Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Reese
Iwake up in my bed with no memory of getting here. The last thing I remember is the kitchen island, my cheek flat against Constitutional Law notes while the words went soft at the edges. Now I’m under my comforter in yesterday’s clothes with my shoes set neatly side by side at the door.
Gray did this.
I have a half-dreamed piece of it: being lifted, warmth and pine, the slow rhythm of somebody taking the stairs carefully. My own voice asking him to stay, then his saying he can’t.
I lie there trying to work out what that leaves me. He carried me upstairs and tucked the blanket around my shoulders, but he wouldn’t get into the bed. Apparently the line he won’t cross is somewhere between taking care of me and wanting me, and I have no idea which side of it he thinks I’m on.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I reach for it hoping it’s him, which is its own answer.
Quinton: Hey, you free this morning? I’m at Common Grounds working on the project. Could use your input on the market analysis.
I told him maybe on the coffee and never followed up. Now he’s handed me a reason to say yes that has nothing to do with whether I want to see him.
The smart thing would be to stay here, study, and wait for everyone to get back from the gym. But the house is too quiet and my head is too loud, and Gray’s I can’t keeps rattling around in there like a marble in a jar.
Me: Be there in 20.
I shower, pull on jeans and a soft sweater, and twist my hair up in a clip. No makeup, no effort. This is coffee with a classmate who doesn’t look at me and see pack logistics.
The kitchen still smells like breakfast when I come downstairs, bacon and coffee with something sweet underneath. There’s a plate wrapped in foil on the counter with a sticky note on top.
Eat something. B.
Bo, obviously.
I peel back the foil and find scrambled eggs and toast gone lukewarm.
He must have made it before weights, because apparently a rest day off the water still requires all of them to find some new way to suffer voluntarily.
Usually the plate would make me feel taken care of.
This morning it feels like being managed instead.
Bo means it. I know he does. That’s almost the problem. Lately every kind thing they do comes with the same question underneath it, even when nobody says the words: Is Reese okay yet?
I eat a few bites at the counter, cover the plate again, and take my bag.
Common Grounds is a ten-minute walk from the team house, tucked into the corner of the student union where the business school runs into the athletics building.
Between classes it’s a scrum, but the midmorning lull has emptied most of the tables.
Quinton is already there with his laptop open and two cups in front of him.
He looks up and waves me over. “Wasn’t sure you’d show. You’ve been a ghost.”
“It’s been a weird few days.” I drop into the chair across from him, and he slides one of the cups toward me. Vanilla latte, same as always.
“Yeah, I figured.” He looks at me for a second longer than is polite. “You look like hell, Callahan.”
I snort. “Really feeling the love.”
“I mean that in a concerned way, not a mean way.” His grin comes easily, and something in my shoulders loosens before I can stop it.
That’s the thing about Quinton. No eggshells, no careful handling.
He just says it. “Seriously, though. How are you doing? Actually doing. Not the fine you give everybody else.”
“What makes you think I give everybody else fine?”
“You’ve got the look.” He gestures vaguely at my face. “The one people get when they’re holding it together with duct tape and denial.”
I laugh before I can help it. “That obvious?”
“Only if somebody’s paying attention.” He takes a drink of coffee. “Championship was this weekend, right? I saw the results. You guys killed it.”
“We did okay.”
“You swept the whole thing and set a course record in the final.” He shakes his head. “That’s not okay, Reese. That’s incredible.”
The praise doesn’t land. Everybody’s been so focused on what happened after the race that almost nobody has talked about the race itself, about the way the boat moved like a single animal through the last five hundred or the break in Gray’s voice when he said we did it after we crossed.
“Thanks,” I say. “It was a good day until it wasn’t.”
Quinton’s expression softens. “I heard there was some family drama. Is that why you’ve been MIA?”
“How did you hear that?”
“People talk. Rowing community’s the size of a postage stamp.” He shrugs. “Somebody saw whatever happened on the dock. Now everybody’s got a theory.”
My stomach turns. “A theory about what?”
“Nothing specific. Just that there was a confrontation and parents were involved. Standard gossip mill.” He reaches across the table but stops short of touching my hand. “I’m not asking for details. I’m asking if you’re okay.”
His eyes stay on me. He isn’t scanning the room or trying to figure out what my mood means for eight other people. For the first time in days, somebody is looking at me without seeming to calculate anything beyond me.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “It’s complicated.”
