Chapter 25 Liam
Iwoke up to Alex's alarm.
Not an alarm—a meditation app. Some woman with a British accent saying "Good morning. Take a deep breath and set your intention for the day" over soft piano music.
I opened one eye.
"What the fuck is that?"
Alex reached over me—his chest pressing against my shoulder, warm and solid—and grabbed his phone from the nightstand. Silenced it.
"My morning routine," he said.
"Your morning routine has a British lady in it?"
"She helps me center."
"She sounds like she's trying to sell me tea."
Alex dropped back onto the pillow. We were tangled together my leg between his, his arm across my chest, the covers pulled up to our waists.
The room was grey with early morning light filtering through the tall windows.
The cold pressed against the glass but under the blankets, with Alex's body heat radiating into mine, it felt like the safest place in the world.
He was looking at me. That soft, unguarded expression I'd only started seeing recently—no mask, just Alex. Eyes still half-asleep and a pillow crease running down his left cheek.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing. Just—" He stopped. "You're in my bed."
"Been here all night."
"I know. I just—" A small smile. Almost shy, which was insane on someone who rowed for Kingswell and told his father to go to hell. "It's nice. Waking up with you."
Something warm bloomed in my chest. I tried to crush it because that was my instinct—crush anything that felt too good, too vulnerable, too much like something I couldn't afford to lose.
But I was tired of crushing things.
"Yeah," I said. "It is."
His smile got wider. I looked away because if I kept staring at him I was going to say something stupid. Like how the morning light made his eyes look almost silver. Or how the pillow crease on his face was somehow the most attractive thing I'd ever seen on another person.
"Your room is freezing," I said instead.
"The radiator's broken. Maintenance put in a ticket three weeks ago."
"At Riverside they'd just give us an extra blanket and tell us to deal with it."
"At Riverside the whole building is a maintenance ticket."
"Watch it, golden boy."
He grinned. Full and real. And God, that grin—I felt it in my stomach.
I shifted, trying to get comfortable, and something crunched under my hip. I reached down and pulled out a rowing magazine that had gotten wedged between the mattress and the wall.
"Do you sleep with reading material?"
"It must have fallen off the nightstand."
"US Rowing Monthly." I flipped it over. "You subscribe to a rowing magazine? In print?"
"It's a good publication."
"Who subscribes to print magazines anymore? Are you eighty?"
"There's something tactile about—"
"You're eighty. I'm sleeping with an eighty-year-old."
Alex snatched the magazine out of my hand and tossed it onto the floor. "Shut up."
"Make me."
His eyes went dark. "Careful."
"Or what?"
He rolled on top of me. Fast. Athlete-fast—the same explosive power that made him dangerous in a boat. His weight pinned me to the mattress. His hands found my wrists and pressed them into the pillow on either side of my head.
My heart rate spiked. Heat flooding my body everywhere his touched mine.
"Or that," he said. Looking down at me with his hair falling across his forehead and his mouth close enough to kiss.
"That's not a punishment," I managed.
"No?"
"No."
He kissed me. Soft. Morning-slow. I arched up into him—couldn't help it—and he pressed me back down with his hips. The sound I made was embarrassing and I didn't care.
"Morning breath," I said against his lips.
"I don't care."
"You probably should. Mine's terrible."
"It's fine."
"It's really not—"
He kissed me harder. I stopped talking.
We stayed like that for a while. Just kissing. Slow and lazy and warm under the covers while the cold turned the windows foggy and the campus woke up outside. No urgency. No clock ticking. No fear of footsteps in the hallway.
Just us.
Eventually he pulled back. Rested his forehead against mine.
"I could get used to this," he said.
My chest went tight. "Alex—"
"I'm not asking for anything." His voice was steady. His eyes on mine. "I'm just saying. This. Right here. I could get used to it."
I swallowed. "Me too."
The words came out before I could stop them and for once I didn't want to take them back.
Alex's expression cracked open into something so raw and hopeful it almost hurt to look at. Like he'd been bracing himself for me to say something different and couldn't believe I hadn't.
"Yeah?" he asked.
"Yeah."
He kissed my forehead. Gentle. Then rolled off me.
We got dressed slowly—me pulling on last night's jeans, digging around for my shirt which had somehow ended up under his desk.
Alex moved around the room with that precise, organized energy that was so fundamentally him—hanging up yesterday's clothes, straightening the desk, putting things back where they belonged.
