Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Jackson
Tyler tells me last, at ten to six, in the hallway outside my room.
“She asked me to,” he says. “Not because she doesn’t trust you.”
“I know why.”
“Do you?”
I pick my bag up off the floor and put the strap over my shoulder. “She wanted seven people between me and the news. It was the right call.”
Tyler watches me for another second, probably trying to decide whether he believes me, then nods and heads downstairs.
The thing is, Reese isn’t wrong. Three years ago, I’d have been in a car before Tyler finished the sentence. Two months ago, I would’ve gone looking for a reason to be near the media gate. Not him, obviously. Just the media gate. And if I happened to see him there, well.
This morning I stand in a hotel hallway with a bag on my shoulder and let the news sit in me. Quinton’s here. It burns exactly as much as it would’ve three years ago, but I go downstairs to breakfast anyway.
That’s the difference, even if nobody can see it from the outside.
We’re at the trailers by seven. The course is flat, and the air is already thick enough to hold every smell close to the ground: diesel from the launches, cut grass, hot rubber.
Nine crews are unloading along the trailer line, and underneath all of it is that green, rotting-water smell every man-made lake gets once the weather turns warm.
This part I can do. Give me a boat, a set of wrenches, and eighteen minutes, and I’ll rig it better than anybody in the county.
Gray takes the bow pair while Bo and Cameron work through the middle. Reese moves down the hull with the tape measure, checking spans and calling numbers to Tyler. He writes everything down, then reads it back to her. Bennett stands by the trailer in his cap and stays out of our way.
I do my rigger and Zane’s. Twelve millimeters at the pin. Everything tight.
At twenty past seven, the smell changes.
It’s faint under the diesel, but I know it anyway. Expensive cologne. The same kind that hung around the Hampton Hills boathouse three Aprils ago. My hand stops on the wrench, and Cameron looks at me before following my eyes over my shoulder.
Quinton Whitmore is walking down the trailer line with a laminated credential hanging around his neck and a coffee in his hand.
He’s not even trying to hide. That’s what gets me. He’s strolling through a restricted equipment area at a national championship in boat shoes and a quarter-zip like he has every right to be here. Two volunteers in yellow vests look at his credential and let him pass.
Gray comes off the bow rigger. Bo straightens beside me, wrench still in his hand.
“Don’t,” Reese says.
She doesn’t raise her voice or even look up from the tape measure, but nobody moves.
Quinton stops about eight feet from her. “You’re in lane four. I looked it up.”
Reese retracts the tape measure with a snap. “Section eleven is closed to guests. Your credential gets you into the grandstand and press tent.”
“I wanted to say good luck.”
“You’ve said it.”
He takes a drink of his coffee, and I put my wrench down. Not on the ground or in my pocket. On the trailer rail behind me, where I can’t grab it without turning around.
Cameron sees me do it. His eyes flick to the wrench and then back to me, but neither of us says anything.
Past Quinton, a woman in a rain jacket has stopped beside the next trailer. Kowalski. She’s been around the press tent all morning, but now one hand is already inside her camera bag.
“I read the piece,” Quinton says. “It was good. You came off well.”
“Go back to the grandstand.”
“I came off badly.”
Reese looks at him. “You weren’t named.”
“No. Just an unnamed male student with a Title IX file.” He rolls the coffee cup between his palms. “Everyone in my house knew who it was by lunch.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“My father’s counsel called me that afternoon. He asked if there was anything else.” Quinton laughs once, but there’s nothing funny in it. “Twenty-two years and that’s the first question he’s ever asked me twice.”
“Quinton, leave.”
“I’ve been managed my whole life, Reese. I’m good at it. Better than you.”
Something changes in his voice. Not louder, exactly. Looser.
I shift my weight, and Cameron notices that too.
Quinton takes another step toward her. “I could’ve kept doing it. You know that, right? Kinsley would’ve gone away. The complaint would’ve done what it was supposed to do. Your father would’ve kept his mouth shut.”
Reese hasn’t moved since he got here. She’s holding the tape measure in her left hand with her right loose at her side, looking at him the same way she looks at us when the boat starts getting stupid at rate thirty-six. She’s giving him nothing to fight with.
“You sat down with a reporter,” he says, “and gave away the one thing I couldn’t take from you. You gave away your own father. Who does that?”
“Somebody who was done paying for him.”
For a second, I think that’s going to be it.
Then Quinton closes the distance and grabs her upper arm.
Everything in me goes white. There’s no thought between seeing his hand on her and moving. No three years ago. No Title IX file. No statement sitting in Okafor’s office. There’s just his hand around Reese’s arm and the sound that comes out of me when I see it.
I get there before I know I’ve crossed the distance. My left forearm goes across his chest, my right hand closes around his wrist, and I strip his hand off her arm and put myself between them.
My fist doesn’t close.
That’s the first thing I notice. Not Reese behind me or Bo saying my name. My hand is open.
I hold Quinton’s wrist until his fingers loosen, then let him go and drop both hands to my sides.
“Get off me,” he snaps.
“I already did.”
His eyes drop to my hands before he looks past me, and I watch him register the rest of it. Nine crews. Two volunteers. Bennett coming fast from the far side of the trailer line. Kowalski thirty feet away with her camera out now.
He knows. I can see the exact second he understands that there’s nothing he can do here that helps him.
He does it anyway.
The punch catches me square on the left cheekbone. My teeth crack together and the side of my head lights up hot. I stumble back one step, plant my foot, and get my balance.
