"What?"
"Your presets are what a sixty-year-old listens to on a Sunday drive."
"Classical music is—"
"Sad." He kept scrolling. Landed on a rock station. The opening riff filled the car.
Liam's whole body changed. He sat up straighter. Turned it up.
"Oh, hell yes."
"What is this?"
He looked at me like I'd asked what water was. "You're kidding."
"I'm not kidding."
"Rolling Stones. 'Gimme Shelter.' This is—Alex, this is one of the greatest songs ever recorded."
"It sounds like—"
"Don't." He held up a finger. "Don't say anything. Just listen."
I listened. The guitar built. Then a voice came in—haunting, desperate—then bass line thumping along.
"My mom used to play this when she was cleaning the house," Liam said. His voice had gone different. "She hadthis playlist—Stones, Springsteen, Tom Petty. She'd blast it on Saturday mornings and dance with the mop. I thought it was embarrassing when I was twelve."
He paused. "Now it's my favorite thing about her."
The song swelled. Liam was drumming on his knee, mouthing the words. Not performing—just living inside the music the way he lived inside the boat. Fully. Without holding anything back. It was so damn cute.
"Okay, It's good," I said.
"It's better than good."
"It's good, Liam."
He grinned and turned it up louder. The bass rattled the side mirror.
We drove. The music too loud, the window down, cold air rushing through the car. Liam was drumming on his knee. I was driving too fast and didn't care. And somewhere around the ten-minute mark, something happened that I hadn't expected.
I stopped thinking.
Not about anything specific—about everything. The boathouse. Braden. Emily. My father's voice on the phone sayingyou looked happy.Eldridge's office. Ethan's camera. The scouts. The shower. The performance. All of it—the constant, exhausting hum of managing a life built on lies—went quiet.
It was just the road and the music and Liam's hand resting on the center console.
I put my hand over his.
He didn't look at me. Didn't say anything. Just turned his palm up so our fingers could lace together. His hand was rough—callused from the oars, blistered, taped at the base of two fingers. My hand was the same. The one thing we had that was identical.
We held hands for thirty miles. The longest I'd ever touched him without looking over my shoulder.
Liam turned the music down after a while. Not off—just low enough to talk over.
"So is this a date?" he asked.
I glanced at him. "Do you want it to be?"
