Page 29 of Open Water
"We're done," I said.
"We've been done since the party. I just hoped you'd come to your senses before this."
He reached for his phone. The movement deliberate. Thumb on the screen. I saw the Kingswell team group chat. And attached to an unsent message was the photo. The kiss. Grainy and dark but unmistakable. My hand on Liam's face.
"Marcus. Don't."
His thumb moved toward send.
I lunged.
The chair went sideways. My body hit his across the table and we went over together — laptop crashing, papers scattering, Marcus's back slamming into the floor with my weight on top of him. The phone skidded out of his hand and spun across the carpet.
Marcus got his arm free and drove his fist into my jaw. The crack went through my whole skull. White light. The taste of copper flooding my mouth. My head snapped sideways and for a half-second I was somewhere else entirely — the boathouse, the dock, Liam's hand on my face,you don't have to be perfect— and then I was back. On the library floor. Marcus underneath me.
He hit me again. Same spot. My vision blurred. I felt the skin split inside my cheek and blood pool against my teeth.
I rolled off him. Got to my feet. My jaw was on fire. Blood in my mouth.
Marcus scrambled up after me. Face red. Shirt torn at the collar.
"What the fuck are you doing?" he said.
I thought of Liam. The party. Marcus's mouth forming that word —faggot— and Liam's fist connecting before the second syllable landed. No calculation. No Harrington playbook. Just a boy who'd had enough.
"What I should've done a long time ago."
I balled up my fist and swung.
The crack of my knuckles against Marcus's jaw sent a shockwave up my arm. His head snapped sideways. His legs went out from under him and he hit the floor. Shoulder first, then hip, then the rest of his body hitting the ground.
I was on top of him before he stopped sliding. Knees on either side of his chest. And that's when I saw it.
The phone. Three feet away. Screen still lit. The group chat open. The photo attached.
Delivered.
Everyone knew.
The whole team. Every phone buzzing right now in dorm rooms and dining halls and the Kingswell boathouse. The photo of me and Liam with my hand on his face, his mouth against mine, glowing on thirty screens.
Something in my gut unlocked. Like a door I'd been holding shut for twenty years finally swinging open, and what came through wasn't the Harrington composure, wasn't the careful architecture of silence and patience and control. What camethrough was everything I'd been swallowing since the day my father told me James was a disappointment. Every night I'd spent staring at my ceiling wondering what was wrong with me. Every time I'd flinched at some shit someone said about gay people and locked it away somewhere it couldn't touch me.
All of it. All at once.
I hit Marcus so hard that he went limp for a half-second, eyes unfocused, and I didn't stop. Couldn't stop. I hit him again and his lip split open. I grabbed the front of his shirt and hit him again.
The girl two tables over screamed.
"Don't —"hit"— ever —"hit"— fuck with me and Liam —"hit"— again."
Blood on my knuckles. Blood on his face. Blood on the carpet between us.
Marcus wasn't fighting back anymore. He was curled on his side, arms over his head, making a sound I'd never heard from him.
I stopped.
Not because I wanted to. Because my arm wouldn't move anymore. The adrenaline drained out of me all at once, like someone had pulled a plug, and what was left was a boy kneeling on a library floor with bloody hands and a split lip and a phone screen glowing three feet away with the photo that had just ended his old life.
