Chapter 9 Alex
Sixteen fifty-eight.
Sixteen fifty-eight.
Hale didn't say Charles fast this time. He said something better. He said nothing. Just looked at his stopwatch, looked at us, and nodded. Then he turned the launch around and headed back to the dock without a word.
Eldridge, watching from the bank with his clipboard, said: "That time would have placed top five in last year's collegiate double at the Charles."
Top five. In the country.
The rest of practice was a blur. The other boats finished their pieces. Remy's quad posted a solid time. Braden and Collins were respectable in their pairs. But everyone knew—the number on the board was ours, and it changed the math.
And Liam—across the bay, racking his oar, not looking at me. But his face was doing the thing. The barely-contained grin he was trying to kill.
I gave him nothing. Kept my face neutral. But inside, something was glowing so bright I was surprised nobody could see it.
Maybe we can have this. Maybe we can win the race, keep the secret, and figure out the rest later.
The team dinner was Hale's idea.
"You've earned a night off," he'd said after practice. "Both squads. Downtown. Be human for a few hours."
He'd picked the restaurant—a place on the Kingswell side of Main Street called The Oarsman.
Brick walls, dim lighting, long wooden tables designed for groups.
Rowing photos on the walls going back decades.
The kind of place where both programs had history, and where the burgers were good enough that nobody argued about the choice.
We took over the back room. Twenty-something rowers filling two long tables pushed together.
The noise was immediate—silverware, laughter, three conversations happening at once.
Tyler was doing an impression of Hale's megaphone voice that had Evan doubled over.
Remy was explaining stroke pacing to one of the Kingswell guys using salt shakers as visual aids, and the Kingswell guy looked like he was actually learning something.
Derek and Jace were at the far end, debating something about race-day logistics with the easy back-and-forth of two people who'd figured out how to respect each other.
Ethan was there too—not eating, just moving through the room with his phone out, grabbing footage for the documentary.
He had that quiet focus he got behind a camera, invisible in a way that made people forget he was recording.
A wide shot of both tables. A close-up of Tyler mid-impression.
Remy's salt shaker formation. He caught me looking and gave a small nod then angled away toward the Riverside end of the table.
Hale and Eldridge sat at opposite ends. Hale had his beer and a burger. Eldridge had his wine and a steak. The gap between them was three feet of table and about thirty years of different ideas about what rowing was for.
Halfway through dinner, Eldridge excused himself. Stepped outside with his phone. Through the window I could see him pacing the sidewalk, nodding at whatever the person on the other end was saying.
"Always on the phone," Collins muttered, grabbing another roll from the basket.
I watched Eldridge through the glass for a second too long, then turned back to my plate.
Liam was across from me and four seats down. We'd gotten good at this geometry. The exact distance required to be in the same room without being in each other's orbit. But I kept catching his eye—brief, accidental, a quarter second that carried the weight of everything we couldn't say.
"Pass the ketchup?"
I handed it to Collins without thinking. The dinner was moving around me—then Braden leaned across the table.
"Nice time today, Harrington. Sixteen fifty-eight." He said it flat, acknowledging the number without congratulating it. "Hale's been pushing hard for more race-pace work. Sounds like he's getting his way over Eldridge."
"The coaching approach is a joint decision," I said.
"Is it?" He took a sip of his soda. "Because you and Moore are getting all the resources while the rest of us train around your schedule."
"That's not—"
"I'm just saying. Some of us earned our seats through the program. Not through family connections and coaches who play favorites."
Before I could respond, Marcus cut in from two seats over without looking up from his phone.
"Lockwood, you rowed a nineteen forty today. Alex rowed a sixteen fifty-eight. That's a two-minute gap." He pocketed his phone. "Maybe focus on closing that before you start critiquing the coaching structure."
Braden's face went red.
"Nobody asked you, Caldwell."
"Nobody had to." Marcus took a bite of his burger. Calm. Almost bored. "I'm just tired of listening to you bitch about other people's boats when yours is minutes off the pace."
