Chapter 7
Noah was reading out loud.
Not to me. To himself. Some philosophy thing about whether free will existed or whether every decision we'd ever made was just neurons firing in a predetermined sequence.
He did this sometimes. He muttered through dense paragraphs like saying them out loud would make them make sense.
It never worked but it was oddly comforting.
Background noise. The sound of someone else's brain working while mine was quiet for once.
I was on my bed, laptop open, not looking at it. Thinking about the quad.
The way the boat had felt that morning. Four bodies moving together. Braden behind Tyler, his catch landing clean, his power steady. Remy's calls getting quieter as we found the rhythm — because a good cox knows when to stop talking and let the boat speak for itself.
The thing was, Braden didn't want to be there. Not really. He'd made that clear every day since the lineup was announced. But he'd rowed clean anyway. And that wasn't just Remy's coxing — though Remy was the best cox I'd ever sat behind and I'd fight anyone who said otherwise.
It was the vibe Alex and I brought into the boat. What we had did something to the water around us. Made people want to pull harder. Made Braden forget he didn't want to be there. Made Tyler row like he gave a shit about technique for once in his life.
Alex and I had something. And it was changing the people around us.
Maybe it would be okay. Being out. Being together.
"—the compatibilist would argue that free will is compatible with determinism, but that feels like a cop-out," Noah muttered. "Like saying you chose the sandwich but the universe already knew you were going to—"
My phone buzzed.
Remy.
Remy
Call me right now.
Then another buzz.
Remy
Ethan just texted me. Someone sent a photo to the Kingswell team chat. It's you and Alex.
I stared at the screen.
Remy
Kissing. The photo is you and Alex kissing. Marcus sent it.
What the fuck. No.
"—which raises the question of whether moral responsibility can exist without—" Noah stopped. Looked at me. "What's wrong?"
I couldn't answer. My phone buzzed again. Tyler.
Tyler
Bro call me
Then Remy again.
Remy
Ethan's trying to reach Alex but he's not answering. Are you with him?
I wasn't with him. Alex was across the river. And Marcus had just blown our lives open.
"Liam." Noah was standing now. "What happened?"
"They sent out photo of me and Alex kissing."
Noah didn't flinch. Didn't gasp. Just processed.
"Who?"
"Marcus."
"The Marcus you punched?"
"Yeah."
"Who's seen it?"
"The whole Kingswell team. Ethan's on the group chat. He texted Remy."
Noah nodded. "Shit. Twenty guys have it. Some will screenshot. Some will forward. By tomorrow—"
"By tomorrow everyone knows."
The word everyone sat between us. Everyone at Kingswell. Everyone at Riverside. The coaches. Maybe even the scouts who'd written my name down at the Charles.
My phone buzzed again. Tyler.
Tyler
Are you ok?
I didn't answer. I was staring at the wall and all my brain kept doing was circling back to Alex. Somewhere right now dealing with whatever had happened and I wasn't there.
"I gotta call him, hold on."
I opened my contact and hit Alex's name. The phone rang. No answer.
"He there?" Noah asked.
The phone ran twice more and went to voicemail.
"No answer. Fuck!"
I stood up and started pacing, my heart went with it, anxiety filling my chest. Worry about Alex. Fear about losing everything.
That was the part that scared me. Not the photo orthe group chat. Alex always answered. Always.
"He's okay," Noah said. Not because he knew. Because he knew I needed to hear it.
My phone buzzed. Remy.
Remy
Alex still not answering. Ethan says there was some kind of incident at the Kingswell library. People heard yelling.
My stomach dropped.
"Something happened at the library," I said. "People heard yelling."
Three knocks on the door.
Fast. Not polite. Urgent.
Noah opened it.
Alex was standing in the hallway. Jacket open. Hair disheveled. Eyes wild in a way I'd never seen from him. It was not the controlled Alex panic, not the calculated crisis management. Something raw and barely held together.
Blood on his knuckles. Blood on his lip.
