The Catch

Two men. Two blades. No cox, no coach, nobody else in the boat.

Theo Rooke came out on live television at twenty-one, soaked to the skin, thirty seconds after winning the Boat Race. He has been the brave one ever since, and it is killing him.

Wessel Marais has never said the word out loud. Not once, in any language, in an empty room. He strokes the Oxford boat, he is the fastest man in the country, and he taught himself to row alone on a dam on his father's farm in the Free State.

They have spent two years hating each other in public.

Then Wes puts Theo in the Thames in front of four million people - and British Rowing's answer is to put them in the same boat.

A coxless pair has no one to steer it and no one to blame. It moves only when two men move as one, and it knows, immediately, when one of them is lying.

What starts in a boathouse at five in the morning is the best thing either of them has ever had. Neither of them can be seen having it.

Theo has one rule, made in a car park at twenty-two with his hands shaking: never a closeted man. Never again.

Wes has nine. It is the ninth one that will finish them.

And somebody already has a photograph.

Rivals to lovers · forced proximity · secret relationship · out/closeted · found family · one couple across all three books · explicit · slow-earned HEA at the end of the trilogy