Chapter 22 Alex
The Kingswell boathouse was louder than usual.
Eight AM. Two hours before race time. The locker room packed with bodies—both teams mixed together, Kingswell blue and Riverside burgundy overlapping in a way that would've been unthinkable a month ago.
The energy was nervous but good. Guys laughing, talking shit, locker doors slamming with metallic percussion, music playing from someone's phone. The air thick with the specific humidity of forty rowers in a confined space. Pre-race adrenaline building the way it always did.
I sat on the bench tying my shoes. Trying to focus. Trying not to think about my father sitting in the stands in two hours. About what he'd said to me at the mixer last night—his hand on my shoulder, his mouth close to my ear so no one else could hear.
The scrimmage didn't go the way I'd hoped. I'm trusting you won't make the same mistake twice.
I'd won the scrimmage. Rowed my best race. And in my father's language, that was the mistake.
He wanted me to lose today. Not obviously—never obviously.
A bad start. A missed catch. The kind of underperformance that looked like an off day, not sabotage.
Just enough to prove the joint program wasn't producing results.
Just enough to kill the thing Eldridge had built before it could threaten everything my father believed Kingswell should be.
I'd said nothing at the mixer. Just stood there with his hand on my shoulder—that hand that always felt more like a clamp than a comfort—while donors clinked glasses around us and smiled until he walked away.
But I knew my answer.
I won't do it.
Derek dropped onto the bench next to me. Close enough that our knees almost touched. He smelled like menthol and the particular brand of tape adhesive that meant he'd already prepped his hands.
"You good?"
"Yeah."
"You look stressed."
"I'm fine."
He studied me for a moment. That quiet, observant thing Derek did—not pushing, just making sure I knew someone was paying attention. His eyes tracked across my face like he was reading a race course, noting where the current ran rough.
"Alright. Well, you and Moore are going to kill it out there. Everyone's talking about your pairing."
My stomach tightened. "Great."
"I'm serious. The coaches have been hyping it all week. This is the race." He grinned—wide and easy. "No pressure."
"None at all."
He clapped my shoulder once. His palm was warm and solid and I had the absurd thought that Derek was one of the few people whose touch didn't make me calculate risk.
Across the room—Tyler on a bench with his hand still braced.
Healing from the party fight. He wore his Riverside warmup even though he couldn't row, the burgundy faded at the seams, a rip near the zipper he'd fixed with a safety pin.
He caught my eye and nodded. Couldn't race but he'd shown up anyway.
That was Tyler—the kind of loyalty that didn't need to be earned because it was given freely.
Something Kingswell talked about but Riverside actually practiced.
Marcus on the other side with Mason and a few Kingswell guys.
Arms crossed. Jaw tight. Not participating in the energy.
The careful performance of indifference that I recognized because I'd spent twenty years perfecting the same expression.
Still bitter about the joint program—or maybe bitter about something more specific.
About losing his claim on me. About the fact that I'd chosen Liam's side of the room without realizing I'd done it.
"Alright, let's go!" someone shouted. "Warm-up in ten!"
The room started clearing out. Guys grabbing gear, filing toward the bay in pairs and small groups. The sounds shifted—lockers closing, shoes squeaking on concrete, the distant metallic clatter of oars being pulled from racks. Derek clapped my shoulder once more and left.
The noise faded like a tide going out.
I stayed on the bench. Tying my shoes even though they were already tied. Just needing another minute with the quiet. The locker room settling around me—dripping faucet somewhere, the hum of the overhead lights, my own breathing too shallow in my chest.
Footsteps. Light. Deliberate.
I looked up.
Remy. Hands in the pockets of his Riverside warmup and his expression unreadable. He was compact and still, carrying himself with the particular authority of someone who commanded eight rowers from the smallest seat in the boat.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey."
We looked at each other. The space between us charged with something I couldn't name.
"You need something?" I asked.
"Not really. Just wanted to say—it's none of my business. Whatever's going on with you and Liam."
My chest seized. The air in the locker room suddenly too warm, too close. I kept my expression neutral—years of practice, muscle memory—but something must have shown because Remy's eyes narrowed just slightly. Reading me. The way he read a crew's breathing patterns from the cox seat.
"But Liam's good people. He's got a good heart. And I've got his back." A pause. "So don't break it."
The words landed heavier than they should have. Because Remy wasn't just talking about a rowing partnership. And the fact that he'd come to say it quietly when no one else was around, meant he'd decided I was worth the risk of saying it at all.
"I won't," I said.
He studied me for a moment—three seconds, maybe four—deciding, I think, whether he believed me.
Then he nodded. Once. "Alright."
He turned and walked out. Unhurried. His footsteps fading down the corridor toward the bay.
Then the door opened again.
Liam.
He stopped when he saw me. Hair damp from a shower.
RSU warmup jacket unzipped over a white t-shirt, the cotton pulling slightly across his chest when he shifted.
Short black athletic shorts showing the cut of his quads—the kind of definition that came from thousands of hours on the water, muscle built for function, for power, for the explosive drive that happened between catch and finish.
My body registered him before my mind did—the pulse of recognition, the way everything in me oriented toward him like a compass finding north.
Heat crawled up the back of my neck. My hands, resting on my knees, went still.
It had been doing that since Brackett Lake—this involuntary, full-body awareness that made the air around him feel different.
Charged. I'd just finally stopped pretending it wasn't happening.
We stood there. Neither moving. Neither speaking.
The silence between us dense with everything from the last twenty-four hours—the hallway, the kiss, Emily's face, his mother's phone call I didn't know about yet.
