Page 13 of Final Drive

“I’m not the story. The rowers are the ones doing the work.”

“Modest. I like that.” She’s still smiling, and she hasn’t stopped reading my face since she got here. “Still, it must be a challenge. Being the only woman, managing all those personalities.”

She sets the last word down carefully, the way you’d set down a full glass.

“It’s a team sport,” I say. “We all have jobs.”

“Yours is unusual, though. Commanding eight men. Keeping them together. It takes a particular sort of person to do that well.”

“It takes training.”

Her smile doesn’t move. “I’d love to do a feature on you. The woman behind Sable Ridge’s championship run. The team dynamic, the pressure. The bonds you’ve formed.”

She lands on that one too.

“I’ll think about it,” I say, which is the polite version of no.

“Here’s my card.” She puts it in my hand. “Call me anytime. I think a lot of people would want to hear your story.”

She’s gone before I can answer, already typing into her phone. I look at the card. Jenna Kowalski, Features Reporter. Her email address has investigative in it.

“What was that?” Gray is at my elbow, keeping his voice down.

“She wants to do a feature on me.”

“On you.”

“The female cox angle.” I put the card in my pocket. “Human interest.”

His jaw tightens. “That’s not what she was fishing for.”

“No.” I look up at him, and for a second the distance we’ve kept all week isn’t there. “It wasn’t.”

“Let’s get the boat put away,” Bennett calls, hearing none of it. “Great work today. Rest up. We go again tomorrow.”

We carry the shell in, rinse her down, and rack her in her spot. The scouts have drifted off with Coach Wilder, talking training blocks and race schedules, which is what any crew this fast would attract.

But Okonkwo chose the word instinctive about a woman he’d been told to look at, and Kowalski came here with the word bonds already loaded, and neither of them stumbled onto this dock by accident.

Somebody has been talking.

“Hey.” Bo’s hand lands on my lower back as the others head for the locker rooms. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“You keep using that word.” His voice stays gentle and his eyes don’t. “I’m starting to think you don’t know what it means.”

I want to tell him. The coffee with Quinton, the reporter’s questions, the fact that Harrison’s two weeks started counting down yesterday and nobody but Gray knows it. But the others are twenty feet away and Bennett is still in earshot, and I don’t have a version of it that fits in the time I have.

“Just tired,” I say. “It’s been a long few days.”

“It has.” He doesn’t push. He keeps his hand where it is as we walk. “Come on. I’ll make dinner.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know.” He smiles, and my shoulders come down an inch without asking me first. “I want to.”

He’ll cook, and it will be good, and he’ll put a plate in front of me and watch until I’ve eaten some of it. I keep waiting to feel like the reason he does it is me and not the job.