8. Camden
Camden
Sleet drove across the Manhattan red carpet hard enough to work through Camden’s jacket and sting the back of his neck.
Beyond the steel barricades, fans surged against one another while camera flashes burst across the media pen in relentless white pulses.
Event staff kept waving him forward by inches, but Chloe’s arm had already cinched around his waist, holding him in place beneath the sponsor wall.
“Stay on the mark,” she said through a fixed smile. “They’re still shooting this side.”
“I’m on it. Watch the barricade.”
The steel rail shrieked as another wave of bodies pressed forward.
Camden kept his shoulders square to the cameras and let Chloe rest her head against him, though every instinct in him wanted to peel her arm away and walk through the nearest door.
One hundred and twenty days without a text from Tess, and somehow he was still standing under campaign lights pretending this circus deserved another minute of his life.
Marcus had sworn distance would burn the anger out.
Then why hasn’t she called?
A reporter forced his way along the rope line and shoved a microphone toward Camden’s mouth. “QB1, hold right there. Give me one clean answer before they move you.”
Camden turned to the microphone. “Ask it.”
The reporter grinned as if he had been handed permission to swing. “The timeline is eating these billboard drops up. Are you two officially taking yourselves off the market?”
Chloe laughed before Camden could answer. She tucked herself closer beneath his shoulder, her nails digging into his side. “You want me to ruin the mystery and give Marcus a heart attack? Not a chance. But I will say sharing a set with Camden is an absolute dream.”
Another wall of flashes erupted.
Camden held the smile.
Four months ago, he would have called this harmless. Necessary, even. A picture sold shoes. A joke fed the campaign. A little manufactured intimacy bought Tess privacy at home, far from the cameras.
Except Tess was not at home.
She was nowhere he could reach.
The microphone remained in front of him while the reporter waited. Chloe’s arm stayed locked around his waist, and the crowd behind the barricade kept chanting his name as if that name belonged to them.
Finish the appearance. Get through the playoffs. Then find her.
That had been the plan every week, delayed so many times it had just become another excuse.
Chloe nudged him with her hip. “Your turn, superstar.”
Camden widened the same smile he had used for endorsement shoots, postgame podiums, and endless sponsor dinners that had all blurred together.
“The chemistry handles itself when you’re working with a global icon like Chloe.
Check the apparel numbers tomorrow. They’ll paint the exact picture you’re looking for. ”
The reporter barked something toward his cameraman. Chloe lifted her chin for another angle, still attached to Camden’s side.
He stayed where the event team had placed him.
Sleet hit his neck while the barricades groaned again under the fans. Somewhere beyond the venue doors waited another reception, another set of executives, another room where everyone expected him to stand by Chloe and sell the illusion.
Camden kept his eyes on the camera line. An empty mansion, a wedding ring left on stone, and a wife who had managed to vanish without a trace.
The cameras fired again, and Camden kept smiling.
The venue doors shut behind Camden and cut the red-carpet roar down to a dull pressure against the walls.
The carpet swallowed his steps as he crossed into the lobby, and the artificial heat struck the sleet still clinging to his collar.
Chloe stayed outside with the photographers. He did not look back.
His PR handler appeared beside a column, tablet in one hand and stylus already moving across the screen.
“You’re clear. Keep moving before they reopen the rope.”
“Where’s the car?”
“Alley side. We lost two minutes on that last interview.”
“Then talk while we walk.”
They cut through the lobby traffic together. The handler tapped through a schedule crowded with blocks of color, already talking while Camden’s ears were still ringing from the red carpet.
“Carpet optics are logged. Alley vehicle is idling. Marcus is timing your entrance for the distributor gala, so we have exactly twenty-two minutes to get you back to the hotel, changed, and downstairs.”
Camden kept walking. They would shake his hand, tell him the campaign numbers looked historic, and ask him to smile beside Chloe as if the last four months had not happened.
Twenty-two minutes for them. Four months for Tess.
“Fine,” he said. “Schedule confirmed.”
The handler glanced down at the tablet again. “Good. I need eight of those minutes in the car for the apparel talking points. Marcus wants the distributor language clean before you hit the room.”
Camden looked past him toward the bank of elevators. A jeweler occupied the corner beyond the lobby bar, all glass shelving and display lights. A row of diamond tennis bracelets glowed in the front case, expensive enough that nobody could mistake them for an afterthought.
