Page 141 of Try Line Hearts
“You absolutely do.”
Lucas huffed a laugh that sounded suspiciously like it might break into something else if he let it. He didn’t let it. He leaned in, pressing his forehead to Eli’s for half a heartbeat, grounding himself in the solidness of him.
Then he looked past Eli’s shoulder and saw the cluster of people gathered a few meters back—familiar shapes, familiar faces.
Mereana Kaine with her scarf pulled tight around her neck, eyes already shiny like she’d started crying in the car and hadn’t stopped since. Hemi beside her, hands in his pockets, jaw set in an expression that was absolutely not emotion because Hemi didn’t do emotion, except the tell was in the way his thumb kept rubbing the edge of his boarding pass like he might wear it smooth.
Kiri leaned against a pillar with her suitcase, grinning like she’d discovered an infinite source of chaos and wanted credit for it. Two aunties were already fussing over someone’s backpack strap as if the strap might spontaneously break if not blessed by three sets of hands. A younger cousin—half asleep—clutched a stuffed toy under his arm.
Eli’s family.
Their family.
Lucas’s throat tightened anyway.
“Last minutes,” Eli said, nodding toward them. “Mum’s already crying. Dad’s pretending he isn’t.”
Lucas glanced at Hemi’s rigid shoulders and murmured, “Your dad cried when you left New Zealand the first time.”
“That was allergies.”
“On a rainy day?”
“Very aggressive pollen.”
Lucas snorted.
Behind them, the announcement repeated, more insistent this time. The queue at the gate thinned and then swelled again as late passengers jogged up, breathless, clutching passports like they were precious.
Eli shifted closer, his hand slipping into Lucas’s pocket the way he’d started doing without thinking—fingers threading with Lucas’s inside the warm fabric, hidden from casual eyes and yet no longer secret. It was such a small thing. It still felt like a miracle.
“You alright?” Eli asked softly.
Lucas nodded. “Yeah. Just—sad.”
Eli’s expression softened, no teasing this time. “Yeah.”
Lucas looked back out at the plane. The silver fern gleamed under the floodlights. A door was still open. A figure in a high-vis vest pushed loaded carts of food and drink inside from a scissor-lift truck.
He swallowed again, the ache pressing behind his ribs.
It wasn’t the fear he’d lived with for years—fear of being seen, fear of being named, fear of losing everything he’d built.
This was different.
This was the ache of having something good and real and knowing it could still leave. Not because someone was punishing him. Not because he’d failed to manage it. Just because life moved people around the globe and called it normal.
Eli leaned in again, lips brushing Lucas’s temple in the exact same place.
A mirror.
Lucas felt it immediately—felt the echo of a memory he’d carried since the first third of the season, back when the idea of this kind of touch had made him ache and panic in equal measure.
An airport. Two men. One of them leaning in, casual and tender, kissing the other’s temple as if it belonged to him.
Lucas had watched them then the way starving people watched food. He hadn’t known he was watching prophecy. He’d only known his chest had hurt and he’d looked away too quickly, terrified someone would see the want in his face.
He hadn’t been brave enough to imagine himself inside that moment.
