10. Four Months Late
Four Months Late
Nolan
The bait shack door had barely swung shut behind Piper before I started after her.
I made it two steps across the crushed shells.
A man came around the fuel pump and walked straight into my path.
Sun had burned his face and forearms into permanent leather, and his stained fishing shirt looked like it had survived more years on these docks than I had spent in the league.
He planted a calloused palm against the center of my chest and stopped me.
“That’s far enough. Step away from the shack.”
The departing charter boat coughed exhaust across the loading area. Diesel drifted between us while its wake slapped against the pilings, and I looked past the man’s shoulder toward the open windows of the shack.
Piper was in there.
Twenty yards away, maybe less, and somehow farther from me than she had been when I was standing in New York with divorce papers in my hands.
“I’m not here to cause trouble,” I said.
“Then quit walking like the door belongs to you.”
His hand stayed against my shirt.
Three years of people moving when I approached had trained a rotten instinct into me. Security opened gates. Restaurant managers cleared tables. Team employees rearranged schedules because mine mattered more. Even Reid treated resistance as something money, pressure, or a phone call could remove.
This man just stood there.
“I need to talk to her.”
“You already talked to her.”
“Not enough.”
“She seemed to think it was plenty.”
The boat cleared the mouth of the marina, leaving the engine noise to fade over open water. Somewhere inside the shack, a cooler lid shut. The bait aerators kept humming as if my marriage hadn’t just detonated ten feet beyond the counter.
I shifted to the side.
He dropped his hand but moved with me, blocking the path again.
“She’s working,” he said. “You can stand out here without disrupting her, or you can leave.”
“I’m standing here. I’m listening.”
“Good. Start there.”
The words should have irritated me. A week ago, they would have. I would have demanded to know who the hell he thought he was, or called a driver, a lawyer, a security guy—anyone whose job was to make an obstacle disappear.
Instead, I looked at the grease under his nails and the fuel pump behind him.
Nobody here worked for me.
“You don’t get to chase her into my boatyard, superstar.” He dropped his hand, but he held his ground. “My name is Skipper. I own these docks, and you’re trespassing.”
“I just need to talk to my wife. Please, I just have to explain.”
Skipper’s expression hardened.
“Your wife?”
The way he said it stripped the title of every right I wanted it to give me.
“Yes.”
“Funny way of treating one.”
I glanced toward the shack again. Piper had disappeared behind the counter. No face in the window. No movement toward the door.
Nothing.
Skipper followed my gaze. “She came here with nobody. Built herself a life with nobody. Worked every day while you were wherever the hell you were.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“I know I screwed up.”
“That’s a nice sentence.”
My shoes sank at the edges into loose shell and marina dirt. They had cost more than some people’s monthly rent, and standing there in them made me feel exactly as ridiculous as Piper claimed I was when I tried to usher her toward the rental SUV.
The car still idled behind me.
Air-conditioning running. Leather seats. Tinted windows.
Another place to hide everything messy.
“I thought she wanted space,” I said. “I was wrong.”
Skipper gave me a long look. “She wanted a husband.”
“I know that now.”
“Four months late.”
There was nothing useful I could say to that.
The glare off the water was harsh enough to force me to look away. A length of hose lay coiled beside the pump. Bait crates were stacked near the shack wall. Every object around me belonged to a working day that had started before I arrived and would keep going after I left.
Piper had a place here.
I was the interruption.
Skipper pointed toward the driveway. “You’ve got a nice car. Use it.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Then you’re going to have a problem.”
“I don’t want a problem with you.”
“You’ve already got one with her. Seems like enough for one afternoon.”
He was right, which made arguing worse.
Another instinct tried to surface—the one that said I could wait her out, book a hotel, send flowers, call until she answered. Every solution I had used for years depended on forcing my way closer until the other person surrendered.
Piper had spent four months building somewhere I couldn’t force my way into.
Skipper looked toward the shack, then back at me. “Your explanations aren’t worth the salt on these pilings. You don’t belong here. Or with Piper.”
I had no defense for that. I just stood there, breathing the diesel fumes while the bait pumps hummed.
Past his shoulder, work lay scattered across the marina. Lines needed coiling. Crates needed moving. Boats rested on supports farther back in the yard. Nobody was waiting for Nolan Callahan, quarterback, brand partner, or MVP.
They might have room for another pair of hands.
