Chapter 27: Alex
We paddled toward the dock. The Charles opening up around us, the crowd still roaring from the bridges, the city indifferent and enormous. My arms were gone. My back was gone. Everything below my waist was a single sustained burn.
"What do you think we got?" Liam said behind me.
"Top five."
"Top five is a range, Alex."
"Top three, then."
A pause. The hull gliding forward on its own momentum. "You think?"
"The Princeton boat fell apart in the last five hundred. Columbia had the mechanical." I did the math in my chest, not my head. "Top three."
"Don't jinx it.
I smiled. "Fine."
We docked.
Tyler hit Liam like a freight train—launching off the landing and throwing his arms around Liam's neck, feet off the ground,the two of them staggering dangerously close to the edge. "TOP FIVE. TOP FIVE, MOORE—"
"Tyler—I will drop you in the Charles—"
"I DON'T CARE. FOURTH PLACE."
Fourth. The number landed in my chest and stayed there.
Mason was clapping. Collins had his arms crossed with the particular nod that meant Kingswell approval—genuine, the highest register he offered. Two novice rowers were filming on their phones. Both teams crowded the narrow landing until there was no dock left, no division, no Kingswell side or Riverside side — just thirty people who'd watched something happen and needed to be close to it.
Someone pulled me out of the boat. I wasn't sure who. Hands on my arms, the hull rocking as I stepped onto the dock, and then the noise crashed down around me.
Liam was still in Tyler's grip, laughing now, actually laughing. He caught my eye over Tyler's shoulder.
I held up four fingers.
He grinned. "Told you."
The team moved as a unit up the bank stairs—both programs together, shoulder to shoulder, Tyler still talking, Remy already pulling up splits on his phone, Derek with his hand over his mouth and his eyes red in the way that nobody commented on because everyone understood. The Charles spread out below us, dark and enormous, already moving on to the next race.
At the top of the stairs, two people with press credentials were waiting. A woman with a recorder and a man with a camera—local sports media, from the lanyards. They clocked us immediately.
"Moore and Harrington?" The woman stepped forward. Recorder up. "Got a minute? We're covering the collegiate doubles for the Charles recap."
The team parted around us. Tyler gave me a look that was approximately seventy percent amusement. Liam straightened slightly—the involuntary adjustment, the way he always composed himself when someone pointed a camera at him even though he'd never admit it.
"Sure," I said.
The camera came up. The light on.
"Fourth place in the collegiate doubles—a program record for both Kingswell and Riverside. What was going through your heads when you crossed the finish line?"
Liam glanced at me. A fraction of a second. "Relief," he said. "Mostly relief."
"Same," I said. "And then the math. Trying to figure out where we'd placed."
"Walk us through the Eliot Bridge turn," she said. "From the footage it looked like you went wide—way outside the racing line. What happened out there?"
