Chapter 10 Liam
Iran across the Riverside campus, through the parking lot, over the bridge. The river was black underneath me, the streetlights throwing long reflections on the surface. Cold air biting my face and my lungs.
Just come. Please. Not good.
Alex didn't say please. Not like that. Not without context, not without the careful framing he put on everything. Please from Alex meant something had broken past the part of him that never asked for anything.
Kingswell's campus opened up ahead. Stone buildings silver in the moonlight. I took the path toward Langford Hall, counting windows the way I had the first time I'd come here — the night I'd told myself I was just coming to talk and ended up in his bed instead.
I was supposed to be finishing reading for my anatomy class but that wasn't happening. This was way more important
Third floor. Room 221. I knocked.
The door opened immediately. He'd been waiting right behind it.
I opened my mouth to ask what happened.
He grabbed my shirt and pulled me inside and kissed me.
Hard. Both hands fisted in my jacket. His mouth on mine before the door was even closed—I heard it swing shut behind me, the lock clicking under his hand.
His teeth caught my bottom lip. His hand found the back of my neck and pulled me in and I stopped thinking about please and not good and whatever emergency had made Alex Harrington ask for help.
I kissed him back. My hands on his waist, his jaw. The heat of him through his t-shirt. His heartbeat hammering against my chest.
When he finally pulled back, I was breathing hard and grinning like an idiot.
"What the hell was that for?" I said.
He didn't smile back.
"Alex. Hey." I put my hand on his face. Tilted it toward me. His eyes were bright. Not soft bright. Something harder. "What's going on? You said not good. You said please. And then you kiss me like—"
"Like what?"
"Like you're trying to prove something."
His jaw tightened. He stepped back. The distance between us filling with something cold.
"Look at my phone. On the bed."
His voice was wrecked. Not the polished Alex voice, not the measured Harrington composure. Something underneath all of that. Raw and shaking and holding itself together by force. Something was seriously wrong.
The phone was on the bed. Screen cracked in one corner. I picked it up.
"Your screen is cracked, what—"
"Just look at the text, Liam"
A photo of us kissing at the mixer.
I read the text aloud. "Congrats on the time today. You two really do have chemistry."
My stomach folded in half.
I sat on the bed. Stared at the screen. That moment was something private to us. Something that belonged in the dark between two people and nowhere else.
Someone had been standing outside with their phone out.
"When," I said.
"Twenty minutes ago."
"Twenty minutes—"
"I texted you immediately."
I looked at the photo again. My own face in the dim hallway light. The way I was holding him—tender, careful, like he might break. The most vulnerable I'd ever been with another person, and someone had turned it into a file on a phone.
The anger came slow. Not the usual kind —not the hot, instant detonation that made me swing at things. This one started deeper. In my gut. In the place where I kept the things that actually mattered to me, the small list of things Liam Moore gave a shit about in this world.
And someone had reached in and taken one.
"It's happening again," I said.
Alex was leaning against the door.
"The video. The illegal race. Anonymous sender." I set the phone on the desk. "Same pattern."
"I know."
"We risked everything to delete that video."
"I know." His face hadn't changed.
"Stop saying I know."
"What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to be pissed off!"
"I threw my phone across the room before you got here." His voice was quiet. "I'm past pissed off."
That stopped me. I looked at the cracked screen. Looked at him. The fracture in the corner suddenly meaning something different. I'd never seen Alex angry before and the thought of the possibility of him losing control kind of scared me.
Then it came to me.
"It's Braden," I said.
"Maybe."
"He was at the mixer. He's been making comments all month. He's got the access, the motive—"
"Or maybe it's not him. If Braden wanted to destroy us, he'd go straight to Eldridge. Straight to my father. He doesn't need to play games."
"Maybe he likes games."
"Or maybe we're looking at the wrong person."
I stood up and now I was getting pissed.
"I'll go to his dorm. Right now. Tonight—"
"And confirm everything." Alex put himself in front of me. "You show up at Braden's room at midnight? You're telling him the photo is real. You're handing him whatever he's building."
"He already has it. He has a photo of us—"
"A photo he sent to me. Not the team. Not my father." Alex held my gaze. "He's holding it. Which means he wants something. And we don't find out what by putting your fist through his door."
I stopped. My anger screaming at me to move, to act, to do the thing I always did—swing first, think later, let the rage carry me past the fear underneath.
But Alex was right. The part of my brain I hated right now knew he was right.
"We need Noah," Alex said.
"Noah's already carrying enough of my shit."
"This isn't about carrying your shit. Someone is threatening us and Noah is the smartest person we know."
I stared at Alex's floor. Perfectly organized. Not a shoe out of place. The room of someone who controlled everything he could because the things he couldn't control were closing in.
"Let's just talk to him tomorrow."
"Fine. Tomorrow."
It was late and there was nothing we could really do tonight.
The anger was draining. Leaving behind something worse—the hollow, gutted feeling of the best weekend of your life cratering into the worst night.
Days ago I was kissing Alex on a covered bridge.
Now I was looking at a photo of a different kiss, weaponized, on a cracked phone screen.
Alex stepped toward me. Put his hand flat on my chest, over my heart.
"Stay," he said.
"If someone sees me leaving in the morning—"
"I don't care about tomorrow morning." His voice cracked. "I need you here tonight. And you need me."
The deal was cracking. Had been cracking since the shower. Since the bridge. Since the first morning in the boathouse. But it didn't matter, tonight we needed each other.
"Yeah. Okay."
We didn't have sex. Changed into whatever Alex had that fit me—his sweatpants too tight, a Kingswell t-shirt that smelled like his detergent. Got into his bed.
He turned off the light. The room went dark except for the glow of campus through the window and the radiator ticking.
Alex pressed his back against my chest. I wrapped my arm around his waist. His heartbeat against my forearm — fast, then slower, then steady.
"Today was still good," he said. His voice small. The voice of someone holding onto something that was slipping. "The time. The dinner. That was real. This doesn't erase it."
I kissed the back of his neck.
"Two photos," I said. "Theirs and ours. Ours is better."
He almost laughed. Not quite—the exhale of someone who needed to but couldn't get all the way there.
"Yeah," he said. "Ours is better."
I tightened my arm around him. His hand found mine on his stomach. Laced our fingers together. Held tight.
Tomorrow we'd go to Noah. Tomorrow we'd figure out who was watching.
Tonight, I held him.
And for now, that was enough.