"That summer was the first time I ever felt like someone actually saw me," he said. "Not the scholarship kid. Not the angry one. Just... me."
The words hit me in the chest. Because I'd felt the same thing—that summer was the first time anyone had looked past the Harrington name and seen the person drowning underneath it. Liam hadn't cared about my father or my family's money or the house on Peninsula Point. He'd cared about whether I could keep up at work and whether I'd try the pancakes.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"For what?"
"For ending it. For not being brave enough to—"
"Alex, it's fine. We've been through this—"
"No. Liam." I tightened my grip on his hand. "It's not fine. I had the best thing that ever happened to me and I threw it away because I was scared of my father. I chose his world over you and it was the worst decision I've ever made."
He was looking at me now.
"I'll never do that to you again. I need you to know that," I said.
The car was quiet. Just the engine and the wind through his open window and another classic rock band playing low on the radio.
I squeezed his hand. "Okay?"
"Yeah." His thumb traced a circle on the back of my hand. "Okay. I believe you."
He said it simply.
"Besides," he said, and the grin crept back. "If you try to leave again, I'll just beat you in another race and make you come crawling back."
"You've beaten me once," I said.
"A win's a win, golden boy."
I shook my head. But I was smiling. And the road stretched ahead of us, and his hand was in mine, and for the first time since that summer on the lake, the past didn't feel like something I was running from.
It felt like something we were building on.
***
The town was called Marlow.
I hadn't planned it—just took exits that looked interesting until the highway became a two-lane road that became a main street with a church steeple and a row of brick storefronts and a banner strung between two lampposts that said HARVEST FESTIVAL.
"This looks like the set of a Hallmark movie," Liam said.
"You watch Hallmark movies?"
"My mom does. Every Christmas. The same plot twelve times with different sweaters."
I laughed.
I parked on the main street. We got out. The air was cold and clean and smelled like wood smoke and fallen leaves. A couple walked past with a pug. An old man was sweeping the sidewalk in front of a hardware store. Nobody looked at us twice.
Nobody knew us here.
The realization hit like a drug. No teammates. No coaches. No Braden watching from across the bay. No Eldridge in his office. No one who knew the name Harrington or Moore or what either of those names meant.
We were just two guys on a sidewalk in a town we'd never been to.
Liam was looking around. Taking it in. And I watched the tension leave his body in real time—the jaw unclenching, the shoulders dropping, that constant scan of the room he did everywhere we went just stopping. Like someone had flipped a switch.
