11. Tess #2
He took no step toward her. “I traded my wife for billboard optics because I was too scared to tell my father no. I called it protecting you because admitting the truth would’ve meant admitting what I’d become.”
Tess looked at the paint ground into his shirt rather than his face. The man standing in her shack barely resembled the one who had left her alone in that mansion.
“Give me one chance,” he said. “Let me fix what I wrecked.”
A drop of blood slid from the knife tip and struck the mat between them.
“Fix what?” Tess asked. “One anniversary?”
“No.”
“One photograph?”
“No.”
“Then what exactly are you planning to repair?”
Camden held her stare.
“Three years,” she said. “Three years of making myself smaller so nobody connected your precious public image to a wife sitting at home. I stayed out of stadium tunnels. I stayed off guest lists. I learned when I could call and when some sponsor might be standing beside you.”
Her voice remained level.
“I lived inside that mansion like a secret you stored between games. Every sacrifice had a reason. Every humiliation came with another speech about protecting us. Meanwhile, you got to be single whenever somebody pointed a camera at you.”
“Tess—”
“I am done being your secret.”
Camden did not move.
Neither did she.
The sink remained behind him.
Tess lifted the knife until the stained tip hovered between them, aimed at the center of his shirt. “Move.”
His eyes dropped to the blade.
For the first time since stepping into the aisle, Camden leaned away.
That was enough.
Tess drove her shoulder past his chest and forced herself through the opening. His boot slid across the wet mat, and his hip struck the edge of the table behind him hard enough to rattle the cutting board.
She kept walking.
At the sink, Tess lowered the knife into the basin, reached for the tap, and turned it.
Water hammered over the metal while Tess held both hands beneath the stream, washing scales and blood from her fingers.
Behind her, Camden shifted away from the prep table. His boot dragged across the floor, then stopped. He had finally given her the aisle, but his presence still filled too much of the cramped room.
The back door swung inward.
Briggs stepped through carrying a pipe wrench in one hand and his battered toolbox in the other. He took two strides into the shack, glanced at the running sink, then looked past Tess toward Camden.
“Water running in here?”
Tess shut off the tap. “Sink is. Tables outside aren’t?”
“Bone dry.”
Briggs set the toolbox beside the wall and crossed the mats. There was no hesitation when he reached the narrow space between Tess and Camden. He simply stepped into it, turning sideways as if Camden were another bucket somebody had left in the work lane.
Camden stepped back.
The ease of it caught Tess off guard.
No challenge. No puffed chest. No demand to know what Camden had done. Briggs just walked in, saw the sink, and went to work.
“Shift left for me,” Briggs said.
Tess moved beside the sink. “Cutoff’s behind the basin.”
“That’s the one.”
He crouched to inspect the exposed line, then reached back for the wrench.
Camden stayed near the table. His clothes had left a faint streak of dirt where his hip had struck the table. He looked from Briggs to Tess, but he swallowed whatever argument he was about to make.
Briggs braced one hand against the pipe. “Pardon the intrusion, Tess. Lines are dead out at the fillet tables. I need to reach that primary cutoff right behind you.”
“You’ve got it.”
She shifted another step.
Briggs took the spot without brushing past her. His shoulder blocked Camden from her line of sight while he fitted the wrench around the pipe.
He wasn’t demanding space; he was just fixing a problem.
For years, men around Camden had treated every room like territory.
Marcus redirected staff with a finger. Security teams cleared hallways before Camden entered them.
Even Camden had just planted himself in her path because he needed an answer and expected the room to stop long enough for him to get one.
Briggs needed a pipe.
So he asked her to move.
“Tess, please.”
Camden’s voice came from beyond Briggs’s shoulder.
She looked toward the sink instead.
“Just five more minutes,” Camden said. “Let me finish this.”
Briggs adjusted the wrench without turning around. “The charter fleet couldn’t care less about your personal summit. Clear the aisle. I need these pipes flowing.”
Camden took another step back.
No protest followed. No reminder that he was Tess’s husband. No attempt to shove past Briggs or reclaim the conversation by force.
Tess rested one palm against the edge of the basin and watched Briggs work.
The room belonged to ordinary problems again. Water lines. Bait. Charter captains waiting on clean tables. Things that could be fixed with the right tool instead of a public apology delivered four months too late.
Briggs locked the wrench onto the cutoff.
He leaned into the handle, testing the stubborn valve while Tess stepped away from the sink. The plumbing gave a short groan behind her. Camden remained across the room near the prep table, close enough that she could still catch him in the edge of her vision whenever she turned.
“Bucket needs clearing if you’re using this side again,” Briggs said.
“I’ve got it.”
Tess crossed back to the table. Fish heads, severed tails, and strips of ruined bait had collected along the board while Camden turned her workday into a confession booth. She pushed the pile of scraps over the lip.
The waste dropped into the chum bucket.
Good. Something in this room still knew where it belonged.
Behind her, Camden shifted. “You can hate me and still let me finish one sentence.”
Tess wiped her palm against the edge of the station and returned to the sink. The knife remained where she had left it beneath the faucet. She picked it up and rinsed the blood from the blade.
“You’ve been finishing sentences since you walked through that door.”
“I’m trying to explain why I’m still here.”
“That part isn’t complicated.”
Camden took one step forward.
Briggs glanced over his shoulder, then went back to the plumbing. He gave Camden no challenge, no warning, no performance. The wrench moved again against the cutoff.
Tess stepped away from the basin and stopped beside Briggs.
Camden looked wrecked enough to make the old version of her dangerous. Deep splits scored both palms. Days in Sully’s yard had stripped away the clean edges Marcus used to polish for cameras.