15. Unwanted Exposure #2
Sloane came around Reid, wearing a smile meant for a camera. “Can we not start with a fight? We finally found him.”
I focused on the photographer lifting his camera.
Sloane crossed the remaining space to Nolan and linked her arm through his.
The shutter fired.
For one ugly moment, the night at McGinnis’s came back in pieces: her body tucked against his side, their hands together, Nolan standing beneath the flashes while another private thing became campaign material.
Sloane tilted her head up toward him. “We missed you so much in New York, Nolan. But this rugged, sunburned aesthetic is going to play well on the red carpet.”
“Hold that pose,” one photographer called.
Nolan looked down at her arm.
Sloane kept smiling. “Just give them ten seconds. Reid can explain everything in the car.”
Another burst of shutters followed.
I gripped the doorframe instead of reaching for the handle. I had watched Nolan endure this before. That had always been his excuse afterward: the cameras were already there, pushing her away would create another story, Reid had a plan, the brand needed the image.
Sloane leaned closer.
Nolan tore his arm free.
His mouth tightened when the movement pulled at his injured side, but he put space between them without hesitation.
Sloane’s smile disappeared. “Nolan.”
“Don’t touch me.”
Reid stepped toward him. “For God’s sake, don’t create another scene in front of the cameras.”
“They shouldn’t be here.”
“They are here because you ran away from your obligations.”
“I came here because my wife served me divorce papers.”
The words rang out across the yard without apology.
My hand slipped from the doorway.
Reid gave me a single, dismissive look, then turned back to Nolan as though I were another piece of equipment cluttering the property. “And you’ve had weeks to indulge that problem. Enough.”
Skipper shifted toward the edge of the porch. “You might want to reconsider how you talk about her while you’re standing on my land.”
“Stay out of this.”
“Then take it somewhere else.”
The photographers kept shooting.
Nolan put his back to Sloane and faced his father. Whatever fragile ease had been in his face that morning was gone. He pointed toward the driveway, past Reid, toward the vehicles that had torn through the quiet of Osprey Bluff.
“Get those cameras off this property, Dad. You have no right to bring this circus here.”
Nobody moved for a moment.
Sloane stood several feet away from him now, her arm at her side. The photographers had captured the reunion Reid wanted, but only for a few seconds.
This time, when Sloane touched my husband for the cameras, he pulled away.
The first photographer stopped shooting Nolan.
He swung his camera toward me instead.
The second lens followed before I could step inside the bait shack.
Both men adjusted their stance in the driveway, no longer interested in Reid, Sloane, or the argument beside the dock.
One lowered his camera just long enough to check the screen, then brought it back up with the lens aimed below my face.
At my stomach.
The shutters started again.
“Stop taking pictures of me.”
Neither photographer lowered his camera.
One of the men shifted sideways to get around the corner of the shack. “Ma’am, stay where you are.”
I stared at him.
The command was so casual that for a moment I couldn’t make sense of it. He had stepped onto private property, pointed a camera at a pregnant stranger, and was now giving me directions as if I had agreed to participate.
My hand covered the front of my shirt. I dropped it again when the photographer fired off another shot.
That was what they wanted.
Every reaction became another photograph.
Three years of staying out of luxury boxes, avoiding sponsor dinners, and letting Nolan walk red carpets alone had been justified with the same promise: privacy. Reid had sold secrecy as protection until I had almost stopped noticing how much of my life disappeared behind it.
Now the cameras had found me anyway.
Worse, they had found the baby.
“Put those down,” Nolan said from across the yard.
The photographers kept working.
One crouched for a lower angle.
I stepped sideways, trying to put the edge of the shack between his camera and me. He moved with me.
“That’s enough.”
Skipper’s voice came from behind me.
He crossed the porch and reached for the steel boat gaff kept beside the dock gear. The hook scraped against the wood as he pulled it free. Both photographers glanced his way before aiming their cameras back at me.
“Skipper, don’t.”
“They were told to leave.”
