Chapter 11 Liam
“The answer is B. Pavlov’s dog. How do you not know this?” Emily was grinning at me, that teasing spark in her dark eyes that made my chest warm.
“I know it’s Pavlov’s dog,” I said. “I’m just saying—”
“You’re overthinking it.” She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. Her fingers were warm. Soft. “Trust me. It’s B.”
The Grindhouse was packed for trivia night—mostly students, some townies, the smell of espresso and beer mixing in a way that shouldn’t work but did. Our table was in the back corner, covered in empty pint glasses and the wreckage of nachos Noah had demolished in under five minutes.
Emily leaned into me as she wrote the answer, her shoulder pressing against mine. She smelled like vanilla—her shampoo, maybe. I found myself noticing the curve of her neck, the way her curly hair fell forward when she concentrated.
She was beautiful.
That wasn’t new information. I’d known that since freshman year when she’d walked into Intro to Bio and sat next to me because the lecture hall was packed.
But tonight, sitting here with her pressed against my side, her hand still resting on mine—
This was exactly what I needed.
We were in third place. Emily was carrying us hard on anything psychology or literature-related. Noah had gotten us through history and politics. And I’d contributed exactly nothing except moral support and occasional wrong answers.
Emily kept answering, kept leaning into me, kept touching my leg under the table. Her thumb traced small circles on my thigh and I found myself hyperaware of every point of contact between us.
I let myself notice the way her lips curved when she smiled. The way she bit her lower lip when she was thinking. The soft curve of her waist when she leaned forward to write an answer.
She caught me looking and smiled. “What?”
“Nothing. You’re just—” I paused. “Really good at trivia.”
“Smooth, Moore.”
She leaned in and kissed me. Quick, sweet, tasting like cider. When she pulled back, her eyes were warm.
My chest tightened in a good way, it was that kind of tightness that meant something.
“Question fifteen: What year did women’s rowing first appear in the Olympics?”
I sat up straighter. “1976. Montreal.”
Emily grinned. “Look at you, being useful.”
“I contain multitudes.”
Noah snorted. “You contain rowing facts.”
“Not true. I also know—“ I paused, thinking. “Okay, yeah. Mostly just rowing facts.”
Emily squeezed my thigh. “At least you’re self-aware.”
“Hey Em,” Noah said, leaning back in his chair with a grin. “Have we ever told you about my brief career in organized crime?”
Emily’s head came up. “I’m sorry, what?”
I laughed. “Oh no. Not this story again.”
“Yes, this story again.” Noah was clearly enjoying himself. “Freshman year. The poker thing.”
“Oh my god, the poker thing.” Emily turned to me. “I’ve heard references but never the full story.”
“It’s hilarious,” I said.
Emily shifted so she was facing us more directly, her knee pressing against mine. “Now I need to know everything.”
Noah took a long sip of his beer. “So. Fall semester, freshman year. I was broke as hell—“
“Aren’t we all,” I said.
”—and someone told me about this underground poker game happening in the basement. They needed a dealer. Twenty bucks a night plus tips. I figured, how illegal can it be? It’s on campus.”
“Very illegal,” I said.
“Very illegal,” Noah agreed. “But I was eating ramen for every meal. Twenty bucks was a fortune.”
Emily was smiling now, her hand back on my thigh feeling her warmth through my jeans. I thought about the other night.
Focus.
“So I show up,” Noah continued, “and the guy running it gives me this crash course in dealing. Five minutes of ‘this is how you shuffle, don’t fuck it up, here’s the chips.’ Then he shoves me at a table and disappears.”
“And the players were insane,” I added.
“The players were insane,” Noah repeated. “There was this theater major who would only speak in Shakespeare quotes when he was bluffing. Like, full commitment. He’d look you dead in the eye and go, ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks’ and then go all in with pocket twos.”
Emily covered her mouth, laughing. The sound made something warm bloom in my chest.
This. I wanted this. Wanted to make her laugh. Wanted to see her happy.
“And then there was the philosophy TA,” I said. “Every hand was a metaphor for existence.”
“Oh my god, yes.” Noah shook his head. “He lost a huge pot once and spent ten minutes explaining how it proved we’re all just meat puppets in a meaningless void.”
