Page 59 of Try Line Hearts
No one else has to know.
The words loosened a knot and twisted another, all at once.
Lucas’s mind flicked back to the airport: two men by the big glass windows, shoulders touching, laughter easy, rings catching the light.
He hadn’t been able to look away.
Now, with Eli’s kiss still ghosting his mouth and the dark humming gently around them, that image came back stronger.
Two men at a window. Two men on a pitch.
The same thing burning between them, just at different stages of its life.
His chest hurt with wanting. For the first time, he let himself feel all of it—the fear, the possibility, the bright, reckless flare ofI want thisunder everything else.
He looked at Eli in the dim light—at the outline of his jaw, the set of his shoulders, the almost ridiculous patience in his voice.
“Start small,” Lucas repeated quietly.
“No one has to know,” Eli said again, gentler this time. “Not Maeve, not the lads, not your family, not mine. Just you and me. We don’t owe anyone a road map for something we’re only just figuring out.”
Lucas thought of Maeve’s texts, of her telling him he deserved more than penance, of her threatening to live vicariously through him. He suspected she’d know before he said a word.
Right now, all he had to decide was whether he trusted himself with this.
With Eli.
His voice came out low and hoarse. “All right,” he said. “Small. Quiet. Just… us.”
He felt Eli’s relief like a physical thing.
“Yeah?” Eli asked, as if he didn’t quite dare believe it.
“Yeah,” Lucas said.
A smile broke across Eli’s face—Lucas could hear it, even in the dark.
“Okay,” Eli said, sounding a little breathless now. “Okay. We can work with that.”
He bumped his shoulder gently against Lucas’s, an almost boyish gesture in the middle of all that weight.
“Come on,” he added. “Before someone with a headlamp catches us and we end up on another fan cam titled‘they’re definitely dating now.”
Lucas let out a rough laugh.
“At least give them some mystery,” he muttered.
They turned together and started toward the tunnel. At the edge of the grass, Lucas let his hand drift just enough for his knuckles to brush Eli’s.
Eli’s fingers bumped back.
No one saw.
No one needed to.
They stepped into the tunnel light side by side, shoulders almost touching, something new and fragile and fiercely wanted alive between them—
small, quiet, just theirs. For now.
