12. Camden
Camden
Camden pushed himself off the sagging motel mattress and crossed into the bathroom with his phone in one hand and the ruined shirt in the other.
His back ached when he bent over the sink, payment for another day spent crouched beneath hulls and dragging tools through Sully’s yard.
He set the phone beside the faucet, turned on the water, and pressed the shirt into the basin.
The motel soap came wrapped in paper thin enough to split beneath his damaged fingers. Camden peeled it open, wet the bar, and worked it into the collar where engine sludge had soaked through the fabric. Grey water ran from the fine cotton and circled the drain.
“Come on,” he muttered.
The stain spread.
A week ago, he would have thrown the shirt away without thinking.
Someone on staff would have replaced it before breakfast, probably with three identical versions hanging in a climate-controlled closet.
That habit belonged to another man now, some idiot who had spent years mistaking convenience for control.
Camden scrubbed harder.
Paint clung near the cuff. Black grease streaked one side. The fabric caught against the torn skin across his palms, and he shifted his grip until the wet cotton stopped dragging over the worst spots.
This was better.
Not the pain. Not the motel sink or the shirt he had probably paid too much for. The work was better. Nobody stood outside the bathroom asking for his signature. Nobody waited with a garment bag, a car, a schedule, or a prepared statement.
His phone rested beside the faucet.
Camden glanced at the blank screen.
He only needed the time.
The shirt sagged against the sink when he released it. He wiped his hands against his trousers, picked up the phone, and pressed the side button.
The screen woke.
Notifications flooded downward, filling the glass instantly. Missed calls. Voicemails. Messages stacked so tightly that Marcus’s name repeated from one edge to the other.
Camden stared at them.
Not today.
“Not today.”
He tapped the newest voicemail.
Marcus’s voice burst through the phone’s speaker.
“Clear the line and pick up! If you blow off today’s playoff walkthrough, the General Manager is officially filing the paperwork to stash you on the Non-Football Injury list! You are actively sinking a nine-figure apparel launch to throw a temper tantrum!”
Camden looked at the sludge staining the cotton.
A playoff walkthrough.
Four months ago, those words could have pulled him out of bed even with a fever. Marcus had trained him to hear every team demand as an emergency and every sponsor problem as a fire only Camden could put out.
Now there was paint under his nails.
There were cuts across his palms from work nobody had photographed.
And his wife was living a few miles away, pregnant with the child he had not known existed while he smiled beside Chloe for cameras.
Marcus kept talking. Another threat about fines. Another demand to call the front office. Camden let the recording finish without answering the empty room.
He stared at the callback icon for a second before tapping delete.
The message vanished.
“Let them bury me on the practice squad. I don’t care.” Camden rested the phone in his palm and stared into the spotted mirror. “I am not boarding a flight until my wife leaves this coast with me.”
He held the side button.
The screen went black.
Camden put down the dead phone and gathered the shirt from the sink. Grey water streamed from the fabric as he wrung it out, careful of his raw palms. Whatever had once made the thing worth several hundred dollars had disappeared beneath boat paint, engine sludge, and motel soap.
“Good enough,” he muttered.
It wasn’t.
The collar still carried a black smear, and blue paint stained one cuff. Camden stopped fighting it anyway. He draped the shirt over the vanity, stepped out of the bathroom, and dug through his travel bag until he found a wrinkled T-shirt near the bottom.
Pulling it on took more work than it should have. He winced as he raised his arms, forcing his stiff hands through. The shirt settled over him without tailoring, logos, or anyone waiting to photograph how it fit.
Camden shoved his feet into his work boots, retrieved his phone from the vanity, and buried it in his pocket.
The pharmacy sat two blocks down the coastal road. By the time he pushed through the glass entrance, sweat had gathered beneath the back of his shirt, and every step reminded him how many hours he had spent crouched beneath Sully’s hulls.
He found the pumice soap first.
The package promised to cut through grease, paint, and industrial grime. Good. That sounded more useful than anything his old grooming staff had ever stocked in a penthouse bathroom.
A cashier glanced over from the register. “Pain relief is two aisles over if you’re looking for more than soap.”
“Found it. Thanks.”
Camden took a bulk bottle of ibuprofen from the shelf and headed for the front.
A tabloid rack stood beside the checkout lane.
Chloe’s face filled the cover.
