Chapter 2 Alex
The hours crawled by like torture.
I watched race after race—JV fours, varsity pairs, Marcus and Collins won doubles. Each one tightened the knot in my stomach until I could barely breathe.
And then, finally, the official’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker.
“Varsity singles. Ten minutes to launch.”
My legs felt heavy as I walked toward the boathouse. The Kingswell dock had thinned out, this was the last race and most of the team was recovering, scattered across the grass in small clusters. A few glanced my way as I passed but no one said anything.
Marcus pumped his fist in the air.
Inside the lower bay, my Empacher R-series single waited for me. I ran my hand along the white hull—smooth, cold fiberglass. Perfect and pristine, like everything else at Kingswell.
What everyone expected me to be... perfect and pristine.
I lifted it onto my shoulder and carried it down the dock to the water.
The wind had picked up even more since this morning. The river looked angrier now, chop slapping against the dock pilingsray sky pressing down.
I always kept my catch high when I trained, this way I was always ready for chop like this.
I was made for a day like this.
But Liam, he was aggressive, he lacked control, he was all power and a day like this would kill him.
I set the shell in the water and climbed in, the boat rocked beneath me with that familiar, unsettling sway.
Alone. No teammates to hide behind. No rhythm to absorb my mistakes.
Just me.
I pushed off from the dock, the shell gliding forward. The cold bit at my face as I settled into an easy paddle, warming up my legs, letting my body remember the motion.
Legs, body, arms. Arms, body, legs.
The rhythm should have calmed me. It always did.
But today my chest felt too tight.
I thought back to the assessment from earlier in the week. How the space had opened up between Braden and Mason. How I had just taken it like it was mine. I needed that fire now. I tried to summon it but it was like trying to start a fire in a vacuum.
No oxygen. No fire.
I took a deep breath.
Come on. Come on. I know you’re here somewhere.
I rowed upstream for a few minutes, letting the burn settle into my quads, letting the cold air clear my head. When I turned back, I could see the officials’ launch motoring into position at the starting line.
My heart kicked against my ribs.
This was it.
Clean catches. Controlled finishes. Technique over power. That’s what would win this, but it wasn’t there, and everything felt jagged and wrong.
I took another deep breath searching for the fire, searching for the calm.
All that was there was worries about the video. My father watching from somewhere. Coach Eldridge’s voice in my head: Something broke your focus. It will happen again unless you address it.
I hadn’t addressed it, and it had only gotten worse. How was I supposed to address it anyway? Confess to Liam that I still wanted him and tell everyone the truth?
Then my father’s voice. You need to crush him, Alexander. Not for pride. For clarity.
I approached the starting line and lined up my stern with the markers. The river churned beneath me, restless and unforgiving. I squared my blades and waited.
And then I heard the soft hiss of another shell cutting through water.
Liam.
He pulled up beside me, maybe ten feet away, his burgundy and white shell rocking in the chop. He didn’t look over. Didn’t acknowledge me at all. Just settled into position, his jaw tight, his knuckles white around the oar handles.
But I looked at him.
I couldn’t help it.
His shoulders were relaxed, but his body was coiled tight like he was holding something back. Sweat beaded at his temples despite the cold. His eyes stayed fixed straight ahead on the far end of the course, like I didn’t exist, like last night never happened.
God, he looked—
I cut the thought off and forced my gaze forward.
This wasn’t about him. This was about me. About proving I could handle the pressure, staying clean and technical and—
Stop.
I gripped my oar handles tighter and tried to steady my breathing. In through my nose, out through my mouth.
Control what you can control.
But the thing I couldn’t control was sitting right there, close enough to touch, and I wanted—
What did I want?
Crush him.
To prove that this rivalry didn’t matter, and to show him I was better, cleaner, more disciplined. I was a Harrington and that was better than anything he’d ever be. And that whatever happened at Brackett Lake... meant nothing.
Good.
Two thousand meters to prove that whatever happened between us was over.
I could feel a fire building as I stared down the river.
The official’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker.
“Lanes are set. Single sculls, this is the final race.”
My heart hammered so hard I could feel it in my throat.
On the Kingswell side, the bleachers had gone quiet. Across the river, Riverside’s crowd fell silent too. Even the wind seemed to die for a moment.
The official raised the flag.
“Ready.”
Every muscle in my body coiled tight.
Liam’s shell rocked slightly beside me.
The only sound was my own heartbeat pounding in my ears and the soft slap of water against the hull.
“Row!”
We exploded off the line at the exact same time.
My legs drove hard, arms pulling through clean and fast. The first ten strokes were pure power—both of us attacking the water like our lives depended on it. Each of us trying to get a lead on the other.
That was me and Liam, both trying to get ahead of what was destined.
I kept my eyes locked forward, focusing on my technique. Long reach. Clean catch. Drive through the legs. My blade sliced through the water with surgical precision. The chop didn’t matter, I wasn’t crabbing a bit. I had this.
But Liam was right there.
I could feel him in my peripheral vision, could hear the churn of his oar strokes, all raw power. But his usual aggression was gone. He had something else. I could feel it. Some secret weapon that was not Liam. I could feel his ease beside me.
We stayed dead even through the first twenty strokes, both waiting for the other to break.
The Kingswell bleachers erupted. I could hear my name being called, could feel the weight of every expectation pressing down on me.
Stay clean. Stay technical. Let him burn out.
But Liam wasn’t burning out.
At the two-hundred-meter mark, he was still right beside me. At three hundred, he hadn’t faded. My lungs started to burn, my legs screaming, but I couldn’t let up. I couldn’t let him see any weakness.
Were we really going to be full power for the whole run?
Our splits must have been insane. That was the thing about me and Liam. We pushed each other, we made each other better, if only we could—
Then I felt my blade catch wrong—just slightly—throwing off my rhythm for half a stroke.
Focus, Alex.
It was all Liam needed.
He took it and surged ahead by a quarter seat.
No.
I dug deeper and pulled myself back even. My technique was cleaner, more efficient—I could win this on discipline alone.
But then I made the mistake of glancing over.
Liam’s face was a mask of concentration. Jaw clenched. Eyes blazing. Every stroke looked like he was trying to rip the river apart with his bare hands. But it was more than that. He was being technical and each stroke wild but controlled.
He looked alive in a way I’d never be. Free in a way I’d never feel.
And something in my chest cracked.
The five-hundred-meter mark flashed by. We were still even, but I could feel it—the way my strokes were starting to get ragged, the way my breathing was going shallow and panicked.
Focus. Stay clean!
But I couldn’t find it. It was like Liam’s focus, his control, his power was making me feel weak. He was sapping my energy. That centered, mechanical place I usually lived in was gone, replaced by something raw and desperate that felt too much like wanting and not enough like winning.
I thought of the way Braden rowed when he saw me coming up on him earlier in the week. But it was happening to me now. And the more I lost focus and worried I was losing it—the faster it went away.
Liam pulled ahead by half a seat.
The halfway point was coming up fast.
And I was losing.