10. Camden
Camden
Camden broke from the spot where Tess had left him and took one step toward the bait shack.
Sully came out from behind the fuel pump before Camden reached the first dock post. The older man planted himself in the path and drove one calloused palm into Camden’s chest. Camden stopped under the force of it.
The contact carried no warning tap, no polite buffer for the famous quarterback who had watched security ropes part before he even arrived.
Sully’s hand stayed where it was, flat against Camden’s shirt, while diesel exhaust rolled back from the departing charter boat and burned through the salt air.
“You stop right there,” Sully said. “She told you to leave.”
Camden kept his hands at his sides. He could have moved the man. That was the ugly truth of it. Sully was older, shorter, built by sun and labor instead of weight rooms and Sunday collisions.
Moving him would prove Tess right.
“I heard her.”
“Then stand where you are.”
Camden looked past Sully’s shoulder. The bait-shack door stood open. Tess had returned to the counter, turned away from the driveway as if he had become one more delivery truck parked where it did not belong.
The divorce papers had been cleaner than this. Black ink. A return address. Something he could hold.
Don’t chase her.
His shoes ground into the shell as he stopped himself from pushing past Sully.
“I’m not going around you.”
“Good.” Sully lowered his hand but kept his place between Camden and the shack. “Name’s Sully. I own this dirt. You don’t hunt her on my clock, superstar.”
“She’s my wife.”
Sully stared at him. “Not an access pass.”
Camden looked toward the shack again. Tess did not turn.
“Please.” The word came out stripped of every press-conference reflex he had learned. “Give me five minutes. I’ll stay right here if that’s what you want. Let her stand twenty feet away. Let her keep the door open. I just need five minutes to tell her where I failed.”
Sully wiped his palm against the side of his work pants. “You think she drove down here because nobody explained the schedule to her?”
“No.”
“You think she packed a car, crossed state lines, took a job gutting bait, and filed for divorce because she missed one damn memo from your front office?”
For a moment, Camden had no answer. The sun burned the back of his neck, but he kept his dress shirt buttoned to the wrists. Rolling the sleeves would have looked too much like settling in somewhere he had not been invited to stay.
“I’m not leaving Florida.”
“That sounds like your problem.”
“It is.”
Sully folded his arms.
Camden glanced toward the yard: mud, hulls, fuel lines, work piled everywhere. No velvet rope. No assistant waiting to translate discomfort into service.
He met Sully’s stare.
“Then put me on the payroll.”
Sully studied Camden for another moment, then turned and pointed across the yard.
A thirty-foot charter hull rested on steel supports beyond the fuel pumps, its underside stained with old growth and flaking bottom paint. Sully reached beside a workbench, picked up a scraper, and shoved the handle against Camden’s chest.
“That hull. Underside from the bow back.”
Camden caught the tool before it dropped.
“Show me where you want the blade.”
“You wanted work. There it is.”
No handshake. No agreement about hours. No promise that Tess would care.
Good.
Camden set the scraper beside the piling. The expensive cotton already clung between his shoulders from standing in the sun. He unbuttoned his cuffs, rolled the sleeves above his elbows, picked the scraper back up, and headed toward the hull.
Sully followed at his own pace.
The packed shell gave way to wet ground near the hull. Camden’s first step sank past the sole of one shoe, the mud clinging hard when he tried to pull free. He worked his foot loose and planted it farther forward.
Sully gave a short grunt. “Those shoes aren’t making it through the day.”
“They don’t need to.”
“That attitude might.”
Camden ducked beneath the hull.
Heat collected against the fiberglass despite the shade. Steel supports rose around him at angles he did not trust enough to touch. He stayed clear of them and turned sideways until he found room to work.
Sully leaned against the bow.
“Keep the edge flat,” he said. “You gouge my fiberglass, you’re paying for it.”
“Understood.”
Camden pressed the scraper against the crusted surface and tested the angle.
The blade barely moved.
Behind him, Sully said, “She showed up here four months ago in canvas sneakers.”
Camden stopped.
“Didn’t know one end of a bait freezer from the other. Didn’t matter. First day, she was hauling frozen inventory through this heat before lunch.”
Camden kept the blade pressed against the hull.
Sully continued, “Eighty-pound bait loads. Wet floors. Charter captains yelling for gear. She never asked me to make it easier.”
Camden stared at the patch inches from his face.
Four months.
