Chapter 12 Alex
The morning was perfect for rowing. Cool air, flat water, just enough light breaking over the horizon to see by. Mist sat low on the river in thin bands, burning off where the sun hit. The kind of conditions that should have made everything feel easy.
It didn't.
The Kingswell dock was crowded—both teams milling in the grey dawn, breath fogging, hands wrapped around oar shafts.
Riverside guys clustered near the far end, Kingswell near the boathouse doors.
The joint practices had a rhythm now but it was still uneasy, like two magnets held close with the wrong poles facing.
Coach Eldridge's voice carried across the dock from the launch. "Harrington and Moore, you're in a double."
My stomach dropped.
Of course. Testing whether Monday's chemistry was real or a fluke.
A few heads turned. Marcus looked at me, then at Liam across the dock, then back at me with an expression I didn't want to decode. Derek just nodded, like he'd expected it.
I glanced across the dock. Liam was pulling oars from the rack, not looking at me. Jaw set. Shoulders tight under his Riverside jacket. He moved with that contained energy he got when he was angry—controlled on the surface, everything coiled underneath.
I couldn't stop replaying it. The meeting at the Riverside Club. Tyler's voice, casual as anything: You bringing Emily? And Liam's answer—flat, automatic, like the words cost him nothing: Yeah, I'm bringing Emily.
Like he hadn't been in my bed four days before that.
I grabbed my oars and headed toward bay three. The familiar weight of the sculls in my hands. The rubber grips cold from the morning air.
Liam was already there, standing by the double on the slings. Up close he looked worse than I'd expected—tired. Shadows under his eyes. A tension in his face that went deeper than pre-practice nerves.
Good. I hoped he'd slept as badly as I had.
"Hey," he said.
I didn't respond. Just set my oars against the rack and moved to my side of the boat. Checked the riggers—fingers tracing the pin, the oarlock swivel, the washer. Everything tight. Everything where it should be.
Everything except us.
"Alex. We need to talk about—"
"No." Flat. Final. "We don't."
He was quiet for a second. Then, lower: "You can't just—"
"I said no."
I grabbed my end of the hull and lifted. He stood there—I could feel him deciding whether to push it. Two seconds. Three. Then he grabbed his end, and we carried the shell to the dock in silence. Set it in the water harder than we should have.
Other doubles were launching around us. The sound of oarlocks clicking, shoes finding stretchers, coaches calling assignments from the launch boats idling near the dock. Tyler and his partner were already out, warming up in long easy strokes.
"Bow or stroke?" Liam asked. His voice had gone professional. Closed off. The walls back up.
"I don't care."
"I'll take bow then."
Fine. That put me in stroke—. Liam behind me where I couldn't see his face. Maybe that was better. Maybe staring at the back of my head was easier for him too.
We climbed in. Me first, settling into stroke, shoes locking into the stretchers, seat sliding to find the right position.
Then Liam behind me. The boat rocked as he got in—every micro-movement traveling through the hull to my seat.
His weight settling. His feet finding the footplate.
The small adjustment of his hands on the oar handles.
The physical awareness was suffocating. Three feet of fiberglass between us and I could feel him like he was pressed against my back.
"Ready?" Liam asked.
I pushed off from the dock without answering.
The first stroke stuttered. My catch was early—just a fraction of a second. The boat checked instead of running clean, the hull decelerating mid-stroke.
From behind me, silence. Pointed silence. The kind a rower gives when they feel the mistake but don't correct it. Yet.
Second stroke. Late this time. My blade slapped the water instead of slicing it.
I couldn't focus. Liam's presence at my back was a constant signal my body couldn't ignore.
I pulled harder on the next stroke. Channeling all of it — the anger, the humiliation, the want — into the drive. Too much pressure. The blade buried deep instead of catching clean. The boat lurched port-side.
"You're rushing the slide," Liam said.
"I know."
"Then fix it."
"I'm trying."
"Try harder." An edge in his voice now. Not a calm coaching tone. Frustration. "You're pulling like you're trying to rip the oarlock off the rigger."
"Maybe if you'd actually follow—"
"I can't follow what doesn't exist. You're not setting a rhythm. You're just thrashing."
The words bit. Because he was right.
We rowed in tense silence for another thirty seconds. I forced myself to slow down—shorter slide, cleaner catch, less power. Trying to give him something to match. But my hands were shaking and every stroke felt manufactured. Mechanical. Nothing like Monday.
