Chapter 15 Alex
Iwoke up wrong.
Not the slow, surfacing kind of waking—the kind where your body jerks because something is off and your brain hasn't caught up to what it is yet. My stomach lurched. My head pounded—a thick, heavy pressure behind my eyes that made the dark room pulse.
Liam's arm was around my waist.
I could feel it before I could see anything. The weight of it. The warmth of his chest pressed against my back. His breathing slow and steady behind me—the deep, even rhythm of someone actually sleeping. Actually at peace.
I sat up and his arm fell away.
The room was dark. Not dawn-dark—middle-of-the-night dark.
My mouth tasted like something had died in it. Vodka and stomach acid and the chemical residue of whatever Collins's girlfriend had mixed into those cups. My shirt was wrinkled, still on. Shoes off. The blanket had been tucked around me—tight, careful. The way someone would tuck in a child.
Liam did that.
Fragments were surfacing. Not in order—in flashes. The party. The porch. Braden's face close to mine. Your little boyfriend. The texts—my own words swimming on the screen, typos and confessions I couldn't take back.
Oh no.
Then the dorm. Liam's hoodie. His hands untying my shoes.
You're the best thing that's ever happened to me.
Oh God.
The memory hit like a fist. My voice—slurred, raw, stripped of every defense I'd ever built. Telling him things I'd never said sober. Things I'd barely admitted to myself.
I can't stop thinking about you.
You're so fucking hot.
My hand. On him. Through his jeans. The hardness I'd found there and the way he'd grabbed my wrist and stopped me—
I pressed my palms against my eyes. The nausea wasn't just from the alcohol.
I'll just have you fuck me another day. In front of everyone. Who cares anymore. We're just two gay boys.
I'd said that. Out loud. To Liam.
Every other time we'd been together, it was equal.
Both of us wanting. Both of us there. This was different.
I'd been falling apart and he'd caught me.
I'd offered myself and he'd said no—not because he didn't want me, but because he wasn't like that.
He'd held my wrist like I was something worth being careful with.
Nobody had ever been careful with me before.
And that was the thing I couldn't sit with.
Not the embarrassment. Not the words. The tenderness.
Because if Liam could look at me like that—wrecked, drunk, graceless—and still choose to protect me from myself, then what I felt for him was bigger than I'd been pretending. And what he felt for me was real.
It was easier to be angry.
"There's water on the nightstand," Liam said.
I flinched. Turned my head. He was behind me in the bed—propped on one elbow, watching me in the dim light. His hair was messy. His eyes were soft and tired and concerned in a way that made my chest ache.
He'd stayed. In my bed. All night.
"You stayed," I said.
"I promised I would."
I picked up the glass. Drank. Set it down. Tried to reassemble the pieces. Brick by brick. The composure. The control. The measured, calculated architecture that had kept me alive since I was fourteen.
"What time is it?"
"Four-something."
I nodded. Pressed my palms against my eyes again. Buying time. Trying to sort the fragments into something I could manage.
"Did I—" I stopped. The question was dangerous. The answer might be worse. "What did I say? When we got back here."
Maybe he didn't remember.
No. I was drunk. Not him.
"You said some things."
"What things?"
"Things you meant."
His voice was gentle.
But it was too late, the Harrington composure was reassembling. I was pissed at him for going to Braden. I needed to control this—him. I could feel it clicking into place—not because I wanted it, but because I didn't know how to exist without it. The walls going up. The mask sliding on.
My father's voice in my head: Control yourself, Alexander.
"You went to Braden," I said.
The gentleness left his eyes. Not all at once. But enough.
"Alex—"
"You went to Braden."
"Yeah. I did."
I picked up the water glass. Put it down without drinking. My hands were almost steady. Almost.
"After I asked you not to."
"I know."
"So why?"
He sat up. The blanket pooling around his waist. "Because he's been in my face for weeks and I couldn't—"
"You couldn't sit with it." I said it before he could finish. "You couldn't just let it be."
"Someone is threatening us. What was I supposed to do, nothing?"
"Yes." I stood up and crossed the room, the nausea rolling through my stomach. "That's exactly what we agreed."
"It didn't feel like enough."
"It wasn't about enough. It was about trust." My voice was rising despite myself. "And now Braden's at a party calling you my boyfriend—"
"He doesn't know what he's—"
"—telling me we've got some secret and he's going to find out what it is—"
"He's fishing. He doesn't actually know anything."
"He knows something. Because you gave it to him." My voice cracked on the last word. "I had to stand on that porch and use the family rivalry. The Lockwood garbage. Thirty years of my father's bullshit. Because I had nothing else. Because you put me there."
"I went after him for you," Liam said, as he got out of the bed and stepped towards me.
"I didn't ask you to."
"You didn't have to."
"That's the problem. You decided. Without me."
"I was trying to—"
"What? Protect me?" I crossed my arms. "I don't need you to protect me. I need you to listen to me."
The tension in his face turned to remembrance. Like he'd heard those words before from someone else.
"You're right," he said.
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Agree with me so I'll stop being angry."
"It's not—I'm telling you you're right."
Liam's face softened but for some stupid reason I didn't. It was my chance to level with him but something inside me took advantage of the opening.
"Then why did you do it?" My voice went up. "If you knew—if you knew before you walked out to that parking lot—why?"
