CHAPTER TWO
Gray
I’m three miles into my run when the rage finally starts to cool.
Not disappear. Just settle from a rolling boil to something I can actually think through. My feet pound against the asphalt in a rhythm that matches my pulse, both too fast, both demanding more than my body wants to give.
Biology.
That’s what she called it. Like the way I knotted her was some accident of chemistry. Like the way she looked at me afterward, soft and trusting and completely wrecked, meant nothing.
Like I mean nothing.
I push harder, lungs burning as I hit the hill that leads back toward campus. The team house sits at the bottom, windows glowing yellow in the early morning light. Practice starts in fifteen minutes. I should head back, shower, pretend the last hour didn’t happen.
Pretend I’m just her teammate.
My phone buzzes against my ribs. Text from Bo: *Where are you? We need to talk.*
I don’t answer. Can’t trust what I might say right now.
Another buzz. This time it’s Coach: *Team meeting after practice. My office. Non-negotiable.*
Shit.
I stop running, hands on my knees as I catch my breath. Whatever support resources he was asking about this morning, it’s escalated. Someone’s been talking. Or someone’s been watching.
Either way, we’re fucked.
The boathouse is already buzzing when I arrive, twenty minutes late and still wearing yesterday’s clothes. The rest of the team stands in a loose circle around our shell, but the usual pre-practice banter is missing. Everyone looks like they’d rather be anywhere else.
Reese stands apart from the group, clipboard in hand, studying our training plan like it holds the secrets of the universe. She’s changed into her team gear, hair pulled back in that no-nonsense ponytail that means business. Everything about her screams professional distance.
Everything except the way her shoulders tense when she hears my footsteps.
“Nice of you to join us,” she says without looking up.
“Traffic,” I lie.
Now she does look at me, those blue-green eyes scanning my face for tells. She finds them, because she always does. The slight widening of her pupils. The way her nostrils flare like she’s catching my scent.
“We need to get on the water,” she says. All business. Nothing in her voice suggests she spent the night before last in my bed, sobbing my name into my pillow as I fucked her from behind until we both passed out. Nothing suggests she knows exactly what I look like when I lose control.
“Fine.” I grab my water bottle from my bag. “Let’s go.”
But as we move toward the dock, I catch Bo watching us with something that might be pity. Jackson won’t meet my eyes at all. Even Zane’s usual energy is muted, like someone died.
Maybe something did.
The boat feels different as we carry it to the water. Heavier. Like we’re all thinking too hard about where to put our hands, how close to stand, what’s appropriate between teammates who aren’t supposed to want each other.
“Hands on,” Reese calls as we reach the dock.
We flip the shell and set it in the water with the kind of careful precision that comes from years of working together. Except today, it feels forced. Mechanical.
“Good,” she says, but her voice is flat. Professional. “Load up.”
I settle into the stroke seat, adjusting my foot stretchers while deliberately not looking up.
Because I know what I’ll see. Reese, directly in front of me, close enough that I could reach out and touch her if I extended my arm.
Close enough that I’ll spend the entire practice staring at her whether I want to or not.
That’s the curse of stroke seat. You face the coxswain for every single stroke, every single meter, every single practice. No escape. No reprieve. Just her, right there, commanding you while you try not to think about how she commanded you three nights ago in an entirely different way.
Behind me, the boat rocks as the others get situated.
Bo’s massive frame in seven. Beckett joking with Tyler in six and five, but the humor sounds hollow.
Zane trying to lighten the mood from four and failing.
Eli’s careful movements in three, Jackson’s tense silence in two, Cameron’s ghost-like presence in bow.
Eight guys who used to function like a machine. Now we can barely look at each other.
Except I have to look at her. That’s my job.
“Ready all,” Reese announces from her seat.
I finally lift my eyes, and fuck, she’s right there. Less than three feet away, those blue-green eyes deliberately focused on her cox box, on the water beyond me, on anything but my face. But she has to look at me, eventually. Has to watch my stroke rate, my form, my timing. That’s her job.
“Row.”
We push off from the dock, oars finding water with varying degrees of success.
I stare past her left shoulder, fixing my gaze on the tree line behind her, trying to find a focal point that isn’t her face.
But peripheral vision is a bitch, and I can see every micro-expression, every shift of her weight, every time she bites her lower lip in frustration.
“Set the boat,” Reese calls, and now she has to look at me, checking my blade height, my body position. Our eyes meet for a fraction of a second before she jerks her gaze away.
But that fraction is enough. I see the flash of hurt she’s trying to hide. The exhaustion from fighting her own instincts. The same rage I’m carrying, directed inward.
“Rate twenty for ten strokes,” she announces, voice carefully neutral. “Building pressure each pair.”
I set the stroke, long and controlled, keeping my eyes locked on a point just above her head. Behind me, I can feel the boat struggling to find rhythm. We’re all fighting ourselves, fighting each other, fighting the very thing that usually makes us strong.
“That’s not together,” Reese snaps, and now she’s looking directly at me because she has to, because she needs to read my face to understand what’s wrong with the boat. “Bow four, you’re early on the catch. Stern four, you’re muscling the finish.”
Her eyes bore into mine as she says it, and I can’t look away. Can’t pretend I don’t see the accusation there. *You’re the stroke. Fix this.*
“Take it from the top,” she says, still holding my gaze. Professional. Distant. Like she didn’t sob my name into my shoulder when she came. “Rate twenty, building by pairs. And this time, listen to stroke seat.”
The irony burns. Listen to me. Follow me. Like she did three nights ago when I commanded her to get on her knees. Like she did when I told her exactly how I was going to take her.
