12. Unscheduled
Unscheduled
Nolan
The mattress had found every sore place the boatyard left behind.
I rolled onto my side and pushed myself upright, stopping when my lower back protested the movement.
Yesterday’s work had left my palms split in the same places Skipper’s scraper had rubbed them raw before.
Even bracing my hands against the mattress reminded me how far I was from the treatment tables, trainers, and recovery staff I used to take for granted.
“Damn it.”
The motel room offered no sympathy. My jacket still hung over the chair where I had left it, and yesterday’s shirt lay in a stained heap near the bathroom.
Boat grease streaked one side. Mud from the boatyard had dried near the hem, and the fabric still carried enough marina stink to make replacing the thing seem like the sane option.
That was exactly why I refused to replace it.
I turned on the water, rubbed the cheap bar of soap against the stain, and worked the fabric between my hands. The soap slipped once in my damaged palm. I caught it against the basin, then went back to scrubbing.
“Come off.”
The grease smeared before it started to lift.
A week ago, I would have handed a ruined shirt to somebody and forgotten it existed. An assistant would have bought another one. A hotel employee would have made the old one disappear. Money had spent years protecting me from anything inconvenient enough to require patience.
Now I stood bare-chested over a motel sink, washing fish residue out of my own clothes because I had brought suits to a boatyard like an idiot.
Piper’s voice came back with humiliating clarity.
“Home isn’t the mansion anymore.”
I stopped working the soap for a moment.
She had been right.
The phone sat on the nightstand where I had left it powered off. I set the shirt over the side of the sink, rinsed the soap from my fingers, and crossed the room to the phone. The screen stayed black until I held the button down.
Then everything arrived at once.
Missed calls stacked on top of missed calls. Voicemail notifications filled the screen beneath messages from the team, the league, Reid, and numbers I recognized from the campaign office. I checked the time and opened the newest recording from my father.
His voice filled the room.
“Nolan, where the hell are you? The GM is threatening to place you on the Non-Football Injury list if you don’t show up for playoff walkthroughs today! You are blowing the campaign launch and your entire career!”
The recording ended.
Another voicemail waited underneath it.
Then another.
For most of my life, that voice had been enough. Reid named the consequence, and I moved. Miss a workout. Lose a start. Hurt the brand. Cost us money. Disappoint the people who had invested in Nolan Callahan.
My thumb hovered over the callback icon.
The shirt remained draped over the sink behind me, stained from work I had chosen because Piper had made one thing clear: I could not buy my way back into her life.
I could not order her home. I could not scrape one hull, apologize once, and expect access to her because I had finally done something difficult.
Skipper had already taught me that lesson.
I opened the voicemail menu instead and deleted the message. Then the next, and the next, until Reid’s name disappeared from the list.
“I am not leaving this town until I fix my marriage, Dad. The team can wait.”
There was nobody in the room to argue with me.
For once, that helped.
I held the power button until the screen went black.
I set the phone back on the nightstand and returned to the bathroom. The shirt still sagged over the side of the sink, soaked through from my attempt to scrub away everything the marina had thrown at me. I wrung it out over the basin, then hung it over the shower rod.
“Good enough.”
My travel bag sat open near the bed. I dug through the clothes I had brought from New York and found a clean T-shirt crushed beneath two dress shirts I had no reason to wear anymore.
The cotton caught against my sore shoulders, and bending to lace my shoes brought a fresh ache to my lower back, reminding me exactly how many hours I had spent hunched beneath boat hulls.
The motel key went into one pocket. Cash went into the other.
My black card stayed where it was.
Outside, the winter sun had already burned the morning haze away.
I started toward the pharmacy a few blocks down, passing low storefronts and parked pickups with fishing rods sticking out of truck beds.
Every step tugged at yesterday’s work, but that ache was easier to understand than anything waiting inside my phone.
Skipper’s voice followed me anyway.
“Piper decides when she wants to speak to you. Not me. Not you.”
That had been the lesson I kept missing. I had spent years assuming effort entitled me to a result. Wins earned contracts. Touchdowns earned applause. Money bought access.
Piper wasn’t another thing I could earn on a schedule.