I looked at Skipper.
“So put me to work.” I kept my hands at my sides. “I’ll do anything.”
His expression didn’t change.
I glanced once toward the bait shack door.
“Just let me stay.”
Skipper stared at me for another moment, then tipped his chin toward the back of the yard.
A charter boat sat out of the water on blocks, its hull mottled with old bottom paint and patches of marine growth. Heat gathered beneath it, trapped between fiberglass and dirt. Skipper walked over to a workbench, picked up a metal scraper, and held it toward me by the handle.
“You know how to use one of these?”
“Not yet.”
He almost smiled. “Good answer.”
I took the scraper.
“Keep the blade flat,” he said. “You dig the corner into my hull, you’re paying for the repair.”
“Show me where to start.”
He pointed toward the stern. “There.”
The jacket had already become ridiculous before I crossed half the yard. I leaned the scraper against one of the supports, took it off, and draped it over a piling near the work area. I stepped back into the heat in just my shirt, sleeves rolled past my elbows, and picked the tool back up.
Skipper looked from the jacket to my shoes.
“You planning on attending a board meeting under there?”
“I packed for New York.”
“Well, congratulations. You’re in a boatyard now.”
Mud gave under one shoe when I stepped closer to the hull. I caught myself against the support, earning another look from Skipper, then crouched beneath the boat and set the scraper against a patch of buildup.
The first pull stopped almost as soon as it started.
The blade caught.
I reset it, shoved harder, and tore loose a strip no longer than my hand.
Skipper snorted. “You’re fighting it.”
“I noticed.”
“Let the edge do the work. Flatter.”
I changed the angle and dragged the scraper toward me again. This time, the coating peeled instead of stopping the tool dead.
“Like this?”
“Better. Don’t celebrate yet.”
A bitter chemical odor collected under the hull. The next pull brought my face closer to the underside. The fumes hit my throat, and I scrambled backward with a harsh cough.
Skipper folded his arms.
“You done?”
I wiped my mouth with the back of my wrist. “No.”
“Good.”
I ducked under again.
Football had taught me pain, repetition, and how to keep moving after getting knocked to the ground by men who outweighed me by seventy pounds.
None of that taught me how to scrape the underside of a charter boat without wrecking the fiberglass.
My shoulder strength meant nothing when the blade sat at the wrong angle.
Another section came loose.
Then another.
Sludge crept over the edges of my shoes each time I shifted my stance. Sweat worked down the back of my shirt, and flecks from the hull peppered my trousers.
Skipper stayed nearby, watching without helping.
“You’re putting too much pressure on it again.”
I adjusted the scraper. “You planning to critique every pass?”
“Until you stop doing it wrong.”
“Fair enough.”
The edge bit beneath another patch. I pulled until it curled away, then moved farther down the hull.
Skipper let me work through several more sections before he spoke again.
“Your pregnant wife stepped onto this dock four months ago wearing canvas shoes.”
The scraper stopped against the fiberglass.
Skipper kept going.
“She hauled frozen ballyhoo all afternoon without complaining once, so let’s see if QB1 can match her.”
I kept my eyes on the patch in front of me.
Pregnant.
She had been pregnant when she drove away from our house. Pregnant when I stood in my kitchen with her ring in my hand and let my father convince me she was throwing a tantrum. Pregnant when I got on a plane for Seattle instead of going after her.
And when she finally reached this place, nobody had been waiting to carry her bags or clear a path.
She had gone to work.
“How far along was she when she got here?” I asked.
Skipper’s face gave me nothing. “Far enough that she had better reasons to complain than you do.”
That was all he offered.
It was enough.
The strip beneath my scraper tore crookedly because I had stopped paying attention. I reset the blade and worked it flat again.
“I came here for Piper,” I said. “I won’t complain about a thing.”
Skipper tapped the hull beside me. “Plenty of daylight left for you to regret saying that.”
“Just point me toward the next hull when I’m done.”
“We’ll see if your stamina holds up to real work before the sun goes down.”
I stared down the stretch of stained fiberglass still waiting in front of me. My shoes were ruined, my shirt was sticking to my back, and the chemical smell under the boat made every trip beneath it unpleasant.
Piper had done worse while carrying my child and believing I had chosen everyone else over her.
I set the scraper back against the hull and kept working.
I dragged the scraper across the hull long after the first rush of determination wore off.