Page 90 of Try Line Hearts
Aoife (PR): Clean, charming, no commitments. Textbook.
Lucas exhaled slowly.
They met him at a café two blocks away, tucked into a corner away from the windows. Declan was already halfway through a flat white, suit immaculate, eyes bright with momentum. Aoife had a tablet open, fingers flicking through engagement metrics.
“Everyone’s happy,” Declan said. “Producers loved it. Social engagement’s already climbing.”
“The ‘don’t kiss and tell’ line is tracking especially well,” Aoife added. “Reads confident without being evasive.”
“It wasn’t meant to be evasive,” Lucas said, wrapping his hands around his coffee.
Declan smiled patiently. “It doesn’t matter what it was meant to be. It matters how it landed.”
Aoife glanced up. “We’ve had some feelers already. Nothing formal, but another appearance wouldn’t hurt. Casual. Low-pressure.”
“I don’t need another appearance,” Lucas said.
“You don’tneedone,” Declan agreed. “But it would help.”
“I said I didn’t want this to become a thing.”
Aoife softened her tone. “It doesn’t have to be a thing. Just… a thread. Something stable.”
“Stable,” Lucas repeated.
Declan leaned back. “You’re thirty-one. You’re a captain. People like narratives they can understand.”
“And if I don’t want to give them one?” Lucas asked.
Aoife didn’t hesitate. “Then they’ll give you one anyway.”
Lucas nodded slowly. He told himself this was rational. Temporary. A holding pattern.
Just a little longer,he thought.Until the season ends. Until it dies down.
He didn’t consider what thatlittle longerwas costing someone else.
The days that followed settled into a rhythm that felt almost normal—until Lucas noticed what was missing.
Eli didn’t avoid him.
That was the unsettling part.
They trained together. Ran drills. Passed cleanly. Spoke when necessary. Eli laughed at the right moments, responded when spoken to, moved with the same competence he always had.
But the ease was gone.
No casual shoulder bumps. No murmured jokes in the line. No instinctive reach when they crossed paths.
Lucas noticed it everywhere once he started looking.
Eli packed up efficiently after sessions and left without lingering. When Lucas spoke, Eli listened—but he didn’t lean in. Didn’t soften. Didn’t offer more than what was required.
At first, Lucas told himself he was imagining it.
By the third day, he knew he wasn’t.
There was space where something used to be.
