15. Tess
Tess
The first hammer strike met Tess halfway down the apartment stairs.
She stopped with one hand on the rail, flannel pulled across her tank top against the morning chill. Low-tide mist clung to the yard below, carrying salt and mud between the buildings. Another strike rang out, followed by the scrape of a nail being reset against wood.
Camden stood beside the damaged railing with his head bent over the work.
White tape wrapped his ribs, visible where his shirt rode up when he reached for another nail. Bruising stained the skin above it. His palms looked worse in daylight, split skin crossed by fresh dressings where she had worked the splinters free.
And he was still swinging a hammer.
Tess stayed on the last step.
He should have been in bed. Sully would have let him sleep until noon after what that hull had done to him. No one had assigned this repair. No cameras waited near the fuel pumps. No sponsor stood off to the side counting how many times Camden Ford could hit a nail before sunrise.
He raised the hammer again.
“Planning to rebuild the whole marina before breakfast?”
Camden paused. He dropped his hand to his side, the hammer hanging against his thigh. “Just this section.”
His voice carried the scrape of too little sleep.
Tess stepped off the stairs and stopped near the rail. One board shifted when the breeze pushed against it.
“That section survived the storm.”
“It held.” Camden nudged the loose post with the toe of his boot. “Top fastener pulled out. Somebody catches a hip on it, the whole thing moves.”
“You could have told Sully.”
“I did.”
“And?”
“He told me to stop being an idiot and sit down.”
A laugh almost escaped her. Tess swallowed it and looked at the tape instead.
Camden followed her gaze, then set the hammer on the railing. He didn’t straighten all the way. The movement stopped short, avoiding the stretch that would pull at his taped ribs.
“You’re doing that thing,” she said.
“What thing?”
“Pretending your ribs don’t hurt because the job in front of you annoys you more.”
He offered a tight half-smile. “That specific?”
“I had years of practice.”
Camden’s gaze returned to the board, and Tess left the sentence alone.
“I’m not trying to prove anything,” he said.
That mattered more than she wanted it to.
Yesterday, he had thrown himself under a falling hull because Sully was trapped beneath it. This morning, instead of turning that sacrifice into another speech, he was fixing a railing.
Tess rubbed her thumb across the worn edge of her flannel cuff.
This is not forgiveness.
She knew the boundary.
But forgiveness was not the same thing as letting a man eat breakfast.
“Sun barely broke and you’re already swinging that hammer. I can see the black and blue around that tape, Camden.” She tipped her chin toward the shack. “Drop the tools. Come inside so I can fry you some eggs.”
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then he looked from her to the railing.
“This handrail is loose. Can’t let your offshore charters catch any splinters.” He picked up the hammer, but didn’t raise it. “I’ll finish up here. But if there’s still hot coffee sitting in the carafe, I wouldn’t turn down a mug.”
Tess let the silence hold.
He let the hammer rest against his thigh.
The rumble of the first engine reached the yard before Tess could turn toward the shack.
Camden’s attention shifted toward the highway. The hammer stayed lowered at his side as a second engine joined the first, then a third, all of them coming up the access road with too much speed for charter clients looking for a slip.
“You expecting somebody?” Tess asked.
“No.”
Three black SUVs swung off the highway and tore onto the crushed-shell driveway.
Tires ground through the pale shells, scattering grit toward the drainage ditch. The quiet morning vanished beneath the engines as the vehicles accelerated past the marina sign and headed straight for the bait shack instead of slowing near the public parking area.
Tess caught the stair rail.
The lead SUV braked across the loading lane. The second stopped behind it at an angle, and the third rolled far enough forward to choke off the clear route between the shack and the commercial slips.
“What the hell?” she muttered.
Camden set the hammer down in the dirt.
Sully came out onto the deck with his travel mug still in one hand. He looked across the three vehicles, then settled his attention on the blocked loading zone.
“Hey!” He descended one step. “Fuel trucks use that lane. Move those damn things before somebody backs a trailer into them.”
The driver-side doors opened.
Tess released the rail.
Marcus stepped out of the lead SUV.
Even dressed for Miami instead of Manhattan, he looked wrong against the boatyard. Clean trousers. Pressed shirt. Sunglasses catching the morning light. He shut the door and turned toward the marina as if he had arrived at property he already owned.
Chloe emerged from the other side.
No.
Tess took one step backward.
