Chapter 4
Aquad.
The word kept turning in my head while I pulled the erg handle. Two thousand meters. Legs, back, arms. Arms, back, legs. The chain hissing and returning. The monitor ticking down.
A quad would be eligible for Henley. The Royal Regatta.
My father had framed it on his office wall — a photo of himself at twenty-two, standing on the bank of the Thames in a Kingswell blazer, holding a trophy he'd won in a four that no longer existed.
He'd pointed at it my entire childhood. That's the standard, Alexander. That's what this family does.
Henley had been his dream for me since I was old enough to hold an oar.
And the truth was, for a long time it had been mine too.
Or I'd thought it was mine. The line between what I wanted and what I'd been trained to want had blurred so long ago that I couldn't find it anymore.
Like trying to see where the river ended and the current began.
But doing it with Liam. In a quad we'd built together. That would be something real. Something that belonged to us, not to the Harrington name or the donor wall or the photo in my father's office.
If it was even what I wanted.
The monitor hit zero. 6:28. I sat back. Lungs burning. Sweat running down my temples.
Across the room, Liam was leaning back on his machine, chest heaving. He caught me looking.
And smiled.
It wasn't the nod the guys do. It was his smile for me only. Crinkled eyes, sweat on his forehead, his whole face open for a half-second before he caught himself and looked away.
I looked away too. But feeling it gave me was still in my body, warm and stupid and dangerous.
I wanted to walk across that room. Sit on the erg next to him.
Put my hand on his knee and say something dumb and watch him pretend to be annoyed about it.
I wanted to not calculate the distance between us or count the eyes in the room or run the risk assessment that fired automatically every time I felt something real in a public space.
I wanted to be done with this.
Ethan's voice from yesterday: Come out because you want Liam. Not because you're sick of your father.
Both. It was both. And I didn't know how to make the first reason louder when the second one was screaming.
Practice ended. Everyone filtered out. Kingswell guys heading toward the foot bridge to cross the river. Riverside guys scattering toward campus. I headed out the back door toward the parking lot.
Braden was alone.
He was standing by the far end of the lot, near the fence where the path split. Bag on the ground. Phone in his hand. Not scrolling. Just standing there, looking at the river.
I should've kept walking. The smart thing. The Ethan-approved thing.
But I was tired of smart.
The thought that had been sitting in my stomach since yesterday. If it was Braden, I needed to know. If it wasn't, I needed to know that too.
I walked over. Shoes crunching on gravel. He looked up. The jaw tightened. The competitive scan.
"Harrington."
"Lockwood."
I almost turned around.
What am I doing?
I'd told Liam we'd figure it out together. I'd told Ethan I'd be smart. And here I was, walking up to Braden Lockwood alone in a parking lot because I couldn't sit with it for one more day.
Too late.
"Can I ask you something? I need you to be straight with me."
Braden pocketed his phone. Crossed his arms. "Depends."
"Someone's been sending me anonymous messages trying to blackmail me." I kept my voice level. "And people keep pointing at you."
Something shifted behind his eyes. Not guilt. Something harder.
"People keep pointing at me?" He repeated.
"You've got motive. You've been in my face since—"
"Moore already had this conversation with me. Except his version involved attacking me."
"I know what happened."
"Good. Then you know I've already been accused once for shit I didn't do." He stepped closer. "So that's three times now. Moore with his fists, you on that porch, and now this. Three times I've been the guy everyone blames."
The anger was real.
"I'm asking. Not accusing."
"No. You walked over here with your mind made up. Same as Moore." His jaw worked. "You know what the problem is? Something goes sideways for Alex Harrington, and everyone looks at me."
"Come on, Braden. You've been talking shit since freshman year. You cornered me in the locker room after the singles trial in September. You threatened me. Don't act like you've been minding your own business this whole time."
Braden just stared at me for a second.
"Yeah," he said. "I did."
The he shook his head.
"Because you took my seat."
"What?"
"You were supposed to chase. Eldridge put you behind me and Mason so we could set the pace.
And you blew past both of us like we weren't there.
" He wasn't yelling. His voice had gone flat.
"I know you're the better rower. Everybody knows.
But that was my shot. That was the one thing I had that wasn't about your last name, and you took it because you could. "
I didn't say anything because he wasn't wrong. I remembered the exact moment. The river opening up, the decision to stop chasing. It was the moment that started all of this. I'd never thought about what it cost him.
"So yeah. I came at you. I talked shit. I got in your face."
He picked up his bag, about to turn away then stopped. He dropped his bag, he wasn't done.
"Because what else am I supposed to do? That's what I'm here for. That's what we're both here for."
"What are you talking about?"
"My father put me here so I could be the other Lockwood fighting the other Harrington. That's the job. That's all I am here. And the truth is I'm fucking tired of it. Because this whole thing revolves around you. Harrington this. Harrington that. And I'm just here to make it look competitive."
"That's not—"
"And all I get for it is shit from my father.
Every Sunday. What were Harringtons splits?
Did Harrington get the scout's attention?
Did you beat him yet?" His voice cracked on the edge of something held too long.
"Not how are you or good race. Just — did you beat the Harrington kid?
And then people come for me for shit I haven't done. "
The parking lot was empty. Just us and the cold.
"All I get is shit from my father too," I said.
Braden looked at me.
"After the Charles. At the reception. Everyone celebrating and he pulls me aside and starts talking about next semester. Making plans I didn't ask for. No congratulations. No 'good race son.'"
"Sounds about right."
"I didn't choose Kingswell either. My father chose all of it."
Braden stared at me. The anger still there but something else underneath. The look of a person seeing something they hadn't expected.
"Our fathers don't even talk to each other," I said. "They just use us. Keep the whole thing going through us like we're—"
"Extensions." Braden's voice was flat. "That's the word my therapist used."
"You have a therapist?"
"Don't look so surprised, Harrington. Us rich kids get fucked up too."
I exhaled out of my nose. I knew it too well, except I didn't have a therapist and probably should. It was like all of a sudden we talked about the thing that we were both suffering from on different ends of this family rivalry and we got each other.
"I don't care what's going on with you and Moore," Braden said. He adjusted the strap on his bag. Not looking at me. "That's your business."
"Okay."
"I care about being fast. That's it." He looked up. "Find your texter. But look somewhere else. Because anonymous messages and photos and all that — that's beneath me. That's not how I operate."
He turned and walked toward his car. His footsteps on the gravel getting quieter.
I stood in the parking lot.
That's beneath me.
He was right. Braden was a lot of things — aggressive, bitter, relentless — but he wasn't sneaky. He came at you head-on and didn't apologize for the damage. Kind of like Liam.
The person texting me was different. Patient and calculated. Someone who understood the architecture of my life well enough to know which buttons to push and when.
I didn't have proof. But I had a shape. And the shape was starting to look like someone I'd known since I was eight years old.
I crossed the parking lot. Headed for the bridge. The cold wind cut through my warm-ups.
Halfway across, my phone buzzed.
Liam
I saw you talking to Braden. What happened?
I stopped walking on the bridge. The river underneath me. Both campuses visible — Riverside on the left, Kingswell on the right.
Alex
Yeah. I'll tell you later. It's not him.
Liam
How do you know?
I thought about Braden's face. The anger that was too real to be performed. The exhaustion underneath it. The father on the phone every Sunday. Three accusations for shit he hadn't done.
Alex
Because I recognized him.
Liam
what?
Alex
I know who it is. And I really wish I didn't. We need to talk.
Liam
Who? Tell me.
Alex
You're not going to like it. Let's meet later. My dorm.