4. Camden
Camden
Camden stared at the ceiling while the trainer’s knuckles worked into the back of his throwing shoulder.
Camphor hung in the therapy room, medicinal and bitter, clinging to the back of his throat.
The facility had gone quiet around them.
No coaches shouting through open doors, no cleats scraping concrete, no cameras waiting for a smile.
Just the treatment table beneath him and the slow grind of pressure against a shoulder that still hadn’t forgiven Sunday.
“Roll toward the good side first,” the trainer said. “Don’t wrench the arm getting up.”
Camden planted his palm against the table and pushed himself upright. The movement dragged a hot line through the shoulder, making him freeze halfway before he gritted his teeth and sat up.
“I’m up,” he said. “You already got your pound of flesh.”
“You’re welcome.”
The trainer stepped away to strip off his gloves. Camden sat there for another moment, forearms braced on his thighs, waiting for the ache to settle into something manageable.
Tuesday was supposed to belong to him.
One day without install meetings, walkthroughs, sponsor calls, or Marcus appearing with some new emergency dressed up as a career opportunity. One day when the building emptied out and nobody needed Camden Ford to be the face of anything.
He had surrendered enough of those days over the past month.
Tess had gotten whatever scraps were left after football, treatment, media, and the brand machine finished chewing through him.
Last night had been worse. She had stood in their kitchen asking him to look at what that photograph meant, and he had answered her like she was another interruption on the schedule.
I handled that wrong.
Camden reached for the clean T-shirt folded beside the table.
“Easy with the sleeve,” the trainer said. “Use the other arm to pull it through.”
“I can manage a shirt, Doc.”
“Then manage it without undoing the last hour.”
Camden fed his good arm through first, dragged the cotton over his head, then paused when the fabric caught behind the injured shoulder. He shifted his arm instead of yanking. The shirt slid into place across his back.
There. Dressed. Finished.
Home was twenty minutes away.
He pictured the front door shutting behind him, his phone powered down on the kitchen counter, Tess somewhere inside the house with no television crew, no handlers, no father telling him where to stand.
He didn’t need a dinner reservation or some elaborate apology.
He just needed to be there long enough to stop acting like a guest in his own marriage.
The trainer glanced at the shoulder before gathering the treatment supplies.
“This arm gets twenty-four hours,” he said. “No throwing. No lifting because you decide you feel better. The swelling’s backing off, but the cuff is still vulnerable.”
Camden nodded. For once, the restriction sounded less like punishment than permission.
“I owe you, Doc. Appreciate you opening the room on a Tuesday.” He rolled the hem of the shirt down and stood. “I’m going home, killing my phone, and disappearing until tomorrow.”
“That’s the first smart thing you’ve said in ten minutes.”
“Low bar.”
“Keep it that way. We’ll rebuild the tape job before Wednesday install.”
Camden reached for the edge of the table, then stopped himself. He didn’t need anything else from this room.
No extra treatment. No excuse to linger. No reason to let another hour vanish before Tess got what was left of him.
He was going home.
The October wind hit Camden the second the facility doors shut behind him.
He crossed the players’ lot with the key fob in his hand, shoulders set against the gusts sweeping over the blacktop. His SUV sat three rows over, pointed toward the exit. Twenty minutes to the house, maybe less if traffic behaved.
Home meant Tess, no cameras, and no one else deciding where he had to stand.
He pressed the unlock button.
Marcus stepped into the narrow space beside the driver’s door before Camden could reach the handle, planting his palm flat against the roof to block the opening.
“Move your hand,” Camden said. “I’m going home.”
“Not yet.”
Camden stopped. The shoulder the trainer had worked over still burned under his shirt, and the last thing he wanted was another argument in a parking lot.
“I’m off the clock.”
Marcus gave him a look that killed the rest of the sentence.
“The apparel team landed ten minutes ago. New CEO came in with them. You and Chloe are expected at dinner.”
Camden looked past him toward the exit gate.
“No.”
“The table is set.”
“Then put somebody else in the chair.”
Marcus’s hand stayed on the roof. “There is nobody else.”
Camden squeezed the fob in his palm as another gust moved through the lot. He shifted to sidestep, but Marcus matched the movement without stepping back.
“Doc just shut the arm down for twenty-four hours.”
