Chapter Nineteen – Crew
Sunlight crawls through the old lighthouse window, spilling across the bed in slow gold stripes. The air smells like salt and cinnamon and her. I don’t move for a while. Bailey’s head is on my shoulder, her hair a mess against my chest, her breathing steady. Every time she breathes, it feels like the world quiets a little.
This shouldn’t feel like peace. I’ve spent my entire life in motion—stadiums, airports, cameras, noise. Peace was always the thing after a win, the silence that came too late. But this—her weight against me, the creak of the beams, the gulls outside losing their minds over breakfast—is something else.
She shifts, murmurs something half dreaming, and her leg slides over mine. My brain short-circuits. I stare at the ceiling, counting heartbeats. If I move, I’ll wake her. If I don’t, I might combust.
So I lie there and try to memorize it instead. The freckles on her shoulder. The small scar near her elbow. The way her fingers twitch like she’s always chasing something, even in sleep.
When her eyes finally blink open, she looks at me like she’s surprised I’m still there.
“Morning,” she whispers.
“Morning.”
“You’re staring.”
“Trying to figure out how I’m supposed to leave this bed ever again.”
Her soft laugh wrecks me. “You start by moving your legs.”
“Not happening.” I tighten my arm around her waist. “You’re a hazard.”
“Crew Wright, accused of being lazy in bed. Film at eleven.”
I grin. “That’d be the first accurate headline they’ve written about me.”
Her smile falters just slightly, and the reality rushes back in—the gossip, the cameras, the noise waiting beyond the bay. I reach up and brush my thumb across her cheek. “Hey. No one gets to ruin this. Not even them.”
She nods, but her eyes say she’s already building the walls again.
We end up in the kitchen anyway because the cat threatens mutiny if breakfast is late. She moves around the narrow space like she’s dancing, barefoot and half awake, wearing my T-shirt that hangs low enough to make me forget what coffee is for.
“You’re staring again,” she says without looking up.
“Occupational hazard.”
“You were a quarterback.”
“Exactly. Reading the field.”
She shakes her head and hides a smile behind her mug. “You’re impossible.”
“And you like it.”
“Unfortunately.”
I steal a piece of toast, and she smacks my hand. It feels normal, dangerously normal. And that’s what scares me most—how easily I could stay.
Around midmorning, her phone dings. I know the sound of bad news before she even reads it.
“The Gazette,” she says. “They want an interview. The lighthouse program.”
“Or the quarterback sleeping in your bed.”
“Probably both.”
My jaw locks. I cross the room, take the phone gently from her hand, then set it face down on the counter. “You don’t owe them anything.”
