9. Without a Press Release #2
The driver’s door opened, and the question died before either of us could add to it.
For months, I had wondered what I would do if Nolan ever appeared here, but those possibilities had stayed safely imaginary.
Reid had his schedules. The team had Nolan’s body.
The sponsors took whatever pieces remained after that.
Then my husband stepped out of the SUV.
His dress shirt looked wrong beneath the Florida sun. Suit trousers, loosened tie, expensive shoes picking up pale dust from the shells. He looked as if he’d walked out of one of Reid’s private rooms in Manhattan and taken a wrong exit into somebody else’s life.
I stopped reaching for the water bottle, and Lawson lowered it without comment.
The clipboard stayed against my hip while I pulled the pen free, fumbled when I tried to put it back, then shoved it beneath the metal edge on the second attempt.
I rested my other hand over my stomach before I could decide whether I wanted Nolan to notice.
He had already noticed.
He met my eyes first. Nolan stepped away from the SUV, took a few paces onto the driveway, and then his attention dropped.
To my stomach.
He froze in the middle of the crushed shells. The space between us was wide enough for the loading cart, the fuel drums, and four months of silence, yet none of it seemed to matter while he stared at the child he hadn’t known existed.
I had imagined anger if this moment ever came. Maybe satisfaction. Maybe the pleasure of forcing him to look at the life I’d built without him. Instead, the unfinished manifest pressed against my side while Nolan stood in the shells and took in the fact that I was six months pregnant.
So now you know.
He looked back at my face. He tried to speak, but no words followed.
Lawson shifted beside me, both bottles lowered to his sides. “I think we just got a visitor, Piper. Looks like a tourist took a wrong turn off the highway in that fancy rental.”
The word tourist almost pulled a laugh from me. Nolan Callahan could walk into any stadium in the country and have security clear a path before he reached the door. Here, with salt air working on his city clothes and his dress shoes planted in Skipper’s driveway, he was the stranger.
“He didn’t take a wrong turn, Lawson.” My hand stayed over my stomach as Nolan stared back at me. “That’s my husband.”
For another moment, Nolan and I stayed on opposite sides of the yard while Lawson held his ground beside me. The clipboard rested against my hip, its bottom corner brushing my shorts whenever the breeze came off the water. Nolan was still staring at my stomach.
I made myself look away first.
The charter captain was checking the tackle along the stern. The coolers Lawson had loaded sat beneath the canopy, and one securing strap had twisted against the nearest lid. Ordinary problems. Problems I knew how to solve without a lawyer, an agent, or a press release.
I dropped my hand. “Lawson, put the water down and finish that strap.”
He didn’t move at once. “Piper, you want me to get Skipper?”
“Not yet.”
Lawson glanced toward Nolan, then set both bottles on the dock beside the loading cart. Condensation had already left circles beneath them. “They’re almost done.”
“Then finish them. The captain needs the lane clear before he pulls out.”
The familiar work words steadied the moment more than any speech could have. I freed the pen from the clip, checked the final line, and held my thumb over the captain’s slip. Nolan could stand in the driveway staring all afternoon if he wanted; Skipper’s charter still had a departure time.
Lawson leaned over the gunwale and pulled the strap through its buckle. He kept looking past me.
“You don’t have to pretend he’s not standing there,” he said.
“I’m not pretending anything.”
“Good, because he’s doing a terrible job blending in.”
Despite myself, I almost smiled. Nolan’s shirt alone probably cost more than half the tools in Lawson’s shop. Standing there in his city clothes, he looked less like a customer than someone who had wandered off a private jet and refused to admit he was lost.
The humor vanished when I looked back at him.
He hadn’t come any closer, but the fact that he was here at all changed the shape of the yard. Four months of keeping my life small enough to protect had ended with one vehicle rolling through Skipper’s gate. The divorce papers had given Nolan an address. I had known that when I filed them.
Knowing he could find me and watching him stand twenty yards away were two different things.
Lawson rose and tested the strap. “This one’s set.”
“Check the other side too.”
He did, then faced me. “Piper.”
The warning in his tone made me lower the clipboard. “What?”
“Are you sure you want to do this right now?” His chin tipped toward Nolan. “I can grab Skipper to run him off, or I can step in myself.”
There was no swagger in the offer. No demand that I move behind him. Lawson was asking because this was my call, and that mattered enough that I took a moment before answering.