“Nobody asked you to throw a football over dinner.”
“I told Tess I’d be home.”
That crossed a different line. Marcus’s expression shifted, not softer, just more impatient.
“Tess understands what this season costs.”
Camden stared at the door handle inches from his hand.
The memory of last night came back in pieces. Tess sliding the phone across the counter. Her face when he called the photo a promotional still. The way he had walked away because film review had seemed easier than staying in the room.
He had promised himself he would fix that tonight.
“I’m not doing this,” Camden said. “One night. That’s all I’m asking for.”
Marcus took his palm off the roof, only to step closer.
“One night doesn’t exist when you’re carrying an MVP season and a hundred-million-dollar campaign. I didn’t spend twenty years getting you out of anonymous college fields and into this position so you could disappear when the people funding the launch arrive.”
Camden rolled the fob once between his fingers.
“It’s a dinner.”
“It’s the dinner. The CEO signs off on the next phase, Chloe keeps the international side moving, and you sit there for an hour and remind them why they attached nine figures to your name.”
Just one hour.
He didn’t have the energy to fight it.
Marcus kept going. “You want the rest of the week quiet? Then give me this. Shake hands, eat the steak, smile at the right people, and go home after.”
Camden glanced toward the exit again.
Tess would be angry. She had every right to be. But that damage could be repaired tomorrow. Marcus, once satisfied, might leave the rest of the week alone.
That was the trade: one ruined evening to protect the next five.
Camden lowered the fob.
Marcus moved aside, leaving the path to the driver’s door open as if the choice still belonged to Camden.
His SUV sat where he left it, the exit gate visible right behind it. Camden slipped the key fob into his pocket and stepped away.
Marcus’s sedan waited across the lot with the passenger door facing him. The wind chased him over the asphalt, tugging at his shirt as he crossed the empty rows. Each step jarred the shoulder the trainer had spent the last hour working on.
“Passenger side,” Marcus said.
“I know where the door is.”
Camden pulled it open and lowered himself into the seat. The leather gave beneath his weight, stiff from the October cold, and he shifted until he found an angle that didn’t pull the shoulder.
He should have been starting his own engine.
Instead, his SUV sat across the lot while Marcus rounded the sedan.
Camden reached to pull the door shut, then stopped.
His phone was still in his pocket.
Tess.
Just the thought of her put him right back in that kitchen. Her phone sliding across the counter. That photograph glowing between them. The look she had given him when he called the whole thing manufactured and walked away.
Tonight was supposed to fix some of that.
Marcus opened the other door. “Send whatever you need to send. We’re already late.”
Camden took out his phone.
The message thread with Tess sat near the top of his inbox. Nothing new waited there. No demand for an explanation. No second argument.
That somehow made typing worse.
He hovered his thumb over the keyboard.
Tell her the truth.
That idea died the second he pictured trying to explain Chloe over text.
Sponsor dinner. Brand executives. Marcus ordering him into another room beside the woman whose photo had already turned their kitchen into a battlefield.
Tess would read Chloe’s name and assume the evening was another staged romance. Then he would spend the whole dinner trying to defend himself through a phone screen instead of ending the obligation and getting home.
Football was easier.
Football had rules Tess understood.
Camden started typing.
Third-down review sounded normal. The offensive coordinator had trapped him after hours plenty of times before. Nobody questioned a quarterback getting dragged back into film during the season.
And he was trapped.
That part wasn’t even a lie.
Marcus had simply replaced the film room with a dinner table.
He hesitated before typing the final sentence.
Tomorrow.
He could make tomorrow belong to her. No sponsor calls. No unnecessary meetings. He would take the argument from last night apart piece by piece and explain why the Chloe photo meant nothing.
He finished the message.
So sorry, babe. OC just caught me at the exit doors. He’s demanding a full teardown on the third-down blitz packages for Sunday. Officially trapped in the film room for the rest of the night. I swear I’ll fix this tomorrow.
Camden read it once.
The football language made the whole thing look routine. Annoying, maybe, but routine.
He pressed send.
The message settled beneath the others.
For a moment, he left his thumb resting against the glass.
One dinner. Then home.
Camden locked the screen and slid the phone back into his pocket. He pulled the passenger door shut, cutting off the wind and the sight of his abandoned SUV.
The cabin went quiet around him.