Chapter Twenty-two – Crew
The handlers move like they’ve done this a thousand times—one hand on my back, one hand gesturing down the corridor, murmuring things I don’t bother to hear.
The hallway smells of hairspray, coffee, and nerves.
Every surface gleams. I can see my reflection in the polished floor: a suit that doesn’t feel like mine, a face that looks older than the man who left Coral Bell Cove yesterday.
A reporter in the front row raises his hand. “Crew, there’s been a lot of speculation about your time away. What would you say to fans who worry about your focus?”
My cue card answer waits in the folder before me. I don’t look at it. “I’d tell them focus never left. It just… learned different targets.”
Laughter ripples. Harris’s smile tightens.
Another reporter. “You’ve had a lot of media attention around personal relationships. Can you comment on how that’s impacted your career?”
Harris leans toward his mic. “We’d like to keep today about football—”
“No,” I say quietly, and the word cuts through the room like feedback. “It’s fair.”
I look at the cameras. “Distractions happen when people forget you’re human. I haven’t.”
The room stills. Harris’s knee presses into mine under the table—his silent shut up.
I give them the smile they want. “I’m grateful to the team, the sponsors, the fans.” My voice sounds even, calm. “I’m looking forward to the season.”
Flashbulbs strobe. Questions pile. I answer each one the way a trained man does—measured, polite, every syllable a leash. Inside, my pulse drums against my ribs, steady, furious.
The last question comes from a woman in the back. “You’ve spoken about mentorship and second chances. Is there anyone you’d like to thank personally?”
Bailey’s name sits on my tongue like a live wire.
I swallow it. “Too many to list,” I say instead.
Applause again. Harris stands. The event dissolves into handshakes and photo ops. I shake them because that’s the choreography. Cameras flash. Someone claps me on the shoulder. I let them.
The lights dim. The crowd disperses. The door to backstage closes, and the air finally tastes like oxygen again.
David exhales beside me. “That went well.”
I turn to him slowly. “Did it?”
“Better than it could have. You stayed on message. Sponsors are already happy.”
“Glad to make the puppeteers proud.”
He flinches. “Crew—”
Harris walks in, phone to his ear, voice smooth. “Yes, it was perfect. Yes, he was perfect. We’ll send the reel to marketing in—” He hangs up and smiles at me. “You handled yourself beautifully.”
“I lied for you,” I say.
He shrugs. “You lied for yourself. For your career.”
“No,” I correct, voice quiet. “For your comfort.”
The room temperature drops by a degree. David shifts uneasily.
Harris pockets his phone. “You think you can burn this machine down and still walk away clean? You’re welcome to try. But remember—public sympathy is a fickle thing.”
“I don’t need sympathy.”
He steps closer. “Then what do you need?”
“Truth,” I say, and smile because the truth scares him more than rage.
His jaw flexes. “You’re not stupid, Crew. You want to go back to your little lighthouse, fine. But this—” He gestures toward the empty stage. “This is what feeds the town that feeds you.”
“Bailey feeds herself.”
Harris laughs. “You really believe that shop can compete with a franchise check? You think love keeps the lights on?”
“Yeah,” I say softly. “Actually, it does.”
David clears his throat. “Let’s all take a breath—”
But I’m done breathing their air. “I’m finished.”
Harris tilts his head. “With what?”
“All of it. You, the sponsors, the act.” I pull the microphone badge from my lapel and set it on the table between us. “You can keep the script. I’m taking my voice.”
He watches me for a beat, calculating. “You walk out now, you’ll never play again.”
I think of Bailey, then wordlessly I turn, walking down the hall toward the exit. My footsteps echo—steady, deliberate. Behind me, Harris says something low to David. David doesn’t answer.
Outside, night has settled over Nashville. The parking lot gleams wet from a drizzle that didn’t earn the name rain. My truck waits where I left it. I open the door, slide behind the wheel, and sit in the dark for a long time.
The city buzzes around me—sirens, laughter, a billboard flashing my own face with the caption Back and Better.