Every part of me knows what comes next. I’ve done it a thousand times in my head, in the gym, in parking lots. In that boathouse three years ago every time I’ve replayed it and changed the ending.
Quinton is right there. One step is all it would take, and I already know where I’d hit him.
I look at my hands instead.
They’re still open.
Then Bo is behind me. His arms come around my ribs, but he isn’t dragging me back or pinning my arms. He just puts himself there, solid against my back, and holds on.
“I got you,” he says against my shoulder. “I got you.”
My chest is heaving hard enough that I can feel him moving with it. “I know.”
Quinton is still standing there with his fist closed. His coffee is on the gravel now, lid off, spreading between his shoes. Nobody says anything, and when he looks around, he finally sees what I saw before he swung.
Everyone is watching.
Nine crews have stopped working. The volunteers are staring. Bennett is almost to us, Kowalski has her camera braced against the trailer, and there’s a venue camera mounted on the light pole twenty feet away with a sign directly under it.
Quinton looks back at me. “He put his hands on me first.”
He’s not talking to anyone in particular.
“I did,” I say. Bo’s arms are still around me. “I took your hand off her arm. Then you hit me.”
Quinton opens his mouth, but apparently even he can’t find anywhere to go from there.
The next twenty minutes are paperwork. Two officials show up first, then a third with a radio. Venue security follows, and the sheriff’s deputy who’s been on site since dawn comes over last and starts separating everybody.
They take Quinton’s credential. Kowalski asks to give her statement first, then Reese gives hers, then I give mine.
The deputy looks at the bruise coming up on my face. “You want to press charges?”
“Yes.”
He asks me again ten minutes later after he’s spoken to Quinton. I give him the same answer.
“Did you throw a punch?”
“No.”
He asks the volunteers. Both say no. Then he asks Kowalski.
“I have it on video,” she says. “And no, he didn’t. I’d like that noted because I don’t think anybody’s going to believe it later.”
I almost laugh.
Bennett stands off to the side with his hands clasped behind his back through the whole thing. He doesn’t interrupt once. When the deputy finally closes his notebook, Bennett steps forward.
“Are my athletes cleared to race?”
The deputy looks at him. “Yes, sir.”
“Thank you.”
Bennett puts his cap back on and walks straight to the trailer.
It’s 8:19. We launch at 9:20.
Nobody talks about what just happened because there’s no time. Zane finishes the rigging at my seat since my hands aren’t steady enough for fine adjustments yet. Tyler comes back from the trainers’ tent with ice wrapped in a plastic bag and hands it to me without comment.
I hold it against my face and look at myself in the trailer window. The bruise is already coming up, and a second later Reese appears beside my reflection.
She’s holding her upper arm where Quinton grabbed her. Not rubbing it. Just holding it.
I turn around.
“Let me see,” she says.
I take the ice away, and she studies my cheekbone for a few seconds. “That’s going to be ugly.”
“Already was.”
“Shut up.”
I put the ice back against it. She stays beside me, and after a few seconds she looks up.
“You didn’t hit him.”
“No.”
“You wanted to.”
“I still want to.” I look toward the road beyond the trailers. “He’s in a car on the county road right now, and I know which road it is.”
“Jackson.”
“I’m not going.”
Her eyes stay on me, and I know that’s not enough.
“I’ve got about eleven separate plans for the next hour,” I tell her. “I’m not going to do any of them. I need you to know both of those things are true.”
She looks down at the gravel while I adjust the ice against my cheek.
“Three years ago somebody asked me to bite her,” I say. “I did what she asked, and it ended my life. Since then, I’ve understood exactly one thing about myself. When an Omega’s in trouble, I don’t get to trust my own hands.”
“You did what she asked, and she’s the one who lied about it afterward.” Reese doesn’t blink. “The part where that makes your hands dangerous is yours. You added it.”
“It’s what I’ve believed.”
“I know.”
I don’t expect that answer.
She reaches for my free hand and grips it hard enough that I feel her nails. “Look at me.”
I do.
“You had his wrist, and you let go. You had him. You could’ve hurt him, and you let go.”
“Reese.”
“No. Listen to me.” Her voice cracks a little, but she keeps going. “You knew he was here this morning and you came to breakfast. You had a wrench in your hand when he walked up to me, and you put it down before he ever touched me. I watched you do it.”
I look toward the trailer rail. The wrench is still there.
“You think your hands are the problem,” she says. “But they’ve been telling you the truth for two months and you haven’t been listening.”
I don’t know what to do with that, so for once I don’t try to do anything.
Reese steps closer and puts her forehead against my chest, and I get my arms around her before I can think about whether I should.
We’re standing in the middle of a gravel lot in front of half the championship field.
My face is swelling, her arm is going to bruise, Kowalski is somewhere behind us, and for all I know she still has the camera out.
I don’t care. Reese doesn’t seem to either.
After a minute she says into my shirt, “Twelve millimeters at the pin?”
I close my eyes. “Twelve.”
“Good. Then I’m going to go make you row two thousand meters.”
“Okay.”
She’s almost turned away when I see her arm properly. Four small marks and one larger one are already coming up where Quinton’s fingers were. They’re going to be in Kowalski’s video and the deputy’s report. Probably on camera when Reese gets into the boat.
She follows my eyes. “Jackson.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you for not killing him.”
“Don’t thank me for that.”
“I’m going to.”
“Reese.”
She takes a step backward toward the boat. “Because you’re the only one out here who had to decide.”
Then she turns and goes back to work.