The rest is a blur of warmth and skin and quiet gasps swallowed by the dark. It’s not about escape; it’s about arrival. About choosing the storm and finding peace in the middle of it.
When it’s over, we stay tangled together on the couch, her head on my chest, both of us breathing hard but easy.
“You think we’ll ever get a week without a plot twist?” she murmurs.
“I’d be bored,” I say.
She pinches my side. “Liar.”
“Maybe a little,” I admit. “But I like the view.”
She hums. “You mean me or the lighthouse?”
“Both,” I say, kissing her forehead.
Hours later, the rainy weather’s moved offshore. The clock blinks 2:17 a.m. when my phone buzzes again—Laramie.
Laramie: Got a name. Call me before sunrise. You’re not going to like it.
I glance at Bailey, asleep again, curled against me, peace finally finding her. I slip out from under her carefully, heart pounding.
The screen lights the room in blue as I type back.
Me: Tell me now.
Her reply comes through seconds later.
Laramie: It’s someone you know, Crew. Someone close.
The thunder outside is long gone, but the echo it leaves in my chest feels like the start of something worse.
I step out onto the porch barefoot, the boards still holding a trace of the day’s warmth. The beam from the lantern room sweeps over the bay, one long blink every thirty seconds. I’ve started timing my thoughts by it—one for calm, one for panic.
When the phone buzzes again, I answer.
“Laramie.”
“Sorry for the hour,” she says. Her voice carries the grit of too much coffee and too few hours of sleep. “You asked for the name.”
“I did.”
“It’s not David,” she says. “He’s involved, but someone higher ordered the insertion. The signature’s falsified but traced from digital correspondence originating inside the team’s legal department.”
My stomach drops. “You’re saying—”
“Your general manager,” she finishes quietly. “Harris.”
I squeeze the porch railing until the old paint bites my palm. “He wouldn’t.”
“He would if he thought forcing you into the public sphere would save the franchise’s image. The clause was designed to fail, Crew. They expected Bailey to default, and then they’d ride the sympathy wave into a sponsorship deal. One tidy loop.”
The world tilts. The man who coached me from college recruit to franchise quarterback, the one who visited me after the surgery with a Bible verse about second chances—he turned us into strategy.
Laramie continues, “We can build a case. I just need you to stay quiet for forty-eight hours. Let me gather the proof.”
Quiet. The one thing I’ve never been good at.
“Copy that,” I say. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. “Thanks.”
