When I turned around, Liam was already walking toward the showers. Towel slung low on his hips. He glanced back over his shoulder.
"You coming?"
And he winked.
He actually winked.
My face went hot. "Yeah. Right behind you."
"I know you are." He turned back around and kept walking.
I stood there for a second. Heart hammering. Then followed him because that's what I always did with Liam.
The showers were an open room. Just shower heads along the tile wall, a drain in the center of the floor. I took the spot nearest the corner. Liam took the one beside me.
We hung our towels on the hooks outside the entrance. Both of us naked. Both of us not acknowledging it.
I turned on the water. Hot. Let it hit my shoulders, my neck, the knots that five days of rowing had built between my shoulder blades. Closed my eyes.
Beside me, Liam's shower started. The sound of water hitting tile. His exhale—slow, relieved, the sound of someone letting the week drain off them.
I didn't look. Kept my eyes closed. Breathed.
But I could hear everything. The water running over his body. The way he shifted his weight. The small sound he made when the hot water hit a sore muscle—not quite a groan, just a release of tension that my brain immediately categorized as something else entirely.
I was getting hard. Slowly. Inevitably. My cock thickening against my thigh, responding to the proximity and the sounds and the knowledge that Liam was naked and wet three feet to my left and there was nobody in this building to stop whatever happened next.
I pressed my forehead against the tile. Cold against hot.
Think about something else. Splits. Technique. The coaching conflict.
Seventeen thirty-one. Turn practice. Bridge clearances.
It wasn't working.
"Stop thinking so loud," Liam said.
I opened my eyes. He was facing the water, head tipped back, not looking at me. Water running down his shoulders, his back, the muscles along his spine.
"I'm not thinking."
"You're always thinking." He turned his head. Eyes finding mine through the steam. "You've been thinking all week. I can hear it from the stroke seat."
"I'm just worried if someone is around they might think…"
"Everyone's gone."
"Liam."
"Alex." He turned to face me fully. The water hit his chest and ran down his stomach and I tried very hard not to look at the rest of him and failed completely.
He was hard. Not hiding it. Not covering himself. Just standing there, water running over his body, watching me with that expression from last night's texts—the one that saidI know what I want and I'm done pretending I don't.
"We said we'd be careful," I said.
"I've been careful all week." He took a step toward me. "Five days of careful. Five days of looking at you across that boathouse and not being able to touch you."
"Liam—"
