Chapter 22 Liam
The Riverside boathouse was dark except for the bay lights—the overhead fluorescents that hummed and flickered and cast everything in that flat, industrial glow that made dawn feel like midnight.
The shells hung in their racks like sleeping animals.
The bay smelled the way it always did—boat wax, river damp, the ghost of a thousand practices soaked into the concrete.
I stood by our double. Hand on the hull. The fiberglass cold under my palm.
Eight days since Hale told me to fix it. Six since the bridge. Two since Alex and I started rowing together again—if you could call it that. The sessions had been better. Not good. Better. The boat no longer dead. Just... quiet. Careful. Two people relearning how to breathe in the same space.
But today was the deadline. Full Charles simulation.
Three miles. Hale would be timing from the launch with Eldridge beside him.
And whatever number showed up on that stopwatch would decide everything—whether we kept the entry, whether Marcus or Braden got our seats, whether the last month of training and fighting and breaking and rebuilding meant anything at all.
Footsteps on the concrete.
I turned.
Alex was coming through the bay door. Gym bag on his shoulder, hair still damp at the edges, coffee in hand.
He was wearing the Kingswell quarter-zip over a white t-shirt, and even running on no sleep, even with shadows under his eyes, he looked good.
The kind of good that made my chest tight if I let myself look too long.
I looked too long.
"Morning," he said.
"Morning."
He set his coffee on the bench. Dropped his bag. Walked to the other side of the shell and put his hand on the hull—mirroring mine. Both of us standing there with our palms on the fiberglass. The boat between us.
"You ready?" he asked.
"Yeah. You?"
"No." A beat. "But I'm here."
"That's enough."
"You want to warm up early? Get some water under us before everyone else shows up?"
Alex nodded. "Yeah. I want to feel the boat before Hale's watching."
We lifted the double off the rack
The hull settling onto our shoulders—his end and mine, the weight distributed the way it had been a hundred times before. We walked in step toward the bay door. Out onto the gravel path. Down to the dock.
The river was still dark. The mist low on the surface—thin enough to see through but thick enough to feel. The air cold enough to bite. Our breath making clouds that dissolved into the grey.
We set the shell in the water. I held it steady while Alex locked in his oars. He held it steady while I locked in mine. The boat rocked on the current—that familiar, delicate balance.
I climbed in first. My feet finding the stretchers and seat sliding into position. Then Alex behind me. The hull dipping under his weight, steadying, settling.
"Ready?" I said.
"Ready."
We pushed off.
The first strokes were careful. The way you'd touch a bruise to see if it still hurt.
My blade entered the water. Catch. The pressure through my legs on the drive—quads loading, hamstrings firing, the power transferring through my core and out through the oar handle. Finish. Release. Recovery. The blade lifting clean, the boat gliding forward.
Behind me, Alex matched. A half-second delay—bow following stroke, the way Eldridge had drilled into us. His catch landing right where mine had been. His drive matching my pressure.
The boat moved. Not singing. Not dead. Somewhere in between—alive but guarded. Like us.
We rowed in silence for a minute. Two. The rhythm settling. The dock getting smaller behind us. The mist opening up ahead.
Then I said something I'd never said in this boat before.
"I'm going to build to twenty-six. Tell me if I'm rushing."
A pause. In the old days—before the fight—I wouldn't have asked. Wouldn't have needed to. We'd rowed on instinct and silence and the unspoken connection that coaches spent careers chasing.
But instinct had gotten us an 18:23. Silence had gotten us a dead boat. And unspoken wasn't working anymore.
"You're good," Alex said from behind me. "Rate feels right. Your port blade's going a bit deep on the catch."
I adjusted. Shallower entry. The boat responded—a tiny lift in the run between strokes. Barely perceptible. But I felt it. And I knew Alex felt it too.
"Better?" I asked.
"Better."
Behind us, the boathouse was waking up. Voices carried across the water—doors banging open, the scrape of shells being pulled from racks. I caught the low rumble of the launch engine turning over in the marina slip. A four was already at the dock, someone barking commands about port-side rigging.
The world filling in around us. But out here, in the mist, we had a head start.
We built the rate. Twenty-four. Twenty-six. The strokes getting faster but not rushed—each one landing clean, the boat accelerating smoothly.
"Wind's picking up from starboard," Alex said. "I'm adjusting pressure."
"Got it."
I felt it—a slight shift in his drive, compensating for the crosswind. The boat held its line instead of drifting. Seamless.
