Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4

by Amy Jo Cousins

  “You can do it?” He wasn’t sure what that meant. He was definitely certain Denny Winslow was fucking awesome, though.

  “Wait.” Denny threw his hands in the air, blowing a puff of air that fluttered his bangs. “I can wait for you.” The most awesome guy in the world muttered something under his breath about a nineteenth-century virgin.

  “Really?” Because waiting didn’t sound like a thing Denny did a lot.

  “Yes, really,” Denny said, even as he was shaking his head, and Rafi’s heart fucking launched itself right out of his chest at the realization that he was getting everything he wanted and the time to figure it all out.

  “I’m gonna be in love with you so hard in about half a minute. You know that, right?” he asked, because look at that. Turned out everything got easier when you weren’t stuffing thoughts and feelings and shit under your mental furniture, trying to hide it from sight.

  “Fuuuuuuck.” Denny groaned again, this time grabbing his crotch as he turned his back on Rafi. “Get out.”

  “What?”

  Denny waved a hand at the door. “Out. Wait in the hall. I gotta punch myself in the dick or something so I can get rid of this hard-on.”

  Rafi flinched. “Don’t do that.”

  “Seriously. Get out. I’m trying to be virtuous here.”

  “Okay.”

  As he passed though, Denny stopped him with a hand on his arm. “And no. I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?” Denny was staring down at his hand on Rafi’s arm, his fingers pale against Rafi’s dark skin. He wondered if Denny liked how they looked against each other. An image of Denny’s naked body sprawled across his own erupted in his brain. Rafi was going to need his own hard-on elimination strategy.

  “Go home with that guy last night. Or anyone else.”

  Rafi hadn’t thought he could smile any harder. “My business now? Even if you’re waiting.”

  Denny grinned right back at him. “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Think so?” He mimicked Denny teasing him about his own “pretty much”.

  “Shut up.”

  He leaned in and pressed a kiss to Denny’s mouth. Soft. Easy. “I’ll be in the hall.”

  He pulled the door closed behind him. Seconds later, he heard another loud thunk from Denny’s room, and then a muttered curse.

  “Ow.”

  Rafi smiled until his face hurt.

  Rafi’s first race at Carlisle was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him.

  Up until the race started, he would have said admitting to Denny that he was halfway to being in love with him already topped the list of great things, but even that momentous event took a temporary backseat to his triumph on the water.

  Two days before the weekend regatta with three local schools, an unofficial event that didn’t count for anything other than annual bragging rights, Coach Lawson pulled him aside after practice to tell him she wanted him in the stroke seat of the JV boat for Saturday’s race. The rower in that seat was responsible for setting the stroke pace for the rest of the boat, the most critical job.

  Rafi spent three days trying not to throw up.

  Denny hadn’t even given him shit about it, although Rafi knew he wanted to impress Lawson as much, if not more than, Rafi did. Because Denny was a pure competitor through and through. Wanting to get naked didn’t make him lose focus on his athletic goals. Not like Rafi, who enjoyed competing, but was mostly operating at a high level of panic when it came to rowing at Carlisle because he worried constantly about being good enough. Denny competed because he loved racing, loved pushing his body to the edge with seven other rowers and a cox in a heart-busting effort to beat back anyone who wanted to challenge them on the water.

  Rafi didn’t know if it was because Denny had been racing so much longer than him, but Denny got pumped at the idea of racing. Rafi got sick to his stomach. Although he was proud that their coach wanted to see what he could do at stroke—this was what he was working for, every day—the idea of being in the spotlight during an actual regatta was nauseating.

  The morning of the race, he stuffed a banana in his mouth while he pulled on his tight, Lycra racing unitard before dawn and hoped he wouldn’t puke.

  He kept his earbuds in for the entire trip to the nearby lake where the local regattas were held. Denny waved off any teammates who wanted to talk to him, and Rafi was grateful. Grateful too for the occasional subtle hand on his back or shoulder that grounded him in the middle of the swirling nerves that threatened to unman him.