The pharmacy doors slid open, and cool air washed over my face. I grabbed a large bottle of ibuprofen first, then crossed to the soaps for an industrial pumice bar meant for grease and engine grime.
The checkout line was short.
A sports tabloid sat in the rack beside the register.
Sloane stared back at me from the cover, styled for cameras beneath a massive headline.
“Cover Girl Flying Solo? Franchise Quarterback Missing After Global Launch!”
For a moment, I could only focus on how ridiculous the image looked from where I stood. Sloane in designer clothes. My face inset beside hers. A headline wondering where the missing quarterback had gone.
I was standing in a Florida pharmacy holding soap made for mechanics.
The woman ahead of me finished paying, and the cashier nodded toward the counter.
“You can set both of those right here.”
I put the soap and bottle down.
She scanned them, then glanced at my hands. The cuts across my palms had started closing, but they still looked worse than anything I had ever allowed during the season.
“Ibuprofen and industrial pumice soap. That comes to twelve dollars. You look like you’ve been pulling double shifts down at the boatyard with the state of those hands.”
I pulled a twenty from my pocket and slid it across the counter.
For once, being mistaken for a boatyard worker didn’t bother me.
“I’m just helping out at one of the local marinas. Keep the change, please.”
She gave me a curious look before dropping the two items into a small bag.
“Suit yourself. Take care of those hands.”
“I will.”
I took the bag and turned toward the exit.
The pharmacy doors opened onto a wall of Florida sun.
I stepped onto the sidewalk, bag in hand, and turned toward the motel. The ibuprofen bottle shifted against the soap inside the plastic as I walked. I was already thinking about getting back to the marina before Skipper decided my late arrival proved every ugly assumption he had made about me.
An old pickup turned into the lot across the street.
I slowed.
There were probably a thousand battered trucks in the Keys that looked like Skipper’s, but I knew the rust along the tailgate and the faded marina sticker near the rear window. The truck rolled past a row of parked cars and stopped in front of a low building.
The sign above the entrance caught the sun.
“Soundside Women’s Clinic.”
My next step never happened.
For several seconds, I could only stare at those words while traffic moved between us. Skipper could have been dropping off paperwork. Picking someone up. Running an errand for somebody from the marina.
Then the passenger door opened.
Piper stepped out.
The pharmacy bag crumpled in my hand.
She turned toward the clinic, one palm resting near the curve of her stomach as she waited for Skipper to come around the front of the truck.
Nothing about the way she moved told me whether this was normal.
Nothing told me whether she had been sick that morning, whether something had happened overnight, whether she had been worried for days.
I didn’t know.
That was the worst part.
I knew the names of every defensive coordinator in the conference. I knew which linebacker disguised pressure on third-and-long and which corner cheated toward the sideline when he expected an out route. I had spent years memorizing details because people paid me millions to notice them.
I didn’t know when my own wife went to the doctor.
A passing car briefly blocked my view. By the time it cleared, Piper and Skipper were already moving toward the entrance.
I stepped off the curb.
The first lane was clear. A pickup rolled through the second, and I waited for it to pass before crossing behind it. The bag swung against my leg as I broke into a jog across the remaining stretch of road.
“Piper, wait! Please just hold on a second!”
She stopped near the clinic doors.
Skipper turned first.
His expression changed the moment he recognized me, and he stepped between Piper and me before I reached the walkway.
“Stay there, Callahan.”
I stopped.
Piper remained behind him, close enough that the surprise on her face was clear, but far enough that touching her was not even a possibility. The glass doors waited at her back.
Skipper planted himself in my path.
“You have got a lot of nerve stalking us across town, superstar. You need to turn around and walk away right now.”
The accusation would have infuriated me once. I would have demanded he move, reminded him that Piper was my wife, and treated the title like it gave me ownership over whatever happened next.
Instead, I lifted the pharmacy bag.
“I am not stalking anyone. I just saw you walking in from across the street.”
Skipper glanced toward the pharmacy, then back at me.
“Then you’ve seen enough. Go back across the road.”
I looked past his shoulder to Piper. She hadn’t told me she had an appointment. Of course she hadn’t. I had spent four months giving her every reason to stop including me in the smallest details of her life.
That didn’t make standing outside a medical clinic any easier.
“I won’t cause a scene.”
“Good. Start by leaving.”