The diner. Ethan's voice saying then you love him like it was the simplest thing in the world.
"Hey," I said finally.
"Hey."
Another beat of silence. He shifted his weight. The fluorescent light caught the shadows under his eyes—he hadn't slept either.
"I'm sorry," I said. "About last night. With Emily."
Liam's jaw tightened slightly. A muscle flexing near his ear. But his eyes stayed on mine—green and steady and more open than I'd seen them in months.
"But I don't take the kiss back. I don't regret it."
He looked at me for a long moment. Something shifting behind his expression—not the defensive walls I'd been hitting for months, not the anger or the deflection or the hard mask he wore to survive.
Something softer. More resolved. Like something had broken loose in the night and he'd decided to let it fall.
"It's okay," he said.
"Is it?"
"Yeah." He almost smiled. Not quite—but the ghost of it. "It's okay."
I stood up. Ten feet apart. The bench between us. The space charged with everything we'd been carrying—separately and together.
"My father asked me to throw the race again." The words came out steady. Measured. The Harrington composure holding, but barely.
Liam's expression changed. Sharpened. "What?"
"Last night. At the mixer." I swallowed. "He wanted me to pull back for the scrimmage—fake an injury, underperform. I said no. We won. And last night he made it clear he expects a different result today."
"He wants us to lose?"
"He wants the program to fail. He wants to prove that pairing Kingswell with Riverside produces mediocrity." I stopped. The next part harder—not because it was secret, but because saying it out loud made it real in a way I couldn't take back. "He doesn't want us rowing together."
"Why?"
"Because I think he can see it. What's happening between us. And he's trying to stop it before it becomes something he can't control."
Liam's eyes went dark. Intense. That competitive fire that lived in him always—the one that burned hottest when someone told him he wasn't allowed.
When someone with money and a legacy and a polished voice tried to put a ceiling on what a scholarship kid from nowhere could want.
His shoulders squared. His chin lifted. The posture of someone who'd been fighting uphill his entire life and had learned to love the angle.
"Fuck that," he said.
Then he moved.
Crossed the space between us in three steps. Pushed me back against the lockers—hard enough that the metal rang out, the sound echoing through the empty room. My shoulder blades hit cold steel.
My breath caught.
He was right there. Close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his skin through the thin cotton of his t-shirt.
See the flecks of gold in his green eyes that you only noticed this close.
Smell soap and deodorant and underneath it, just Liam—that specific, devastating scent that my body had memorized at Brackett Lake and never let go of.
His chest rising and falling. His hands flat against the lockers on either side of my head.
Our faces inches apart.
"We're going to crush every double on that course," he said. Low. The words vibrating between us. "Like nobody's ever seen."
Heat flooded through me. Want so sharp it made my hands shake against my thighs.
My throat went tight. The risk calculator in my head—the one that had been running since I was old enough to understand what the Harrington name required—went silent for the first time I could remember. Just static. Just Liam.
"You and me," Liam said. Eyes locked on mine. "Golden boy."
The nickname hit like something physical.
He'd called me that before. At Brackett Lake—said with affection, with the surprised tenderness of someone who didn't know he was falling.
Murmured on a dock at midnight, half-laughing, the taste of cheap beer and bonfire smoke between us.
Then later—after everything fell apart—said with bitterness.
With anger. Spat across the water like something ruined.
But now—
Now it sounded like reclamation. Like something he was taking back. Cleaning off. Making it his again.
"My golden boy," he said.
Then he kissed me.
Not hard. Not desperate. Not the way we'd kissed in the closet—frantic hands, teeth catching lips, the urgency half want and half fear of getting caught. Not the hallway last night—reckless and exposed and doomed.
This was soft.
His lips moving against mine with a tenderness I'd never felt from him before.
His hand coming up to cup the side of my face—calloused palm against my cheek, thumb brushing my cheekbone.
The calluses from his oar handle rough against my skin in a way that made my chest ache.
Gentle in a way that undid me more completely than any desperate kiss ever had.
Because this was Liam choosing me. In daylight. In the boathouse. With a race in two hours and his whole team outside and no excuse of adrenaline or darkness or desperation.
Just him. Kissing me. Like I mattered.
Like I was his.
I kissed him back. Tried to pour everything I felt into it—everything I'd been holding back for the last year, every apology and every promise and the terrifying, undeniable truth that I loved him.
That I'd loved him since a dock on Brackett Lake and had been too afraid to say it.
My hand found the back of his neck—the short hair there, warm skin, the ridge of muscle that tensed under my fingers.
I pulled him closer. Felt him exhale against my mouth.
He pulled away. Just slightly. Foreheads touching. His breath warm against my lips. The tips of our noses brushing. I could feel his pulse in the hand still cupping my face—rapid, certain.
"Deal?" he asked.
I could barely breathe. "Deal."
"Let's go."
He stepped back. Gave me that look—half challenge, half promise. The same look he'd given me across the water that first morning on Brackett Lake, when he didn't know my name and I didn't know his.
Then he turned and walked toward the door.
I stood there for a second. Heart racing. Lips tingling. The ghost of his hand still warm on my face. The lockers cold against my back.
Then I followed him out.
Into the bay and the noise and the energy and the chaos of race day. The sound of boats being lowered from racks to slings, shells settling onto shoulders, oars clattering, someone calling for their cox. The nervous, electric hum of forty athletes about to prove something.
Two hours until we proved it to everyone—the coaches, the donors, his team, my team, my father sitting in the stands with his watch and his expectations and his absolute certainty that his son would do as he was told.
We wouldn't.
What we had wasn't just chemistry on the water.
It was real.
And we were done hiding from it.