He saw me and his face just broke. Not crumpled. Broke. Like everything he'd been holding together on the walk across the bridge let go the second he saw my face.
He crossed the room in three steps and pulled me into him. Arms around my neck, face buried in my shoulder, his whole body shaking.
"I'm sorry," he said into my shoulder. Muffled. "Liam, I'm so sorry."
I held him. One hand on the back of his head, the other across his shoulders.
"I'm here," I said. "I've got you."
"I tried to stop him and I couldn't and he sent it and I—" His voice broke. The sound of a person who'd been performing composure for twenty years finally running out of material. "I ruined everything. I ruined your life."
"Stop."
"Everyone's going to know and it's my fault—"
"Alex. Stop."
He pulled back. Just enough to look at me. Red-eyed. Tear-streaked. A bruise already forming along his jaw. Blood smeared from his lip to his chin. His knuckles split and swollen and trembling.
"I ruined your life," he whispered.
I held his face. Both hands. Thumbs against his cheekbones.
"You could never ruin my life." I looked at him through the tears and the blood and the bruise darkening on his jaw. "You're everything."
I kissed him. Gentle. Tasting blood and salt.
Behind us, Noah cleared his throat. I totally forgot that Noah was still in the room because I was so focused on Alex.
That was the first time we showed affection in front of someone else.
The first time someone saw me kiss a guy.
I'm glad it was Noah, and he didn't care because he was my best friend.
And it was almost like relief having him there to witness it, and know that it was fine that I was kissing a guy.
"I'll give you guys the room," he said. Already grabbing his jacket and his phone. "I'll be at Priya's"
"Thanks, Noah."
He paused at the door. Looked at Alex's knuckles. Looked at me.
"You guys are going to be okay."
I gave him a small nod and he closed the door behind him.
The lock clicked.
Alex sat on the edge of my bed hunched forward and staring at his hands.
I sat next to him. Close enough that our shoulders touched.
"Tell me," I said.
"I hit him, Liam." His voice was flat. Hollow. "I didn't just hit him once. I couldn't stop."
"Okay."
"He was on the ground and I just kept—" He held up his hands. Looked at them like they belonged to someone else. "Everything came out. All of it. Everything I've been holding in. And I just kept hitting him."
I took his hands and turned them over. His knuckles were a real mess.
"He told my dad," Alex said. "About us. Told him I kissed you." He laughed, not a funny laugh but like he couldn't believe it actually happened.
That was not good. Both schools knowing was one thing but his father knowing was a whole other can of worms. And it wasn't good. It wasn't going to be good for Alex… or maybe even me. I didn't know how powerful the Harringtons really were. His power could stretch beyond Kingswell.
"Jesus."
"Then he called us sick."
The word landed between us.
"He said what we have is sick. And I—" Alex looked at me. "The party. Our first kiss. Racing the Charles with you. Those are the best moments of my life."
I put my hand on the back of his neck. Held it there.
"The best moments of your life?"
His blue eyes looked up to me, wide and true. "Yes. The best."
Electric shot through my chest.
That's the real Alex.
"I don't care what Marcus thinks. They are the best moments of my life too." I said.
He closed his eyes. Leaned into me.
"But everything's going to fall apart," he said. Quiet now. Almost to himself. "The photo's out. And I beat the shit out of Marcus in the library in front of witnesses." His breath hitched. "I could get kicked off the team. Expelled."
"Hey. Not tonight."
"But—"
"Not tonight."
I stood up. Grabbed a t-shirt off the floor — one of my old ones, gray, a stain on it that might have been hot sauce — and my water bottle from the desk. Poured water onto the shirt.
"Come here."
He tilted his face up. I pressed the wet shirt against his lip. He hissed.
"Sorry."
"It's fine."
"At least you beat the shit out of Marcus."
Alex smiled. "I did it for us."
"We gotta stop doing that. Punching Marcus is becoming a habit."
I wiped the blood off his chin. His jaw. The smear across his cheek. I worked carefully around the bruise which was already purple at the edges.
