Don't go back.
The anger wanted me to. Every muscle in my body wanted me to. But the anger was a liar. It dressed itself up as strength and it was just a faster way to break things.
I sat there until the heat bled out of it. Until my hands unclenched. Until my breathing slowed and the fog crept over the windshield and closed me in completely.
What was left wasn't anger. It was the thing underneath. The thing I'd been covering with fists and attitude my whole life.
I was scared.
Not of Alex. Not of Braden or the texts or whoever was watching. Scared of myself. Of the pattern. Of the fact that every good thing I'd ever touched had my fingerprints on the cracks.
The river was somewhere below me. Invisible. Just the sound of water moving in the dark.
I turned the key. Drove the rest of the way to Riverside. Parked in the lot behind the dorm and sat there for a while.
Eventually, I got out, walked inside, and climbed the stairs. Noah was asleep. His breathing steady. His side of the room neat and organized. Mine was a pile of crew gear and an unmade bed.
I sat on the mattress. Didn't take off my shoes. Didn't take off the hoodie that smelled like Alex's room.
I laid back on the bed. Stared at the ceiling. The same ceiling I'd stared at a thousand nights before—after fights, after races, after Emily, after every time I'd let the worst version of myself make the decisions.
The anger was quiet now. Not gone. Just resting. Waiting for the next time I'd be scared enough to let it out.
I closed my eyes and waited until it was bright enough to start the day.
Chapter 17: Alex
We rowed on the Kingswell side that day and the boat felt dead.
Not heavy—dead. The specific lifelessness of a shell carrying two rowers who weren't connected. I could feel it in the hull, in the way it sat too low in the water, in the resistance on every stroke that shouldn't have been there.
We'd been rowing for twenty minutes. The river was flat and grey beneath an overcast sky. The mist had burned off an hour ago but the air still carried the damp, and the cold crept through my uni and settled into my ribs.
Liam was right in front of me. His back—broad, strong, the muscles I knew by touch as well as sight—moved through the drive phase with mechanical precision. Catch. Drive. Finish. Recovery. Technically sound. Emotionally vacant.
I matched him. Blade entering a half-second after his, finding the water at the right depth, the right angle. My catches were clean. My drives were controlled. On paper, we were rowing.
But the boat knew.
A double is the most honest shell on the water. An eight can hide a weak rower—seven other bodies absorb the inconsistency. A four can compensate. A double has nowhere to hide. Two people, two oars each, and the hull between them acting as a lie detector. When you're connected, the boat sings—lifts and runs and feels like it's moving without effort. When you're not, it drags. Fights you. Every stroke a negotiation instead of a conversation.
We weren't having a conversation. We were filling silence with oars.
And the worst part was how easy the pretending was. We'd slipped back into it without a word—the performance of two people who were fine. Just rival double partners having a quiet practice. No tension. No history. No four AM fight that cracked us both open and left the pieces on the floor of my dorm room.
He hadn't texted.
I hadn't texted.
We'd shown up this morning and nodded at each other across the boathouse like acquaintances. Like the last two months hadn't happened. Like Brackett Lake hadn't happened. And part of me—the Harrington part, the part trained since birth to perform through pain—was relieved by how naturally the mask went back on.
The other part of me was drowning.
Because I could see him doing it too. The set of his shoulders. The way he'd looked past me when we carried the shell down to the dock—not through me, not at me, just past. Like I was scenery. Liam had his own version of the mask—anger and indifference. Less polished than mine. But just as thick.
We'd both retreated to our defaults. Him behind the wall. Me behind the composure. And the boat was carrying the weight of everything we wouldn't say.
"Ready to build?" Liam said. First words in ten minutes.