“Family stuff usually is.”
“It’s not only family.” I wrap both hands around the cup. “It’s the team and the administration and all of it.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
He nods once, then leans back in his chair. “Okay. Different subject.”
“What?”
“Anything that isn’t rowing, family, administration, or whatever fresh disaster somebody handed you this week. Favorite movie. What you wanted to be when you were seven. Last book you read that wasn’t assigned.”
The questions are so ordinary I have to think about them. Every conversation I’ve had since February has circled the team, the pack, or the designation I never asked for.
“The Princess Bride,” I say. “Marine biologist. And I haven’t read anything that wasn’t for class since I transferred.”
“Okay, the last one is tragic.” He pulls out his phone. “We’re fixing that.”
I laugh. “You don’t need to fix my reading habits.”
“I absolutely do. What do you like? Fantasy, thriller, romance?”
“I used to read everything I could get my hands on.”
“A woman of varied tastes. Respect.”
He starts scrolling. The light catches the line of his jaw and the dark sweep of hair that probably takes more effort than he’d ever admit. Heather-gray sweater pushed to his elbows, acid-washed jeans that still look expensive, nothing visibly trying too hard.
“I’m building you a list,” he says. “Books you can finish in a weekend when you need out.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know. I want to.” He glances back at the screen. “Besides, you look like you could use one thing somebody else handles for five minutes.”
I have to look down at the table. I think about Bo’s plate under the foil, Gray carrying me upstairs and leaving, and eight Alphas who would probably step in front of a truck for me but can’t seem to say what they want when the answer might cost them something.
“That’s really nice,” I say, and I mean it.
“I’m a really nice guy.” His grin turns crooked. “Whatever Gray tells you.”
“He doesn’t talk about you.”
That gets a real reaction. His eyebrows lift. “No?”
“No. Not really.”
“Huh.” He looks down at his coffee. “I figured after the Sophia thing he’d have material.”
“He said you take things that matter to other people.”
Quinton lets out a short laugh, more tired than angry. “Of course he did. Gray and I have never been particularly generous about each other. Sophia didn’t help.”
I wait.
“She picked me, lasted three weeks, then decided she couldn’t stand being the reason the two of us stopped speaking.” He turns his cup once between his hands. “So I lost both of them.”
I’ve heard his version before, back in the library. Hearing it again after watching Gray burn his family down on that dock leaves me less certain than I want to be about which version of either man I’m supposed to believe.
“We should probably talk about the project.”
“Probably.” Quinton doesn’t push. He turns the laptop around. “I’ve been working the market analysis. Want to see?”
We spend the next hour in spreadsheets and projections, arguing about consumer behavior models and target demographics.
The work is thorough. He doesn’t explain things I already know, and when I make a better argument than his, he changes the model instead of defending it just because it was his first.
“This is good,” I say when we finally come up for air. “We might actually ace this.”
“Was there ever a doubt? We make a good team, Callahan.”
“Don’t let Gray hear you say that.”
The joke is out before I can stop it, and Quinton laughs.
“He does have opinions about who you spend time with.” His tone stays light as he starts packing up his laptop. “Must be intense, though. Eight Alphas under one roof.”
“It has its moments.”
“I bet.” He slides the computer into his bag and looks at me. “If you ever need a break from all that, I’m around. No pressure, no expectations. Just somebody to talk to who isn’t tangled up in it.”
I came here because that was exactly what I wanted. An hour where I’m a person with a class and a project instead of the team’s Omega or a legal problem everybody is trying to solve.
I still can’t work out why my hands have gone cold around the cup.
“Thanks. I might take you up on that.”
“I hope you do.” He slings his bag over one shoulder. “Same time next week? We can finish the analysis and start the presentation.”
“That works.”
He hesitates beside my chair, then squeezes my shoulder on his way past. It’s quick and friendly and completely ordinary, but I can still feel the pressure of his fingers after the door closes behind him.
I stay at the table for a few more minutes with my cold latte. Coffee with a classmate. An hour working on a project worth forty percent of my grade. He didn’t ask me for anything I didn’t want to give him, and I didn’t do anything that requires an explanation.
But when I get back to the house and Bo asks how my morning was, I tell him it was fine and ask what we’re doing for dinner before he can ask me anything else.