"As long as you can hold it." Remy paused. The mask cracked—just a fraction. Something underneath that might have been pride. "You two are the fastest double in this program's history. Don't overthink it. Just row."
He turned and walked back toward the team staging area. Small. Compact. Unhurried.
Liam and I stood on the dock.
Around us, the Head of the Charles was coming alive. Announcements over the PA system—heat times, lane assignments, the official's voice carrying across the water. Other crews launching—the splash of oars, the calls of coxswains, the organized chaos of hundreds of boats preparing for three miles of river.
I looked at the river. Three miles of dark water stretching into the distance. The bridges overhead. The banks filling with spectators. The biggest race of my life.
Every distraction fell away. The texter. My father in the hotel lobby. The magazine with our photo. The fight. The reconciliation. The hotel room. The flannel. The bridge. All of it—every moment of this impossible, beautiful, terrifying semester—narrowing to a single point.
The boat. The water. And Liam.
"Ready?" I said.
He looked at me. His green eyes steady. The body I knew as well as my own—the shoulders that powered the stroke, the hands that gripped the oar handles with the same calluses as mine, the heart that had chosen me on a bridge in the dark.
"Let's go."
We stepped into the boat. Feet finding stretchers. Seats sliding into position. The hull settling under our weight—dipping, then steadying, then finding its balance the way it always did. The way we always did.
I pushed off from the dock. The blade bit the water. The hull glided forward.
The Charles River opened up in front of us. Three miles. Six bridges. Thousands of spectators. Scouts with clipboards. My father somewhere in the crowd. And the anonymous texter's words echoing in the back of my mind—Good luck at the Charles. I'll be watching too.
Let them watch.
We had a race to row.
Chapter 26: Liam
The scouts were standing on the bank near the launch area. Three of them. Windbreakers and clipboards and the quiet attention of people whose job it was to decide who mattered.
I knew what they looked like because I'd been imagining them since I was fourteen. Since Jerry put me in a borrowed single on Brackett Lake and told me to chase the run. Since Hale told me I had something. Since Jace told me the pipeline was real and the Olympics weren't just a dream for Kingswell kids with trust funds and private coaches.
Those three people on the bank could change my life.
One race. One morning. Eighteen minutes on a river in a city I'd never been to before this weekend, and everything I'd worked for—every 5 AM practice, every erg piece that left me retching, every dollar I didn't have and every meal I couldn't afford—came down to what happened between the start flag and the finish line.
Kingswell kids had been scouted since they were fourteen. Private coaches since twelve. Elite summer camps that cost morethan my mom made in a month. They'd had a hundred mornings like this one. A thousand chances to be seen.
I had one.
Hale appeared at the dock while we were adjusting foot stretchers. Not the megaphone Hale. Not the clipboard Hale. Just the man—hands shoved in his parka pockets, coffee steam curling past his face in the cold air. He looked at the river for a long moment before he looked at us.
"Listen," he said. No preamble. That was Hale. "I've coached fifteen years. Sent eight rowers to U23 camps. Two to Olympic trials. I rowed this race myself in 1994—lane three, collegiate doubles, got seventh."
He crouched at the edge of the dock. Eye level with us in the boat.
"I've never had a pair like you two. And I've been doing this long enough to know what that means and what it doesn't. It means you've got something special. It doesn't mean today will be easy." He looked at Alex. Then at me. "The Charles is not our home river. It's three miles of wake and current and bridges that funnel the wind and a thousand boats churning the water to shit. Your technique will not save you. Your fitness will not save you. The only thing that saves you on the Charles is the person in the boat with you."
He stood. Brushed off his knees.
"Trust each other. Row your race. And when it gets bad—because it will get bad somewhere on this course—talk. Don't go quiet. Talk."
He looked at me specifically. "You hear me, Moore?"
"Yes, Coach."
