Chapter 19 Liam
The cold night air hit me like a slap.
The kind of cold that found your bones immediately—no buildup, no warning. Just ice against skin.
"Emily!"
She was halfway across the parking lot. Moving fast. Heels clicking on gravel and cracked asphalt.
"Emily, wait!"
She didn't stop.
The parking lot behind the Riverside Club was small—lit by a single streetlight that cast everything in harsh orange. Most of the cars were gone now, donors and alumni filtered out. The music from inside was muffled, bass thumping through the brick walls.
I ran after her and caught up as she reached the edge of the lot where it met the street.
"Please. Just—just let me explain."
She whirled around.
Her face was wrecked. Mascara in dark streaks down her cheeks. Eyes red and swollen. Tears still streaming. The cold had turned her skin blotchy, her breath coming out in visible clouds.
"Explain?" Her voice came out high. "Explain what, Liam? How I just found you kissing a guy? How you've been lying to me for months?"
"It's not—"
"Not what it looks like?" She stepped toward me. "Because it looks like you've been using me as a cover while you fuck around with Alex Harrington."
My whole chest compressed. I tasted something metallic at the back of my throat—adrenaline or bile, couldn't tell which.
"That's not—we're not—"
"Don't lie to me." She was shouting now. Her voice cracking in the cold air. "Don't you dare lie to me anymore."
I glanced around. A few people standing by their cars near the back entrance. Smoking. Talking. One couple loading something into a trunk.
They were looking at us.
My skin prickled.
"Can we just—can we talk somewhere private?"
"Now you want privacy?" She laughed—bitter, harsh, the sound breaking in the middle. "Now you care about who's watching?"
"How long?" she demanded. "How long has this been going on?"
"It's complicated—"
"How. Long."
My throat felt like sandpaper. My jaw ached from clenching.
"Summer. Before freshman year."
Her whole body recoiled. Like I'd shoved her physically. She took a step back, hand coming up to her mouth.
"The summer?" Her voice went quiet. Deadly. "That was a year and a half ago, Liam."
"But it wasn't the whole time—it was only recently that we—"
"You wanted him." Her voice cut through my explanation like it was nothing. "Even when you were with me. Even when you said you loved me."
"I did love you—"
"Don't." Her hand came up. "Don't say that to me right now."
My chest was caving in. The actual physical sensation of my ribs pressing inward, my lungs refusing to fill. Every word out of my mouth was wrong. Every explanation made it worse.
"Was it happening?" she asked. "When we were together the first time? Were you thinking about him?"
"Emily—"
"Answer me!"
"Yes!" The word ripped out of me. Torn from somewhere I'd been keeping it locked. "Yes, okay? I thought about him. I tried not to but I couldn't stop."
She made a sound like I'd hit her. Arms wrapping around herself. Holding tight. Shaking—cold or crying or both.
I wanted to take it back. Shove it back down where it had lived for months—years—in the dark space behind my ribs where I kept everything I couldn't afford to feel.
Not him. It was never supposed to be him.
But the denial didn't work anymore. Not out here. Not with her mascara running and the truth hanging in the frozen air between us.
"And when we got back together?" Her voice was smaller now. Not wanting to know.
Before I could say a word—
"Stop. Stop talking. I don't want to hear anymore."
We stood there.
The cold biting at my face. My hands numb. Wind cutting through my jacket that I borrowed. The fabric was too thin. Made for heated cars and coatrooms, not standing in a parking lot while your life fell apart.
From inside, the music shifted—something slower, the party winding down.
Emily was shaking.
I wanted to reach for her. Fix this somehow. But there was nothing to fix. I'd broken this beyond repair and I knew it.
"Everything," she said finally. Voice hollow. "Everything between us was a lie."
"No—"
"Yes."
I couldn't answer. Because she was right.
Tears were running down my face now too. Hot against the cold air. I wiped at them with the back of my hand.
"I'm sorry," I said. "Emily, I'm so sorry."
"Sorry for what?" She wiped at her face. "For lying? For using me? For letting me think we had a chance when you knew—"
"I didn't know! I thought I could make it work. I thought if I just tried hard enough—"
"But you couldn't." Her voice went flat. The anger draining into something worse—resignation. "Because you're in love with him."
The words hung in the cold air between us.
I didn't answer.
Couldn't answer.
Because she was right about that too. And hearing it from her—not from Noah, not from my own spiraling thoughts, but from the girl I'd been lying to—made it real in a way nothing else had.
My knees felt like they might give out. I locked them. Stood there like I was bracing for a hit because that's what this was. A hit I'd earned.
Emily let out a broken laugh. "Oh my god. You are. You're in love with him."
"Emily—"
"So what now? You two ride off into the sunset? Come out together? Play the happy couple?"
"No! Because people can't know. It could ruin everything. Just please don't—"
I stopped myself but it was too late. She knew exactly what I was going to say.
Emily went very still.
Even in the harsh orange streetlight, I could see her face change. The hurt shifting into something harder. Angrier. Something that looked a lot like contempt.
