Nothing new. Not yet.
I got up. Showered. Got dressed. Made the bed. Straightened the desk. Lined up my shoes by the door. The routines that kept me from flying apart.
Practice was at 5:30 and hopefully afterward I'd have time before class to get my reading done. I doubted it.
The boathouse felt different now.
Same building. Same racks of shells and fluorescent lights and Hale's coffee mug on the dock railing. But I was watching everyone differently. Every person who walked through the bay was a question mark. Every phone in someone's hand was a weapon.
Braden arrived at 5:20. Quarter-zip. Crew cut. Bag over his shoulder. He nodded at Collins and started rigging his pair without looking at me. Normal. Routine. The same Braden who'd been here every morning for two weeks.
Was that evidence of guilt or innocence? A guilty person would act normal. An innocent person would also act normal. The information was useless.
I watched him anyway.
Marcus showed up at 5:25. Phone in his hand—scrolling something, smirking at his screen. He caught me looking and raised an eyebrow.
"What?"
"Nothing."
He shrugged and went to the erg row. Started warming up. The same Marcus who'd apologized to me twelve hours ago at dinner and meant it.
Or seemed to mean it.
I was losing my mind.
Tyler was stretching near the bay door. Evan was taping his hands. Derek was in conversation with Jace about the Charles travel schedule. Remy was on his laptop. The morning routine of twenty-something athletes who had no idea that someone in this building had a photo of me kissing another man.
Liam came through the door at 5:28. Two minutes early instead of his usual ten. He looked tired—dark circles, jaw tight. His eyes found mine for a fraction of a second.
I'm here. We're okay.
I gave him nothing back. The performance.
We rowed.
The session was off. Not bad—not broken. But the edge was gone. The thing that had made usCharles fastwas built on trust, on the connection that lived between our bodies, and now there was static in the signal. My catches were a fraction late. Liam's drive was a fraction hard. The timing that had been effortless was now requiring effort, which meant it wasn't the same thing.
Hale noticed. He didn't say anything from the launch—just watched. Made notes. The silence was worse than a correction.
Eldridge was on the bank. I couldn't tell if he was watching us or the pairs boat behind us. Couldn't tell if the phone call last night had been a donor or my father. Couldn't tell anything about anyone anymore.
***
I pushed through the bay door and into the hallway. It was empty and quiet. Just the hum of the overhead lights and the muffled sounds of the team filtering out behind me.
I leaned against the wall. Closed my eyes. Let out a breath that felt like it had been sitting in my lungs since 5:30 AM. The cold cinder block wall against the back of my head. My shoulders dropping. Just one second of not performing. One second where nobody was watching and I could let the weight of it settle without holding my face together.
My phone buzzed in my bag.
I pulled it out. Unknown number. Same one as last night.
Unknown
Does your father know you're rowing with the scholarship kid after hours too?
The hallway tilted.
