Page 78 of Try Line Hearts
Lucas’s jaw tightened.
Behind him, the team was loud in the way men got when they were pretending not to care about where they were going. Music leaked from someone’s phone. Someone else was already complaining about sand.
Eli sat three rows back, knee bouncing, hood pulled up despite the heat inside the bus. He’d been quiet since they boarded.
Lucas didn’t look directly at him.
He didn’t need to.
He could feel him the way he felt pressure changes before weather—subtle, insistent, impossible to ignore once noticed.
The bus pulled into a gravel lot overlooking the beach. Wind came off the water sharp and salty, carrying the sound of waves hitting rock. A cluster of charity volunteers waited with clipboards and high-vis vests. A few photographers lingered farther back, lenses long, pretending to admire the horizon.
Declan clapped his hands. “Okay. Gloves on. Smiles natural. Captain—stick close to me.”
Lucas stepped down from the bus, boots crunching. The air cut clean through his lungs. For a moment, it was just sea and sky and grit.
Then he saw Eli’s hands.
His right knuckles were wrapped—clean, professional bandaging—but swollen enough that Lucas’s stomach dipped. It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t nothing.
Eli caught him looking and lifted one shoulder in a shrug that saiddon’t.
Lucas didn’t ask.
He filed it away like he did everything else that scared him.
They spread out along the beach in loose clusters. Gloves snapped on. Bags were handed out. Someone made a joke about finding treasure; someone else immediately found a dead crab and recoiled.
Lucas bent into the work. It grounded him. The simple logic offind → lift → discard. No commentary. No interpretation.
He was hauling a length of fishing line free from a tangle of kelp when Declan hissed his name.
“Byrne.”
Lucas straightened. “What.”
“She’s here.”
Evelyn Cross approached from the car park with two charity reps, already in a volunteer vest, hair pulled back, sunglasses pushed up into the crown of her head. Jeans. Old trainers. No makeup worth mentioning. She looked… normal. Intentionally so. Like someone who knew exactly how much effortnotto show.
Lucas felt the attention shift before she even reached them.
Eli did too.
Lucas saw it happen almost in slow motion—Eli’s head lifting, his gaze tracking, his laughter tapering off midsentence. One moment he was leaning against a prop, bin bag hooked over one shoulder, easy and loose; the next, his feet were carrying him closer toLucas’s stretch of shoreline without him seeming to notice he’d made a decision at all.
Not a rush.
Not a confrontation.
Just… proximity.
Territorial.
Not aggressive. Not conscious. Instinctual, the way bodies sometimes answered questions before minds caught up.
Declan swooped in like this was his cue. “Evelyn! Thank you so much for coming out.”
