Two schools. One river. A love neither of them was supposed to survive.

Alex Harrington has everything a golden boy is supposed to want. Money. Legacy. A girlfriend his family loves. A rowing seat at Kingswell University, the school his grandfather built his whole life around.

What he doesn't have is the guts to admit who he really is.

Liam Moore has nothing handed to him. He fights for every inch at Riverside State, on a scholarship his mom worked two jobs to help him earn. He doesn't do soft. He doesn't do second chances.

Especially not for Alex.

Two summers ago, they had one perfect week at a lake that didn't ask them to pick a side. Then Alex panicked, let go, and pretended it never happened. Liam never forgave him.

Now it's sophomore year, and the same two boys who broke each other's hearts are standing on opposite banks of a river that splits their whole town in half — Kingswell money on one side, Riverside grit on the other, two schools that live to destroy each other every single season.

One dare changes everything.

Five a.m. No coaches. No rules. Just an illegal race that reopens every wound they never healed — and starts something neither of them can walk back from.

But somebody was watching. And what that person saw is about to blow up both their worlds.

Family expectations. A scholarship on the line. A closet that's about to get very crowded. Alex has to decide if he's finally brave enough to choose Liam out loud, in front of everyone who's ever told him who he's supposed to be.

If you love slow-burn tension, rivals who can't stop circling each other, and a romance that makes you ache before it makes you smile, you're going to fall hard for this one.

One summer. One kiss. One betrayal neither of them survived. Now they get one more shot to get it right.