"I know what we just did." I paused. Laced our fingers together—his calluses matching mine, the blisters in the same places. "But the bus was bigger."
He was quiet then kissed me.
Because the sex was private. A locked room, a shared bed, a secret between two bodies. It cost nothing to want someone in the dark. But the bus—him sitting next to me in front of thirty teammates. That was a choice that could unravel everything, everything we were supposed to protect.
And he'd done it anyway.
And I'd let him.
The city hummed through the window. Boston at night. A million lives—none of them knowing that two rowers were lying in a hotel bed, eleven hours from a race that could change everything.
"We're going to be okay," Liam said into the back of my neck.
"You sure?"
"We will."
I squeezed his hand. Felt my breathing slow. Felt my body get heavier against his chest.
I closed my eyes. Liam's chest against my back. His arm around my waist. His breathing slowing to match mine—or mine to match his. The synchronization unconscious and inevitable.
He held me, and I just slept.
***
The bus crossed a bridge. The Charles River below. Crews already on the water. Eights and fours and singles cutting lines through the surface. The bridges starting to fill with early spectators—dark figures against the grey sky, leaning on railings, pointing at boats.
We pulled into the boathouse complex.
The scale of it hit me—and I'd been here before. Fourteen years old, rowing a youth single, finishing seventh while my father sat in silence on the drive home. I knew this river. Knew its width and its current and the way the wind came off the bridges.
But I'd never seen it like this.
Hundreds of boats. Hundreds of athletes. The boathouse area was a controlled chaos of crews unloading trailers, carrying shells to the water, rigging oars, checking equipment. Uniforms from every program in the Northeast—Princeton's orange, Dartmouth's green, BU's scarlet, Yale's blue. National media cameras stationed at the launch area. Officials in white with clipboards and megaphones.
And on the banks—the scouts. I could see them from the bus window. Small clusters of people in khakis and windbreakers, standing apart from the spectators, watching the crews with the specific attention of professionals evaluating talent. Clipboards. Phones. The quiet intensity of people whose job it was to find the next generation.
Those people could change Liam's life.
The thought arrived without calculation. Without self-interest. Just the clear, simple recognition that the boy beside me—the one who'd textedI want to go to the Olympicsat 2 AM like it was too big to say in daylight—was about to row in front of the people who could make that real.
We unloaded. The team moving with the practiced efficiency of athletes on race day—no wasted motion, no extra words. Oarsout of the trailer. Shells off the racks. Gear organized on the dock.
Jace managed it. His last race in a Riverside jersey and he spent it making sure every boat was rigged, every crew had their lane, every rower knew the warmup schedule. The captain who led by doing.
Remy had the course map in his head. He walked Liam and me through it one final time at the water's edge—the three of us standing on the dock, the Charles stretching in front of us, the bridges visible in the distance.
"Eliot Bridge at twelve hundred meters, the course narrows. Other boats stack up. Stay inside on the turn and don't let anyone push you wide."
"Got it," Liam said.
"Weeks Bridge at two thousand. Current shifts. You'll feel it in the starboard blade—compensate early, not late. The crews that lose time here are the ones that react instead of anticipate."
"We practiced that," I said.
"I know. I'm reminding you anyway." Remy looked between us. His face unreadable—the coxswain's mask, the expression that gave away nothing and saw everything. "Anderson Bridge at twenty-four hundred. That's where Ethan is. That's where the crowd is loudest. Don't let the noise pull your rating up. Stay at twenty-eight until Liam calls the sprint."
"How long is the sprint?" Liam asked.