“I would’ve walked out,” Emily said, still laughing.
“I tried,” Noah said. “But Harry kept paying me.”
“So this goes on for like six weeks,” I said. “Games getting bigger, higher stakes—“
“Way too much cigar smoke,” Noah added.
Emily’s eyebrows shot up. “Cigars? In a dorm basement?”
“Shakespeare guy brought them,” Noah said. “Said they ‘set the mood.’ The whole place smelled like a 1920s speakeasy by week three.”
“Which is how he got caught,” I said.
“Night janitor,” Noah confirmed. “Poor guy’s just trying to do his job, and he follows the cigar smoke down to the basement. Opens the door. Finds twenty college students running a gambling ring.”
Emily was fully laughing now, her hand squeezing my thigh. “What happened?”
“Janitor calls campus security. Everyone scatters. I’m still holding the deck of cards like an idiot. Harry grabs the cash box and runs. The philosophy TA stays behind to ‘engage in dialogue about institutional authority.’”
“Did you get in trouble?” Emily asked.
“Two weeks of disciplinary probation,” Noah said. “Had to write an essay about ‘making responsible choices in a university setting.’”
“And you learned your lesson,” Emily said, grinning.
Noah raised his beer. “I learned that organized crime doesn’t pay as well as people think.”
The trivia questions kept coming. We stayed in third place—never quite catching up to the team of grad students in the front or the group of townies who seemed to know every obscure fact about 80s music. But it didn’t matter. It was fun.
This was good. This was what I needed. Friends and trivia and cheap beer and zero drama.
No racing. No rivalry. None of it.
The final round ended. We finished in third place—respectable, but not victorious. The grad students celebrated their win with polite golf claps.
We settled our tab and headed out into the cool night air.
***
Campus was quiet, most people already back in their dorms or still at bigger parties. The three of us walked slowly, in no hurry to get back.
“That was fun,” Emily said, linking her arm through mine. “We should do this more often.”
“Agreed, but next time, Liam needs to contribute more than one answer,” Noah said.
I grinned. “Hey, that one answer was crucial.”
He turned and laughed. “It was worth three points.”
“Crucial points.”
Emily laughed, squeezed my arm.
We walked in comfortable silence for a bit, passing the library, the student center, the academic buildings all dark and empty. Noah was humming something under his breath—probably still riding the high of telling the poker story.
After a minute, Noah’s expression shifted and got more serious. “Hey, the computer science guy got back to me about the video.”
My stomach dropped. I still hadn’t told Emily about the video and I wasn’t planning on it.
“What video?” Emily asked, looking between us.
“The video of the illegal race with Alex.”
“Noah—“ I started, heat flashing through my chest.
Emily stopped walking, turned to face us both. “What illegal race?”
Fuck.
My jaw clenched. Noah had just thrown me under the bus in front of Emily—the one person I’d been trying to keep in the dark about this. About Alex. About all of it.
I shot Noah a look that could’ve killed and he winced apologetically.
Emily’s eyes went wide. “When was this?”
My heart was hammering. I could feel the conversation spiraling, feel Emily’s attention sharpening like a blade. This was exactly what I didn’t need—her asking questions, digging deeper, connecting dots.
“At the start of the semester,” I said, resigned.
“And that’s what the video is of?”
I hesitated. Noah jumped in trying to save the conversation. “It’s not a big deal. Liam and Alex had a little rival race one morning.”
It didn’t work.
Emily’s mouth opened slightly. She looked at me. “You raced him? Before the official scrimmage?”
“We ran into each other on the water first day of classes,” I said, keeping my voice level. “It wasn’t planned. We just—it happened.”
“And someone filmed it?”
“I guess so... and they sent it to me the other day.”
“So someone you don’t know sent you footage of an illegal race that could get you kicked off the team?” Emily asked.
“Pretty much. Just the one message. ‘Thought you’d want to see this.’ That’s it,” I said.
Emily’s face went pale. “Liam, someone is blackmailing you.”
“We don’t know that—” Noah chimed in.
