The words sat in my chest like something warm and heavy.
Someone who doesn't make me feel like I have to be someone I'm not.
Alex's face. The hallway. The way he'd kissed me like I was the only thing that mattered.
"Thanks, Mom."
"Get some rest. Call me tomorrow after practice."
"Okay."
"I love you."
"Love you too."
The line went dead.
I sat there in the silence. In the dark. My face tight from crying. Eyes stinging.
My mom's words echoing:You don't owe anyone an explanation for who you are.
My phone buzzed.
Noah
Dude. Come back to the dorm. You're scaring me.
My best friend. Who already knew. Who was waiting.
I started the car.
Tomorrow would come whether I was ready or not. The scrimmage. The boat. Alex.
But tonight my mom had reminded me of something I'd forgotten: I started rowing because it made me feel free. Not because it was a ticket out. Not because it was what people expected. Because on the water, everything made sense.
And the last time everything had made sense on the water—
Was with him.
I pulled out of the parking lot and headed back to campus.
Chapter 22: Alex
The Kingswell boathouse was louder than usual.
Eight AM. Two hours before race time. The locker room packed with bodies—both teams mixed together, Kingswell blue and Riverside burgundy overlapping in a way that would've been unthinkable a month ago.
The energy was nervous but good. Guys laughing, talking shit, locker doors slamming with metallic percussion, music playing from someone's phone. The air thick with the specific humidity of forty rowers in a confined space. Pre-race adrenaline building the way it always did.
I sat on the bench tying my shoes. Trying to focus. Trying not to think about my father sitting in the stands in two hours. About what he'd said to me at the mixer last night—his hand on my shoulder, his mouth close to my ear so no one else could hear.
The scrimmage didn't go the way I'd hoped. I'm trusting you won't make the same mistake twice.
I'd won the scrimmage. Rowed my best race. And in my father's language, that was the mistake.
He wanted me to lose today. Not obviously—never obviously. A bad start. A missed catch. The kind of underperformance that looked like an off day, not sabotage. Just enough to prove the joint program wasn't producing results. Just enough to kill the thing Eldridge had built before it could threaten everything my father believed Kingswell should be.
I'd said nothing at the mixer. Just stood there with his hand on my shoulder—that hand that always felt more like a clamp than a comfort—while donors clinked glasses around us and smiled until he walked away.
