Chapter 5
Alex's dorm room smelled like the expensive soap he used.
I'd crossed the footbridge at nine. Noah hadn't asked where I was going.
He just looked up from his textbook, saw me grabbing my jacket, and said "tell Alex I said hi.
" It made me smirk and heat rise in my body, it felt almost normal.
The walk across the bridge had been fast. Not because of the cold but because I needed to know.
All day my mind kept circling back to Alex's text.
Whatever he'd found out, it was bad enough to make Alex Harrington send something that raw over text.
Alex was sitting on his bed with his back against the wall when I came in. Laptop open. Not looking at it.
"Hey."
"Hey." I closed the door.
"How was the rest of your day?" he asked.
"Fine. A&P. Dining hall. Tyler made me look at boats on his phone for forty-five minutes."
"Boats?"
"He wants to buy a used sailboat. I have no idea."
Alex smiled. But it was thin. Something underneath it waiting to come out.
I sat on the edge of his bed. Pulled off my shoes.
And slid across the mattress until my back was against the wall, adjacent to Alex.
The mattress was better than mine, some kind of memory foam situation that made my Riverside dorm bed feel like a park bench by comparison.
I didn't say anything about it. I never said anything about it.
"So," I said. "Tell me."
He closed the laptop and set it on the nightstand.
"Braden didn't do it."
"You said that in the text."
"I know." He pulled his knees up. Arms around them. "I accused him in the parking lot after practice. And he was genuinely pissed."
"What did he say?"
"That blackmail isn't his style. That he comes at people to their face. Which—" Alex tilted his head. "He's right. That's exactly what he does. He cornered me at the party. He's been talking shit since freshman year. None of that is sneaky. It's just… direct."
"Okay." I watched Alex while his mind worked through it all.
"And then he started saying how he really felt which is why I don't think it was him."
"What did he say?"
"Talked about all the pressure his father gives him to beat me. Like his whole existence is this family rivalry."
"Jesus. You legacy guys…"
"He said our fathers use us as extensions. His therapist told him that."
"He has a therapist?"
"Apparently."
I sat with that for a second. The heating vent rattled on.
"So if it's not Braden," I said. "Then who?"
Alex looked at me. Steady. His eyes nervous and almost pleading. "You're not going to like this."
"It's okay. Just tell me."
Alex exhaled.
"I think it's Marcus."
The name sat in the room.
I felt the heat behind my ribs, the tightening in my hands.
The old program booting up. Find him. Hit him.
Make it stop. My body had been solving problems with fists since I was fourteen.
Since my dad's empty chair at the kitchen table made me so angry I put my hand through the drywall in the hallway.
But I'd been here before. And I knew where it led.
Punching Marcus at the party hadn't stopped anything.
Slamming Braden into his car hadn't gotten answers.
Instead it had terrified someone who might be innocent.
Snapping at Emily on the bridge hadn't protected me either.
It had made the person I was hurting feel crazy for asking the right questions.
Every time I swung, someone who didn't deserve it caught the impact.
So I sat there. Let the heat rise and pass through me instead of acting on it. Leaned my head back against the wall. Stared at the ceiling.
"Talk me through it," I said.
Alex blinked. He'd braced for the detonation but got silence instead.
"Well, the timing," he said. "After our illegal race, Marcus had already known about it. He said the group chat was blowing up. And I didn't think anything of it — but it makes sense now. He probably recorded the video and started the rumor himself."
"Yeah," I said. "That tracks."
"And then we deleted the video, so he didn't have evidence anymore." Alex looked at me. "But then you punched him at the party."
I laughed. Couldn't help it. "Yeah. I did."
Alex smiled and shook his head, then locked back in. "Which pissed him off. And then I stopped talking to him. Called him out for being a bigot. So now he's pissed and he's got no evidence."
"So he had to go get more."
"Exactly. And I think it was him at the mixer. Outside the window when we kissed. He took that photo."
I nodded slowly. "Okay. Yeah. But what about Braden? Braden was there in the locker room. He was in the boathouse that time we kissed. Plus all the comments he's been making."
"I know. And Braden was pissed that I beat him and Mason in the singles trial. He had reasons." Alex rubbed his face. "But after talking to him today… I don't think so. I believe him."
"I mean, you're kind of right about Marcus. He was giving me shit back at Brackett Lake for no reason. Just because."
Alex got quiet. "What if that's when it started."
I turned my head toward Alex.
"Remember, I defended you on the dock? When Marcus was being an asshole?"
"Yeah... when isn't he, but yeah."
"What if he saw us at the bonfire?"
As soon as he finished that sentence, I could feel that moment in my body, grabbing Alex by the shirt and kissing him for the first time. It made me sick that one of the best moments of my life might have started this whole thing.
"You think he saw us kiss?"
"Probably."
I stared at the ceiling.
"Shit," I said.
"I'm sorry," Alex said.
"For what?"
"For all of this. Marcus is my problem. My world. My—" He waved his hand. "Legacy bullshit. And I dragged you into it."