“I can handle him.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“I know.” I tucked the clipboard against my side. “And I’m still telling you no.”
He studied me for another beat before he nodded. “All right.”
“Just keep the loading zone clear. I don’t want him walking onto the dock while the captain’s trying to pull out.”
“If he tries?”
“Get Skipper.”
Lawson scowled, but he accepted the instruction. “Fine. But I’m staying right here.”
“I wasn’t asking you to leave.”
The captain waved from the gunwale. “We’re good on tackle whenever you are, Piper.”
“Give me a minute before you cast off.” I raised the clipboard so he could see it. “I still owe you a signature.”
“You got it.”
That was all. No questions about the SUV. No staring at Nolan. The captain went back to his boat because, to him, I was still the person running his loadout.
I held on to that.
The dock steps were sun-hot beneath my shoes as I started down. Lawson remained near the boat, close enough to intervene if I called for him and far enough away to let the choice remain mine.
Nolan watched every step.
At the bottom, the shells shifted beneath my soles. The SUV waited behind him with its engine running, a clean black shape pressed into a yard full of bait carts, fuel drums, and old trailers. He belonged to the world on the other side of that windshield.
I belonged here.
The clipboard stayed tucked against my side as I crossed the driveway. Nolan started forward, then checked himself before he reached the loading area.
Good.
He could come this far because I allowed it. He was not walking into the bait shack, onto Skipper’s docks, or any farther into the life I had built until I decided what happened next.
I stopped between Nolan and the dock.
He stood on the other side of the driveway as if he had forgotten what he came here to say. He looked down at my stomach again, then back to my face. The SUV idled behind him, an anchor to the life he had dragged down from New York.
“Piper—“
I kept the clipboard tucked against my side.
“How far along are you?”
His voice was rough. Nolan stepped toward me, stopped, then looked at my stomach again as if the answer might be written across my shirt.
I gave him nothing.
“Piper… my God, you’re pregnant.” He reached out, stopping short. “Why didn’t you tell me? We need to get you into the AC and talk about this right now.”
There it was.
Not Can we talk? Not Are you okay? Not even Please.
We need.
The same language he used with trainers, handlers, drivers, assistants. A problem appeared, Nolan decided what happened next, and everybody around him moved into position. Three years of money and access had taught him that urgency was the same thing as authority.
He reached for my arm.
I stepped back before his fingers reached me. Shells shifted beneath my shoes as I brought the clipboard across my chest, holding it with both hands.
“Do not touch me, Nolan.”
He dropped his arm. “I wasn’t trying to—“
“Do not come onto Skipper’s property and try to order me around like I’m one of your PR handlers.”
“I’m not trying to order you around.”
“You’ve been here for less than five minutes, and you’ve already told me where I need to go.”
He looked past me toward the dock, where Lawson remained near the charter boat. The captain was still working through the last of his tackle, giving us the kind of deliberate privacy people offered when they knew a situation had nothing to do with them.
“I’m standing out here trying to understand why my wife is pregnant and I had no idea.”
“You didn’t ask whether I wanted to have this conversation.”
“I didn’t know there was a conversation to have.”
“That’s the point.”
Nolan gestured toward the passenger side of the idling SUV.
“At least get out of the sun.”
“No.”
“Piper, it’s hot.”
“I work here.”
“I can see that.” He took in the bait shack, the loading carts, the boats tied along the dock. “But you don’t need to prove anything to me by standing out here.”
A hard knot formed in my throat, but there was nothing funny in what he’d said.
“I’m not proving anything to you.”
“Then come sit in the car for ten minutes.”
“No.”
“We can talk somewhere private.”
“This is private enough.”
He tensed before he caught himself. For years, that tiny pause had come before a press conference answer, a sponsor call, or one of those conversations where Reid had already decided the acceptable outcome. Nolan’s voice changed when he spoke again, losing the broken edges from his first questions.
“We shouldn’t do this in the middle of a working dock.”
I stared at him. “You came to a working dock.”
“I came because you sent me divorce papers with this address on them.”
“So the papers worked.”
“Piper.”
“What?”
He rubbed one hand over his face, then pointed toward the SUV again. “I’m asking you to give me ten minutes where we’re not surrounded by people carrying bait buckets.”
“And I’m telling you no.”
“This isn’t about the marina.”
“It is when you show up here and start telling me where I should stand.”