He counted us through a brutal shift—ten, then fifteen, then twenty—and somehow made every number feel personal, like he’d tied a rope to our lungs and refused to let us drown. We surged past in the last hundred, blades shredding water, Princeton’s stern drifting backward. We won by a bowball.
Everyone knew it was him. Remy saw the opening before we did. He always did.
Now, watching him roll his shoulders like he was about to conduct an orchestra instead of a room of sweaty rowers, I felt that same flicker of electricity under my ribs. If Remy said we were going to war on these ergs, then we were.
And God help anyone who wasn’t ready.
“Ten seconds!” Remy said.
The room fell silent except for the collective inhale.
Hale nodded to us. “Let it rip.”
Then—
“GO!” Remy yelled, just like he would at a race.
Flywheels screamed to life. My legs exploded off the start. I yanked for those insane sub-1:30 splits—numbers I’d only ever touched for five desperate strokes at a time. The screen flashed 1:29, then 1:30.
Olympic-level insanity. What the hell am I doing?
My lungs burned. My grip started to shake. My legs felt like they were filling with cement. My split skyrocketed to mid-1:40s.
And for a split second—just one—I thought about Alex.
About his clean catch. His perfect rhythm. The way he rowed like every motion started three strokes before he took it. The way he’d moved with me once, just once, on Brackett Lake—long, precise, like he’d handed me a blueprint.
I matched the memory. Settle. Lengthen. Breathe.
My split steadied—1:38. Held.
1:36. Held.
1:34. Held.
Fuck yes.
Hale paused behind me. I felt him check my screen, which sent a shock of adrenaline straight through me.
“Good, Moore,” he said. “You’ve got more. Don’t rush it.”
I found something deeper in my legs. Not force. Rhythm. Alex’s rhythm. That thought pissed me off enough to push harder.
Halfway in, the room sounded like a battlefield—chains clattering, breaths breaking, a freshman behind me already wheezing like a dying harmonica.
The third 500 was hell. It always was. My vision tunneled. My legs screamed. Tyler was gasping beside me; Jace grunted at the end of each drive like a metronome.
I wanted to quit. I wanted to collapse.
“Don’t you dare back down now—this is where Riverside eats boys!” Remy said.
I imagined Alex’s boat crossing the line ahead of mine. That lit something unholy in my chest.
I was sprinting. Catch. Drive. Release. The rhythm I fell into—Alex’s precise rhythm, like he was right there in front of me. I surged back to low 1:30s again.
My body falling apart. Screaming for me to stop. My form breaking apart.
Then—I hit 2k.
