20. Tess #3
Tess nodded, then glanced back at him. “Don’t start being careful again.”
His mouth curved. “You really hate that.”
“I hate being managed.”
“That lesson landed.”
“Good.”
He stayed with her as she moved, neither taking over nor retreating, burying his thick length into her tight channel with absolute, unyielding possession. There was no hesitation now, no apology hiding inside every touch. For once, neither of them was trying to earn anything from the other.
This is what I wanted.
Not the old marriage.
Not the version of them that existed before everything broke.
This.
The tide pushed higher across the sandbar, and Tess’s hand slipped against the loose grains beneath her as Camden’s thrusts turned violent and rapid. She shifted her weight, but the next deep penetration sent her forward again.
“Camden—”
His arm closed around her waist, anchoring her flush against his hips.
“I’ve got you.”
Tess reached backward without looking.
His hand found hers at once.
Their fingers locked.
Something about that small certainty undid her more than anything else had. Months ago, she would have reached for him and wondered whether football, Marcus, a sponsor, or another flashing camera would take him away before he answered.
Now she reached.
He was there.
The friction built until Tess stopped trying to hold herself apart from it. Her pussy contracted violently around him, her fingers tightening on Camden’s. Her other hand sank deep into the sand as the climax ripped through her, erasing the last of her control.
“Camden.”
He dropped his forehead against her shoulder, his hips hammering into her.
“Go with it.”
She did.
His name broke from her again as she milked him with every spasm, the surf carrying the sound away toward the mangroves. Camden let out a guttural groan, pumping his hot release deep inside her in heavy, searing pulses.
He collapsed over her bare back afterward, their linked hands still pressed into the sand as they rode out the final tremors.
Camden shifted away enough to take his weight off Tess, then drew her sideways with him until they lay facing each other in the sand. His hand moved into her hair, pausing when his fingers caught on a grain near her temple.
“You have half this island in your hair.”
“You put me in the sand.”
“You abandoned the blanket.”
“Because you destroyed it.”
His mouth curved as he brushed the grain free. The blanket lay twisted several feet away, one corner folded under itself and the rest coated with enough sand to tell a story Tess had no intention of explaining to Sully.
They stayed there until the breeze began cooling the salt on her skin.
Eventually Tess retrieved her tank top and shook it out before pulling it over her head. Camden found his clothes near the edge of the blanket and dressed while she worked sand out of her shorts.
“This was a terrible picnic,” she said.
“We haven’t eaten yet.”
“That isn’t helping your case.”
They reclaimed the blanket and sat opposite each other with the cooler between them. Camden opened it and produced two sandwiches that had survived the boat ride with less dignity than either of them.
Tess peeled back the paper around hers. “That used to be turkey.”
“Still tastes like turkey.”
“It looks like somebody sat on it.”
Camden glanced at the wrecked blanket. “Sully takes one look at that canvas when we get back, he’s going to know exactly what happened out here.”
Tess took a bite and pointed the sandwich at him. “Sully confiscated our child and ordered us onto a deserted sandbar. He knew what he was doing.”
“That makes this worse.”
“It makes him efficient.”
Camden laughed and opened one of the sodas. The drink had lost its chill hours ago, but Tess took it from him and had a sip anyway.
For a while, that was enough.
They ate bad sandwiches beneath a lowering sun while water slid across the sand around them. No camera waited beyond the mangroves. Nobody checked a clock. Camden did not reach for a phone because there was no phone demanding the next version of him.
When Tess looked back at him, the laughter had faded from his face.
He turned the empty soda can between his hands. “I keep trying to figure out what I’m supposed to say now.”
“You already said the sandwich tastes like turkey. I’m still evaluating that lie.”
“I mean about us.”
Tess set her food down.
Camden looked toward the water, then back at her. “I keep building some grand promise in my head. Something good enough to swear I’ll never fail you again.”
His words stopped when Tess reached across the blanket and covered his hand.
Grease remained beneath his fingernails.
He had scrubbed those hands a thousand times since coming to Heron Point. Soap never quite reached all of it anymore. Outboard engines had stained the creases, and old cuts crossed his knuckles where football tape and manicures for sponsor appearances used to be the closest his hands came to work.
That was the promise.
Not Miami.
Not the retirement speech.
Not even the money he had surrendered.
Those choices had mattered, but this mattered too—the ordinary mornings afterward. The broken pumps. The midnight bottles. The diapers. The charter inventory. The man who stayed after there was no audience left to impress.
I don’t need another oath.
“You don’t have to write one,” Tess said.
Camden’s hand turned beneath hers until their palms met.
“You already made the choice. Then you woke up the next morning and made it again. And the morning after that.”
His gaze stayed on her.
Tess rubbed her thumb across the grease near his nail. “You burned down the life that was destroying us, but that isn’t why I trust you now. I trust you because you stayed after the fire was over.”
Camden lowered his eyes to their joined hands.
“That mansion was never my real life,” he said. “The league wasn’t either. It was always you, Tess.”
She smiled.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too, Camden.”
They packed the empty wrappers into the cooler and folded the blanket as well as its new collection of sand allowed. Camden carried both back through the shallows while Tess followed, water curling around her calves.
At the skiff, he stowed the cooler, hauled the anchor free, and helped Tess aboard before pushing them away from the sandbar.
The outboard caught.
Mangroves began sliding past as Heron Point waited somewhere beyond them—the bait shack, the pumps, Sully pretending he had not spent half the afternoon spoiling their daughter.
Home.
Camden threaded his fingers through hers as he steered the skiff toward the docks.