Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Reese
Practice was perfect, which is getting to be a habit. The boat sang through the water with eight oars moving as one, that effortless swing we’ve been riding since the championship. They gave me everything and I gave it straight back.
Now we’re in the boathouse racking the shell, everybody loose in the post-practice glow. Zane’s humming something while he coils the dock lines. Jackson catches my eye across the bay and the corner of his mouth lifts, barely, just for me.
Zane’s mark is still fresh under my leggings, and I can feel all three of them through the bond. Jackson, Beckett, Zane. A low constant hum that makes the whole world sharper.
“Three oh two point eight for the thousand,” Tyler says, checking his SpeedCoach. “Four seconds off Wednesday and still quicker than anything we did in April.”
“We’re peaking at the right time.” Gray wipes down his blade. “Nationals will be here before we know it.”
Harrison’s clock is running in the back of my head, and it isn’t the only one.
“Hey.” Bo appears at my elbow with his voice down. “You good?”
“Better than good.” I bump my shoulder into his arm. “That was a hell of a row.”
“It was.” His smile comes out warm and open, the one he saves for when nobody’s paying attention.
Except somebody is.
I see her half a second before the others do. Jenna Kowalski, just inside the boathouse entrance with the same press badge around her neck. She isn’t alone this time. There’s a younger guy beside her holding a phone like he’s already recording.
“Ms. Callahan.” Her voice carries across the bay, bright and professional. “I was hoping I’d catch you. A few follow-up questions about that feature.”
Every bit of the easy energy in the building goes out of it. Gray straightens with the oar still in his hand. Beckett stops mid-sentence. Even Zane goes still.
“I told you I’d think about it,” I say. “I haven’t decided.”
“This isn’t about the feature anymore.” She comes toward us, heels loud on the wooden floor. “I’m working on a different story.”
Bo moves closer without making a thing of it. Jackson does the same on my other side, and the bond flares with heat that has nothing to do with wanting.
Kowalski notices. Of course she does.
“What story?” Gray asks.
“One involving your coxswain and the team.” She takes out her phone. “I’ve been sent footage from earlier this season that raises questions about the nature of those relationships.”
My stomach drops.
“What footage?” Eli asks.
“Why don’t I show you?”
She turns the screen around.
The image is small and instantly recognizable.
A restaurant table with the whole team in frame, but the angle is on me between Tyler and Beckett.
I remember working to keep my face still that night.
I thought I’d managed it. In the frozen frame my lips are parted, my shoulders too rigid, Tyler and Beckett both angled toward me.
Maybe nobody else would know what they’re looking at.
I do.
I can’t do anything except stare at my own face in a moment I believed was private.
“Taken in March, I’m told,” Kowalski says. “A team dinner after a regatta. There’s video as well.”
“Where did you get that?” Beckett’s voice could take skin off.
“Anonymous source.”
“Convenient.”
“It’s standard.” Her attention shifts back to me. “Ms. Callahan, are you in a romantic or sexual relationship with members of this crew?”
Gray steps between us. “That’s enough.”
Kowalski doesn’t even look at him. “You don’t have to answer.”
“She’s not answering anything,” Gray says.
“That’s her decision.”
“Then ask me,” I say.
Every man around me goes still.
Kowalski meets my eyes. “Are you bonded to members of the team?”
I say nothing.
Her gaze flicks to Jackson, Beckett, then Zane.
“Three of them,” she says. “You’re bonded to three members of your crew.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then tell me I’m wrong.”
Nobody does.
Her eyes move to Tyler. “Sable Ridge lists Ms. Callahan as a Beta. Is that information accurate?”
“Her eligibility paperwork is in order,” Tyler says.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s the answer you’re getting.”
Kowalski studies him for a second, then looks back at me. “Were you knowingly registered under the wrong designation?”
My mouth goes dry.
Gray cuts in. “We’re done.”
“Captain—”
“No. You came here without an appointment, brought a camera into our boathouse and started asking a student about private medical information. We’re done.”
Kowalski’s expression barely changes. “I’m running the story this weekend. Print and digital. I’m giving Ms. Callahan the opportunity to respond before publication.”
Cameron has his phone out now, thumbs moving fast. His face changes.
“It’s online.”
Kowalski turns toward him.
“The photo,” he says. “Three gossip sites already.”
Kowalski’s mouth tightens before she can smooth it out.
“You knew,” Beckett says.
“I knew material had been circulating.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No, it isn’t.” She pockets her phone. “The full video isn’t public yet. When it is, this gets harder to contain. I’m offering you the chance to comment before that happens.”
Bo’s voice drops. “You’re done here.”
She looks at me one last time. “Ms. Callahan, if you want your version included, call me.”