The photograph had caught her under event lighting, every strand of hair arranged for a camera that probably had three assistants standing behind it. Camden stopped long enough to read the headline printed above her.
“APPAREL LAUNCH IMPLODES! HAS OUR FRANCHISE STAR BECOME A RUNAWAY QB1?”
He left the magazine where it was.
The cashier took the soap and bottle from him. The scanner chirped once for each item before she dropped them into a thin plastic bag.
Her gaze fell to his hands.
“Industrial pumice and the bulk painkillers. Twelve bucks flat.” She tapped the screen. “With your hands torn up like that, you must be dragging chain around the commercial slips all day.”
Camden looked down at his battered hands.
A week ago, those hands would have meant autographs, camera phones, and questions about passing yards. Here, a stranger looked at the damage and assumed he worked for a living.
The anonymity suited him.
He pulled a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet and laid it on the counter.
The cashier opened the drawer and started counting change.
“Keep the difference.” Camden took the plastic bag from the counter. “Just pulling a shift at the boatyard.”
She looked at him again, then pushed the drawer shut. “Get some ointment on those cuts before they split worse.”
“I will.”
Camden hooked the bag around two fingers and pushed through the pharmacy doors.
Midday glare bounced off the parked cars and bleached the pavement ahead of him, forcing him to narrow his eyes as the closing glass cut off the cooled air.
He stepped toward the curb, already measuring the walk back toward Heron Point.
A battered pickup rolled into the lot across the road.
Camden stopped.
He knew that truck. That faded paint and scarred tailgate belonged beside fuel pumps, hull stands, and stacks of dock gear. It had no business sitting across from a pharmacy in the middle of town.
The truck pulled into a marked space.
Camden looked at the sign above the building.
Gulfshore Women’s Clinic.
His grip tightened on the bag.
Sully killed the engine. The passenger door opened a moment later, and Tess stepped down onto the asphalt. She kept one hand on the door frame while she found her footing, the rounded swell of her stomach unmistakable beneath her shirt.
Camden stared across the moving traffic.
Four months.
Four months without appointments, updates, test results, or any clue what normal looked like for her pregnancy. He didn’t know what was normal for her anymore. Holding the truck door could mean nothing, or it could mean Sully had rushed her here because something was wrong.
Tess shut the passenger door.
“Wait—Tess?”
Traffic swallowed his voice.
Sully rounded the truck and joined her near the sidewalk. They turned toward the clinic entrance.
“Tess! Hold up—just stop for one second!”
She looked back at him.
That was enough.
Camden stepped off the curb, then checked himself when a sedan swept through the lane in front of him. Its horn cut across the roadway. He backed onto the edge of the pavement, waited for the rear bumper to clear, then crossed behind it.
The bag knocked against his thigh.
A second car rolled toward him from the opposite direction. Camden sprinted across the lane, reaching the far curb just before the driver had to brake.
Sully had already turned around.
“Stay on that side of the road, Ford.”
Camden kept moving until the older man stepped away from Tess and planted himself between Camden and the glass entrance.
That stopped him.
“I just need to know why she’s here.”
Sully’s expression hardened. “You do not get to hunt her across town, superstar. Turn your boots around and march straight back to your motel.”
Camden looked past him.
Tess stood near the clinic doors, one hand resting beside her hip. No visible injury. No blood. Nothing that explained the panic he had carried across the street.
He forced himself to look back at Sully.
“Nobody is hunting anybody. I walked out of the pharmacy and your truck pulled in right in front of me.”
“Then call it bad luck and keep walking.”
Camden shifted the pharmacy bag from his fingers and looped the handles over his wrist. The soap and ibuprofen knocked against his forearm. He raised both hands, palms open despite the sting.
“I’m not pushing past you.”
Sully held his ground.
Camden glanced toward Tess again, then stopped himself from stepping around the older man. That would be the old version of him—deciding urgency gave him the right of way, demanding that everyone else clear the path because Camden Ford needed an answer.
He had built half his marriage that way.
“I don’t need to go inside,” he said. “I’m not asking you to move.”
Sully’s eyes stayed on him.
Camden lowered his hands.
The clinic doors were only a few steps behind Tess. Any second, she could walk through them and disappear into another part of their child’s life that he had missed.
He deserved that.
It didn’t stop the quiet panic settling in his chest.
Camden stayed exactly where he was.