While he had been sitting through sponsor dinners, team flights, hotel suites, and film sessions, Tess had been learning how to keep a commercial marina moving with their child growing inside her.
He had called the silence ‘space’.
He had called it a tantrum.
Camden shifted his grip on the scraper.
“Not looking for favors,” he said. “Just point me. Next block of fiberglass when I clear this one.”
Sully’s shadow moved across the dirt beyond the hull.
“Pace yourself, superstar. Afternoon humidity gets worse. Let’s see if you’re still talking like that when your arms quit cooperating.”
Camden leaned closer to the work.
The trapped chemical stink beneath the hull burned his throat.
He jerked back and gagged, turning his head toward open air. The taste lingered at the back of his mouth while Sully remained exactly where he was.
No rescue. No joke.
Camden spat into the dirt, wiped his mouth against his wrist, and reset his feet.
She did this pregnant.
That was enough.
He squared the scraper against the fouled patch and drove both hands forward.
The blade bit into the crust.
It broke away in stubborn strips, forcing Camden to reset the tool every few inches. Each pass sent dried barnacles and blue dust into the mud around his shoes. He shifted beneath the hull, found the next patch, and drove the blade forward again.
“You missed a strip by the support,” Sully called.
“I’ve got it.”
Camden ducked lower and reached around the steel stand without touching it.
The scraper juddered against the hull, the handle vibrating hard against his raw skin.
Sweat ran from his hairline and dropped from his chin, but the sun had begun to sink behind the marina roofs, taking some of the punishment out of the yard.
The handle had started rubbing the base of his fingers raw. He changed his grip and kept working.
A fresh strip peeled loose. Then another.
Sully crossed the yard, stopped near the bow, and inspected the section Camden had cleared. “Run your eyes down the line before you call it finished.”
Camden stepped out far enough to see the underside from a better angle. A single spot near the stern still held a band of barnacles.
“Last patch is clean after that.”
“Then finish it.”
Camden went back under.
The first drag across the remaining crust burned through his already-tender skin. He loosened his grip for one stroke, adjusted his fingers, and tried again. The scraper caught, tore free, and slid hard enough that the handle shifted against his palm.
A sharp sting followed. Blood marked the metal where his right hand wrapped around it.
He stared at the smear. Back in the training room, a split like this would have brought disinfectant, tape, somebody asking whether he could still throw. Nobody moved toward him now, and that suited him.
Camden wiped the handle against his trousers, reset both hands, and drove the scraper into the last patch.
By the time the final crust broke loose, both palms were split and bleeding. He let the scraper hang at his side, checking the fiberglass from bow to stern. Satisfied, he planted the blade into the dirt and leaned against the shaft to straighten his back.
The hull was clean.
Sully stood near the edge of the bait shack, arms folded.
Camden pulled the scraper free and carried it across the yard. He stopped well short of the threshold and set the tool beside Sully’s boot.
“Fiberglass is clean. Hit the gelcoat.” He glanced toward the shack door, then back at Sully. “Just let me knock. Thirty seconds. I only want to say goodnight.”
Sully looked down at Camden’s hands.
“Four months of dead air, and you think half a shift bleeding in my dirt pays the debt?”
“I didn’t say it paid anything.”
“You’re still asking for something back.”
That landed harder than Camden wanted it to.
The work had changed nothing about the door. Tess had told him to leave. Sully had let him stay long enough to earn sweat, not access.
Sully jerked his chin toward the driveway. “Get in your rental. Find whatever motel you’re hiding at. Stay off my gravel tonight.”
Camden looked once toward the bait shack. No movement came from inside.
Camden nodded. “Understood. I’m leaving.”
Sully watched him turn away.
Camden took three steps, then stopped and looked back. “I’ll be standing at the bottom of this driveway at sunrise.”
Sully said nothing.
Camden held his gaze. “Have another tool ready.”
The coastal highway unspooled beneath the rental’s headlights while Camden kept both hands on the wheel. Every turn tugged at the open skin across his palms, but Heron Point stayed behind him, exactly where Sully had ordered him to leave it.
He found the Sandpiper by its vacancy sign.
The motel sat close to the road, a row of doors wrapped around a cramped parking lot with barely enough room to turn the SUV. Camden eased into an empty space, killed the engine, and stayed behind the wheel, staring down at his hands.
Dried blood marked the creases around his fingers. Blue paint dust clung to his shirt and trousers. His shoes had surrendered to the boatyard mud hours ago.
He got out.