Chapter 6
The footbridge was empty at six in the morning.
I crossed from the Kingswell side with my gear bag over my shoulder and Liam's warmth still fading from my skin.
He'd left at five-thirty, kissed my cheek and slipped out quiet, the way he always left.
I'd heard the door click and lay there for a minute with my face in the pillow where his head had been.
It smelled like his shampoo. The cheap kind.
The kind that shouldn't make my chest ache but did.
Last night had cracked something open. Not the Marcus conversation, but when we stopped talking and just lay there. His arm across my chest and his breathing going slow and his body pressed against mine. Both of us hard and neither of us doing anything about it. Just being there with each other.
We'd never done that before, there was always something attached — sex. But not last night, Liam just held on. Like I was something worth keeping despite how my legacy was putting his dreams in jeopardy.
He was still choosing to stay. After everything that happened between us. And I was not going to waste it.
Marcus was today. Not tomorrow. Not after some plan. Today.
I needed to do this for Liam.
The Riverside boathouse appeared through the bare trees. Concrete and steel. The dock jutting out into the river. Bay doors open, light spilling onto the gravel.
Liam was already inside. I could see him through the bay door, pulling on his shoes by the erg row. Tyler next to him, talking with his hands. A normal morning. Like he hadn't fallen asleep against me six hours ago.
I waited two minutes. Then walked in through the main entrance with the Kingswell guys.
Hale had been rotating quad combinations all week.
Every morning a different lineup. Different boats, different seats, different experiments that ended with Remy shaking his head in the cox seat and saying things like "that felt like rowing through peanut butter" or "I've coxed funeral processions with better timing."
Nothing clicked. The pieces were there — good rowers, strong numbers, clean technique — but a quad isn't four good rowers. It's a conversation between four bodies and the person steering them, and most of these conversations sounded like strangers arguing at a bus stop.
Until that Tuesday.
Hale posted the lineup on the whiteboard at six-forty-five. I was pulling on my shoes when Tyler read it out loud.
"Moore stroke. Marsh three. Lockwood two. Harrington bow. Ortega coxing."
The boathouse was quiet. Three Riverside guys. Two Kingswell guys. And Braden Lockwood in the same shell as me and Liam.
Braden, standing by the erg row, looked at the board. Then at me. Shook his head. But he didn't say anything.
Liam caught my eye from across the room. Eyebrows up. Did you know about this?
I shook my head. He shrugged. The whole conversation.
Hale was already down at the dock when we got there. Arms crossed, coffee in hand, watching the river. He stood at the water's edge before a session and studied the current, the wind, the light.
"Alright, listen up," he said as we gathered on the dock. "This is the last combination I'm trying this week. If this doesn't work, we table the quad and focus on pairs through December."
He looked at each of us. "Moore, you're stroke. Same role as the double. Set the rhythm, set the pace. Marsh, three seat. You're the engine room. I want power."
Tyler nodded.
"Lockwood, two seat. Same thing. Power, consistency. Match Marsh's pressure." Braden's jaw tightened but he nodded.
"Harrington, bow. You're the anchor. Balance, timing, technical precision. Same relationship to stroke as you had in the double." He looked at me. "You know what that means."
I did. Amplify. Don't lead. Feel Liam through the hull and make everything he does bigger.
"Ortega. You're calling."
"Obviously," Remy said from behind his clipboard.
Hale almost smiled.
"Eldridge and I are both watching from the launch. Don't try to impress us. Just row." He took a sip of his coffee. "Put in."
The November sun had broken through for the first time in a week.
Not warm — the air was still cold enough that your hands went numb on the oar handles within minutes — but the light changed everything.
The river was steel-blue instead of the usual grey.
You could see the bottom near the banks where the water ran shallow over gravel.
We carried the quad down to the dock. It was an Empacher, one of the Kingswell shells Eldridge had sent across for the joint program. Carbon fiber, stiff hull, the kind of boat that responded to everything you did whether you wanted it to or not.
Braden climbed in first. Then Tyler. Then me. Then Liam. The boat rocked with each body — that familiar instability of a shell finding its balance.
Remy stepped into the cox seat. Settled. Adjusted his headset.
"First thing. I don't care about your history." He looked at me and Braden. "In this boat, you're seat numbers. That's it. Talk to me, not each other. Clear?"
"Clear," I said.
Braden grunted.
"Moore. Set us off."
