"I won't," I said.
He studied me for a moment—three seconds, maybe four—deciding, I think, whether he believed me.
Then he nodded. Once. "Alright."
He turned and walked out. Unhurried. His footsteps fading down the corridor toward the bay.
Then the door opened again.
Liam.
He stopped when he saw me. Hair damp from a shower. RSU warmup jacket unzipped over a white t-shirt, the cotton pulling slightly across his chest when he shifted. Short black athletic shorts showing the cut of his quads—the kind of definition that came from thousands of hours on the water, muscle builtfor function, for power, for the explosive drive that happened between catch and finish.
My body registered him before my mind did—the pulse of recognition, the way everything in me oriented toward him like a compass finding north. Heat crawled up the back of my neck. My hands, resting on my knees, went still. It had been doing that since Brackett Lake—this involuntary, full-body awareness that made the air around him feel different. Charged. I'd just finally stopped pretending it wasn't happening.
We stood there. Neither moving. Neither speaking. The silence between us dense with everything from the last twenty-four hours—the hallway, the kiss, Emily's face, his mother's phone call I didn't know about yet. The diner. Ethan's voice sayingthen you love himlike it was the simplest thing in the world.
"Hey," I said finally.
"Hey."
Another beat of silence. He shifted his weight. The fluorescent light caught the shadows under his eyes—he hadn't slept either.
"I'm sorry," I said. "About last night. With Emily."
Liam's jaw tightened slightly. A muscle flexing near his ear. But his eyes stayed on mine—green and steady and more open than I'd seen them in months.
"But I don't take the kiss back. I don't regret it."
He looked at me for a long moment. Something shifting behind his expression—not the defensive walls I'd been hitting for months, not the anger or the deflection or the hard mask he wore to survive. Something softer. More resolved. Like something had broken loose in the night and he'd decided to let it fall.
"It's okay," he said.
"Is it?"
"Yeah." He almost smiled. Not quite—but the ghost of it. "It's okay."
I stood up. Ten feet apart. The bench between us. The space charged with everything we'd been carrying—separately and together.
"My father asked me to throw the race again." The words came out steady. Measured. The Harrington composure holding, but barely.
Liam's expression changed. Sharpened. "What?"
"Last night. At the mixer." I swallowed. "He wanted me to pull back for the scrimmage—fake an injury, underperform. I said no. We won. And last night he made it clear he expects a different result today."
"He wants us to lose?"
"He wants the program to fail. He wants to prove that pairing Kingswell with Riverside produces mediocrity." I stopped. The next part harder—not because it was secret, but because saying it out loud made it real in a way I couldn't take back. "He doesn't want us rowing together."
"Why?"
"Because I think he can see it. What's happening between us. And he's trying to stop it before it becomes something he can't control."
Liam's eyes went dark. Intense. That competitive fire that lived in him always—the one that burned hottest when someone told him he wasn't allowed. When someone with money and a legacy and a polished voice tried to put a ceiling on what a scholarship kid from nowhere could want. His shoulders squared. His chin lifted. The posture of someone who'd been fighting uphill his entire life and had learned to love the angle.
"Fuck that," he said.
Then he moved.
