9. Tess
Tess
The February sun bore down on Heron Point as if winter had forgotten the Florida Keys.
Tess dragged the tip of her pen down the manifest clipped to her board, matching each handwritten line against the bait stacked beside the waiting charter boat.
Sweat gathered beneath the straps of her faded tank top and worked down her back, but the afternoon rush didn’t care how hot the docks got.
“You’ve got those two boxes on the sheet?” the captain asked from the stern.
Tess checked the tags again. “Marked. Keep the next load out of the sun until I clear it.”
The captain bent for another box while Tess moved down the page.
Four months at Heron Point had taught her exactly how fast a dock could turn ugly when one late charter jammed the next two behind it.
Sully trusted her with the manifests now, trusted her to catch shortages before a captain reached open water and discovered half his bait missing.
She intended to deserve that trust.
She stopped writing.
A firm kick landed beneath her ribs, sudden enough to break the rhythm of the count. Tess shifted the clipboard against her hip and covered the curve of her stomach with her free hand.
There it was again.
She smiled before she could stop herself.
The captain glanced over from the boat. “You good, Tess?”
“Yeah.” She kept her hand there for another moment. “Somebody objected to my schedule.”
He grinned and went back to the cargo without another question.
Tess looked down at her stomach. Six months.
The number still caught her sometimes, not because it surprised her anymore, but because time had begun moving with a purpose of its own.
Maternity leave was no longer some vague future problem.
It sat ahead of her on the calendar, a hard deadline on every paycheck she could stack before the winter slowdown emptied half these slips.
Keep turning inventory. Keep saving.
The baby shifted once beneath her hand, then settled.
“Okay,” Tess murmured. “You win.”
She dropped her hand and lifted the clipboard again.
Sunlight flashed off the water hard enough to make her squint. Two ice chests still sat exposed on the deck, their white lids taking the full force of the afternoon heat. Tess raised her pen and pointed toward the covered section near the stern.
“This sun is going to melt half the ice before you even reach the reef if they sit on that bare fiberglass. Shove those ice chests dead center under the stern canopy.”
The captain caught one handle and dragged the chest out of the sun. “You want the rest of those chum buckets hauled to the live-well, Tess? I can muscle those over after I get these into the shade.”
“Grab the buckets. Lock down the rest of that tackle, and I’ll sign off on your departure slip.”
He gave her a quick nod and turned back toward the dock.
Tess checked the cargo against the manifest once more. The numbers mattered. Every box sold, every charter cleared, every clean line in Sully’s ledger bought her a little more room before the baby came and the marina slowed.
She wasn’t waiting on anyone else to build that security for her.
She pressed her pen back to the manifest, finding the next line just as Briggs stepped up onto the dock from the repair slips. Grease stained the front of his faded shirt, and a rag hung from one back pocket. His attention went straight to the coolers waiting beside the charter boat.
“Which one’s next?”
“Blue tag first. Stern side.”
Briggs bent, caught both handles, and lifted.
The cooler came off the planks in one controlled pull.
Eighty pounds of ice and bait would have stopped Tess cold these days, but Briggs brought it up to the gunwale without asking her to move or surrender the clipboard.
That was the part she appreciated. He carried the weight; she kept doing her job.
Tess stepped alongside him and angled the manifest toward the tag.
“Hold it there. I need the number.”
Briggs paused with the container braced against the side of the boat. “You’ve got it?”
She found the matching line with her pen. “Got it. Set it down.”
He lifted the cooler over the gunwale and lowered it onto the stern deck. A breath of chilled air escaped through a gap beneath the lid and vanished into the heat. Tess checked the box on her sheet while Briggs returned for the next load.
They had done some version of this routine for months now. No speeches. No one hovering over her asking whether pregnancy had made her incapable of counting cargo. Briggs handled whatever demanded brute force, and Tess made sure every charter left with what it had paid for.
That arrangement suited her fine.
The captain climbed onto the deck and shifted a tackle case farther beneath the canopy. “We clear after this?”
“After I verify the ice and the outriggers.”
Briggs caught the next set of handles.
Tess moved with him, pen ready. The sun had been beating down since morning, and sweat slipped along the back of her neck every time she leaned over the board. Sitting down sounded better than she wanted to admit.
Not yet.