He came down the steps carrying the gaff at his side.
Reid finally turned away from Nolan. “Put that ridiculous thing down.”
Skipper kept walking.
The photographer nearest the SUV backed up a step, but his camera stayed raised.
Skipper stopped before he reached them. “You have exactly ten seconds to get those lenses off my property before I start smashing windshields!”
“Skipper.” I moved away from the doorway. “They’re not worth it.”
“They’re photographing you after you told them to stop.”
“And if you hit one of those cars, Reid will make sure you’re the one who gets blamed.”
The nearest stringer laughed.
That sound bothered me more than the cameras.
He swung the lens toward me again. “Just getting some candids for the timeline, old man! The fans want to see the quarterback’s pregnant mystery woman!”
Mystery woman.
The phrase stripped away everything that was true.
Not wife.
Not Piper.
Not the woman who had spent years waiting for Nolan to come home after games, or the woman who knew exactly how he took his coffee, or the woman carrying the child we’d made before our marriage broke apart.
Just a mystery attached to a quarterback.
The shutter fired again.
I backed toward the shack until the wall stopped me.
Sloane stood near Reid. The PR handler had moved closer to the SUVs, his attention bouncing between Reid and the photographers. Nobody from that group told the cameras to stop.
Only Nolan did.
Reid pointed at Skipper. “Calm down, you crazy old fool, or I’ll have you arrested for assault.”
Skipper raised the gaff enough to make the warning clear. “You brought trespassers onto my property.”
“They’re accredited media.”
“I don’t care if they’re the damn President’s photographers. She told them no.”
Reid turned away from him, clearly done with the conversation.
“Nolan, get your bags right now.”
Nolan didn’t answer.
The photographers kept shooting.
A gust pushed my hair across my face, and I tucked it behind my ear, forgetting that even an ordinary movement gave them another image. One camera followed my hand. The other stayed trained on the front of my shirt.
The marina had never made me self-conscious about being pregnant.
Here, nobody treated the baby as news. Skipper complained when I worked too long. Lawson moved the big coolers before I could argue. Charter captains asked when I planned to take maternity leave because they wanted to know who would keep their paperwork straight.
The cameras made it something else.
Content.
A secret pregnancy attached to the league MVP.
“Reid.” Nolan’s voice carried across the yard. “Tell them to stop.”
“Get in the car.”
“Tell them to stop photographing her.”
Reid didn’t even look at me. “This ends when you stop making everything difficult.”
Another shutter burst cut across the yard.
Nolan’s attention shifted.
He looked past Reid, past Sloane, and followed their aim to where I stood against the shack, seeing every lens pointed at me.
Nolan closed the distance before Reid could say another word.
He put himself between me and the cameras, broad shoulders cutting off their view. The next burst of shutters caught his back instead of me. One photographer stepped sideways, trying to find an angle around him, and Nolan moved with him.
“Nolan—”
“Stay behind me.”
The photographer lowered his camera enough to glare at him. “Move aside, Nolan.”
Nolan didn’t.
For the first time since the SUVs arrived, I could stand without a lens aimed at my stomach. His shirt filled most of my view, marked with boat dust from the morning’s work. Beyond him, Reid waited beside Sloane with the patience of a man convinced this would end his way.
Nolan pointed toward the vehicles.
“Call off the cameras right now, Dad. Tell them to get back in the cars, and I will leave with you.”
The yard went still around those words.
I stared at his back.
Reid smirked. “I knew you would finally come to your senses. Go grab your things so we can get back to Miami.”
Skipper tightened his grip on the gaff. “Get them off my property first.”
Reid lifted one hand toward the photographers. “Enough. Back to the cars.”
Neither man argued.
They lowered their cameras. One stringer lowered his rig as he walked toward the SUVs. The other kept glancing at Nolan, as if hoping for one last shot worth selling, before finally following.
The lenses were finally off me.
I should have felt relieved.
Instead, Nolan’s offer kept repeating in my head.
“I will leave with you.”