Hale lowered himself into his own chair and laced his fingers together. For a moment, he didn’t speak. He just studied me with a kind of focused attention that made me feel too seen.
“You’ve come a long way since last year,” he said.
I tilted my head.
“Liam, relax. This is all good,” he said.
I let out the breath I was holding.
“Last year wasn’t easy. You had to scrape for every meter, every stroke, every seat. Some guys break under that. But you didn’t. You worked. You figured out what needed changing. You put in the hours.”
A warmth tightened in my chest, a mix of appreciation and strange disbelief.
“I put you in the single because you earned it,” Hale continued, leaning back. “But also because you have something I can’t teach.”
I swallowed, steadying my voice. “What’s that?”
“Fire,” he said. “The raw kind. Stubborn. Hungry. Unbreakable.”
I felt the words settle in my chest.
“But fire without control burns out. Or worse, it burns the wrong thing down.”
My jaw tensed.
He wasn’t wrong.
The moments when I had ruined things with my anger flashed through my mind. The blowup with my mom right before Christmas last year, the time I barked at Jace in front of the whole crew when he corrected my posture, and the day at the marina last summer when Jerry almost fired me.
“And I don’t want to see that happen to you. You’ve worked too hard. But you still haven’t learned how to manage your emotions.”
I stiffened, but didn’t protest.
That alone felt like a victory.
He continued, “You get angry too fast. You take things personally. And when that happens, you lose focus.”
I lowered my gaze for a moment. “I’m working on it.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s why we’re having this conversation.”
He paused, letting the moment breathe before adding, “There’s something else.”
I lifted my eyes.
Fuck not the unsanctioned race.
“Jace graduates this spring,” he said. “We’re going to need a new captain next year.”
The word hung between us like a struck bell.
Captain.
“You have the makings of one,” Hale said, leaning back in his chair. “Not just because you train hard, but you’ve got natural leadership skills. But it takes control. Composure. Emotional discipline. If you want that role next year, if you want to take this seriously—then you need to start showing me that now.”
The unsanctioned race flashed in my mind. One slip, one rumor, one wrong set of eyes, and everything Hale was talking about could vanish. I forced the tension out of my shoulders, trying to keep my face neutral, but the truth burned under my ribs: I couldn’t afford mistakes anymore.
The breath I took felt deeper, steadier.