Alex looked down at the shirt.
"Is that hot sauce?"
"Probably."
"On the shirt you're using to clean an open wound."
"It's got vinegar in it. Vinegar's antibacterial."
A sound escaped him. Not quite a laugh. The ghost of one. His shoulders dropped a fraction.
"This is disgusting," he said.
"Welcome to Riverside."
I took his right hand and started cleaning the knuckles. He winced but didn't pull away. I worked the dried blood out of the creases between his fingers, careful around the splits.
While I cleaned his hands, my brain was doing the thing it does.
Running scenarios, building the map of what's coming, and seeing what I needed to fight.
Not for Alex. For me. The photo was of both of us.
Tomorrow morning every rower at Kingswell would have seen it.
By afternoon, Riverside too. The whispers in the dining hall.
The looks in the boathouse. The guys on the team who'd been fine with me yesterday deciding they weren't fine with me today.
I thought about the erg room. Pulling a piece next to guys who now knew.
Guys who'd been in my boat. Guys who'd high-fived me after the Charles and slapped me on the back and said good race, Moore.
Would they still say that tomorrow? Or would they look at me and see the photo first and the rower second?
And practice. We had practice tomorrow morning. Six AM. The boathouse. Both teams.
I hadn't even begun to process what this meant for me. I was too busy holding Alex together to fall apart myself. But the fear was there — not the sharp, hot kind. The cold kind. The kind that settles into your stomach and stays.
"You might need to get this looked at," I said, keeping my voice even.
"Not tonight."
We sat there. The room quiet except for the hum of the overhead light. His hand steady in mine now. The trembling gone.
"Stay here tonight," I said.
"Sure? What about Ethan?"
"It's fine. We're really in this now."
He kicked off his shoes. I kicked off mine. We lay down on my bed — the Riverside version, narrow, barely room for two — and I pulled him close. His back against my chest. His injured hand cradled against his stomach. My arm around him.
His breathing slowed. Mine didn't.
Alex was asleep in minutes. The exhaustion pulling him under like a current. I held him and listened to the building settle and the river outside and the sound of everything being different now.
After a while, I carefully untangled myself. Slid my arm out from under him. He shifted but didn't wake. He just curled tighter around his injured hand and made a small sound.
I went to the window.
The bridge was lit up. The footbridge between Riverside and Kingswell, the one Alex had just walked across — bloody, broken, choosing me.
In eight hours I was going to walk into the boathouse and every person in it was going to know.
The photo wasn't a rumor you could deny or a whisper you could outlast. It was evidence.
Permanent. Screenshotted and forwarded and living on thirty phones that would become sixty that would become everyone.
I'd spent my whole life being underestimated.
I'd learned to use that, to let people see what they expected and then beat them on the water where it mattered.
But this was different. This wasn't being underestimated.
This was being seen. The real thing. The thing I hadn't barely even fully named for myself yet out in the open where I couldn't shape it or control it or decide when and how people learned it.
Marcus had taken that from both of us.
My phone lit up on the desk.
Mom
Hi baby. Just thinking about you. Hope you're having a good week. Love you.
The nothing text. The kind she sent sometimes on Tuesday nights or Thursday mornings or whenever I crossed her mind between shifts.
I stared at it for a long time.
She didn't know. Right now, in this moment, Linda Moore was sitting in the kitchen or lying in bed or driving home from the late shift, and her son was just her son. The boy who rowed. The boy who got the scholarship. The boy she'd always believed in.
By tomorrow or next week she might know something else that boy.
I didn't answer. I couldn't. Not tonight.
I'd tell her. On my terms. When I could sit with her — or at least call her — and say it with my own voice.
But not tonight.
I put the phone down.
I went back to bed and pulled Alex close. He murmured something I couldn't hear and pressed back against me.
Tomorrow we had practice. Tomorrow we'd walk into that boathouse. Together.
I closed my eyes and didn't sleep.