Braden stared at him. Then stood. "Big training day tomorrow." He grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. On his way past me, he leaned down. Close enough that only I could hear.
"Be careful, Harrington. People are always watching."
Then he was gone. The door swung shut. The noise of the restaurant rushed back in. Tyler was still doing impressions at the other end of the table. Most of the room hadn't even noticed.
Marcus slid into the chair next to me. His expression had changed—the lazy amusement gone, replaced by something I hadn't seen from him in weeks.
"He's a prick. Always has been. His dad's the same way," Marcus said.
"I know."
We sat there for a second. Around us, the dinner continued.
"You know what I remember?"
"What?" I asked suspiciously.
"Summer before seventh grade. Your dad made us do that sailing camp at the yacht club."
I hadn't thought about that in years and the memory made me smile. "The one where you capsized the Sunfish?"
"I capsized it on purpose. Lockwood was being an asshole about who got to skipper and I decided if I couldn't have it, nobody could." He grinned. "Your dad was furious. My dad thought it was hilarious."
I nodded and started to laugh. "And your dad bought the yacht club a new Sunfish."
"That's how Caldwells apologize." His grin faded. "Remember the bonfire? You and me snuck out of the cabin and sat on the dock and you told me you hated sailing but you'd never tell your dad."
"I remember."
"That was the first time you ever told me something real.
" His voice had gone softer. Not the Marcus who made cutting remarks and traded in casual cruelty.
The other one—the one who'd been my friend since we were eight.
"I miss that, man. When it was simple. When we were just kids and the biggest problem was who got to steer the boat. "
Something ached in my chest. Because he meant it. I could see it in his face—genuine nostalgia, genuine loss. Marcus wasn't performing sadness. He was actually sad.
"I miss it too," I said. And I meant it—not for what our friendship had become, but for what it used to be. Before Marcus learned cruelty from his father's world. Before I learned to perform from mine.
"Things got complicated," Marcus said.
"Yeah. They did."
He nodded. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. About the party. What I said about Remy. All of it."
I studied him. Looking for the angle, the play. And I couldn't find it.
"Thank you," I said.
"Don't make it weird. I'm still an asshole. I'm just an asshole who's trying."
Marcus retreated back to his seat and rejoined a conversation with some of the other Kingswell guys. I wasn't sure of what to make of it.
Down the table, Hale was talking to one of the Riverside assistant coaches. I caught a fragment—"if they can do that in a double, imagine what we could build around that chemistry next season—" The rest was lost under Tyler's laughter.
The dinner wound down. Tabs settled, jackets grabbed. The two squads filtering out—some heading to bars, some heading back to campus.
Liam passed me in the doorway. Then kept walking. Not toward the bridge—toward the side of the building, away from the streetlight, where the brick wall met a narrow alley that led to the parking lot.
I followed. Couldn't help it.
He was leaning against the wall when I rounded the corner. Arms crossed. The cold air turning his breath to fog. He looked up when he saw me.
"Hey," he said. Soft. The real voice.
"Hey."
We stood there. The restaurant noise muffled behind us. The sidewalk empty. A streetlight buzzing twenty feet away, casting the alley in dim orange.
"What was that with Marcus?" Liam asked.
"What do you mean?"
"I saw you two. Laughing. Talking. He was sitting right next to you for like twenty minutes."
"It was nothing."
"It didn't look like nothing."
"He was just—" I stopped. Tried to figure out how to explain Marcus Caldwell being human for fifteen minutes without it sounding like I was defending him. "He was trying to make up with me, I guess. Apologized about the party. About Remy. Talked about when we were kids."
Liam's eyes went flat. "And you believe him?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"The guy called Remy a faggot and now he's your buddy again?"
"He's not my buddy. He's—it's complicated. We grew up together."
"Right. Kingswell kids. Complicated." There was an edge in his voice that hadn't been there a second ago. Not anger exactly—something closer to jealousy, or the fear underneath it.
"Liam, it's not—"
"No, it's fine. You don't have to explain your friendships to me."