That was something he could put in Tess’s hand.
He had spent four months letting Marcus dictate exactly how and when he was allowed to handle his own marriage. Buying one thing for his wife without asking permission should not have required a committee.
A phone call could be ignored. The diamond bracelet was visible, valuable, impossible to misread. He could hand it over, apologize without cameras around them, and end the standoff.
Get through tonight. Find her. Fix it.
“Change of plan,” Camden said.
The handler looked up. “Sir?”
“Go to the jeweler by the elevators. Front display. Diamond tennis bracelet.”
The handler froze.
“I want that exact one,” Camden continued. “Buy it yourself. Have it sent to my room before we leave for the gala.”
The handler lowered the tablet. “Marcus is waiting on me to drill these apparel points into you. We need to kick the jewelry run to an intern so we can prep.”
Camden kept his pace for another few steps.
The handler hurried beside him. “I can send somebody now. They’ll have the box upstairs before you finish changing.”
“No intern.”
“Mr. Ford, we have twenty-two minutes.”
“I heard you.”
The handler stiffened, though he kept his voice measured. “Then you know why I need to stay with you. Marcus will ask whether we covered the distributor language, and I can’t tell him I left you unprepped to shop for jewelry.”
The lobby doors opened somewhere behind them, letting in a brief wash of crowd noise before closing again. Camden stared him down until the man stopped trying to redirect the errand. The tablet remained tucked against his chest while lobby traffic divided around them without slowing.
“Kill the prep,” Camden said. “Take the titanium. You walk into that boutique personally, and you keep this transaction out of an intern’s hands.”
The handler checked the schedule glowing on his screen. “You want me to leave the route now?”
“For ten minutes. Yes.”
“Marcus is going to ask why I disappeared.”
“He can ask me.”
Camden reached inside his jacket and pulled the black card from the inner pocket. For four months, he had let Marcus and the PR team handle the fallout, standing back while the schedule dictated exactly how much he was allowed to care.
Not this.
One thing for my wife. I can manage one damn thing myself.
He slapped the card into the handler’s palm.
The handler stared at the card. “And the same bracelet from the front case?”
“That one. No substitute.”
“You don’t want me calling upstairs to check whether they have another piece in reserve?”
“No. I saw what I want.”
Camden started walking, forcing the handler to keep pace. The distant bass from the event pulsed through the floor as they crossed toward the service corridor, faint enough now to reveal the squeak of catering carts somewhere behind a closed door.
The bracelet remained fixed in his mind.
A clean line of diamonds. Expensive enough to make the apology impossible to dismiss. Tess had worn his ring for years while he asked her to vanish whenever the cameras came around. He could at least put something beautiful back into her hands when he finally found her.
You should have gone after her four months ago.
The thought stayed with him longer than he wanted.
Camden shoved it aside.
He had let himself get buried in the playoff run and the new campaign launch, using the travel as an excuse to avoid dealing with the fallout.
Marcus had insisted that chasing Tess while she was furious would only make things worse, and Camden had believed him because believing him had been easier than admitting he had no idea how to fix what happened at O’Malley’s.
The handler adjusted his grip. “I’ll run the card personally. I can have the box upstairs before you’re dressed for the gala.”
“Good.”
“I still need five minutes with you on the distributor language once I get back.”
“You’ll get them in the car.”
Ahead, the service-corridor sign pointed toward the loading dock and alley access. Camden angled toward it instead of the main entrance, where another bank of photographers would be waiting for anyone worth shooting.
“Route the SUV to the loading dock,” he said. “I’m not fighting my way through the main exits.”
The handler nodded and peeled away toward the elevators.
Camden pushed through the alley door and headed for the waiting SUV.
The penthouse door shut behind Camden, finally blocking out the noise of the city. After the red carpet, the sudden quiet should have been a relief, but the clock was already working against him. He stripped off his jacket, dropped it across the nearest chair, and loosened his tie.
“Get through the gala,” he muttered.
He pulled the tie free from his collar as he crossed toward the bedroom. A charcoal suit waited across the bed, already laid out by staff with the shirt and cuff links arranged beside it.
Then find Tess.
That was the only part of the night worth thinking about.