Page 69 of Try Line Hearts
Didn’t make a joke about rugby emergencies.
She simply continued talking, steering the conversation somewhere safer without making it feel like a rescue.
By the time the plates were cleared, Lucas felt wrung out in a way that had nothing to do with Evelyn and everything to do with the role he’d been wearing all evening. Like he’d been holding a pose for hours and had only just been allowed to breathe.
“Can I say something mildly inappropriate?” Evelyn asked suddenly.
Lucas startled, then nodded. “At this point, I’d welcome it.”
She smiled. “You’re very good at this.”
“At what?”
“At being… acceptable,” she said, choosing the word carefully. “Palatable. You give people exactly what they expect and nothing they could misuse.”
Lucas swallowed. “Occupational hazard.”
“Mm,” she murmured. “It looks exhausting.”
He laughed again, softer this time. “You’re not wrong.”
There was a pause. Comfortable. Earned.
Evelyn took a sip of her wine at last, then set the glass down with decision. “For what it’s worth,” she said lightly, “I don’t feel like I had dinner with a headline tonight.”
Lucas looked at her.
“I feel like I had dinner with a person,” she continued. “Which I appreciate. Even if the internet won’t.”
Something in her tone—casual, generous—made his throat tighten.
“Thank you,” he said, meaning it.
When they stood to leave, the shift in the air was immediate.
The restaurant door might as well have been a curtain. On the other side waited light and lenses and the unspoken agreement that whatever they’d been inside, they were now something else entirely.
Evelyn paused just before stepping out, close enough that only Lucas could hear her.
“We’ll be fine,” she said quietly. “We’ll give them what they want to see. And then we’ll go back to our actual lives.”
Her gaze held his for a beat—steady, kind, and knowing in a way that didn’t demand anything.
Lucas nodded.
Outside, cameras snapped. Arms linked. Smiles placed where they belonged.
And when it was over—when they reached the car and the moment loosened its grip—Evelyn leaned in, kissed his cheek, hugged him briefly, warm and genuine, and whispered against his ear:
“Now they’ll talk. And hopefully everyone will be happy.”
Not relief.
Gratitude.
Because she hadn’t asked him for the truth.
She’d simply treated him like someone who deserved to keep it.
