Page 1 of Try Line Hearts
Chapter One: Collision Course
The Dublin morning had teeth; cold, wet ones—the kind that bit straight through Lucas Byrne’s Ireland team jacket and settled into his chest. He welcomed it because cold was simple. Cold didn’t ask questions.
He couldn’t afford questions. Not today.
He zipped the jacket higher, more out of habit than comfort. It didn’t matter; the wind always found him. It slipped through seams and collars, curled along his spine, reminded him—quietly, insistently—that control was never permanent. Only practiced.
First day of training camp.
First session as captain.
First look at the squad he’d be responsible for welding into something coherent—and marketable, and honorable, and uncontroversial.
Uncontroversial mattered more than people liked to admit.
Expectation pressed close, heavy and intimate, as the squad gathered on the pitch. Cameras would come later. Commentary later. Judgment later. For now, there was only grass underfoot and the weight of the armband snug against his bicep, a constant reminder that everything he did would be seen.
“Let’s warm it up, lads!”
Coach Carmody’s voice cracked across the pitch, whistle sharp enough to split stone. Players spilled onto the immaculate grass, boots churning frost into pale mist. Byrne jogged with them—not because he needed warming, but because captains didn’t stand still.
Captains set tempo, stayed visible and hid their doubts behind motion.
He scanned faces as they ran loops, cataloguing without effort. The returning lads were comforting in their predictability:
Rory Keane—lock and human battering ram, whose booming laugh could shake rafters and whose shoulders should have been regulated equipment.
Darren Morris—the wiry scrum-half whose mouth ran faster than his feet, sharp and relentless and always half a step from trouble.
Cillian Ward—a flanker built like a punishment, forever hovering between affectionate and homicidal.
Known quantities. Safe ones.
New faces blurred together—fresh haircuts, new boots, nerves masked as swagger. Manageable. All of it manageable.
Except one.
A problem.
Elijah Kaine—Eli to those who knew him.
Byrne clocked him mid-stride and felt something in his chest hitch, sharp and unwelcome.
Kaine ran with smooth, unhurried ease, every step balanced and sure, as if motion itself bent to accommodate him. Nothing forced. Nothing showy. Just a body doing exactly what it had been engineered for. Broad shoulders cutting clean lines through the air. Lean muscle working without waste. Dark curls brushing his temples, already damp with mist.
Byrne tried not to look.
He failed within ten seconds.
Kaine was already a whisper around camp—speed, finishing ability, highlight reels from Super Rugby Pacific quietly circulating between phones and murmured conversations. The kind of signing that generated optimism. Headlines. Expectations.
Not just because he was good.
Because of how hard Ireland had gone after him.
Byrne had heard the story before he ever saw Kaine in the flesh—heard it in the quiet places where decisions were actually made. In corridors after meetings. In low voices over coffee that had gone cold. Ireland didn’t usually chase players like this. They developed, they cultivated, they waited. They didn’t cross hemispheres with intent unless the prize justified the risk.
And Elijah Kaine had justified it.