  Unloading the boats kept Rafi distracted long enough before they dry-launched from the dock that he thought he might actually make it through the morning without passing out.

  From the moment they’d sat in their boats—the bow pair of rowers sculling intermittently to keep them in line with the other novice boats—waiting for the command to Attention! until the moment Austin’s Way ’nuff! command to stop rowing finally penetrated his oxygen-deprived brain, the entire race was a blur.

  All he knew was that they’d won.

  The adrenaline hangover was going to be a killer. His legs were shaking so hard he didn’t know if he’d be able to get out of the boat when they got back to the docks. He’d collapsed on his back, head practically ramming Vinnie’s feet. Maybe Austin would haul on his hands to help him sit up again.

  He’d known rowing stroke would be harder than anything. He’d done it in practice, for crying out loud, even if that had only been once. But the stress of knowing that seven guys behind him were counting on him to keep the pace Austin set was a killer.

  What the hell had Coach been thinking, giving him that seat?

  Maybe it was some kind of “mess with the new guy” strategy to see what he could do? He could almost believe that, except for Coach’s whole I’m here to win speech on the first day of practice. Either she was the best bullshitter he’d ever seen, or she really had thought he might be the man for the anchor seat.

  When they docked, Austin was up and out of the boat so fast Rafi didn’t have a chance to ask him for a hand. That boy could move when he wanted.

  “What the hell?” he wondered out loud.

  Vinnie’s laugh behind him was little-kid delighted. “Get your ass back over here, Schreiner!” His suitemate steadied the shell with a hand on the dock while Rafi and the other port rowers climbed out first. “Got it?”

  “Yeah.” He dropped to his stomach and grabbed the edge of the shell with a hand to stabilize it. “What’s he running from?”

  “The dunking he knows he’s gonna get,” Denny grunted out as he clambered onto the dock, along with Vinnie and the rest of the eight-man team. He called to Austin. “Don’t you jinx us, you little shit.”

  “Superstitions are stupid.” Their cox was hovering a theoretically safe distance away, clearly hoping to talk his way out of a swim in the lake.

  “Says the guy who’s wearing seven-year-old underwear,” Vinnie shouted.

  “What?” Rafi looked up from the dock.

  “He won his first race coxing a four while wearing tighty whities,” Vinnie explained over the hand Austin was leaping up to clap over his mouth. “So guess what he wears whenever he wants luck for a race?”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, Vincent. Do you have to tell everyone that story?”

  “Yes. It’s adorable. You’re like a little tiny boy with a lucky teddy bear. Except it’s underpants. Little boy underpants.”

  Austin made an attempt at a dignified denial.

  They tossed him in the lake before he could get a word out.

  Standing on the edge of the dock, Denny’s shoulder pressed against his as they shouted to Austin where he was splashing in the lake, Rafi was happy in the warm glow of their laughter.

  “Quite fucking around and get the damn boat out of the water.” The shout from the varsity boat waiting to
launch interrupted their goofing off.

  “JV whores.”

  Rafi tensed on the dock. Was Boomer being his usual prick self, or was that the sign he’d been fearing that gossip about Denny’s PrEP status had spread? Mutters picked up in volume behind him.

  “Knock it off.” Ted’s snapped-out command shut everyone up. Rafi’s face burned, but he ignored it as his teammates high-fived him again and then helped get their boat out of the water.

  Not even Boomer’s bitchy comments could smother his elation.

  He had a place here. At last.

  Chapter Eight

  Rafi had never seen anything like the Head of the Charles.

  What must have been every college student on the eastern seaboard had caravanned to Boston for the biggest two-day regatta in the world, and half of them looked like they were sleeping on park benches for the weekend. Lots of bed hair and noticeable body odor, which was maybe just part of that liberal hippie thing that was so different from Midwest liberal—voting Democratic while making sure your lawn was properly maintained.