"You're making the bed?" I said. "We literally just got out of it."
"Habits."
"You have a problem."
"I have standards."
"Your mother has standards. You have a compulsion."
He threw a pillow at me.
I caught it. Threw it back. He caught it mid-air without looking—those reflexes again—and placed it perfectly on the bed.
I sat on the edge of his desk chair and watched him. Watched the way he moved. The muscle in his back shifting under his t-shirt. The concentration on his face while he smoothed the comforter.
He glanced up and caught me staring.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing."
"You're looking at me."
"I'm allowed to look at you."
Something softened in his expression. "Yeah," he said. "You are."
The room went quiet. Comfortable. Like the silence between strokes when the boat was running perfectly and nothing needed to be said.
"So," he said. "The joint program's over."
My stomach tightened. "Yeah. After yesterday."
"Which means no more mandatory joint practices."
"Right."
"Which means us not in a boat together."
I looked at the floor. "Right."
"So." He leaned forward. "What do we do?"
The question sat between us. Heavy. Real.
No more coaches putting us together. No more plausible deniability—we were just training partners, we had to be around each other, it wasn't a choice.
Whatever came next would have to be a choice.
"I don't know," I said honestly.
"That's not good enough."
I looked up. "What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to say what you actually want. Not what's safe. Not what's easy." His eyes were steady on mine. "What do you want, Liam?"
You. I want you. I want to wake up like this again. I want to know what your stupid meditation app says tomorrow morning. I want your gross towel and your obsessive bed-making. I want—
"This," I said. "I want this."
"This meaning—"
"This." I gestured between us. At the bed. At the room. "Whatever this is. I want to keep doing it."
"Secretly?" He asked.
The word landed like a stone.
"For now," I said.
"For now."
"I'm not—" I stopped. Rubbed my face. "I'm not ready for people to know. I'm not ready for my team to look at me different or for the coaches to make it weird or for—" I stopped again. "Your dad."
Alex's jaw tightened. Just slightly. "My father isn't a factor."
"He's always a factor."
"Not in this. Not anymore." His voice was firm. "I'm done making decisions based on what he wants."
"That's easy to say—"
"It's not easy. It's not easy at all." Something flickered in his eyes. "But I'm done."
I believed him. That was the terrifying part—I actually believed him.
"One day at a time," I said. "Can we do that?"
"What does that look like?"
"It looks like—" I paused. Tried to actually think about it instead of just throwing out words to buy time. "We see each other when we can. Carefully. We don't put labels on it. We don't make big declarations. We just—take it a day at a time and figure it out as we go."
"And the teams?"
"They don't know."
"And if someone finds out?"
"We deal with it then."
Alex studied me. I could see him calculating—running scenarios, assessing risks, doing that Harrington mental math that made me feel weirdly safe because at least one of us was thinking ahead.
"Okay," he said finally. "One day at a time."
"Okay."
"But Liam—" He caught my eyes. Held them. "I'm not going to pretend this doesn't matter. I'll keep it secret. I'll be careful. But I'm not going to act like you're nothing to me. Not anymore."
My throat went tight.
"I wouldn't ask you to," I said.
And I meant it.
He kissed me—not heated, not desperate. Just warm. Firm. A seal on whatever agreement we'd just made.
"You should go," he said. "Before the hall gets busy."
"Yeah." I didn't move.
"Liam."
"Give me a second."
He smiled. Patient. I looked at him—really looked—and tried to memorize this moment. The light. His face. The feeling of being in his room on in the morning with everything uncertain and everything possible.
"I'll text you," I said.
"You better."
I walked to the door. Unlocked it. Checked the hallway—empty, quiet, the sound of someone's alarm going off behind a closed door somewhere down the hall.
I looked back at Alex. Standing in his room. Arms crossed. Watching me go with an expression that was trying to be casual and failing spectacularly.
"One day at a time," I said.
"One day at a time."
I stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind me.
Stood there for a second. Heart hammering. Stupid grin on my face that I couldn't fight.
I felt different.
Lighter, maybe. Or just—less afraid. Like something that had been wound tight for months had loosened just enough to let me breathe.
One day at a time.
I could do that. Probably. Maybe.
The Riverside campus materialized ahead. Brick and concrete. The familiar sounds of a campus waking up—doors slamming, someone's music through an open window, a car starting in the lot.
I climbed the stairs to my floor and went down the hall.