I start the engine. The sound fills the cab, warm and rough, the only honest thing I’ve heard all day.
As I pull onto the highway, my phone lights up with missed calls, messages, notifications I don’t read. The skyline shrinks in the mirror.
Bailey’s lighthouse glows in my mind like it’s calling ships home.
The fury finally breaks, quiet and clean, leaving only purpose behind.
The next time they try to speak for me, they’ll have to find me first.
The city fades like a bruise under the rain.
One last flash of blue neon glows on the wet asphalt before the skyline disappears behind me completely, and I finally—finally—breathe.
Not the shallow, camera-ready kind. The real kind.
My knuckles ache where I’ve been gripping the steering wheel too tight. My pulse has slowed, but that restless hum under my ribs hasn’t. It’s not anger anymore. It’s something sharper. Purpose, maybe. Or the kind of calm that only comes after you’ve already decided what to lose.
The GPS voice tells me to stay on the interstate for 200 miles. I kill the sound and drive in silence.
Headlights slice through the dark. Every mile marker feels like another layer of noise falling away. Nashville, the press conference, Harris’s smug face—all of it shrinks in the rearview until it’s just me and the hum of tires on wet pavement.
The rain is steady now, a soft percussion against the windshield. It reminds me of nights on the farm, lying awake in the loft listening to storms roll across the fields. I used to count seconds between thunderclaps, pretending that meant control.
Tonight, I don’t need to count. I just drive.
Bailey’s name sits somewhere behind my sternum, steady and certain.
I picture her behind the counter of A Page in Time, sleeves pushed to her elbows, pencil tucked behind her ear.
Probably pretending not to notice when her glasses slide down her nose.
She never lets me push them back up for her, says she doesn’t need rescuing. She’s right.
But God, I miss the way she lets me try.
The highway stretches out, endless and wet, and my reflection in the window looks like a man I almost recognize. Not the quarterback. Not the brand. Just the guy who once handed a girl a tattered copy of The Outsiders and told her to keep it because she loved it more than he ever could.
Stay gold, she wrote inside the cover. Her handwriting is looping, stubborn, and beautiful.
I still have that book. It’s on the passenger seat now, beside my phone, buzzing with messages I don’t answer.
By the time the “Welcome to Virginia” sign flashes by, dawn’s threatening the horizon. The air smells like salt and earth—like home.
I stop at a diner just past the state line, order black coffee, and sit in the corner booth watching the rain taper off. No one recognizes me here. Just another tired guy in a hoodie, staring out the window like he’s waiting for something to shift.
The server fills my cup again without asking. “Long night?”
“Long life,” I say, and she laughs softly, patting my shoulder before walking away.
I think about Bailey’s face when she used to laugh like that—unrestrained, head tilted back, eyes crinkled. The kind of laugh that hit you in the chest and made everything make sense.
I wonder if she laughed after the press conference. Or if she just turned off the TV and let the silence do what I didn’t have the guts to.
That thought twists something inside me, sharp and deep.
I throw down some bills, grab my keys, and head back to the truck. The air’s cold now, clean. It cuts straight through the haze.
The drive to Coral Bell Cove is muscle memory. The roads narrow, the pine trees crowd close, and the world gets quieter. Every curve feels like peeling back time.
When I hit the first stretch of coastline, I roll down the window. The smell of brine and sea grass fills the cab. I breathe it in like it’s medicine.
The sign at the edge of town still reads: Welcome to Coral Bell Cove—Population 4,817
Someone’s painted a tiny seashell above the “C.” Bailey, probably. She always said details mattered.
Main Street’s asleep when I roll through. The bakery is dark except for the faint glow of the ovens. The lamppost by the dock flickers like it’s thinking about quitting. Everything is the same, and everything is different.
Otter Creek Farm sits quiet on the hill, the barns still and silver in the early light. I pass it, heading straight for the water.
