Collins' place was a converted Victorian three blocks off campus—the kind of house Kingswell upperclassmen rented when they wanted to pretend they'd outgrown the dorms without actually leaving the bubble. Crown molding and hardwood floors, a front porch with columns that had been repainted so many times the edges were soft with layers. Inside, the furniture was expensive but trashed—leather couches with beer stains, a dining table covered in solo cups and a half-finished game of cards.
I didn't want to come.
Derek had shown up at my dorm at nine.
"You've been in this room for three days."
"I've been at practice."
"Practice and this room. That's it. That's your whole life right now."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You look like you haven't slept, you're rowing like shit, and Eldridge asked me today if something was wrong with you." Derek stepped inside without being invited. "Soyou're coming out tonight. Collins is having people over. Low-key. Just the team. Kingswell."
"I don't—"
"I'm not asking, Alex."
So there I was.
Standing in Collins's kitchen with a red cup in my hand and the noise of twenty Kingswell rowers filling the rooms around me. Music from a speaker on the counter—something with bass that vibrated through the old floorboards. The smell of beer and pizza and someone's cologne layered over the permanent scent of old wood.
I took a drink. Vodka and something. Collins's girlfriend had mixed it and handed it to me with a smile that saidyou look like you need this.She wasn't wrong.
The first drink went down fast. The second faster.
I wasn't a drinker. That was the thing. My father drank— scotch, neat, two fingers, never more than two—with the kind of disciplined control that turned even alcohol into a performance of restraint. And I'd absorbed that lesson the way I absorbed everything from him: unconsciously, completely, until it felt like my own choice rather than his programming.
But tonight the programming was failing.
Tonight I needed the noise in my head to stop.
The anonymous texts. The photo. Eldridge's voice:Whatever is happening off the water, leave it there.My father's number appearing on my phone three times this week—calls I'd answered with the careful, measured tone of a son who was performing normalcy while everything behind the mask was disintegrating.
And Liam. Always Liam. The way practice had felt today—half a beat off, catches not landing together, our drives mismatched in a way that felt less like bad rowing and more like the boat could feel us lying to it.
I finished the second drink and went back to the kitchen for a third.
Mason was at the counter, talking to one of the novice rowers about erg scores. He nodded at me as I refilled my cup. "Harrington. Didn't think you'd show."
"Derek made me."
Mason laughed. "Derek makes everyone do things. It's his superpower."
I took my drink and moved through the house. The living room was packed—guys sprawled on couches, a few standing by the fireplace that hadn't worked in years. Collins was holding court near the front window, telling some story about a race that got louder and more exaggerated with every retelling.
I found a spot near the back hallway, leaned against the wall, and drank.
The vodka was doing what I needed it to do—softening the edges, turning the volume down on the constant risk calculation that ran through my head like a ticker. For the first time in days, I wasn't cataloguing every person in the room as a potential threat. Wasn't replaying the texts. Wasn't watching for the micro-expressions that might reveal who was watching us.
I was just standing in a house, at a party, being a college sophomore.
This is what normal feels like.
The thought made something ache behind my ribs. Because I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt it. Maybe before Brackett Lake. Maybe never.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
