18. Camden #2
Tess stayed at the threshold, letting the silence hold. Camden waited for the order to leave, but she stepped over the scattered tackle instead. She took the first stair, then the next, her footsteps carrying across the yard while his bag remained in the dirt beside him.
“Tess, you don’t have to come closer.”
“I know.”
She didn’t stop.
Camden resisted the urge to move. Her pregnancy changed the balance of her stride now, but she crossed the last stair without reaching for the rail and started over the shells toward him. Months ago, he would have closed the distance before she had the chance to decide whether she wanted him there.
“Your tray,” he said. “The tackle’s still all over the deck.”
“It can wait.”
Those three words robbed him of the last excuse to look anywhere except at her.
She crossed the yard at a steady pace. The midday heat shimmered over the dirt between them, carrying diesel and salt from the slips.
Camden kept his arms at his sides while every old instinct begged him to go meet her, close the gap, and find out whether her body still remembered how to fit against his.
Not yours to decide.
Tess reached the middle of the yard.
Camden allowed himself one step.
Shells crunched beneath his boot.
“Stay there,” she said.
He stopped before taking a second. “I’m staying.”
Tess came closer until only a few feet remained between them. She stopped there, leaving enough room that neither of them could mistake proximity for permission. Her gaze moved over his shirt, his boots, the abandoned duffel behind him, then returned to his face.
Camden let her take inventory.
No stylist waited in a car. No security detail stood near the road. No phone kept vibrating with instructions from a front office. His whole arrival sat in one bag behind his heel, collecting dust.
“That broadcast wasn’t a PR pivot,” he said. “There was no recovery plan after I walked off that stage.”
Tess said nothing.
“I dissolved the contracts. The endorsement agreements, the league obligations, the corporate deals Marcus tied around everything I owned.” Camden kept his voice level.
“Some assets survived the penalties. A lot didn’t.
I stopped fighting to preserve any of it once the lawyers showed me what keeping it would cost.”
She looked down at the duffel again.
Camden swallowed the impulse to turn the confession into a plea. He had spent years making promises sound polished enough to survive a camera lens. Anything polished now would ruin the point.
“There isn’t a dollar in that old life worth trading you for,” he said. “I should have known that before I ever let him put Chloe beside me. I should have known it before O’Malley’s. I know it now.”
Tess crossed her arms. “And what exactly do you think happens here?”
Camden waited.
“You aren’t checking into a luxury suite at sunset when the humidity gets ugly.
Nobody is bringing room service because you spent six hours scraping hulls.
” She tipped her chin toward the commercial slips.
“There is no VIP entrance. No handler fixing your schedule. No trainer waiting with an ice bath because your back hurts.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Her eyes stayed on his. “Because this place is diesel fumes, bait scales, broken pumps, and work that keeps going when you’re tired. Sully doesn’t care what trophies used to sit in your house. The charter captains won’t care what your contract was worth.”
Camden glanced toward the docks. He remembered split palms, bottom paint ground into his clothes, and mornings when every bend at the waist punished his ribs. None of those memories carried regret.
“That’s the life I came back for.”
Tess’s mouth tightened. “You say that now.”
“The league is over.”
A gull cried somewhere beyond the slips, but Camden kept his eyes locked on hers. Camden stayed where she had told him to stay.
“You and the baby are what I have left that matters,” he said. “Not the endorsements. Not the house. Not whatever number used to sit beside my name on a contract.”
Tess lowered her arms. Her hands hung at her sides again, but she did not cross the remaining distance. Camden looked at the gap between them and held his ground.
“I’m not asking you to hand me my old place back,” he said. “Put me on hulls. Pumps. Bait deliveries. Give me the jobs nobody else wants, and I’ll show up when the sun comes up.”
His bag remained behind him, slumped in the dirt where he had dropped it.
“I’ll do the work every day and earn whatever place in this life you decide I can have.”
For several seconds, Tess said nothing.
Camden had nothing left to add to what he had already offered. The duffel sat behind him, and the heat pressed through his shirt while the marina carried on somewhere beyond the yard. He waited for whatever she chose to give him.
“The buyouts took most of it,” he said. “The contracts, the penalties, the legal fees. I didn’t come here with the life I had before.”
Tess glanced toward the bag. “You came down here with one duffel.”
“That’s all I needed.”
She met his eyes again.
“I’m not expecting you to hand me a key. I’m not expecting your bed. I’m not even asking you to trust me because I finally did what I should’ve done years ago.”
The words came easier without a camera pointed at him. There was nothing to sell here, and no one to impress.
“Put me back on the hulls,” he continued. “Give me the pumps, the bait deliveries, whatever Sully wants done. Let me earn my place one shift at a time.”
Tess stared at him across the last stretch of dirt.
Camden let the silence remain hers.
Then she moved.
He kept his arms down as she crossed the remaining distance. Tess stopped just short of him, reached up, and caught a fistful of his shirt near the collar.
“Camden—”
“Don’t ruin this.”
She yanked him forward.
The fabric pulled tight against his neck as he stumbled one step toward her. Tess wrapped herself around him before he had time to decide whether he was allowed to touch her back.
That was permission enough.
Camden brought his arms around her. His hands settled low and wide across her back, leaving room for their child as Tess pressed against him.
The contact was awkward in a way their bodies had never been before, altered by months he had missed and a baby he had almost lost before he ever knew she existed.
He would take awkward for the rest of his life.
Tess buried her face against his chest. “You are such an idiot, Camden Ford.”
He let out a short, broken laugh.
“So stubborn,” she continued. “So determined to learn everything the hardest possible way.”
“I know.”
She tightened her grip on his shirt. “But you’re finally my idiot again.”
Camden shut his eyes.
She said again.
He held her without pulling tighter, terrified of demanding too much of the moment. The marina heat had soaked through his shirt, and Tess had to be roasting against him, but neither of them moved.
“No more hiding you,” he said.
She didn’t pull away.
“I mean it. No more deciding that protecting you means pretending you don’t exist. No more letting somebody else tell me when my wife is convenient enough to acknowledge.”
“Camden.”
“I hate that it took blowing up my career to understand what I was doing to you.”
She pulled back just enough to look up at him.
“Never again,” he said. “You don’t disappear for my job. You don’t disappear for a sponsor. You don’t disappear for anybody.”
Tess studied his face, then wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist.
“You’re about five minutes from passing out in this heat.”
Camden blinked. “That’s your response?”
“My response is that you’ve been standing in direct sun while delivering the longest surrender speech in Florida.”
He couldn’t entirely stop a smile.
Tess pointed past him. “Pick up your bag.”
He looked toward the duffel.
“And get inside,” she added. “I’m pouring you ice water before you cook yourself in Sully’s driveway.”
Just being told to go inside almost hurt more than the embrace.
Not leave. Not find a motel. Not come back tomorrow.
Inside.
Camden let Tess step away first, dropping his hands from her back before he turned toward the duffel.
He picked it up.
Tess was already heading toward the bait shack when she glanced back at him.
Camden followed his wife home.