Chapter 7 Alex
The idea came to me Saturday night.
I was lying in bed, lights off, staring at the ceiling of my dorm room.
My body was still humming from the shower—not just the sex, though that was part of it.
The feeling of Liam pressed against me. The weight of his arms around my waist. The way he'd rested his chin on top of my head and just held me while the water ran, like we had all the time in the world.
We didn't have any time. That was the problem.
Everything we had existed in stolen seconds.
A look across the boathouse. A whispered conversation in a locker room.
Texts after midnight. The shower had been the most time we'd spent alone together since the night he slept over, and even that had been borrowed—ten minutes of reckless, desperate contact in a place where anyone could have walked in.
Next time I want more of you.
We both knew what he meant and we both wanted it. I'd never done it before, the thought of it was nerve wracking but exciting because it was Liam.
The shower had unlocked something in my chest… my heart. A want that went beyond touching him. I wanted to be with him. Actually be with him. Sitting across a table. Walking down a street. Existing in the same space without hiding. To see who we were together.
The way it had been at Brackett Lake. Before I ruined it.
I wasn't going to make that mistake again.
The plan came together at 11 PM. Not really a plan—more like an impulse I decided to trust. I had a car I never drove. Sunday was a rest day. An hour north of Ashford was a world where nobody knew our names.
I texted Liam at 9 AM.
Alex
Be outside the athletic building in 20 minutes. Back entrance. Bring a jacket.
Liam
Why?
Alex
Just be there.
Liam
Is this a kidnapping?
Alex
Bring a jacket, Liam.
He was there when I pulled into the parking lot.
Standing behind the athletic building in jeans and that burgundy team hoodie—the same one he wore everywhere, slightly too big, cuffs frayed, a bleach stain on the sleeve.
Hands in the front pocket. Hair still damp.
He looked like he gotten dressed in ninety seconds.
I knew this because I knew him, and Liam Moore did not spend time on things that wasn't rowing… . and me, apparently.
I pulled up and rolled down the window. He stared at the car. Then at me.
"A BMW?"
"It's my car."
"You're picking me up behind the Riverside gym in a BMW." He looked left, then right, then back at me. "Real subtle, Alex."
"Get in the car."
"Everyone on this campus drives a ten-year-old Honda. You might as well have shown up in a helicopter."
"Liam."
"I'm just saying—"
"Get. In. The car."
He got in the car.
He ran his hand along the dashboard.
"Your car smells new," he said.
"It's not new."
"It smells like it just came off a lot."
"That's because I don't eat fast food in it."
"Isn't that the whole point of having a car?" He was settling in though. Adjusting the seat. "Where are we going?"
"Away."
"Away where?"
"I don't know yet." I pulled out of the lot and turned north. "Is that okay?"
His sarcasm softened into something real. "Yeah. Sounds fun."
It took about fifteen minutes to drive out of Ashford.
The campuses disappear first—Kingswell's stone towers in the rearview, then Riverside's concrete sprawl. Then the town fell away—the cobblestone downtown, the bridge, the river. And then it was just road.
Two-lane highway cutting through New England, trees blazing red and gold on both sides, the sky that sharp blue that only happens when the air gets cold enough to strip the haze.
Liam had his window down even though it was forty degrees.
"You're going to freeze," I said.
He smirked. "Okay mom."
Then he was going through my radio presets. Classical. NPR. Jazz. A playlist my mother had synced to the car last Christmas that was entirely Yo-Yo Ma.
"Dude," he said.
"What?"
"Your presets are what a sixty-year-old listens to on a Sunday drive."
"Classical music is—"
"Sad." He kept scrolling. Landed on a rock station. The opening riff filled the car.
Liam's whole body changed. He sat up straighter. Turned it up.
"Oh, hell yes."
"What is this?"
He looked at me like I'd asked what water was. "You're kidding."
"I'm not kidding."
"Rolling Stones. 'Gimme Shelter.' This is—Alex, this is one of the greatest songs ever recorded."
"It sounds like—"
"Don't." He held up a finger. "Don't say anything. Just listen."
I listened. The guitar built. Then a voice came in—haunting, desperate—then bass line thumping along.
"My mom used to play this when she was cleaning the house," Liam said. His voice had gone different. "She had this playlist—Stones, Springsteen, Tom Petty. She'd blast it on Saturday mornings and dance with the mop. I thought it was embarrassing when I was twelve."
He paused. "Now it's my favorite thing about her."
