20. Tess
Tess
Tess stepped off the bottom of the apartment stairs and walked into the bait shack, pausing near the doorway.
Lead sinkers clattered into plastic bins across the room.
Camden stood at the prep table, sorting terminal tackle into neat piles while their daughter slept against his chest in a canvas carrier.
Sweat had soaked through the collar of his cotton shirt, and streaks of outboard grease marked one shoulder where he had wiped his face during whatever repair Sully had roped him into before breakfast.
The baby slept through all of it.
Camden picked up a swivel, checked the size stamped along its side, and dropped it into the wrong bin.
“That’s the forty-pound pile.”
His hand paused over the plastic. “I knew that.”
“You put three in with the sixties.”
“They looked convincing.”
Tess walked toward him. The bait shack carried its usual mix of diesel, salt, and thawing fish, but someone had spilled formula near the register. The powdery sweetness mingled with the pump fumes.
“You’re supposed to read the labels,” she said.
“I’ve rebuilt two fuel pumps this morning while wearing a sleeping human being.”
“Excuses.”
Camden glanced down at their daughter. One tiny fist rested beneath her chin, tucked between the carrier and his stained shirt. He lowered his voice. “She went down twenty minutes ago. If you wake her, you’re taking the next shift.”
Tess reached toward the unsorted tackle, then let her hand fall before touching it.
The sight of him ruined her concentration.
Months ago, every minute of their life had demanded something urgent—feed her, change her, wash bottles, finish manifests, answer charter captains, sleep whenever the baby permitted it.
Camden had stepped into the rhythm without asking for praise.
He changed diapers with engine grease still trapped beneath his nails.
He walked the apartment floor at two in the morning.
He brought their daughter downstairs when Tess needed both hands for the morning books.
And now he stood there sorting sinkers with a sleeping baby strapped against him as if this had always been his life.
I want my husband.
Not the deckhand. Not the man checking pumps between feedings. Not the father who woke at every small noise from the bassinet.
Him.
The back door opened before Tess could decide what to do with that thought.
Sully walked in, took three steps, and paused.
His gaze traveled from Camden’s shirt to the carrier, then across to Tess. “This is pathetic.”
Camden frowned. “Good morning to you too.”
“You two look like somebody sentenced you to this place.”
“We work here,” Tess said.
“That’s the problem.”
Sully crossed the room and stopped in front of Camden. Without asking permission, he slid both hands beneath the sleeping baby.
Camden caught his wrist. “What are you doing?”
“Taking my employee.”
“Your employee is four months old.”
“Best attitude on the property.”
The corner of Tess’s mouth betrayed her.
Sully nodded toward the carrier. “Unclip it.”
Camden stared at him. “She’s asleep.”
“I possess eyes.”
“Then use them and notice she’s asleep.”
“Ford.”
The pumps thrummed beneath the floorboards. Camden held Sully’s stare for another moment before setting the swivel onto the prep table.
“Support her head.”
“I raised children before you learned what a first down was.”
“You raised one child.”
“And he survived.”
“Debatable.”
Tess stepped beside them before Sully decided to prove his qualifications through force. “Camden, release the lower buckle first. If he takes her weight before you free the shoulder strap, it’ll catch.”
Sully gave her a wounded look. “Not you too.”
“Just don’t wake her.”
“Nobody on this dock trusts me.”
Camden pressed the release at his waist, then worked the upper clasp loose. Sully took the baby’s weight against his chest while Camden drew the carrier away without snagging her leg.
Their daughter shifted once, cheek settling against Sully’s shirt.
She stayed asleep.
Sully looked down at her, satisfied. “See? Competence.”
Camden folded the empty carrier on the prep table. “Give her back.”
“No.”
“Sully.”
“I’ve got the little captain until dinner.” Sully adjusted his hold and pointed toward the back door. “You two are untying the skiff and disappearing until sunset.”
Camden stared at him as if the man had suggested sinking the marina.
“The west fuel line is losing pressure again,” he said. “And the afternoon tackle shipment still needs inventory. Let me move this to tomorrow.”
Of course.
Give Camden Ford a repaired marriage, a daughter, and a place that finally belonged to him, and the man would still invent one more job before allowing himself to stop.
Tess stepped between him and the prep table.
His attention shifted to her.
“You’ve appointed yourself chief engineer of every broken pump on this property,” she said. “This marina functioned before you showed up with a toolbox.”
