Page 63 of Try Line Hearts
Maeve had demanded Eli’s number the first time Lucas had admitted—carefully, vaguely—that something had shifted. She’d said she “needed to establish basic facts,” which had turned out to mean she wanted to hear Eli’s voice, take his temperature, and determine whether he was the sort of man who would treat Lucas like a secret or like a person.
Apparently, after a single conversation with Lucas and a handful of messages with Eli, she’d reached a conclusion.
Between her and Lucas, she’d decided she needed to make sure that, quote:he’s worthy of you.
Eli laughed at his own phone.
“She’s fun but scary, that one,” Eli said, amusement threaded through it.
“You have no idea,” Lucas murmured.
He didn’t pull away.
Outside, the river slid past, indifferent and endless. Inside, the apartment held the quiet aftermath of something new—unsettled, unspoken, real.
For the first time, Lucas didn’t feel the need to leave immediately.
And that—more than anything else that night—terrified him.
Chapter Eleven: Even The Best Fall To It
Home matches always felt different.
The noise arrived earlier, lingered longer—a low animal thrum that seeped into the concrete long before kickoff. Lucas felt it in the tunnel, in the way the crowd leaned forward as one body, expectant and possessive. This was his ground. His city. His captaincy was sharpened by familiarity rather than dulled by it.
The stadium smelled like wet grass and metal and anticipation. He could taste it on the back of his tongue, the way he always could before a home match. The weight of it steadied him. Anchored him.
He stood at the front of the line, shoulders square, eyes forward. The anthem rose around them, voices folding into one another, and Lucas sang without thinking, muscle memory carrying him through the words. He felt more than heard the crowd surge at the chorus, the sound pushing into his ribs like a second heartbeat.
Eli stood two places down in the line, already vibrating with energy, jaw set, eyes bright. He bounced once on his toes, rolled his shoulders like he was loosening something feral and coiled under his skin.
When their shoulders brushed during the anthem, it was accidental in the way things sometimes were—and sometimes very much weren’t.
Lucas didn’t look at him.
He didn’t have to.
He could feel Eli anyway. The heat. The awareness. The way Eli’s attention always seemed to find him, even when Lucas refused to return it in public.
The match burned hot and fast.
From the first whistle, it was clear they had England on the back foot. Clean breakdowns. Relentless pressure. Lucas marshaled the field like a general, voice cutting through the noise, decisions landing sharp and right. He read the defensive line like a language he’d been born fluent in, dragging bodies with him, opening space where there shouldn’t have been any.
Eli followed every call with feral precision, chasing space like it owed him money. He burned defenders on the outside, snapped back inside when they overcommitted, trusted Lucas to see him even when the crowd swallowed everything else.
They were devastating together.
Lucas felt it in his bones—the click, the rhythm, the way the field opened when Eli trusted him and he didn’t flinch from the responsibility of it.
The crowd fed them. Every break, every hit, every clean catch ratcheted the noise higher. By halftime, the stadium felt like it might lift clean off its foundations.
By the final whistle, the roar felt physical.
They’d won.
Lucas stood for a moment with his hands on his hips, chest heaving, sweat cooling on his skin as the reality of it settled. The noise washed over him, the kind that stayed with you long after you left the pitch.
In the chaos that followed—shouting, slaps on backs, water bottles flying—Lucas caught Eli’s eye at last.