"We're drifting left," Liam said.
"I can see that."
"Then adjust your pressure."
"I'm adjusting."
"You're not. You're pulling the same on both sides. Your port blade is going deeper and it's—"
"I know what my blade is doing."
"Clearly you don't, because we're about to hit the—"
I over-corrected. Too much starboard pressure. The boat swung right and Liam's oar caught awkward on the recovery, the handle knocking against the gunwale with a sharp crack.
"Jesus, Alex—"
"Don't."
"You almost caught my hand in the—"
"I said don't."
We sat there. Drifting. The boat rocking on its own wake. Both of us breathing hard and we'd barely gone three hundred meters.
From behind me, I heard Liam exhale. Long. Controlled. The kind of breath you take when you're choosing not to say something.
"Just row," he said. Quieter now. Tighter. "Stop thinking about whatever you're thinking about and just row."
"That's rich coming from you."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means you seem to have no trouble turning things off. Compartmentalizing. You did it pretty easily a few days ago."
Silence.
I'd gone too far. I knew it the second the words left my mouth. But I couldn't pull them back and part of me didn't want to.
"Just row the fucking boat, Alex."
I rowed.
It didn't get better. Every stroke felt like dragging the hull through wet sand. Liam tried to compensate, adjusting his timing to match my broken rhythm, but that just made it worse. Two rowers fighting for control of a boat that needed them to surrender it.
My blade caught a crab.
The oar jerked violently—the handle slamming into my ribs like a baseball bat. Pain whited out everything. The boat lurched sideways, dead in the water, and I doubled over the oar shaft gasping.
"Fuck—"
"Alex, are you—"
"I'm fine." I grabbed the oar handle, brought it back under control. My ribs screamed. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine, you just took a handle to the—"
"I said I'm fine."
The coaches' launch was already pulling alongside. Engine puttering, wake rocking our stalled shell. Eldridge stood at the bow, clipboard in hand. Hale beside him with his coffee, squinting at us.
"What happened?" Eldridge asked. Calm. But the disappointment sat right underneath it, barely hidden.
"Caught a crab. My fault."
Hale looked between us. That calculating expression—not assessing our rowing anymore. Assessing us. "You two need to figure out what's going on. This isn't the chemistry we saw Monday."
"We'll get it together," Liam said from behind me. Automatic. The good soldier voice.
"Twenty minutes left," Eldridge said. "Make them count."
The launch pulled away. Its wake rocked us for a few seconds, the shell tipping gently side to side.
"Ready?" Liam asked.
"Yeah."
We didn't make them count. The remaining twenty minutes were the same. My ribs throbbed with each stroke. Liam stopped trying to talk and I stopped trying to pretend I could hear him over the noise in my own head. We rowed like two people in adjacent boats, not the same one.
***
By the time we docked, my whole body ached. Not the good ache of a hard morning on the water. The ache of thirty minutes spent fighting the person I was supposed to be moving with.
We carried the shell back to the bay without speaking. Set it on the slings. Started wiping it down.
The boathouse emptied around us. Voices and footsteps fading toward the locker rooms. Coaches still out on the water with the last boats. The sounds of the morning winding down — oars being racked, dock lines being cleated, the distant idle of a launch engine.
Until it was just us. Alone in the bay. Morning light slanting through the tall windows, catching the dust motes and making the racked shells glow amber and white.
I wiped down the hull. Checked for damage where the crab had torqued the rigger. Cleaned the slide tracks. Anything to keep my hands busy and my eyes away from him.
But I could feel him. Five feet away. Working his side of the boat in the same methodical silence. The awareness constant and exhausting.
I couldn't take it anymore.
"When were you going to tell me?" Harder than I intended.
Liam froze. His hand stilling on the rag.
"About Emily." My voice was shaking—I couldn't stop it and didn't try. "When were you going to tell me you were dating her again?"
He set down the rag. Turned to face me. His expression wasn't defensive—it was pained. The defiance I'd braced for wasn't there.
"I was going to..." His voice was quiet. "I should have said something before the meeting. Before you had to hear it like that. I'm sorry."
The apology caught me off guard. I'd walked into this ready for a fight—ready for him to get defensive, throw up walls, tell me it was none of my business. I had responses prepared for all of that.
I didn't have a response for sorry.
"That was shitty. You deserved better than finding out in a room full of people."
"Then why didn't you tell me?"