The lighthouse appears through the fog like it always does—solid, defiant, impossible to ignore. The bookstore’s porch light glows, soft and golden, a beacon for the lost and the stupid. I pull over, kill the engine, and sit for a long time.
Every muscle in my body wants to run to her door, but fear keeps me still. Not the big, life-and-death kind. The smaller, crueler one—the fear of watching her eyes shutter when she sees me.
I close my hands around the steering wheel until the leather creaks.
She deserves better than half-apologies. She deserves the truth.
When I finally get out, the night air hits like salt on an open wound. The wind off the bay carries the faintest trace of her—vanilla, old paper, and something uniquely Bailey.
The porch steps creak under my boots. The CLOSED sign sways in the window. The place smells like rain and ink and second chances.
I knock once. Twice.
No answer.
I should leave. Let her sleep. Let her choose when to see me. But before I can turn away, I hear the soft tread of bare feet. The lock clicks. The door opens, and there she is.
Bailey.
Her hair is in a tangle, her eyes rimmed red, but she’s never looked more like home. She’s wearing my old Stallions hoodie—gray, frayed at the cuffs, the one she used to sleep in when she thought I didn’t notice.
Her breath catches when she sees me. “Crew.”
“Yeah.” My voice scrapes out low, rough. “It’s me.”
She blinks, like her brain’s fighting to catch up. “You—how did you—”
“Drove,” I say simply.
Her gaze flicks over me, taking in the suit jacket, the exhaustion, the rain still dripping from my hair. “You’re supposed to be—”
“Somewhere I didn’t want to be,” I finish for her.
A thousand words live in the silence between us. The rain, the headlines, the lies, the press conference.
She finally breathes, the sound small and shaky. “I saw you on TV.”
“I figured.”
“You looked…” Her voice falters. “Trapped.”
“I was.”
Her throat works. “And now?”
“Free.”
The word lands heavy. True.
Her eyes search mine, like she’s trying to see if I mean it. “You left all of it?”
“All of it,” I say. “The sponsors. The contracts. Harris.”
Her laugh breaks, part disbelief, part heartbreak. “You really are insane.”
“Maybe.” I take a step closer, close enough to see the faint freckles across her nose. “But I’m done letting someone else own my story.”
Her lips tremble. “And what story’s that?”
“The one that ends here,” I say quietly. “With you.”
Her breath stutters. The sound of the ocean fills the space between us.
She doesn’t move when I reach up and brush a strand of hair from her cheek. Her skin is warm, soft. Her eyes close on a shiver.
For a heartbeat, everything in me tilts toward her—every nerve, every memory, every word I didn’t say.
Then she opens her eyes. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I should,” I whisper. “I needed to be.”
The way she looks at me—torn between anger and relief—undoes me completely.
“You can’t just show up after all that and expect—”
“I don’t expect anything,” I cut in. “Just a chance to explain.”
She swallows. “Then explain.”
“I said things I didn’t mean because they told me to. I let them control the story because I thought it was the only way to keep everything together. But the truth is—everything I was holding on to wasn’t worth what I almost lost.”
Her eyes glisten. “And what was that?”
“You.”
She lets out a broken sound, half laugh, half sob. “You always did know how to ruin a girl’s defenses.”
“I’m not trying to ruin anything,” I say softly. “I’m trying to rebuild.”
For a long moment, she just stands there, breathing me in like she’s deciding whether to believe me.
Finally, she steps back, her voice barely above a whisper. “Come in before you freeze.”
The air between us shifts, softer now, something like surrender.
I step inside.
The door closes behind me with a quiet click, sealing us in. The room smells like books and salt and her shampoo. A candle burns low on the counter, wax pooling in the shape of a heart that’s been melted and remade.
Bailey crosses her arms, watching me like she’s still deciding whether this is real. “So what now?”
“I figure that out here,” I say. “With you. If you’ll let me.”
Her lips curve—not quite a smile, not quite forgiveness. “We’ll see.”
And for the first time since I walked off that stage, the world feels right again.