We try again. I force myself to focus on technique, on the mechanical perfection of the stroke. Legs, body, arms. Arms, body, legs. Don’t think about her watching every movement. Don’t think about how her pupils dilate slightly when she catches me looking back.
Still sloppy. The boat rocks as someone rushes their slide. Someone else misses water entirely.
“Stop.”
We sit up, oars squared and resting on the water. Now she’s glaring at me openly, no longer pretending to look elsewhere. The silence stretches between us like a live wire.
“What the hell is wrong with you people?” she asks, but she’s looking at me when she says it.
Nobody answers. I hold her stare, refusing to be the first to look away.
“It’s like you’ve never seen each other before,” she continues, finally breaking eye contact to address the rest of the crew. “Jackson, you’re three beats behind everyone else. Tyler, your blade work looks like you learned to row yesterday. And Beckett... are you even trying?”
“Hey,” Beckett starts, but she cuts him off.
“No. I don’t want to hear excuses. I want to know why eight guys who won Riverside just days ago suddenly can’t row in a straight line.”
Her eyes find mine again. Challenging. Daring me to say what we both know.
“Gray.” The way she says my name is sharp enough to cut. “You’re stroke. Get them together.”
I lean forward slightly, closing the distance between us just enough to make her breath catch. “Maybe the problem isn’t technique.”
“Then what is it?” She doesn’t back down, doesn’t lean away. If anything, she lifts her chin higher.
“You tell me.”
We’re locked in a staring contest now, the boat gently rocking beneath us. I can see her pulse jumping in her throat. Can see the way her hands clench around the rudder lines. Can see everything she’s trying not to feel written across her face because we’re too close for her to hide it.
“Fine,” she says finally, voice low and dangerous. “If you can’t row like a team, we’ll work like individuals. Pairs only. Bow pair, take it away.”
Cameron and Eli push off, and I’m left sitting there, nothing to do but stare at the woman in front of me who’s pretending we’re strangers. She keeps her eyes fixed on the bow pair, rating their strokes, but I can see the tension in her shoulders, the way she’s hyperaware of my gaze.
“Three and four,” she calls.
Jackson and Zane take their turn. Still, she won’t look at me.
“Five and six.”
Tyler and Beckett find their rhythm. I watch her watch them, notice the way she unconsciously leans away from me like proximity hurts.
“Seven and eight.”
Finally. Something to do besides sit here drowning in awkwardness. Bo and I push off together, and I pour every ounce of frustration into the strokes. Hard. Fast. Punishing.
“Better,” Reese says, and now she has to watch us, has to look at me to gauge our timing. “Full crew, let’s try a piece. Rate twenty-two for twenty strokes.”
We line up again, eight blades poised above the water. She’s right there, so close I can smell the faint trace of her shampoo beneath the lake air. So close I can see the shadows under her eyes from not sleeping.
So close I could lean forward and—
“Attention... go.”
We’re off. And for the first ten strokes, it almost works. The boat begins to move properly, finding that sweet spot where resistance disappears. I keep my eyes locked on hers, letting her see everything I’m not allowed to say. The anger. The hurt. The desperate need that suppressants can’t touch.
She stares back, and for a moment, her mask slips. I see her. Really see her. The girl who’s just as lost as the rest of us, just as scared, just as desperate to make this work without destroying everything we’ve built.
Then Jackson catches a crab.
The oar digs deep, handle flying up and back. The shell lurches, momentum gone.
“Way enough,” Reese calls, tearing her gaze from mine.
The moment breaks. Whatever connection we’d found dissolves back into professional distance. I look back to see Jackson fighting with his blade, jaw clenched in embarrassment and anger.
“You good?” I ask.
He nods, but won’t meet my eyes. Just like he’s been avoiding everyone since the kitchen confrontation.
“Let’s head back,” Reese announces. “We’ll work on this at afternoon practice.”
The paddle back is torture. Every stroke means looking at her. Every breath means being close enough to touch but not allowed to reach out. Every second is a reminder of what we had and what we’re pretending we didn’t lose.
As we dock and begin cleaning equipment, I catch her watching me. Just for a second, when she thinks I’m not looking. There’s something in her expression that makes my chest tight. Regret, maybe. Or just exhaustion from fighting a battle we’re all going to lose.
“Afternoon practice, four-thirty,” she announces as we finish up. “Don’t be late. And team meeting tomorrow, six AM before morning practice. We need to figure out how to make this work.”
She walks away, but I notice she’s careful to circle wide around me. Maintaining distance. Playing the part.
But I was stroke seat today, which means I spent forty minutes staring at the woman who called what we have ‘biology.’ Forty minutes watching her fight not to look at me. Forty minutes of torture disguised as practice.
And in six hours, we get to do it all over again
I head for the showers, needing the hot water to wash away the tension coiled in my shoulders. But I know it won’t help. Nothing will, not as long as we’re pretending that what happened between us was just hormones and heat.
Not as long as I have to sit in that stroke seat, facing her, remembering exactly how she looked at me when I was inside her.
Not as long as she keeps calling it biology when we both know it’s something else entirely.
The shower water runs cold before I’m ready to face the world again. But I shut it off anyway, grab my towel, and prepare for another day of pretending.
Another day of looking at her without being allowed to see her.
Another day of being her stroke, following her commands, while we both pretend it doesn’t mean anything.
Biology. Right.
If that’s what she needs to call it to sleep at night, fine. But we both know the truth. What’s between us isn’t biology.
It’s inevitability.
And no amount of suppressants or team meetings or professional distance is going to change that.