“That’s literally what blackmail is!” Her voice rose. “Someone has evidence of something you don’t want public and they sent it to you to let you know they have it. That’s a threat.”
“It might not be—” I said.
“What else would it be?” She looked genuinely scared now. “This is serious. Have you told Coach? Campus security? Anyone?”
“No. And I’m not going to.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I tell them, I’m admitting to it. Which means I’m off the team. Which means I lose my scholarship. Which means—” I cut myself off. “I can’t tell anyone.”
Emily was quiet for a moment, her hand still in mine but her grip tighter now. Then, carefully: “Why were you racing Alex in the morning?”
Noah walked a little further ahead of us.
My chest tightened. “I told you. We ran into each other.”
“Liam.” Her voice was soft but firm. “Why were you with him?”
The way she said it—with him—made something twist in my gut.
“I wasn’t with him. We just happened to be on the water at the same time. It wasn’t planned,” I said.
“But you raced him.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because—“ I struggled for words that wouldn’t be lies. “Because that’s what we do. It’s rivalry shit. That’s all.”
Emily studied my face.
“Okay,” she said finally. But there was something in her voice—doubt.
Noah turned and cleared his throat. “For what it’s worth, I think whoever sent it is just trying to mess with Liam’s head before competition. Like psychological warfare.”
“Maybe,” Emily said, but she didn’t sound convinced.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said, squeezing her hand. “I’ll deal with it.”
Emily bit her lip, clearly unhappy with this answer. “This doesn’t feel right, Liam.”
“I know. But I’ll handle it.”
Noah, sensing the tension, jumped in. “Anyway, my debate tournament is this Saturday. Against Kingswell. You guys are coming, right?”
“Obviously, wouldn’t miss it,” I said, grateful for the subject change.
“What’s the topic again?” Emily asked, but her voice was distracted.
“Should elite private institutions be forced to share resources with underfunded public schools?” Noah said.
“Fitting,” Emily said. She was still looking at me.
Noah was trying hard to change the conversation and I appreciated it. But it really was not working. We reached the split where Noah would head to our dorm and I’d continue to walk Emily to her building.
“Night, kids. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Emily and I kept walking, but the ease from earlier was completely gone. She was quiet, processing. I could practically hear the gears turning in her head.
“Liam?” she said finally.
“Yeah?”
“Are you sure you’re telling me everything?”
My chest tightened. “What do you mean?”
“About the video. About Alex.” She stopped walking, turned to face me. “I just feel like you should’ve said something earlier... and you didn’t.”
“It just all happened so quickly, and it was just a race. Bad timing, bad decision, but that’s it.”
She studied my face in the dim light from the street lamps. “You promise?”
The lie caught in my throat, but I forced it out. “I promise.”
She nodded slowly, but I could see she didn’t quite believe me. Still, she let it go—for now.
We reached her building and stood outside, the moment stretching between us.
“You want to come up?” she asked.
I did. I wanted to fall into her bed and her warmth and prove to both of us that everything was fine. But I was also exhausted, and that conversation—Emily’s questions, her suspicion, the way she’d looked at me when she asked about Alex—had left me shaken.
“I’ve got early practice,” I said.
“Right. Of course.” She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Rain check?”
“Definitely.”
She kissed me—soft and sweet, but something was different. A hesitation that wasn’t there before.
“I love you,” she said against my mouth, but this time it sounded like a question.
The words should’ve felt good. They should’ve filled the hollow space in my chest, but they didn’t.
“Love you too,” I said.
She smiled, squeezed my hand once, and headed inside.
I stood there for a moment, watching her disappear, knowing something had shifted tonight. Then I turned and started the walk back to my own dorm.
Emily called it blackmail and maybe she was right. Or maybe whoever sent it just wanted me to know they were watching. That they’d seen something I thought was private.
That they knew. But knew what, exactly? Just that we had the race or that I couldn’t stay away from Alex? What if they knew about the summer?
What would I have to sacrifice to be honest? Emily? My team? My scholarship? Everything my mom had worked for?
All of it... so it was best to keep pretending. Once Noah and I figured out who sent that video and dealt with it, this would all be over.
Hopefully, Emily’s suspicions would fade and my life would go back to normal—whatever that meant.