Page 47 of Try Line Hearts
“Thanks,” Lucas said quietly. “For tonight.”
“Anytime,” Eli said. “Rivers are kind of our thing now.”
“Goodnight,” Lucas said.
“Night, Luke.”
Lucas lay awake later, staring at the ceiling, tasting Guinness and river air and something dangerously close to hope.
Nothing big had happened.
Which somehow made it feel enormous.
ChapterEight: Small Spaces
The airport made everyone smaller.
Even in their suits—navy blazers, white shirts, ties knotted tight—the squad looked less like giants and more like a pack of young men waiting to be told where to go next. Lucas sat at the gate with his carry-on tucked neatly under his feet, boarding pass folded into his passport, tie already irritating the back of his neck.
Around him, the team hummed with low-grade chaos.
Darren and Jamie argued over who’d forgotten their passport the most times in their career. Finn was trying to balance a rugby ball on his head and nearly taking out strangers in the process. Rory had his headphones in, mouthing lyrics with religious devotion. Aoife hovered like a benevolent storm, checking they hadn’t lost any humans, any documentation, or any remaining brain cells.
Lucas sat slightly apart—close enough to be included if he wanted to be, far enough that no one expected him to join in.
He rubbed his thumb along the edge of his boarding pass, watching the gate screens flick over with delays and destinations. Cardiff glowed in simple white letters, calm and indifferent.
A movement across the way caught his eye.
Two men stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, framed in pale morning light. Both in suits, jackets open, hands loose in theirpockets. One taller, dark-haired, shoulders broad. The other a bit shorter, hair curling at the nape, posture easy.
Something about the silhouette tugged at Lucas’s mind.
The realization hit like a punch to the lungs:it could easily be them in ten years’ time.
He watched without meaning to. Without permission.
The taller man said something low. The other laughed, head tipping back, hand sliding up to touch his arm—not dramatic, not possessive. Just automatic. Comfortable in a way that didn’t ask permission from the world.
They stood close in that way that wasn’t necessary for conversation. Just… chosen.
Then the taller one leaned in and pressed his mouth to the other man’s temple. Quick. Instinctive. A small, private gesture done in public because it wasn’t a risk. Because it didn’t register as a risk.
Lucas’s chest tightened.
As the shorter man shifted, the light caught on both their hands. Rings—simple gold bands on left hands. Matching.
The ache that hit Lucas was swift enough to feel physical. Hunger, but not the sharp bodily kind. Something deeper. The sudden, savage want for a future he’d never allowed himself to picture for longer than a heartbeat.
Standing in an airport in a suit that fit his shoulders, with someone who knew him enough to rest a ring on his hand and a kiss on his temple without thinking twice.
His fingers curled hard around the boarding pass.
He stared.
He didn’t realize how obvious he was being until someone nudged his knee.
“Earth to captain.”