Not good.
"Because I was scared!" he said, louder than either of us expected, and a look on his face that proved it.
We both paused, then he continued. "Because someone has a photo of us and I don't know who they are and I can't—I don't know how to be scared without doing something. I don't know how to just sit there."
"So you made it worse."
"Yeah. I made it worse."
Silence. Both of us breathing hard.
I should have stopped there. He'd admitted it. He was sorry. I could see it in his face—the remorse, the exhaustion, the specific pain of someone who knew they'd failed the person they cared about.
But the shame from earlier was still burning in my chest. So I did what I was taught. I went deeper. Found the place where I could draw blood.
"You know what I think?" I said. Quieter. The shift in my voice—from anger to something colder, more precise—was a weapon I'd learned from my father. I hated that I knew how to use it. "I think you went after Braden because you've already decided this ends."
His face changed. "What?"
"You've been waiting for it to fall apart since the day we started.
You don't think you get to keep this." I was looking at him and seeing everything—the boy from the south side of the lake, the kid who watched rich families come and go every summer, the person who'd learned that good things were temporary because they always had been.
"You don't think you get to keep me. So you're trying to control how you lose me. "
The words landed. I saw them hit. Watched his expression go from confusion to something raw and exposed—the look of someone who'd been cut in a place they didn't know was unprotected.
"That's bullshit," he said.
"Is it?"
"I was the one who wanted to stay together at the lake." His voice was shaking. "You ended it. Not me. You."
"Liam—"
"I threw away my relationship with Emily. For you." His chest rising and falling too fast. "I broke into a building for you. I drove across town tonight to carry you off a couch."
Each word landed like a stone. Because they were true. Every one of them. He had chosen me. Again and again and again. At cost. At risk. With everything to lose and nothing to gain except me.
"So don't tell me I've already decided this ends." His voice broke. "I've chosen you every single time. Every time."
The silence that followed was unbearable.
"And the one person in this room who keeps deciding it's over," he said. Quiet now. "Isn't me."
I couldn't breathe.
Because he was right. Every exit had been mine. Every time we got close to something real, I was the one who flinched. Who shut the door.
"An hour ago you were in my arms," Liam said. "Telling me I was the best thing that ever happened to you."
My shoulders tightened. The shame flooding back. Hot and total.
"Now there's something wrong with me?"
"I was drunk."
"You were honest."
"I was drunk, Liam."
"Those aren't different things and you know it."
I turned away. Walked to the window. Put my hand on the glass. The cold seeped into my palm—grounding, real, the only solid thing in a room that wasn't spinning.
What am I doing?
"That's what you do," he said behind me. "You let me in and then you shut the door. Every time. And I'm left standing trying to figure out which version is real."
"Both of them." Barely a whisper. "Both of them are real."
"Then stop choosing the one that pushes me away."
I closed my eyes. My reflection in the glass was a ghost—transparent, hollow. The version of me that existed at 4 AM in a dorm room with the person I wanted more than anything standing behind me, asking me to give up control.
And I couldn't do it.
The walls were already up. I could feel them—solid, familiar, the architecture of twenty years of training. Harringtons don't lose control. Harringtons don't break. Harringtons don't want things that could destroy the family name.
The drunk version of me had been free and said what he felt.
And the worst part—the thing that would keep me awake for days after this—was that I could see myself doing it. Could watch the mask slide back on. Could feel the words forming in my mouth that would undo everything.
"Maybe this was a mistake," I said.
I heard him go still behind me.
"Don't."
"Us. Off the water." I kept my hand on the glass. Kept my back to him. Because if I turned around and saw his face I wouldn't be able to finish. "On the water we're perfect. Off the water we just—we keep doing this."
"You're doing it right now." His voice was rough. "Exactly what I just said. Shutting the door. Right in front of me."
I knew he was right.
"Please go," I said.
Silence.
I didn't respond. Couldn't. My throat had closed around everything I wanted to say—I'm sorry too. I'm scared. Don't leave. I don't mean it. I can't stop doing this. Help me stop doing this.
The sound of him finding his shoes. The zip of his hoodie. His footsteps crossing the room.
The click of the door latch.
And then silence. The complete, total, devastating silence of a room with one person in it who'd just pushed away the only person who mattered.
I stood at the window. My hand on the glass. The quad was dark and empty below. Fog pressing against the buildings.
My shoulders were shaking. I couldn't stop them. The tears came—not the dramatic, cinematic kind. The quiet kind. The kind where your chest hurts and your eyes burn and you're too exhausted to hold it in anymore.
I've chosen you every single time. And the one person who keeps deciding it's over isn't me.
He was right.
He was right and I'd done it again. Watched myself do it. Felt the words leave my mouth—maybe this was a mistake—and known they were a lie even as I said them. Chosen the mask over the truth. Chosen fear over him.
My father's son. Right to the end.
I slid down the wall beneath the window. Sat on the floor. Knees pulled to my chest. The cold seeping through my shirt from the plaster behind me.
The room was perfectly organized around me. Desk clear. Books alphabetized. Bed made with corners that could survive inspection—except for the dent where two bodies had been lying, the pillow that still smelled like Liam.
I pressed my face against my knees and let it come. All of it. The sobs that shook my whole body. The grief that had no bottom.
Not for what I'd lost.
For what I'd thrown away.