12. Camden #2
“Nobody is hunting you. I was standing at the pharmacy register across the street, Sully.” His gaze moved to Tess. “Just—give me one single sentence. Is she safe? Is something wrong with the baby?”
Tess met his eyes from the clinic doors while traffic moved behind him in broken waves. The glass doors caught the midday sun, throwing a harsh glare across the pavement. Sully stayed between them, but Camden kept his boots planted where they were.
“Nothing is wrong,” Tess said. “This appointment was scheduled.”
The answer removed the worst possibilities without giving Camden any actual footing.
“Okay.” He let his hands fall to his sides. The pharmacy bag rested against his wrist. “That’s all I needed to know.”
Tess turned toward the doors.
“Wait.”
She stopped before touching the handle.
Camden resisted the urge to close the distance.
A few feet of pavement separated them, and crossing that line without permission would turn every apology he had made at the marina into another lie.
He had spent years treating access to her as something permanent, something his name and their marriage guaranteed.
“I won’t interfere with anything,” he said. “I can stay out of the way.”
Tess looked back at him. “That isn’t the point.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Sully stepped aside just enough that Camden could look directly at her now. He didn’t take advantage of the opening. The old reflex—to move first and explain later—had already cost him more than he knew how to repair.
Tess’s hand settled against the clinic door.
“A four-month disappearing act doesn’t get erased just because you suddenly parachute onto this asphalt. I don’t need a devoted husband for a standard check-up.”
Camden accepted the reprimand without trying to argue.
Sixteen weeks.
He had spent those weeks letting Marcus convince him that silence meant cooling off, that distance was some kind of strategy, that Tess would eventually return once the inconvenience of being furious wore itself out.
Meanwhile, she had built appointments, routines, and an entire pregnancy without him.
The clinic door remained closed beneath her hand.
“I lost the right to an invitation,” Camden said. “I know that.”
Tess waited.
He glanced at the tinted glass, then back to her. Somewhere beyond those doors was a part of his child’s life that had gone on without his voice, his schedule, or his permission.
“But please,” he said. “I’ll stay against the back wall. I won’t say a word. Just let me see the monitor.”
Sully looked at Tess, but he stayed silent.
That mattered.
Nobody answered for her here. No agent stepped in with a compromise. No handler smoothed the conversation into something marketable. The decision belonged to Tess, and Camden could do nothing but stand on the pavement and wait for it.
She tightened her grip on the door handle.
“You still think this is about whether you can behave for twenty minutes.”
“No.”
“You flew down here after four months and started talking about hotels, private cars, getting me out of the heat.” She pressed her lips together. “You looked at my pregnancy and went straight back to managing the problem.”
Camden had no defense worth offering.
“I was scared.”
“So was I.”
Camden didn’t try to formulate another excuse.
Tess had been scared alone.
Not for five minutes on a sidewalk. Not while staring at a clinic sign with no information. She had done it for months, carrying their child while the man who promised to protect their private life smiled beside another woman for cameras and let his father decide when his marriage mattered.
Camden looked down at the pavement, then back up.
“I know saying sorry doesn’t buy access.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“I’m still asking.”
Tess pulled the door open. A draft from the lobby slipped through the gap before vanishing into the heat.
For one second, Camden thought she might wave him forward.
She didn’t.
“You made your choice with Chloe at O’Malley’s.” Tess held the door with one hand and looked straight at him. “Take a plastic chair in the lobby, or walk the highway back to your motel mattress. That examination door stays shut to you.”
Tess stepped inside first, and Sully followed close behind her. Camden waited long enough to leave space between them before crossing the threshold. A rush of conditioned air cut through the heat, carrying the clean bite of sanitizer through the small lobby.
“Lobby means lobby, Ford,” Sully said without turning around.
“I heard her.”
Tess kept moving toward the front desk. Camden stayed several paces behind, watching her cross the tiled floor without trying to catch up. She had given him one concession, and he had no intention of turning it into permission for anything else.
A hallway opened beyond the reception counter.
Tess angled toward it with Sully beside her. Camden followed on instinct, taking two steps before a woman behind the desk rose from her chair to stop him.
“Sir, stop at the desk.”
Camden stopped.
The receptionist gestured toward the hallway, picking up a clipboard. “Sir, the hallway stops here. I need your signature on this visitor log if you plan on using the waiting room. We only permit cleared family members past this desk.”
Cleared family members.
He didn’t need anyone to explain what that meant for him.
Tess paused near the corridor entrance, but she didn’t turn back to rescue him from it.
Camden had spent years walking through restricted stadium tunnels where security guards opened doors before he reached them.
Team staff memorized his schedule. Hotel managers cleared elevators.
Entire floors became private because somebody had typed his name into the right reservation system.
None of that followed him here.
“Hand me the pen,” Camden said. “I know the rules—I won’t take a single step near those doors.”
The receptionist handed him the clipboard.
Camden shifted the pharmacy bag farther up his wrist and took the pen. He adjusted his grip and lowered the tip to the paper.
He found the line for his name.
He wrote Camden Ford in the blank space.
No title. No team. No jersey number.
Just a name beneath the signatures of several strangers who had arrived before him.