"Alex."
"I'm serious. You didn't sign up for any of this. The Harrington family drama, the anonymous texts, the—"
"Alex." I moved next to him on the bed. "You didn't drag me into anything. I kissed you back. I kissed you back and I'd do it again."
His eyes were bright.
"This isn't your fault," I said. "Marcus being a bigot isn't your fault. Your father being — whatever your father is — isn't your fault. You don't have to apologize."
He was quiet. His knee pressed against mine.
"We'll deal with Marcus," I said. "Together"
"Okay."
"Alright, then it's settled."
The tension in his shoulders eased a little bit.
"You said something on the bench this morning," he said. "About not being ready."
"Yeah."
"I want to understand. Not to push. Just — what are you actually afraid of?"
I looked at my hands. The calluses from the erg handle. The roughness that never went away.
"It's not the scholarship," I said. "I know they're not going to kick me out for being bi."
"Then what?"
"It's the future." I tried to find the words. "Like a scout could see me row. Write down my name. But then by time it gets to a program director, someone finds out. They don't like it. The door just… doesn't open. And nobody ever tells me why."
Alex was listening.
"I'm afraid of getting passed over. Being the guy with great splits who somehow never gets picked for the development camp.
Never gets the call from the national program.
And everyone just kind of shrugs and says it's competitive, there were a lot of good candidates.
" I swallowed. "And I don't want to spend the rest of my life wondering if it as because I liked guys. "
"You're not going to get passed over," Alex said.
"You don't know that."
"What did you pull today?"
"Six twenty two."
"You're amazing Liam." I know scouts watched you at the Charles and told Eldridge you had the best catch-to-drive ratio in the field. I know that Hale just named you the guy coordinating winter training." He put his hand on my thigh. "They'd be idiots to pass you over."
"Idiots exist, Alex."
"Then we'll deal with the idiots too."
Something about the way he said we. Not sympathetically. Matter-of-factly. Like the idiots were just another item on a list he was working through.
"Liam. Look at me."
I looked at him.
"I'm going to handle Marcus. I'm going to talk to him and I'm going to end this.
And whatever my father is planning… I'll deal with it.
That's my side of the river." His hand moved from my thigh to my face.
Thumb against my cheek. "Your side of the river is rowing.
Being the best. Getting the call. And I'm going to make sure nobody gets in the way of that. "
"You can't promise that."
"I'm promising it anyway."
His face was close.
I kissed him. It wasn't a rough kiss. It was just — there. His lips warm and dry and steady. His hand sliding from my jaw to the back of my neck. My hand finding his waist, the strip of skin between his shirt and his jeans.
He pulled me closer. My chest against his. I could feel his heartbeat through our shirts — fast, faster than his calm voice had suggested. He wasn't as steady as he sounded. He was just better at hiding it.
"Come here," he said. Pulling me down. We shifted until we were lying side by side, facing each other. His bed barely wide enough for both of us. My knee between his. His hand on my hip.
We kissed again. Slower. His mouth opening against mine.
My hand under his shirt now, spread flat against the small of his back, feeling the muscles shift as he pressed closer.
He was hard against my thigh. I was hard against his.
Neither of us moved toward it. It was just there.
The fact of wanting, steady and alive, held between our bodies without needing to go anywhere.
"Stay," he said. Against my mouth.
"You don't have to ask twice."
Alex smiled, his eyes lighting up.
"You're beautiful you know that?"
He pulled back enough to look at me. His hair messy against the pillow. His eyes dark.
"It's always been you," he said. "I need you to know that. Whatever happens with Marcus, with my father, with any of it. It's you."
I pressed my forehead against his. Eyes closed. Breathing him in.
"I'm going to take care of this," he said. "I'm going to take care of you."
Something in my chest seized. Not the good kind. The scared kind.
Nobody had ever said that to me before. And instead of it feeling like relief, it felt like standing on a ledge.
Because I wanted it so badly — wanted someone to carry this with me, wanted to not be the guy who handled everything alone — and wanting something that badly meant it could destroy me if it disappeared.
And Alex had disappeared before. Twice. The last day of summer before freshman year. The 4 AM in his dorm room when he called me a mistake. Both times I'd let him in and both times he'd shut the door and I'd stood on the other side wondering what I'd done wrong.
He was different now. I could feel it. The hand on my back wasn't the hand of someone about to pull away. The voice saying I'm going to take care of you wasn't the voice that had told me to go.
I felt it in my body in a way my brain couldn't override.
And somewhere underneath the warmth of him, underneath how much I wanted this to be real, there was a kid sitting at a kitchen table watching his father's chair stay empty.
Learning the lesson early: people who say they'll stay don't always stay.
I wanted it to be Alex. When my mom asked me — who's carrying you? — I'd wanted to say his name and I couldn't.
And I still wanted to it to be him but my body wouldn't let me believe it even though he just said he would. I just didn't know if I could survive being wrong about it again.
So I did the thing I could do.
I pulled him closer and I stayed with him for the night.