"No."
"And I have never asked you for anything unreasonable in return."
Lie.
My throat was tight. I picked up my water glass just to have something to do with my hands.
"You've asked me for everything," I said.
He tilted his head slightly, like I'd said something mildly interesting.
"I've given you everything. There's a distinction."
I thought about all of freshman year. Then the illegal race. The way I'd broken down behind the boathouse after Liam destroyed me, and my father had appeared—perfectly timed—with his lesson about letting go of distractions.
But he'd set it up, the whole thing, he'd wanted Liam to beat me so badly that I'd have no choice but to walk away.
And it hadn't worked.
And now we were in a boat together. The thing he'd tried to sever still alive, still pulling at me, still the thing I couldn't control no matter how hard I performed the version of myself he needed me to be.
"You've been spending a great deal of energy on this pairing," he said.
The emphasis was so slight I almost missed it. Almost.
My stomach dropped.
"I'd encourage you to think carefully about what that energy is actually serving."
He knew.
Not everything. Maybe not the specifics. But he could sense it—the way he always sensed when I was pulling away, when I was thinking thoughts he hadn't pre-approved, when I was becoming something other than the son he'd designed.
And this lunch wasn't just about the scrimmage. It was about cutting off whatever he sensed between me and Liam before it became something he couldn't manage.
I thought about the boathouse hallway. Hiding behind the office door and listening to his voice go cold as he told Eldridge what things cost. Eldridge—who had bent to him for twenty years—finally saying no. The surprise underneath my father's smooth control. That microsecond where he hadn't known what to do.
If Eldridge could say no.
The words sat in my chest. Half-formed. Waiting.
I looked at my father across the table. At the perfectly knotted tie, the cufflinks, the watch that had been gifted to him when he'd made team captain. At the face that had been teaching me what disappointment looked like since I was eight years old.
"I won't do it," I said.
Not loudly. Not with heat. I said it the way he said things—evenly, with the conversation still open in front of us, like I was simply correcting a minor factual error.
My father looked at me.
My hands were shaking under the table. I pressed them hard against my thighs where he couldn't see. My heart was slamming against my ribs. Every instinct I'd developed over twenty years of living under his authority was screaming at me to take it back, to qualify it, to sayI mean, I'll think about itorperhaps we could discuss alternatives.
I didn't.
"You won't," he said.
"No."
He didn't move. Didn't reach for his wine or his silverware. Just sat there, and I had the sudden vertiginous feeling of having stepped off a ledge I'd been standing at the edge of for years—only now noticing there was no ground below.