"Okay," I said. "This feels—"
"Yeah," he said. "It does."
Hale's launch appeared at the starting mark. Engine idling. Eldridge beside him with the clipboard. Hale with the megaphone in one hand, stopwatch in the other.
We turned and headed back to meet them.
"Early start boys?" Hale said.
"Just getting warmed-up," I replied, as we aligned our boat at the starting mark.
"Full simulation," Hale's voice crackled across the water. "Three miles. Race pace. Buoy markers at the turn points. This is your Charles." A pause. "Make it count."
My heart rate spiked. Not from fear—from the specific, electric readiness that came before the best pieces. The feeling I'd had at the invitational. The feeling I'd had the first time Alex and I rowed together and the boat had come alive beneath us.
"You good?" I asked over my shoulder.
"I'm good."
Hale paused for a moment.
"Ready…? Go."
I drove.
The first stroke was clean. Hard. The kind of committed, full-body drive that came from knowing exactly what was at stake.
Behind me, Alex matched it—not following, matching.
His blade entering the water with that precise, technical catch that made Eldridge's coaching worthwhile.
My instinct. His refinement. The combination that made us faster than anyone here.
The boat surged.
"That's it," Alex said. Under his breath. Not coaching—just confirming. That's the feeling.
We built through the first five hundred meters. The mist parting around the hull. The river opening up. Hale's launch keeping pace off our port quarter, the engine a low constant rumble.
"Rate's at twenty-eight," I called.
"Build to thirty at the bridge marker."
"Ready?"
"Go."
We kicked. The rating climbing. Two strokes. Four. The boat lifting—that thing it did when everything was right, when the hull seemed to rise out of the water and skim the surface instead of cutting through it. The run between strokes lengthening. The speed building without effort.
"That's the run," I said. Jerry's word. The thing I'd been chasing since I was fourteen in a borrowed single.
"Hold it," Alex said. "Don't chase it. Let it come to us."
Us.
He was right. When the boat was singing you didn't push harder—you trusted it. Let the hull do the work. Stayed smooth.
The bridge marker passed. Buoy turn ahead—Hale had set them to simulate the Charles's bends, the spots where boats stacked up and lanes narrowed and the water got choppy from traffic.
"Turn coming," I said. "Inside pressure."
"Ready."
We leaned into it. My left blade pulling harder, Alex's right matching. The double carved through the turn—not wide, not sloppy. Clean. The bow pointing true out of the bend and into the next straight.
"Nice," Alex said.
"You too."
One mile down. Two to go. My lungs were settling into the sustainable burn—the 5K pace that lived right on the edge of comfortable. Deep inhale on the recovery. Sharp exhale on the drive. The thin November air cold enough to taste.
"Split check?" Alex asked.
I glanced at the rate monitor strapped to the gunwale. "Pace is three twenty-two per five hundred."
He did the math faster than I could. "That's sixteen-ten over the full distance."
Sixteen-ten. Thirty seconds faster than the 16:40.
"Don't think about it," Alex said. Like he could hear the number landing in my head. "Just row."
"Since when do you tell me not to think?"
"Since you started overthinking."
I laughed—a short, sharp bark that echoed off the water and startled a bird on the bank. And behind me, I heard something I hadn't heard in weeks. Alex laughing too. Quiet. Almost private. But there.
We rowed.
The middle mile was where races were won or lost. The glamorless stretch where the start adrenaline was gone and the finish sprint was too far away and all you had was your body and your partner and the willingness to hurt.
My quads were screaming. The lactic acid building in my hamstrings—that deep, familiar ache that meant I was working at the edge. My hands raw on the oar handles despite the tape. The sweat running down my spine despite the cold.
"I'm starting to feel it," I said.
"Me too. Stay long on the drive. Don't shorten up."
"You're dropping your left hand on the finish."
"Am I?"
"Half an inch. You're feathering early."
A pause. Three strokes. "Fixed."
"Better."
This. This was what we'd never done before. Before the fight, we'd rowed on instinct—bodies syncing without words, the connection so natural it felt like magic. And it was. But magic broke when the magicians stopped trusting each other.
This wasn't magic. This was work. Two people choosing, stroke by stroke, to communicate. To be honest.
The boat wasn't singing the way it had before. It was doing something better.
It was talking.
"Two miles," Alex said. "Pace holding."
"How are you doing?"
"Lungs on fire. Legs dying."
"So the usual."
"The usual."