Page 110 of Try Line Hearts
Maeve’s eyes sharpened. “What do you think he wants?”
Byrne hesitated. “To not feel—” He stopped, breath catching. “To not feel like he’s only real when no one’s looking.”
Maeve nodded once, satisfied. “Aye. That’s a good start.”
Byrne’s chest ached. “I didn’t mean to make him feel like that.”
Maeve leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Intent doesn’t matter as much as impact, Luke. You can love someone to bits and still hurt them if you keep choosing the easy option for yourself.”
Byrne flinched again.
Maeve’s voice stayed steady. Not picking sides. Not making villains. Just cutting cleanly to the bone.
“You’re not a monster,” she said. “You’re just—” She grimaced. “You’re acting like an eejit.”
A weak laugh scraped out of Byrne, then died.
Maeve pointed at him with her glass. “And don’t you dare start blaming Evelyn Cross in your head.”
“I’m not,” Byrne said quickly. “She was kind.”
Maeve’s mouth twisted into something like reluctant approval. “Good. Because she’s not the problem. Declan’s not even the main problem.”
Byrne’s eyes narrowed. “Declan is definitely a problem.”
Maeve snorted. “Declan can get in the sea, like. But the real problem is you thinking you can keep Eli in a holding pattern until you’re ready to be brave.”
Byrne’s throat tightened. “I thought—”
Maeve cut him off, gentler this time but no less firm. “You thought silence meant he’d wait,” she said.
Byrne stared down at his pint like it might rearrange itself into an answer. The foam ring clung to the glass in slow, pathetic circles. He flexed his fingers once, then again—like he could shake the feeling out through his hands.
Maeve watched him. Didn’t rescue him. Didn’t soften it into something he could skate past.
“You know that man loves you, don’t you?”
The words hit Byrne like someone had cracked a window in a room he’d been suffocating in.
For a second, nothing happened—his face stayed still, his posture held, captain’s spine and public composure like an old habit. Then his body betrayed him in the smallest way: a hard swallow thatdidn’t go down properly. A blink that didn’t clear anything. His breath catching on the way in like it had snagged on a rib.
Maeve’s eyes narrowed slightly, like she’d seen the exact second the truth found the gap in his armor.
Byrne opened his mouth. Closed it again.
His heart thudded once, heavy enough to be felt in his throat. Then it happened—not in a clean, cinematic rush, but in a glitch. Like his brain tried to file the thought under danger and couldn’t find a drawer big enough.
“I—” he started again, and this time the sound came out wrong. Too raw. Too human.
Maeve leaned forward a fraction. “Go on,” she said, almost bored, as if daring him to try lying to her now.
Byrne’s knuckles whitened around the pint glass.
And then—like a man stepping off a ledge because staying on it was worse—he said it.
“I love him.”
The pub didn’t change. No thunder. No choir. No dramatic hush from the room.