  “Seriously, do they kick everyone over thirty out of the city for the weekend? And does that mean you’re in danger?” he ragged on Cash, and ducked when his friend took a swing at knocking his hat off. “Gettin’ slow, old-timer.”

  “Don’t make me chase your ass down. Thirty, ha. You need those legs.”

  “Not like I’m rowing this weekend.” It was hard not to be bitter about that, but Denny had explained about the Head of the Charles’s complicated eligibility and lottery system. The Carlisle women had done hot shit last year, and had two boats in the Collegiate Eights race and another two in the Women’s Championship Eights, an open race with international teams, Olympic boats, collegiate teams and club teams. However, the previous year’s poor showing and minimal luck in the lottery meant the Carlisle men only had one boat on the water in the Men’s Collegiate Eights.

  Rafi’s performances in the races they’d participated in already—small gatherings though they were—had been solid. But with only one men’s boat in the Head, there was no chance he would have been selected for that eight-man roster.

  “Hey. Have you been racing in a fucking boat?”

  “Yes.” Cash had never been able to curse before, not as long as Rafi had known him. He’d always claimed that he couldn’t compartmentalize like that between his work with the elementary school kids and his grown-up life. Looks like he’s figured it out.

  Either that or Boston kids were way more potty-mouthed than the ones in Chicago.

  “Are you gonna knock it out of the fucking park in the spring?”

  The spring season was heavy with races almost every weekend. Rafi knew it was unrealistic to have expected to row on the Charles his first semester on the team, but the anxiety about letting people down rode him hard. If he was on a rowing scholarship, he was meant to be one of the best, wasn’t he? His scholarship renewal depended on the committee members being satisfied with him, and not rowing this weekend was stressing him out.

  “Yes, Coach.” That got him a grin and an arm slung around his shoulders.

  “That’s all that matters. Proud of you, buddy. What’s our motto?”

  He knew exactly what to say. “Go big or go home, Coach.”

  “That’s right. Because who are we in charge of?”

  The chorus of “Just us!” was loud and proud, as it turned out that their conversation wasn’t quite as low volume as Rafi might have hoped.

  But he couldn’t begrudge the eavesdropping. Not when Cash and Denny’s friends were all so damn friendly. Rafi had met Tom and Reese briefly during their visit to Chicago, when they’d flown out to meet and help Denny, and of course he knew Steph. She’d never stopped coming to help out at Friday afternoon soccer games until she and Cash had moved back to Boston last year. But he hadn’t expected them all to show for the Head. Certainly not at the asscrack of dawn, to accompany Rafi and Denny in their quest to grab a viewing spot on the Eliot Bridge, which was apparently prime real estate.

  But the previous night the older Carlisle alums had taken him and Denny out for dinner, and they’d all huddled over the race schedule for the weekend, planning out where they could meet up before and after different races. Carlisle alums were rowing in a bunch of races, from Masters to Championship Fours to the 8:00 a.m. Senior Veteran Singles race, whose entrants were all over seventy years old. Rafi couldn’t wait to see that one, even if Denny had whined about getting up that early.

  Both he and Denny skipped the margaritas at dinner. Morning workouts didn’t dematerialize in honor of major races, after all. But Rafi had laughed and nodded when Steph opened her bag and showed him the bottle of champagne she was bringing home to chill for celebrating on Sunday, when the college races took place.

  As soon as Cash spotted her gesture, though, he’d shouted and reached across the table to clap a hand over Steph’s mouth.

  “Jesus, woman, what are you trying to do? Jinx ’em? You might as well call it an l-o-c-k,” he spelled out, voice pitched in a whisper. “Sorry, guys. She means well but she’s not a sports fan.”

  “Fine. I’ll drink it all myself, mixed with your loser tears after the little guy steers your team into a mud bank,” Steph replied, chin lifted in a superior look.

