Page 57 of Try Line Hearts
“Helpful,” Lucas muttered.
Eli’s mouth twitched. “Just accurate.”
He shifted his weight, planted his boots a little deeper into the turf, and then met Lucas’s eyes again, steady.
“I’m not asking you for a full future,” he said. “Not tonight. I’m not asking you to change your life or throw yourself on some rainbow-colored sword. I’m asking for… one honest thing. Here. With me.”
Lucas’s heart thumped hard enough to hurt.
“Which is?” he asked.
Eli took a breath, like he was bracing for a hit.
“I want to kiss you,” he said quietly. “Properly. Sober. Here. So that when your head starts chewing you up again, you’ve got at least one memory where rugby and this”—he flicked his gaze between them—“aren’t enemies.”
The words landed like a dropped ball in the middle of a silent stadium.
Lucas’s pulse sprinted.
Fear reared first: cameras, headlines, sponsors, his mother’s voice, a parish full of gossip.
Want rose up after it, bigger than it had any right to be.
Before he could speak, all the stadium lights cut off with a heavy thud and a long, dying electrical sigh.
Darkness rushed in, thick and immediate.
They were suddenly lit only by the weak glow of emergency strips in the tunnel mouths and the scattered bobbing headlamps of staff up in the stands.
For a second, Lucas just stared into the dark where Eli’s face had been, heart hammering, nerves jangling.
Then Eli huffed a soft, startled laugh.
“Perfect timing,” he said. His voice sounded closer in the dark. Warmer. “See? Maybe God isn’t so ambivalent toward us after all.”
A shocked, helpless sound escaped Lucas—half laugh, half breath.
“Blasphemy on a rugby pitch,” he managed. “Bold choice.”
“Please,” Eli murmured. “If God’s watching us right now, He’s got weirder hobbies than I thought. What a creep.”
The stupid joke loosened something in Lucas’s chest. Like a hand unclenching.
He could feel Eli’s presence in front of him, even without the glare of the floodlights—heat in the distance between them, the faint outline of his shoulders against the barely-lit sky.
“Still want that kiss?” Eli asked softly. “Darkness and all?”
Lucas thought of saying no.
He always thought of saying no first.
Instead, he stepped closer.
Just a small shift of his boots on the turf, enough that he could feel Eli’s breath on his face now, shared air in the cool night.
It was answer enough.
Eli’s exhale shivered between them. “Okay,” he breathed.