"If people find out." She stared at me. "That's what you're worried about right now? Your reputation?"
The realization of what I'd just said crashed over me. What I'd implied. That her pain mattered less than my secret. That after everything I'd done to her, my first instinct was still to protect myself.
What kind of person—
My stomach turned. Actually turned. I thought I might be sick right there on the gravel.
"You just broke my heart. And your main concern is making sure no one finds out?"
"Emily please—"
"Please what? Please keep quiet? Please don't tell anyone?" She stepped closer. "Please protect you even though you couldn't be bothered to protect me?"
"I'm not asking you to lie—"
"Yes, you are." Her eyes were hard. "That's exactly what you're asking. And you don't even hear yourself. You don't even hear how selfish that sounds."
She was right. She was absolutely right. And the shame of it—bone-deep, the kind that settled into your muscles like lactic acid after a race you lost—was worse than the cold, worse than the fear.
"I hope it was worth it," she said. "I hope he was worth throwing everything away for."
She turned to walk away.
"Wait." I grabbed her arm. "Please. Just—just don't do anything tonight. Just think about it—"
She looked down at my hand on her arm. Then up at my face. Something in her expression that I'd never seen before—not anger, not hurt. Disgust.
"Let go of me."
I dropped my hand. My fingers were shaking.
"You don't get to ask me for anything," she said. "Not anymore."
She pulled out her phone. Ride app.
We stood in silence. Waiting. The cold brutal now. My hands numb. Wind carrying laughter and music from inside—the party continuing like nothing had happened. The streetlight hummed above us, faint and electric, the only sound that belonged to this moment.
I couldn't leave. Couldn't walk away until I knew she was safe.
A car pulled up. She moved toward it.
"Emily—"
She stopped. Turned back.
"Tomorrow," she said. "The invitational. I'm not coming."
She got in the car and the car pulled away.
I stood there. Alone in the parking lot. In my borrowed suit. Shaking from cold and shock and the weight of what just happened.
She didn't promise to keep quiet.
She didn't promise anything.
And why would she? Why should she protect me when I'd spent months lying to her face? When my first instinct—even now, even watching her fall apart—had been to ask her to carry my secret too?
The streetlight flickered once. Steadied. Cast everything in harsh orange.
I pressed my palms against my eyes until I saw colors. My breath was ragged—short, uneven, the kind of breathing Coach Hale would have told me to control. Four counts in, four counts out. But there was no controlling this. No technique for what was happening inside my chest.
My phone buzzed. Numb fingers.
Noah
Where are you? People are asking about Emily.
People were asking. Which meant people had noticed her leaving. Noticed her crying. Noticed me running after her.
Liam
Outside. Emily left. I'm coming back in.
Noah
What happened?
I couldn't answer that over text. Shoved my phone in my pocket.
I forced myself to walk. One foot in front of the other. Across the gravel. Each step crunching too loud in the quiet. My legs felt heavy—dead weight, like the last 500 meters of a race when your body has nothing left and the only thing keeping you moving is the refusal to stop.
Pulled open the heavy door. Heat hit my face like a wall and the music got louder. String lights crisscrossing overhead. The smell of cologne and wine and warm bodies packed together.
Noah found me immediately. Pulled me into a corner near the old loading dock doors.
"What happened?"
"She saw us."
"Saw what?"
"Me and Alex. Kissing. In the hallway."
Noah's eyes went wide. "Fuck."
"She's hurt. And angry. I fucked up really bad."
Noah was quiet for a moment. Just looked at me with that steady, patient expression he always had.
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
Then—through the crowd, across the room—I saw him.
Alex.
Standing with the Kingswell guys near the bar. Face carefully blank. The performance of composure—shoulders back, drink in hand, jaw set in that way I recognized because it was the same thing I did. The same armor. Different material.
But his eyes found mine across the room and I saw it—
The same fear.
The same certainty that everything was about to fall apart.
Something pulled tight in my chest. Like looking in a mirror and seeing every lie you've ever told reflected back at you in someone else's face.
His father appeared beside him. Hand on Alex's shoulder. Talking. Alex's whole body went rigid—the controlled rigidity of someone being touched by a person they hated.
We're the same. That's the thing nobody knows. Under all of it—the money, the scholarship, the river between us—we're the same.
I looked away before the thought could finish forming.
"Tomorrow," I said to Noah. "I have to get in a boat with him. In front of everyone. After this."
Noah nodded. "One thing at a time."
"What's the one thing?"
"Getting through tonight." He put his hand on my shoulder. "That's it. Just tonight."
I nodded. Didn't trust my voice.
The party moved around us—laughter, music, the clink of glasses. A fun Saturday night for everyone who wasn't me.
Tomorrow I'd wake up and either the world would know or it wouldn't. Either Emily would have told someone or she'd have decided to carry the secret that had no business being hers.
Either way, I had to get in a boat.
Either way, I had to row.
That was the one thing I could control.
Everything else was already out of my hands.