13. Tess #3
He could have asked. After the dock, the windows, the rack, the door, he had enough material for one of his old speeches about effort and sacrifice. He could have pointed at the torn skin on his arm and treated it like admission paid.
Instead, he was leaving.
The keys sat in his damaged hand, cheap rental plastic where a black card or team driver would once have solved the problem. No argument followed. No assumption that saving her inventory had bought him a room upstairs.
Camden shifted toward the rear exit again.
Tess moved faster.
She stepped between him and the door before his hand reached the latch. Camden stopped close enough that she had to tip her face up to meet his eyes, but he made no attempt to crowd past her.
Up close, the shivering was harder to miss. His clothes were plastered to his shoulders, and rainwater had soaked through every layer. The abrasion on his forearm had started bleeding again, a thin line tracing toward his wrist before disappearing beneath the cuff.
“Move,” he said, but there was no command in it.
“No.”
“Tess.”
“You put that rental on the highway tonight, you’re going to end up sideways in floodwater.”
“I’m not staying where I haven’t been invited.”
Wind battered the rear wall again. The overhead lights flickered once, recovered, then held while rain hammered the roof above them.
Tess kept her place in front of the exit.
Camden looked at her, keys still trapped in his hand. She did not reach for them or touch him. She only stood there, blocking the one route he had left himself.
“Put them away.”
He met her eyes. “I’m not going upstairs.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
For a second, the only sound was the rain battering the roof and the wind pressing against the back wall. Then Camden slid the keys into his pocket.
Tess opened the door.
Rain came at them sideways. She ducked her head and crossed the short stretch between the bait shack and the marina office, boots sinking into the churned mud. Camden followed close enough to catch the door when the wind tried to wrench it from her hand, then let her enter first.
The mudroom smelled of wet rubber, diesel, and old coffee. Sully stood near the wall, peeling off a soaked slicker and dropping it beneath the coat hooks. Water ran from the hem onto the floor in a widening pool.
Sully took in Tess, then Camden.
“Fuel mains are capped.” Sully jerked his chin toward Camden. “Give me the dock report.”
Camden pushed his dripping hair back. The rope burn along his forearm had opened again, leaving a thin streak of blood through the grime.
“Cleats held. Canvas stayed down.”
“You lose anything?”
“Nothing that matters.” Camden glanced toward Tess. “She called it. I just moved what she pointed at.”
Tess looked away first.
Sully grunted and reached for a towel hanging from a peg. He tossed it at Camden’s chest. “Fair enough. You earned your oxygen for the shift. Dry off before you turn my office into a swamp.”
Camden caught the towel with both hands. “Understood.”
No joke. No performance. No attempt to turn Sully’s approval into a victory.
Tess walked past them into the back office.
The battered couch sat beneath the narrow window, one cushion cracked along the seam. She opened the storage cabinet, pulled out a dry wool blanket, and carried it across the room. The fabric was rough against her damp palms.
Camden stopped at the threshold instead of following her all the way in.
That, too, was new.
Tess threw the blanket onto the couch. “You’re taking the back office tonight.”
He glanced toward the cushions, then back to her. “Tess—”
“Do not make this bigger than it is.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.” She pointed at the cushions. “You stay here until the roads clear. You do not go upstairs. You do not wander into the bait shack because you decide I forgot something. You do not treat this like some kind of marital ceasefire.”
Camden nodded once.
Tess folded her arms, then dropped them again when her damp tank top pulled against her skin. “Keeping you from putting a rental SUV into floodwater is weather protocol. That’s all.”
“Message received.”
Sully leaned against the mudroom doorway, his arms crossed. “And keep that bleeding arm off my upholstery.”
Camden glanced at his ruined arm. “I’ll manage.”
“You’ll do more than manage. Sit down before you fall down and make paperwork for me.”
Camden lowered himself onto the couch. The cushions sagged under his weight, and he peeled the shirt away from his skin before draping it over the armrest instead of the seat. He picked up the blanket but did not pull it around himself yet.
Tess stayed near the doorway.
He looked exhausted in a way the cameras had never managed to capture. No custom suit, no stadium lights, no practiced media smile. Just mud on his boots, a ruined forearm, and rainwater drying on his face.
“Get some sleep,” she said.
Camden looked up at her. “Thank you.”
Tess shook her head. “Don’t thank me for basic survival.”
“I know.”
She had no response for that.
She turned toward the stairs before he could say anything else. Sully moved aside, leaving the path clear.
Tess climbed the stairs and left Camden beneath the same roof.