2. Camden #3
Camden pressed the pack harder against his knee.
Four minutes.
That was manageable.
He had spent longer than that standing under campaign lights while strangers pushed him into poses. Four quiet minutes in a treatment room should not have felt like a luxury.
“Block the door,” Camden said. “Keep the hallway traffic out until they call my name.”
The equipment manager glanced toward the corridor. “Media too?”
“Especially media.”
“Understood. I’ll post up outside and hold the line.”
He stepped into the doorway and pulled the door nearly shut behind him, leaving only enough space to hear the summons when it came.
The room finally fell quiet around him.
The ice pack numbed the worst of the ache in his knee. His shoulder still needed the tub, his forearm needed cleaning, and somebody would eventually make him stand beneath another bank of lights to explain a game everyone had already watched. None of that required his attention for the moment.
He let his head drop back onto the padding and closed his eyes against the overhead glare.
This was why Tess stayed away from stadium corridors.
No reporters waiting outside their kitchen. No photographers tracking which side of the bed she slept on. No brand staff telling her where to stand or how much of their marriage could fit inside a campaign.
Keeping her separate had always been the point.
The public could tear pieces off Camden Ford until midnight if it wanted. His bruises, his statistics, his face on a billboard—those belonged to the job.
Tess did not.
He had never struggled to keep those two worlds apart.
For four minutes, nobody needed anything from him.
The door opened before Camden’s four minutes were up.
“He asked for the room cleared,” the equipment manager said from the hallway.
“I need ten seconds.”
Chloe came through anyway, phone already raised.
Camden opened his eyes. The pack still covered his knee, the ice finally numbing the joint enough to bear his weight again. “Chloe, I’m due at press.”
“The PR department is hounding me for one last candid.” She advanced on the table without lowering the phone. “We have to feed the timeline a crossover tease before those billboards launch.”
The equipment manager stayed near the doorway. “He’s supposed to be left alone until Coach calls.”
Chloe flicked him a glance and kept moving. “Then I’ll be gone before Coach calls.”
Camden pressed the pack against his knee as she closed the distance.
Compliance was faster.
Take the picture. End it.
“My knee is under ice,” he said. “You’ve got one shot.”
“That works for me.”
Chloe moved between his knees.
Camden slid back on the table to keep the pack in place. Her perfume overpowered the antiseptic smell of the room as she leaned over his lap, lifting the phone above them. Her hip settled against his bruised thigh, their combined weight pressing into the padding.
The added pressure dug directly into another aching muscle.
Camden stared at the phone instead.
“Sixty seconds of dead air before they shove me at a microphone,” he said. “Just take the shot, Chloe.”
“You could look less thrilled about it.”
“I’m icing a knee after getting chased around by defensive linemen all night.”
“That’s why it’s a candid.”
“There’s a phone six inches from my face.”
Chloe adjusted the angle. “Work with me.”
Camden slipped into the familiar campaign expression.
It required less effort than another argument.
The public wanted chemistry. Marcus wanted engagement numbers. Chloe wanted whatever usable image pushed the apparel launch through another news cycle. None of those things changed where Camden slept when the stadium emptied.
One photograph could not alter a marriage.
Not a real one.
Chloe leaned closer, fitting both of their faces onto the screen. She maintained the contact while Camden kept one hand on the pack and left the other resting on the table rather than touching her.
The equipment manager checked the corridor. “Coach is getting close.”
“I know,” Camden said.
Chloe raised the phone another inch. “Hold that smile.”
The digital shutter snapped.
The screen briefly froze their faces together: Chloe bent over his lap, Camden smiling beneath her, her body tucked between his knees.
Then the image vanished.
“Camden, the internet is going to eat this alive,” Chloe said. “We’re locked in.”
“Good. Then we’re done.”
He stood.
The pack slid from his knee and dropped onto the tile. Chloe stepped back as Camden straightened the front of his jersey and settled the pads on his shoulders.
The equipment manager pushed the door wider. “Coach is ready.”
Camden left the pack on the floor. The trainers could deal with his knee after the microphones. He had already given the campaign its photographs, satisfied Marcus’s demand, and kept the corporate circus contained inside the stadium where it belonged.
Tess was nowhere near any of it.
That was still the point.
Camden entered the corridor, heading for the press podium without looking back at Chloe’s phone.
As far as Camden was concerned, the night was under control.