Our paddles slap the water at opposite times, jerking the boat sideways instead of forward. The dragon head wobbles as we lurch toward the starting buoy in a wide, embarrassing arc.
"Left, left—no, your left," Noah snaps.
"I know my left," I shoot back, jabbing my paddle deeper into the water. It only sends us spinning further off course.
We clip the edge of another team's boat, drawing a curse and a spray of water. The crowd's laughter carries across the lake, and I'm painfully aware of how ridiculous we look.
"Stop.” Noah grits his teeth. “Just stop paddling."
I freeze mid-stroke, my oar dripping lake water.
"Let me set the rhythm.” His voice is low but unmistakably firm. “Follow me. Got it?"
A dozen responses press against my lips, but only one makes it past the lump in my throat.
"As you wish."
His head jerks slightly—just enough for me to see the flicker in his expression. Shock. Recognition. Heat.
It's what I used to say. Always. Our private shorthand. The one that started as a joke after we watched “The Princess Bride” on his parents' couch junior year, his arm around me, my headon his shoulder, both of us pretending we weren't already in way over our heads.
He asked me to pass the popcorn. I saidAs you wishin my best dramatic impression, and he laughed so hard he nearly choked.
But then the laughter faded, and he looked at me. Really looked at me. And I realized the words meant something different when I said them to him. Not a movie quote. Not a joke.
A promise.
After that, it became ours. Our shorthand whispered across crowded rooms. Murmured in the dark. Scrawled in the margins of passed notes during chemistry class.
Three words that held everything we couldn't say out loud at eighteen.
“Stroke,” he says, hoarsely. “Stroke. Stroke.”
His voice drags over me, rough, stripped down to something that hits too deep, too fast. The paddle falters in his hands for half a second—just enough for the boat to rock, just enough to send a jolt straight through me.
“Stroke.”
God.
Heat slams into me, low and immediate, coiling tight as memory surges up without warning—his voice, younger but no less commanding, right at my ear, dark and certain and impossible to ignore.
Stroke…Yeah, just like that…Harder, Riley. Stroke me harder.
My grip slips.
Water splashes wide as I miss the rhythm completely, my breath catching hard in my throat as the past crashes into the present, blurring the edges until I can’t quite tell where I am.
The river.
The boat.
Or the way I used to lose myself in him—every word, every command pulling me under until there was nothing left but the sound of his voice and the need to follow it.
“Stroke.” He says it quieter now. Controlled. Too controlled.
I glance up, pulse pounding.
He’s not looking at me, but his shoulders are tight, tension drawn sharp across his back, his hand wrapped around the oar like he’s holding on to something more than balance. The rhythm he sets is deliberate, measured… like he’s forcing it to stay there.