  Saturday’s dawn run was ridiculous. If he’d thought western Massachusetts was an exhaustingly hilly landscape, that was only because he’d never gone for a run in Boston. He tried begging when they turned corners and found themselves at the foot of the kinds of hills he’d hoped to escape by being closer to the coast, but Denny just laughed and called him a pussy, jogging up slopes like they were prairie flat. Rafi’s thighs burned and his calves ached, sheer competitiveness driving him to chase after Denny.

  “I thought Boston didn’t have any hills,” he huffed as they ran.

  “Welcome to Somerville,” Denny replied, grinning as he picked up the pace.

  After microshowers and shoving food in their faces, they headed out. Tom and Reese were meeting them at the river, and Rafi’s suitemates had promised to connect with them too.

  The wind carried the ache of a chill, ruffling the gray water of the river, everything colorless and flat in the cloudy morning light. Nobody drove anywhere near the river on race weekend, and the walk over had kept them warm in their fleece jackets and hooded sweatshirts, but standing still all day would be a shivering challenge.

  “Tailwind today. Could be fast,” Rafi commented, eyes on the farthest stretch of the river they could see from their perch on the bridge. With the wind behind them, the rowers would square their blades instead of feathering them, letting the surface work like a sail to pick up more speed on each stroke.

  “Overnight temps have been dropping, though. The water’ll be slow.” Denny leaned with his elbows on the railing next to him, their shoulders touching. The tight quarters meant everyone was pressed against their neighbors, but Rafi knew it was more than that for them. The desire to touch each other whenever possible was constant now.

  The Senior Veteran Singles weren’t enough of a draw to bring out the full mass of the crowds. They’d easily found a viewing spot on the upstream side of the bridge where the races would pass. The downstream side was reserved for boats returning to the docks where they’d launched.

  “How many rowers compete this weekend?” Steph’s voice rose in a question as she pored over the draw list they’d cut out of yesterday’s newspaper.

  “Ten thousand?” Rafi wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

  “Closer to nine, I think,” Denny corrected. He’d been coming to these races since he was a kid.

  “How do they fit them all on the river? It’s gotta be total chaos.” Steph waved her hand at the narrow course of the Charles, especially tight leading up to the three low brick arches of Eliot Bridge, a known challenge where rowers had to negotiate a tight turn and
then straighten out in time to make it under.

  “This is a Head race,” Denny explained. Rafi turned his head and watched him become Professor Crew. “It’s more of a time trial than the side-by-side races you saw us do. They start the boats every fifteen seconds or so. There’s no way to know who’s winning by watching, although if you see a boat with a higher number in front of one with a lower number, that means they’ve caught up and passed someone, which is a good sign.”

  “Here they come,” Cash said, pointing down the river to where a single scull skated toward them like a bug on the surface of the water. They watched the boat approach, which seemed to take a long time. It was strange to see how slow a single scull moved in comparison with the speeds Rafi was used to in an eight-man boat.

  “How do they not run into things without a cox? It doesn’t look like they’re turning their heads to look where they’re going.” Steph craned her neck to watch the old man whose boat slid under the bridge.

  The age-old challenge of a sport where the rowers were always going backward. Rafi pointed at the nearest sculler. He knew the answer to this one. “Look. They have little mirrors clipped to their hats.”

  “And how old are these guys?” she asked.

  “At least seventy,” Denny said.

  “Holy shit.” Steph’s eyes widened and she leaned over the railing to watch another sculler disappear beneath their feet. Cash grabbed the waist of her jeans and tugged her back. “When I’m seventy, I hope to spend my days on the couch.”

  “No way, Tyler. I’ll have us moving till we’re dead.” Cash’s smacking kiss against his girlfriend’s cheek evoked a groan from Denny at the cheesiness. Rafi smiled. He liked seeing Cash all mushy over Steph. It was sweet.

  By the time Tom and Reese showed up, Cash and Steph had decided to look for a viewing spot along the banks of the river.

  “Standing all day? Not happening,” Steph had announced.

  “Text us where you end up,” Denny told them as he and Rafi waved at the foursome heading out.