The charter still occupied the slip. One missed tag, one loose latch, one forgotten box of bait, and Sully would have another captain idling in the queue within the hour.
Briggs settled the last cooler onto the deck and straightened. “Hit the bench, Tess. You’ve been roasting out here in the sun since dawn.”
Tess kept her eyes on the manifest. “Sully will skin me if we stall a premium offshore client at the dock. I’m not hitting that bench until this hull clears the slip, so check the outriggers.”
“You know the outriggers are fine.”
“Then checking them should be easy.”
He fought a smile as he turned toward the rigging. “Bossy.”
“Employed.”
That earned a short laugh from the captain.
Briggs reached the starboard side, tested the latch, then crossed to the other. Tess watched the hardware rather than him, verifying each lock against the departure checklist.
He looked back over his shoulder. “Latches are pinned. He’s about to start those twin engines, so I’m heading for the bait shack. Getting you a cold water out of that fridge.”
“I didn’t ask for water.”
“No. You also didn’t ask the sun for permission to cook you.”
Tess lowered the clipboard enough to give him a look, but Briggs was already stepping off the loading area.
The argument could wait. The charter couldn’t.
Briggs headed for the bait shack, leaving Tess with the idling charter, only to return a moment later with a bottle of water beaded with condensation. He set it beside Tess’s clipboard while she checked the final cargo line against the charter deck.
“Water.”
“I’ll get to it.”
“You said that about sitting down.”
Tess lifted the pen without looking at him. “And somehow the marina survived.”
The captain laughed from the stern, but Tess barely heard it over the sudden grind of tires on crushed shells.
Tess stopped marking the page.
A black SUV rolled off the highway and onto Sully’s driveway, its paint throwing back the afternoon sun.
The vehicle moved too slowly for a delivery route and was too clean to belong anywhere near Heron Point.
Even the engine sounded wrong here, a muted purr beneath the rattle of pumps, idling outboards, and working boats.
Briggs turned toward the lot. “That’s ambitious.”
Tess didn’t move her pen.
Nobody she knew drove something like that onto Sully’s property.
Nobody except—
The SUV stopped.
Her hand dropped to her stomach entirely on instinct. The clipboard stayed pinned against her hip. She stared across the dock, past the loading area and the sun-struck shells, as the driver’s door opened.
Camden stepped out.
For one stupid moment, he looked exactly like the life she had escaped.
Clean shirt. Expensive trousers. Shoes that had never met fish blood, diesel, or dock mud. Four months vanished at the sight of him standing beside that polished vehicle as though Manhattan had spit him straight into Sully’s driveway.
No.
The thought came clean and immediate.
Not here.
He pushed the door shut behind him and turned toward the marina.
Tess pressed her fingers harder into the fabric of her shirt, a sudden, fierce spike of adrenaline cutting through the heat.
The divorce papers.
Of course.
She put Heron Point on the petition because the attorney needed a legal address. She knew Camden would see it, but she’d convinced herself that knowing where she lived was not the same as coming after her.
Apparently, she had been wrong.
Camden started toward the dock.
One step.
Then another.
He stopped.
Tess knew the exact moment he saw her stomach.
The distance between them was too wide for her to make out every detail of his expression, but she didn’t need to. He looked down at the curve beneath her hand and went completely still. Whatever he had expected to find at Heron Point, it had not been this.
Not six months of proof standing in the sun.
A charter line slapped against the side of the boat behind her. The captain said something Tess didn’t catch, her eyes locked entirely on Camden.
He knew now.
There was no envelope to hide. No oversized mansion kitchen between them. No chance to wait for a better night, a quieter schedule, a husband who might actually listen.
Their child was right there in front of him.
Briggs shifted beside her, still watching the driveway. “Tourist in the tinted rental definitely missed his highway turnoff. Nobody pulls something like that into this dirt unless they’re looking for the resorts.”
Tess let her hand fall to her side.
Camden still hadn’t moved.
Briggs glanced at her. “You know him?”
She tightened her fingers around the clipboard and kept her eyes on the man standing in Sully’s driveway.
“He didn’t take a wrong turn, Briggs.” She spoke lower than she intended. “That’s my husband.”
Tess anchored the clipboard against her side, finding the last unchecked line on the manifest. Camden remained in the driveway, but the charter boat was still tied to Sully’s dock, and the captain was still waiting for clearance.
That mattered first.