The song swelled. Liam was drumming on his knee, mouthing the words. Not performing—just living inside the music the way he lived inside the boat. Fully. Without holding anything back. It was so damn cute.
"Okay, It's good," I said.
"It's better than good."
"It's good, Liam."
He grinned and turned it up louder. The bass rattled the side mirror.
We drove. The music too loud, the window down, cold air rushing through the car. Liam was drumming on his knee. I was driving too fast and didn't care. And somewhere around the ten-minute mark, something happened that I hadn't expected.
I stopped thinking.
Not about anything specific—about everything. The boathouse. Braden. Emily. My father's voice on the phone saying you looked happy. Eldridge's office. Ethan's camera. The scouts. The shower. The performance. All of it—the constant, exhausting hum of managing a life built on lies—went quiet.
It was just the road and the music and Liam's hand resting on the center console.
I put my hand over his.
He didn't look at me. Didn't say anything. Just turned his palm up so our fingers could lace together. His hand was rough—callused from the oars, blistered, taped at the base of two fingers. My hand was the same. The one thing we had that was identical.
We held hands for thirty miles. The longest I'd ever touched him without looking over my shoulder.
Liam turned the music down after a while. Not off—just low enough to talk over.
"So is this a date?" he asked.
I glanced at him. "Do you want it to be?"
"I've never been on one."
"A date?"
"With a guy, I mean."
The sentence sat between us. Simple, yet enormous.
"Me neither," I said.
"So this is our first date." Liam smiled.
"Technically our first date was Penny's."
Liam's head whipped toward me. "Penny's was not a date."
"You took me to your favorite restaurant. You ordered for me. You wiped syrup off my face with your thumb," I said.
Liam squeezed my hand. "That was—I was being helpful. You had blueberry all over your—"
"You touched my face."
He was grinning. Fighting it, losing. "Penny's was not a date. We were friends."
"We were coworkers who couldn't stop staring at each other." I shot a look towards him. "And you told her I was just a coworker. Not even a friend. Coworker."
"You were both."
"Either way Liam, you wiped food off my face."
"You keep coming back to that."
"Because it was the moment I knew."
That stopped him. The grin fading into something quieter. He looked at me.
"Knew what?" he asked.
"That you were going to be a problem."
He was quiet for a second. The road humming under us. Trees blurring gold.
"The pancakes were life-changing though," he said finally. "I wasn't wrong about that."
"You weren't wrong about that."
"So fine. Penny's was... a pre-date. An audition."
"An audition."
"Yeah. And you passed."
"Damn straight I passed."
"Barely." He squeezed my hand. "But yeah. You passed."
I squeezed back. The road stretched ahead of us.
He was grinning. But then it faded—not into sadness, just into something more honest.
"That summer was the first time I ever felt like someone actually saw me," he said. "Not the scholarship kid. Not the angry one. Just... me."
The words hit me in the chest. Because I'd felt the same thing—that summer was the first time anyone had looked past the Harrington name and seen the person drowning underneath it.
Liam hadn't cared about my father or my family's money or the house on Peninsula Point.
He'd cared about whether I could keep up at work and whether I'd try the pancakes.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"For what?"
"For ending it. For not being brave enough to—"
"Alex, it's fine. We've been through this—"
"No. Liam." I tightened my grip on his hand. "It's not fine. I had the best thing that ever happened to me and I threw it away because I was scared of my father. I chose his world over you and it was the worst decision I've ever made."
He was looking at me now.
"I'll never do that to you again. I need you to know that," I said.
The car was quiet. Just the engine and the wind through his open window and another classic rock band playing low on the radio.
I squeezed his hand. "Okay?"
"Yeah." His thumb traced a circle on the back of my hand. "Okay. I believe you."
He said it simply.
"Besides," he said, and the grin crept back. "If you try to leave again, I'll just beat you in another race and make you come crawling back."
"You've beaten me once," I said.
"A win's a win, golden boy."
I shook my head. But I was smiling. And the road stretched ahead of us, and his hand was in mine, and for the first time since that summer on the lake, the past didn't feel like something I was running from.
It felt like something we were building on.
***
The town was called Marlow.
I hadn't planned it—just took exits that looked interesting until the highway became a two-lane road that became a main street with a church steeple and a row of brick storefronts and a banner strung between two lampposts that said HARVEST FESTIVAL.
"This looks like the set of a Hallmark movie," Liam said.
"You watch Hallmark movies?"