Page 127 of Try Line Hearts
“You chose truth,” Eli said softly. “That’s never the wrong thing. Even when it hurts.”
Lucas closed his eyes.
Outside the room, phones buzzed. Headlines wrote themselves. The world moved on, loud and demanding.
Inside, for a few stolen minutes, there was only the quiet weight of another person holding him upright.
And that was enough.
ChapterNineteen: The After
They didn’t say it out loud at first.
It was just there, hanging between them as they sat in the PR office— the quiet knowledge that neither of them could face their own front doors tonight. Not Lucas’s apartment, with its memories and its silence and the weight of expectation pressing in from every wall. Not Eli’s, already too exposed, too close to streets that would be crawling with people who suddenly felt entitled to know him.
Lucas leaned back in the chair, head tipped against the wall, eyes closed.
“I don’t think I can go home,” he said finally, voice low and flat.
Eli didn’t hesitate. “Yeah. Me neither.”
That was it. No justification required.
Lucas pulled his phone back out, turning it on just long enough to send one message.
Luke: still alive. need somewhere discreet. you’re annoyingly good at this.
The reply came almost instantly.
Maeve:Already booked... it was gonna be a surprise. You just won the world cup and a boyfriend – I need sleep so you need to bang it out elsewhere. Five-star. You’re paying me back. National icons can afford it.
Lucas let out something like a laugh and something like a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
He typed backthank youand turned the phone off again.
Aoife handled the rest with ruthless efficiency.
She appeared at the door like a stage manager, already holding keys. “Right,” she said briskly. “We’re leaving. Now. Delivery entrance. No one’s looking there.”
They didn’t argue.
They pulled their hoods up, heads down, slipping through service corridors that smelled like cardboard and disinfectant instead of sweat and history. Aoife’s car was waiting, engine running, lights off. She ushered them in, slammed the doors, and pulled away before either of them had time to think.
Only once they were several blocks away did she speak.
“You did good,” she said, eyes on the road. “Both of you.”
Lucas swallowed. “You don’t have to—”
“I do,” she cut in gently. “Because you’ll hear enough noise soon. You should hear at least one clean thing before that.”
She dropped them outside the hotel, waited until they were safely inside, then drove off without ceremony.
The hotel was too nice for hiding.
That was Lucas’s first thought as the car pulled away and the doorman disappeared back into the warm gold glow of the lobby. Marble floors. Soft lighting. The kind of place that smelled faintly of old wood and money. Central Dublin—discreet, expensive, and blessedly anonymous at this hour.
At the reception desk, the clerk looked up—and stilled.