“The fuel line—”
“Will survive.”
“The shipment—”
“Will also survive.”
He glanced toward the bins behind her. “Tess.”
“The docks can manage six hours without you hovering over them.”
Something changed in his expression. Nothing dramatic. His eyes stayed on her a little longer, and the argument he was about to make never arrived.
Sully shifted the sleeping baby higher against his chest. “Glad we agree, because that wasn’t a negotiation.”
Camden pointed toward the pumps one last time. “If that line drops again—”
“I’ll cope with the unimaginable burden of running my own marina.”
Tess leaned past Camden and nudged the tackle bin away from him.
He reached for it by instinct before stopping his hand against the edge of the table.
“No inventory,” she said.
His gaze returned to her.
Tess left the bin where it was and stepped toward the back door.
Sully pointed them toward the docks.
The skiff rocked against the dock while Tess shoved the cooler beneath the forward bench and wedged the folded blanket beside it. Camden checked the fuel line twice before climbing aboard, which earned him a look.
“You know Sully is watching from the shack, right?”
“He can watch me make sure we don’t drift into Cuba.”
“He threw us out for the afternoon, Camden. Try accepting the exile.”
His mouth twitched as he pushed away from the dock.
The marina shrank behind them until the bait shack disappeared beyond the mangroves.
Water flashed beneath the hull, and the outboard sent a steady vibration through the bench under Tess.
Camden kept one hand on the tiller and the other loose against his thigh, listening while she talked about nothing important—whether Sully had packed enough sandwiches, whether the baby would wake furious, whether Briggs would remember the tackle delivery.
It took her too long to understand why she kept filling the air.
Nobody needed them.
No monitor waited upstairs. No charter captain shouted from the fuel dock. No bottle needed warming. No manifest sat open beside the register. The hours ahead belonged to them, and after months of measuring life in feedings and invoices, the freedom made conversation easier than silence.
“When was the last time we had this long alone?” Camden asked.
“Labor does not count.”
“I wasn’t going to say labor.”
“You were thinking it.”
He glanced at her, smiling. “I was going to say the hospital parking lot.”
“That is somehow worse.”
By the time the skiff slid into the shallows, Tess had stopped checking the empty space where her phone usually sat. Camden cut the engine, dropped the anchor, and grabbed the cooler and blanket before climbing over the gunwale. He turned back and offered his free hand.
She took it.
Warm water folded around her calves as they waded toward the sandbar. Soft sand shifted beneath her feet, and Camden stayed beside her instead of moving ahead to inspect something, repair something, or make himself useful.
His hand settled at her lower back.
Tess looked up at him.
“Sully thinks we forgot how to be married,” Camden said. “Maybe we just forgot what it’s like to have an afternoon nobody else owns.”
“Bringing up Sully while you have me alone on a deserted sandbar is a terrible choice.”
“I’m trying to behave.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
His arm wrapped around her waist, drawing her against his side. “You slept through the night. Nobody is crying. Nobody needs a pump fixed. And I’m standing here looking at you, so behaving is becoming a bad plan.”
There he is.
Tess leaned back against him. His mouth touched the side of her neck, slow enough to make every practical thought she had carried from the marina disappear.
She turned in his arms.
“We did not come out here to discuss fuel pressure.”
She slid both hands into his hair, pulling him down to kiss him.
The kiss followed them farther up the sandbar until Camden broke away long enough to drag the blanket from beside the cooler. Wind caught one corner before he pinned it beneath his palm, and Tess laughed as she helped flatten the rest across the sand.
“You planned this terribly.”
“I was kidnapped from work.”
“By an elderly man carrying our daughter.”
“He has a terrifying amount of authority.”
Camden didn’t wait for an answer, catching her around the waist and guiding her down onto the blanket. The canvas scratched against her shoulders as he kissed her again, slower now, with no engine running behind them and no interruption waiting back at the dock.
His hands found the hem of her tank top.
Tess lifted her arms.
The shirt landed somewhere near the blanket’s edge. Her shorts followed, and Camden stripped off his own clothes with none of the careful distance that had defined the last several months of stolen showers and exhausted nights.
Then the sunlight found her.
Instinctively, Tess wrapped an arm across her stomach.
Camden stopped.
“Camden, wait—give me a second.” She looked down at herself. “Half the time I can’t even recognize myself in the mirror anymore, and this daylight is brutal.”
He didn’t answer at once.