A rear door opened, and the PR handler climbed out with a tablet tucked beneath one arm. The other SUVs spilled people into the driveway. Two men came around the back, long-lens cameras slung over their shoulders.
The sight of the glass stopped her retreat.
Not Marcus.
Not Chloe.
The cameras.
Heron Point had been the one place where nobody waited around a corner for a photograph. Nobody measured her clothes, her expression, the shape of her stomach, or whether she stood close enough to Camden to fuel a headline.
One of the photographers lifted his camera and checked the lens.
Tess backed up another stair.
Both hands covered her stomach before she could think.
Sully planted himself on the deck and pointed toward the road. “Nobody authorized a convoy. Put those land yachts in reverse and clear my loading zone.”
Nobody moved.
The SUVs idled in the driveway, engines sending a low vibration through the shell bed.
Marcus snatched his sunglasses off.
Tess stared at him across the yard.
He had found the marina.
Four months of disappearing into cash payroll, bait deliveries, charter manifests, and a town where nobody cared which quarterback appeared on Sunday television—and Marcus Ford was standing in Sully’s driveway with Chloe and cameras.
“They found us,” she said.
Camden turned toward her.
Tess barely recognized her own voice when she spoke again. “It’s Marcus. He actually hunted me down. That entire tabloid circus is idling right here on the docks.”
Camden’s gaze moved past her toward the two photographers.
His expression changed.
Not the corporate smile. Not the blank patience he used when sponsors pushed too close. He stared at the cameras, then looked back at Tess’s hands over her stomach.
A photographer shifted sideways beside the second SUV, searching for a cleaner angle past the railing.
Camden moved.
He knocked the hammer aside with his boot as he crossed the space between them. He reached toward Tess, stopped short of touching her, then pointed toward the shack.
“Hit the shack, Tess. Keep your spine to the gravel and hide your face from those lenses.”
She stayed where she was for one more second.
Yesterday, he had taken a steel cradle across his ribs for Sully.
This morning, he had been repairing a handrail without an audience.
Now the audience had arrived anyway.
Sully stepped farther down the stairs, putting himself between the vehicles and the commercial yard. “You people deaf? This is private property. Start those engines and reverse.”
The PR handler glanced toward Marcus.
Marcus remained beside the SUV.
Chloe smoothed her clothes and looked toward Camden.
Neither photographer lowered his camera.
Tess stepped backward toward the shack.
Camden stepped between her and the lenses, blocking the shot as Marcus crossed the yard.
His father’s loafers ground through the shells as he closed the distance. Sully came down another step from the deck, planting himself near the loading lane, but Marcus kept moving without slowing.
“Stop right there,” Sully called. “You’re already blocking my driveway. Don’t start wandering through an active yard.”
Marcus barely turned his head. “I’m here for my son.”
“You’re standing on my property.”
Camera shutters started behind him.
Tess kept close to the bait-shack wall, one palm resting against the siding. The photographers stayed near the vehicles, but both lenses were trained past Marcus toward Camden.
Marcus stopped several feet from him. “You’ve had your fun playing in the blue-collar mud, Camden. Now it’s time to work. We have less than twelve hours until the Honors broadcast, and the footwear CEO is demanding a massive return on investment. Get inside the car.”
Camden didn’t move.
“Turn the cameras off.”
Marcus glanced toward the stringers. “You vanished during the playoffs. We need proof you’re still functional.”
“This isn’t your set.”
Chloe crossed the yard before Marcus could answer.
Her perfume reached Tess before she did, cutting through salt and diesel. Chloe stepped around a rut without breaking stride, her smile already aimed toward the cameras.
“Camden, don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”
“Stay over there.”
Chloe laughed as if he had made a joke.
Then she hooked her arm through his.
The shutters erupted.
Tess flattened her fingers against the siding.
For one ugly second, O’Malley’s existed again: Chloe pressed against him, cameras feeding on the contact, Camden trapped inside the same polished lie that had sent Tess driving south in the middle of the night.
Pull away.
Chloe leaned closer to him and turned her face toward the stringers.
“Keep that exact expression! The timeline is literally starving for us. Staging you out here looking all gritty and sunburned is going to send our red carpet metrics straight through the roof!”
Camden ripped his arm free.
The movement twisted his torso.
His face tightened. He pressed one hand straight to the tape beneath his shirt, and his shoulders dipped before he caught himself.
Chloe dropped the smile.
“Camden.”
“Don’t touch me.”
The photographers kept shooting.