Ethan didn’t search my face for meaning. Didn’t tilt his head or ask why I wanted to know. He just bopped along, as if we’d discussed the weather.
We came to a fork in the pathway—one led back to the quad, the dorms, and dining hall. The other kept going along the river.
“You want to grab food?” he asked. “Carb load or whatever excuse we use.”
“Not yet. You go. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Okay,” he said. “Take it easy before then.”
He clapped my shoulder before heading back to campus.
I continued forward and after ten minutes or so—
Someone stepped into the lamplight ahead of me.
“Alex.”
That voice. It sent electric through my body. I stopped.
It was Liam.
He looked different under the soft yellow glow—tense, but not closed off or angry. I studied his face for a moment, his expression softer, almost vulnerable. His lips were slightly parted.
He looked like himself, not the rival I’d been circling all week, not the ghost from the summer I’d tried to bury, but just... Liam.
The boy I’d kissed under the stars at Brackett Lake.
A deep longing opened up in my chest, sharp and sudden, and I realized how much I’d missed this version of him—the one who let me see him.
“We need to talk,” he said.
My heartbeat jumped.
There were a hundred things defensive things I could’ve said but something in his expression stopped me.
“Okay.”
He let out a breath, half relief, half dread, and stepped closer. Close enough that I could see the stress sitting in his shoulders and the nervous way he swallowed before pulling out his phone.
“I got something and you need to see it.”
My stomach dipped. “What kind of something?”
He didn’t answer. Just pressed play and handed me the phone.
And then I saw water. A familiar stretch. Early sun. Two singles. Two rowers.
It was us.
Me driving my legs down. Liam matching me. The river boiling under our hulls as we tore across it like we were racing for our lives.
We looked fantastic—it was beautiful seeing us rowing next to each other like that. And it would have been fine if it wasn’t totally illegal.
Someone had filmed us that morning.
Someone had been there.
I froze.
