6. Camden #2
Camden waited for the reaction that should have followed. A question. A demand for the location. Some sign that crossing state lines after midnight mattered.
Marcus didn’t even blink.
“You are incredibly gullible.”
He sounded more irritated than concerned.
“Stop validating amateur theatrics,” Marcus continued. “She knows you have a West Coast flight. She knows what this week means. So she picks tonight to manufacture a crisis big enough to pull your attention off football.”
Camden looked down at the ring.
“She physically used the card.”
“And?”
“And she’s driving south in the middle of the night.”
“Mr. Ford, I need to keep the departure sequence moving while you two sort this out,” the handler interrupted. “The Seattle timeline cannot absorb much more delay.”
Camden turned his head.
“My wife is somewhere on I-95.”
“I understand, sir.”
No, he didn’t. None of them did.
Camden looked back at Marcus. “I tanked the anniversary dinner tonight. I know that. But she doesn’t stage PR stunts. Burning gas down the interstate after midnight doesn’t fit.”
Marcus stepped farther into the kitchen and glanced at the abandoned plates.
“You missed dinner.”
“I lied about where I was.”
“You attended a required sponsor event.”
“At our bar.”
Marcus gave him a flat look. “It is a restaurant.”
It wasn’t.
O’Malley’s had been ten-dollar pitchers and booth seats patched with tape. It had been draft night before private jets, before billboard campaigns, before Marcus could buy out a room and repurpose a memory because the backdrop tested well.
Camden tightened his grip.
“She saw Chloe hanging off me outside that place on our anniversary.”
“And now you understand the tantrum.”
“That doesn’t make it a tantrum.”
The answer came out before he had time to dress it up.
Marcus leveled an assessing look.
For once, Camden didn’t retreat from the correction.
“She doesn’t do this,” he said. “She gets angry. She tells me exactly why. She waits until I walk through the door and makes me stand there while she says it to my face. She doesn’t disappear.”
The handler’s stylus resumed tapping against the screen.
Marcus glanced toward him, then back to Camden. “Tess has spent years learning exactly where your pressure points are. Tonight she found a new one.”
Camden looked toward the hallway as if Tess might appear there and destroy the argument herself.
Nothing moved.
Marcus nodded toward the ring. “She left you the one object guaranteed to make you panic. Then she put miles on the card because she knew you could track it. That is not disappearing. That is making sure you watch her leave.”
The explanation should have sounded absurd.
Instead, pieces of it fit into the version of Tess that Camden still needed to believe existed: furious, hurt, determined to punish him, but still acting within the marriage. Still expecting him to react.
Not gone.
Not finished.
The handler checked his screen again. “We need a decision soon.”
Camden kept his eyes on the ring.
He hated that his father almost made the explanation sound reasonable.
Marcus crossed the remaining stretch of kitchen and put a palm on Camden’s shoulder.
Camden didn’t look up. “Take your hand off me. I’m still thinking.”
“Then think about what happens if you chase her car down the interstate tonight.” Marcus kept his hand where it was.
“You leave this house, somebody notices. One photographer catches your vehicle heading south instead of toward the team flight, and by sunrise every tabloid in the country is looking for whatever you’re looking for. ”
Camden looked up.
That risk sobered him up faster than the lecture about Seattle.
O’Malley’s had proven how fast a camera could ruin a private mistake.
If someone picked up his route tonight, Tess would not get the space she was demanding.
She would get stringers at gas stations and strangers studying every hotel parking lot between here and Florida.
The PR handler stepped closer to the island. “Flight crew needs a departure decision now.”
Camden shrugged off the hand. “How much time?”
The handler checked the screen. “We have exactly one hundred and five minutes until wheels-up, sir. The team charter is idling on the private tarmac, already fueled.”
The handler checked a new alert on his screen.
“They’re holding your seat. They cannot hold the whole roster indefinitely.”
Camden turned the ring between his fingers.
One hundred and five minutes.
Numbers were easier. Numbers had edges. A departure slot existed or it didn’t. A defensive install had an assigned time. A charter carried fifty men who had spent the week preparing for the same game.
Tess did not fit inside any of those parameters tonight.
“She’s driving alone,” Camden said. “That part doesn’t stop being insane just because I have a flight.”
Marcus withdrew his hand and gestured toward Camden’s phone. “You verified the card. She has money. She has transportation. She wants distance, and she has gone out of her way to make sure you know it.”
“She left her wedding ring on the counter.”
“Yes. You noticed.”
Camden stared at him.
“That was the point.”
“If we miss this departure slot, operations will have to rebuild ground transport on the West Coast,” the handler said. “Coaching staff is already asking whether they should adjust the morning walkthrough.”
Camden looked toward the untouched dinner.
A few hours ago, Tess had been somewhere in this room waiting for him. He could picture her setting out the plates, checking the time, watching the candles burn away while his chair stayed empty.
He had done that.
No sponsor clause changed it. No campaign obligation erased it.
“I should go after her.”
Marcus answered at once. “And do what? Force her off the interstate? Corner her at a hotel while cameras trail you into the parking lot?”
Camden said nothing.
“Eighty thousand seats are waiting on the West Coast,” Marcus continued. “A nine-figure apparel launch is riding on your playoff stats. Look at the logistics, Camden. You do not burn down a franchise legacy to reward a temper tantrum.”
“She’s my wife.”
“Then give your wife what she is demanding.”
The logic silenced him.
Marcus held his gaze. “Space.”
Camden looked down again.
Space. That was all this had to be.