Chapter Twenty-six – Crew #2
The rest is a blur of warmth and skin and quiet gasps swallowed by the dark. It’s not about escape; it’s about arrival. About choosing the storm and finding peace in the middle of it.
When it’s over, we stay tangled together on the couch, her head on my chest, both of us breathing hard but easy.
“You think we’ll ever get a week without a plot twist?” she murmurs.
“I’d be bored,” I say.
She pinches my side. “Liar.”
“Maybe a little,” I admit. “But I like the view.”
She hums. “You mean me or the lighthouse?”
“Both,” I say, kissing her forehead.
Hours later, the rainy weather’s moved offshore. The clock blinks 2:17 a.m. when my phone buzzes again—Laramie.
Laramie: Got a name. Call me before sunrise. You’re not going to like it.
I glance at Bailey, asleep again, curled against me, peace finally finding her. I slip out from under her carefully, heart pounding.
The screen lights the room in blue as I type back.
Me: Tell me now.
Her reply comes through seconds later.
Laramie: It’s someone you know, Crew. Someone close.
The thunder outside is long gone, but the echo it leaves in my chest feels like the start of something worse.
I step out onto the porch barefoot, the boards still holding a trace of the day’s warmth. The beam from the lantern room sweeps over the bay, one long blink every thirty seconds. I’ve started timing my thoughts by it—one for calm, one for panic.
When the phone buzzes again, I answer.
“Laramie.”
“Sorry for the hour,” she says. Her voice carries the grit of too much coffee and too few hours of sleep. “You asked for the name.”
“I did.”
“It’s not David,” she says. “He’s involved, but someone higher ordered the insertion. The signature’s falsified but traced from digital correspondence originating inside the team’s legal department.”
My stomach drops. “You’re saying—”
“Your general manager,” she finishes quietly. “Harris.”
I squeeze the porch railing until the old paint bites my palm. “He wouldn’t.”
“He would if he thought forcing you into the public sphere would save the franchise’s image. The clause was designed to fail, Crew. They expected Bailey to default, and then they’d ride the sympathy wave into a sponsorship deal. One tidy loop.”
The world tilts. The man who coached me from college recruit to franchise quarterback, the one who visited me after the surgery with a Bible verse about second chances—he turned us into strategy.
Laramie continues, “We can build a case. I just need you to stay quiet for forty-eight hours. Let me gather the proof.”
Quiet. The one thing I’ve never been good at.
“Copy that,” I say. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. “Thanks.”
“Crew.”
“Yeah?”
“She’s safer than you think,” she says. “That lighthouse has teeth.”
Then the line goes dead.
I sit on the porch steps until the sky starts graying at the edges. The cat squeezes through the door and curls beside my foot, purring like it knows better than to ask. The sea smells clean, almost sweet after the storm.
Inside, Bailey stirs. “You’re brooding,” she mumbles, voice still thick with sleep.
“Always,” I say.
She wraps the blanket around her shoulders and joins me. “Bad news?”
“Complicated news.”
“That’s your polite word for betrayal.”
I give a humorless laugh. “You’re getting too good at reading me.”
She bumps my shoulder. “Occupational hazard.”
I tell her everything—Harris, the clause, the plan to use us. By the time I finish, her coffee’s gone cold and her jaw’s set in that way that makes smart men run.
“So he wanted to save the team by destroying your life,” she says.
“Pretty much.”
“And he thought I’d crumble under paperwork.”
“People always underestimate librarians,” I say.
“Booksellers,” she corrects automatically. Then she sighs. “What do we do?”
“Wait forty-eight hours.”
She snorts. “You don’t wait well.”
“Neither do you.”
We sit there while the sun climbs out of the water. For a second, everything feels suspended—like the calm right before kickoff. I used to live for that tension. Now it just feels expensive.
By midmorning, the town knows something’s wrong again, though not the details. Coral Bell’s gossip chain runs on instinct, not information. Mrs. Winthrop shows up with muffins “for stress,” Lila with legal pads, and Ivy with a playlist titled Burn It Down but Gently.