Then she’s gone.
The door swings shut behind her, and for half a second nobody moves.
Zane exhales. “Fuck.”
Then everybody comes unstuck at once.
Cameron is already opening one of the posts. Eli moves over his shoulder. Gray starts asking Tyler about the school’s media policy while Beckett swears under his breath and Jackson looks like he’s deciding whether punching a wall counts as personal growth.
I take the phone out of Cameron’s hand.
“Reese—”
“I need to see it.”
The photo is everywhere.
Three sites becomes five while I’m looking. Somebody has already pulled a still of my face and cropped everybody else out. The comments are worse.
Slut. Whore. Pack bunny.
The same words my mother used, multiplied by people who have never met me and never will.
Jackson’s hand lands on my shoulder. “Don’t read those.”
“Too late.” My voice sounds wrong to my own ears. “It’s out. Everyone’s going to see it.”
“We’ll handle it.” Gray’s jaw is locked. “Tyler. Legal options.”
“We knew Kinsley had footage,” Tyler says. “She and Andrea both. We should’ve dealt with the possibility sooner.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” Gray says. “We focus on what we can still control.”
“This is Harrison,” Beckett says.
“Maybe,” Cameron says. “Kinsley shot the original.”
“Does it matter?” I hand the phone back before I can read another comment. My hands are shaking. “It’s done either way.”
The bonds are shouting at me, three threads of protective fury with nowhere to go. There’s nobody here to hit. No shell to steer. No call I can make that fixes pixels already loose on the internet.
“The filing,” Eli says. “We accelerate it.”
I look at him.
“If we’re legally recognized before the full story runs, the university has less room to act like this is misconduct instead of a lawful pack relationship.”
“We only have three claims.”
“Then we get more claims,” Bo says.
I stare at him, and his certainty falters.
“That came out wrong.”
“Did it?”
“Yeah.” He steps closer, but not close enough to crowd me. “The paperwork can go to hell for a minute. I’ve wanted to claim you since before there was paperwork. Before Harrison. Before any of this.”
The room goes quiet again.
Bo holds my eyes. “I kept waiting because I thought waiting was the decent thing to do. If you’re asking whether I want you, Reese, the answer is yes. If you’re asking whether I’d bite you tonight because Tyler needs another signature, the answer is no.”
My throat tightens. “Bo—”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
Eli steps forward. “The filing and the claiming are two different things.”
“You just said we need to accelerate.”
“The filing. Not you.”
That hits me harder than it should.
“We’ve wanted this from the beginning,” Cameron says. “The only thing that changed is that we can’t pretend we’ve got unlimited time anymore.”
I look around at them. Gray with his phone already in his hand.
Tyler watching me instead of the screen for once.
Bo standing close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him.
Cameron still and unreadable except for the fact that he’s here.
Eli calm in that way that means he’s already thinking six moves ahead.
“We don’t have to do this because of her,” I say. “Because of the story. I don’t want anybody claiming me because we’re scared.”
“Nobody is,” Bo says.
“What if it changes the timing?”
“It probably does,” Eli says. “That doesn’t make the choice fake.”
I don’t know what to do with that.
Gray finally lowers his phone. “Nobody does anything tonight because we’re panicking. We figure out the filing. We figure out the media response. And anything that happens between you and any of us happens because you want it to.”
I look at him.
“That’s the line,” he says. “We don’t cross it.”
For all the things Gray gets wrong, I believe him when he says that.
“Okay.”
He nods once and turns back toward the others. “Tyler, start the expedited filing. Eli, find every option for getting in front of this before the video drops. Cameron, track where the image started. Beckett, call Bennett.”
“And us?” Zane asks.
Gray looks around at the rest of them, then at me. “We stay close.”
That I can handle.
Everybody starts moving. Tyler and Eli take over one of the workbenches. Cameron is already tracing usernames and timestamps. Beckett has Bennett on the phone before Gray finishes asking. Bo stays near me without touching me, and Jackson disappears long enough to come back with water.
There’s a plan now. Jobs. Something to do with our hands.
I look at the five who haven’t claimed me. Bo, Gray, Tyler, Eli, Cameron.
Five more bites. Five more bonds that were supposed to happen because one of them couldn’t wait another second, not because a reporter put us on a deadline.
Jackson and Beckett and Zane chose me when nobody was making them. When there was no clock and no story and nothing riding on it but whether they wanted to. They wanted me, not a legal position.
I know that’s what the others are telling me too. I know it.
It doesn’t stop the next five from lining up in my head like an assembly line. Claim the Omega. File the form. Close the problem.
Everybody is moving with purpose, and I’m standing in the middle of it wondering whether I’ll ever know which parts would have happened without the clock.