyway because the cat threatens mutiny if breakfast is late. She moves around the narrow space like she’s dancing, barefoot and half awake, wearing my T-shirt that hangs low enough to make me forget what coffee is for.
“You’re staring again,” she says without looking up.
“Occupational hazard.”
“You were a quarterback.”
“Exactly. Reading the field.”
She shakes her head and hides a smile behind her mug. “You’re impossible.”
“And you like it.”
“Unfortunately.”
I steal a piece of toast, and she smacks my hand. It feels normal, dangerously normal. And that’s what scares me most—how easily I could stay.
Around midmorning, her phone dings. I know the sound of bad news before she even reads it.
“The Gazette,” she says. “They want an interview. The lighthouse program.”
“Or the quarterback sleeping in your bed.”
“Probably both.”
My jaw locks. I cross the room, take the phone gently from her hand, then set it face down on the counter. “You don’t owe them anything.”
“I owe the kids visibility for the reading fund.”
“They’ll twist it, B.”
“I know.”
Her shoulders sag, and I hate that I can’t fix it. Football taught me to bulldoze problems. This isn’t that. This is a woman trying to protect her quiet, and me being the noise she invited in.
“Let me handle it,” I say.
She glances up. “And what—charm them into silence?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“You can’t fight every battle for me, Crew.”
“Maybe not,” I say, voice low. “But I can stand next to you while you fight.”
Something flickers in her eyes—relief or love or both—and then she’s moving, pressing her forehead against my chest. “You make it really hard to stay mad at you.”
“That’s the idea.”
The rest of the day plays out like a movie that refuses to end.
We fix the wobbly back bookshelf together.
I hold the boards while she drills, pretending not to stare at the way her ponytail keeps slipping loose.
We eat lunch on the porch steps, sharing one sandwich because she forgot to buy bread again.
We argue about what counts as “classic literature.” She claims Pride and Prejudice is superior.
I counter with Friday Night Lights, and she throws a pickle at me.
The shop opens after lunch, and I stay because leaving feels wrong. I restock shelves, read to the kids, and let the town ladies corner me with questions about my “return to fame.”
Bailey watches from behind the counter, pretending to check receipts, her eyes soft but uncertain. I know that look. It’s the same one I used to give the scoreboard when time was running out.
When the last customer leaves, the quiet between us feels alive.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she says.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to say something reckless.”
“I was,” I admit. “But I’m saving it.”
“For when?”
“For when you’re ready to believe I mean it.”
Her breath catches. “You’re terrible at small talk.”
“I’m really good at bad timing.”
The predicted hurricane swells far off the coast, bringing with it a storm that rolls in just before closing. She locks the front door, and thunder hums through the floorboards. I’m standing too close, but she doesn’t move away. The air shifts, dense and electric.
“You should probably head home before the road floods,” she says.
“I’m already home.”
She shakes her head, half smiling. “You’re infuriating.”
“Persistent,” I correct, stepping closer. “Difference of semantics.”
“Crew—”
“Bailey.” I reach out, trace a line down her arm, and stop at her wrist. Her pulse jumps beneath my fingers. “Tell me to go.”
She doesn’t.
The lightning flashes once, and then we’re kissing—slow, unhurried, inevitable. The kind of kiss that erases names and seasons and every bad decision that came before it.
When she pulls back, breathless, she whispers, “I don’t want to complicate things for you.”
“You simplify it,” I say. “You. Me. That’s it.”
Her laugh is a broken sound. “You make it sound so easy.”
“It could be.”
She looks up at me, rain glinting on the glass behind her. “Then don’t make me regret it.”
I don’t answer her with words.
I answer her with my hands—gentle at first, like I’m asking permission even though we’re already past that point.
My palms slide along her arms, memorizing the way she fits against me, the way her breath stutters when I pull her closer.
There’s nothing rushed about it. No urgency except the kind that’s been building for far too long.
She presses her forehead to my chest, and for a second we just breathe together, the storm roaring outside, the lighthouse holding steady around us like it’s done for a hundred years. When I tilt her chin up again, her eyes are dark, searching. Trusting.
“Tell me to stop,” I murmur.
She shakes her head, fingers curling into the front of my shirt instead. “Don’t.”
That’s all it takes.
We move together, not toward anything specific, just toward each other—backing into the room, hands exploring, mouths finding familiar places that suddenly feel new again.
Every touch feels deliberate, like we’re making a promise without saying it out loud.
Her laugh dissolves into a soft sound against my neck, and I feel it everywhere, right down to my bones.
I guide her down, slow enough to let the moment stretch, to let it mean something. She watches me the whole time, like she’s afraid if she looks away, it’ll vanish. I don’t rush. I don’t need to. The anticipation is its own kind of heat.
When I finally lower myself beside her, she reaches for me immediately, anchoring me there. As if I might disappear if she doesn’t. I kiss her again—deeper this time, fuller—and everything else fades out. The storm. The future. The careful lines we’ve both been walking.
For a while, there’s only this. Warmth and closeness and the quiet certainty of being exactly where we’re supposed to be.
Later, the lighthouse smells like coffee and rain again. She’s lying beside me, tracing idle shapes on my chest. I’m pretending not to count how many heartbeats until I have to tell her.
“I got a call,” I finally say.
“From?”
“Nashville. Training camp wants me to check in next week.”
Her hand stills.
“I don’t even know if I’m ready,” I say. “But I have to find out.”
She nods, staring at the ceiling. “Of course.”
“I’ll come back.”
“I know.” Her voice is steady, but her eyes aren’t. “You always do.”
I reach for her hand, link our fingers. “I don’t want this to feel like goodbye.”
“Then don’t make it one.”
Dawn comes too soon. I pack my bag while she makes coffee, both of us pretending it’s just another morning. She stands on the porch in my sweatshirt, hair in a braid, trying to look unshakable.
“I’ll call,” I promise.
“Drive safe,” she says.
“Bailey.”
She meets my eyes. There’s so much in them—fear, pride, everything I’ve ever wanted.
“Come back to me,” she says.
“I will.”
I kiss her once more, taste salt and coffee and the kind of goodbye that doesn’t end. Then I climb into the truck, start the engine, and watch her fade in the rearview mirror until she’s just a shadow against the rising sun.
The road stretches ahead, slick and empty. My chest aches like a bruise I can’t tape over. Somewhere behind me, the lighthouse beam cuts through the fog—steady, stubborn, waiting.