Bailey handles them like the pro she is—gracious, grounded, funny even. Watching her, I realize she’s changed. She doesn’t shrink from chaos anymore. She orchestrates it into rhythm. The girl who once left town because someone humiliated her now runs a community that would riot for her.
I want to tell her that, but I know she’d brush it off, so I just fix another hinge in silence.
At noon, I call Marcus because I need to hear from someone who still believes in clean hits and honest work.
“You sound like a man balancing on the fifty-yard line,” he says.
“Feels that way,” I admit. “Harris forged grant documents.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. We’ve got proof coming. But Laramie wants quiet.”
“You going to give it to her?”
“I’m trying.”
He chuckles. “You always did confuse patience with weakness.”
“Maybe I’m learning.”
“Maybe you’re finally listening,” he says, and hangs up before I can argue.
Afternoon brings a strange peace. The lighthouse inspection required by the grant passes without a single note. The inspector shakes Bailey’s hand and calls the place “a marvel of responsible preservation.” She nearly cries, and I nearly tackle him in gratitude.
We celebrate with sandwiches on the porch. The wind’s warm, the bay glittering. For five whole minutes, we pretend this is what normal looks like.
Then her phone buzzes. A text from an unknown number.
Unknown: Nice inspection yesterday. Shame about what’s coming.
She shows me the screen. My stomach knots.
“Laramie?” I ask.
“She’d call you, not text me.”
I grab the phone, take a screenshot, and forward it.
Me: You seeing this?
Not five minutes later, I get a response.
Laramie: Already have a PI tracing. Stay put.
Bailey bites her lip. “You think it’s just Harris?”
“Could be anyone connected to him.”
She shakes her head. “They won’t stop, will they?”
“Not until we stop them.”
Her eyes find mine—steady, unflinching. “Then let’s finish it.”
We decide to go public, but on our terms. A live town-hall stream from the porch, just like the Read-In, except this time the story’s not children’s books, it’s the truth. Ivy sets up cameras, Dean drafts the statement, and Rowan offers goats for background ambience (“optics,” he says).
While they plan, Bailey disappears upstairs. I find her in the lantern room, staring at the water.
“You sure about this?” I ask.
She nods. “I’m tired of waiting for permission to exist.”
I step behind her and wrap my arms around her waist. “Then we’ll tell it loud.”
She leans back against me. “You’re not scared?”
“I’m terrified,” I say. “But you taught me fear doesn’t mean retreat.”
We stand there until the sun drops low, our reflections merging in the glass.
The broadcast goes live on my social media page at dusk. The town gathers again—kids on blankets, adults on folding chairs, half the coast watching online. Bailey sits beside me, her hand steady in mine.
“Good evening,” she begins, voice clear despite the wind. “You’ve heard a lot of stories about us. Some true, some… creative. Tonight, we’d like to tell you our own.”
I talk about second chances, about the difference between fixing a shoulder and fixing a life. She talks about building something worth fighting for, how light only matters when you share it.
The comments flood in—hearts, encouragement, the occasional troll drowned by kindness. For once, it feels like we control the narrative.
Then, mid-sentence, the screen behind us flickers. Static. A logo.
The feed cuts to a prerecorded segment—Harris at a podium, press cameras flashing. His voice is smooth as ever. “Due to ongoing investigations, we’ve placed Crew Wright on administrative leave. We wish him the best as he focuses on personal matters.”
Gasps ripple through the crowd. Bailey squeezes my hand. I stare at the screen, every muscle locking.
Laramie’s number flashes on my phone. I answer without looking away from Harris’s smug face.
“Crew,” she says, breathless. “It’s moving faster than expected. He leaked his own statement early. We’re intercepting the files now. Do not—repeat, do not respond publicly.”
Too late. Bailey’s already speaking into the mic. “You don’t get to narrate this one, Coach.”
The crowd roars approval, but I know what’s coming next—legal threats, media vultures, endless noise. The beam from the lighthouse sweeps over the porch, catches Harris’s face frozen on the paused feed, and throws his shadow long against the wall behind us.
I look at Bailey, steady in the chaos, and realize we’ve crossed the point of no return, but if it means giving everything up for her, then it’s worth its weight in gold.