Liam took the first stroke. Clean. Legs, back, arms — the chain of movement that started in his quads and finished in his fingertips. The boat moved.
Tyler followed from three. His stroke was bigger than Liam's but he had an instinct for rhythm you couldn't teach. He locked into Liam's cadence within three strokes.
Braden from two. I felt his power before I heard his blade then the hull surging as his drive connected. He and Tyler together were raw force. The engine room doing its job.
And then me. Bow seat. The end of the chain. My job wasn't power, it was precision. Matching the timing that Liam set, that Tyler and Braden amplified, and translating it into balance. A bad bow seat makes a quad feel like rowing on a seesaw. A good one makes it feel like the hull is on rails.
I'd done this with Liam for months in the double. Feel him through the hull. Anticipate. Amplify. Don't fight, don't lead, just be there.
I was there.
"Settle," Remy called. "Twenty-six. Long and loose."
We settled. The rate dropped. The boat lengthened.
"Better. Catches together — three, your blade is a fraction late. Fix it."
Tyler adjusted. The next stroke was clean.
"Good. Run it out. Feel the glide."
I felt it. That moment after the finish where the blades lift and the boat runs on its own — carried by momentum and balance and the collective faith that nobody is going to rush the slide.
In a double with Liam, that moment belonged to us.
In a quad, it belonged to five people. And all five of us were letting it happen.
"Okay," Remy said, not with excitement — Remy didn't do excitement — but with clarity. "Building twenty. On my call."
He counted us in.
The first ten strokes were clean. Pressure building evenly, the rate climbing from twenty-six to twenty-eight to thirty. Tyler and Braden in the middle were a wall of power — I could feel it through the hull, the boat accelerating with each drive.
Liam was at the other end. Stroke seat. The rhythm. Three seats away and I could still feel him the way I always felt him. Through the water, through the shell, through whatever invisible thing connected us when we rowed.
"Fifteen. We're moving. Stay connected."
The boat lifted slightly. Not flying like me and Liam.
But enough. The hull rose in the water as our combined pressure hit the right frequency.
The drag dropped. The speed increased without the effort increasing.
Physics. A quad that works: four people pulling becomes more than the sum of its parts.
"Twenty. Hold it."
We held it. Thirty-two strokes per minute. The oars entering and leaving the water in unison — that sound, like four doors closing at the exact same time.
We rowed a thousand meters at rate thirty-two and nobody said a word except Remy, and even Remy was quieter than usual.
When we came in, Hale was on the dock. Arms crossed. Eldridge behind him with the expression of a man who'd just watched his best rower blend into a Riverside boat and liked it more than he wanted to.
"That's the lineup," Hale said.
"That's the lineup," Eldridge agreed.
Remy climbed out of the cox seat. Walked past me on the dock. Tapped me once on the shoulder.
"Not bad, bow."
From Remy, that was a standing ovation.
***
I found Marcus in the Kingswell library at eight that night.
I wasn't looking for him. Not yet. I was going to text him tonight, go to his dorm, have the conversation on my terms. But I walked into the library to print a training schedule, and there he was. Back table. Laptop open. Earbuds in. Alone.
My feet made the decision before my brain caught up. I was already crossing the room, already pulling out the chair across from him, already sitting down.
He looked up. Pulled out one earbud.
"Alex." Surprised. Then the smile. Easy and familiar and completely full of shit. "Hey. What's up?"
I didn't say I know it's you. I didn't say anything close to it.
Because Alexander Harrington didn't walk into a room and show his hand. He sat down. He smiled. He made the other person comfortable enough to hang themselves.
I hated that I knew how to do this. Twenty years of watching Thomas Harrington dismantle people across dinner tables had installed something in me that I couldn't uninstall. A program that ran on patience and politeness and the precise application of silence.
For Liam, I told myself. You're doing this for Liam.
"Not much," I said. "Saw you over here. Figured I'd say hey."
Marcus studied me. Looking for the angle, the way I was looking for his. Two kids raised in the same world, trained by the same kind of fathers, both of us scanning for the trap while pretending we were just talking.
"Okay," he said carefully. "Hey."
"How's Morrison's seminar treating you?"
"Like shit, same as everyone." He closed the laptop halfway. Relaxed a fraction. "You?"
"Behind on everything. But today the quad lineup worked."
"I heard. Moore at stroke, right? You in bow?"
"Yeah."
"How's that working?"