"I'm not explaining my—he sat down and started talking. What was I supposed to do, tell him to fuck off in the middle of a team dinner?"
He looked at me. The edge softening. "No. I know. I just—"
Voices. The restaurant door opening. Tyler's laugh cutting through the night air. Then footsteps—a group of guys spilling out onto the sidewalk, pulling on jackets, someone asking who was heading to the bar.
Liam straightened off the wall. The transformation was instant—the softness gone, his shoulders squaring, his face closing like a shutter. Three seconds from real to performance.
"Better be on time tomorrow morning, Harrington," he said. Loud enough for the guys rounding the corner to hear. "Hale's not going to go easy just because we had a good session."
The words were right. The tone was right. Just two teammates talking about training.
But his eyes—for one second before he turned away—his eyes said I'm sorry.
He walked off. Joined Tyler and Evan on the sidewalk. Became Liam Moore, Riverside rower, rivalry intact, nothing to see.
I stood in the alley and watched him go.
Twenty-four hours ago he'd kissed me on a covered bridge in a town where nobody knew our names. Now he was performing for three guys on a sidewalk because we could lose everything.
I hated it. The whiplash of it.
I turned and walked toward Kingswell.
***
My dorm room. 11 PM.
I was in my boxers pulling off my button-up shirt when my phone buzzed on the desk.
Probably Liam.
My chest welled up with warmth.
I grabbed my phone. Unknown number.
A photo.
Grainy. Dim. Taken through the glass side door of the Riverside Club into the back hallway.
Two figures. Close. One had his hand on the other's jaw. Their mouths pressed together.
Me and Liam.
Congrats on the time today. You two really do have chemistry.
My first instinct was to delete it. Close the message, lock the phone, put it face-down on the desk and pretend I never saw it.
Then I read the message again. Looked at the photo again. My thumb hovering over delete like muscle memory.
Again.
The thought landed cold. We'd done this before. The video. The server. Noah's break-in. All of it—the planning, the risk, the hours of terror—to destroy evidence someone was holding over us.
And here it was. Different photo. Different night. Same game. Someone watching. Someone waiting. Someone choosing when.
Three weeks they'd had this. Through training. Through sixteen fifty-eight. Through every morning we climbed into that boat and performed strangers. They'd watched us build something and waited for the exact moment we started to believe in it.
My hands were steady. My breathing was even. The mask was doing what it always did—absorbing the impact, distributing the weight, keeping the surface intact while everything underneath compressed.
Then I looked at the photo one more time.
Liam's hand on my jaw. The way my body curved into his. The half-second where I'd forgotten to be afraid.
And something shifted.
That kiss was ours.
Not evidence. Not leverage. Not a grainy transaction captured through a window by someone who had no right to it.
That was the night Liam chose me like he wasn't afraid.
That was the night I stopped performing and let someone see me.
That was mine—the most real moment of my life—and someone had been standing on the other side of the glass with their phone out, turning it into a weapon.
The mask cracked.
I threw the phone across the room. It hit the desk and bounced to the floor and I stood there with my chest heaving and my fists clenched and a sound in my throat I didn't recognize—not a word, not controlled, just raw.
No.
Not again. Not the shame. Not the sick, crawling feeling of someone else's eyes on the thing I'd fought hardest to protect. I was done being afraid of a photo. Done letting some anonymous coward with a phone turn the best thing in my life into something I was supposed to hide from.
I picked the phone up off the floor. Crack running through the corner of the screen. The photo still there. Still us. Still beautiful, even through the grain and the glass and the violation of it.
My phone buzzed.
Liam
Today was a good day.
I stared at his message. At the photo above it. Two versions of reality—the one where we were winning, and the one where someone was watching us win and sharpening a knife.
Alex
Can you come over? Now.
Liam
What's wrong?
Alex
Just come. Please. Not good.
I set the phone on the bed in my boxers. Sat in the quiet of my dorm room and stared at the photo of us kissing in a hallway.
Three weeks. Someone had been sitting on this for three weeks.
And now the clock was ticking.