Page 143 of Try Line Hearts
“Final boarding call for Air New Zealand flight one-zero-seven…”
Lucas tracked the movement like it mattered. Like if he witnessed it properly, it would hurt less.
He’d never been particularly sentimental about airports. He’d spent his adult life in them—lounges, gates, early-morning queues, the tired sameness of duty-free perfume and coffee that tasted vaguely of cardboard.
But airports were where you learned the cost of loving people who moved.
Eli returned, eyes a little red, face steady.
The plane pushed back slowly, engines deepening, lights blinking. It began its careful turn, inch by inch, toward the runway.
Lucas followed its path until it vanished from view, swallowed by distance and dark.
He stood there with the sadness and didn’t fight it.
Months ago, that sight would have broken him. It would have felt like a punishment. A consequence. Something he deserved for not being brave enough.
Now it just felt like rhythm.
People leaving. People returning. Love stretching across oceans and refusing to snap.
“They’ll land in two days,” Eli said. “Texted already. Mum says she forgot to tell you she loves you.”
Lucas’s throat tightened. “Tell her I love her too.”
Eli paused—just for a beat. Then nodded, a soft smile pulling at his mouth. “Yeah. She’ll like that.”
They began to walk away from the gate together, footsteps syncing without effort.
Lucas glanced back once more, as if making sure the silver fern had truly gone.
Eli bumped his shoulder lightly. “You hungry?”
“Always.”
“Thought so. There’s a place still open near the river.”
Lucas smiled, small and real. “Lead the way.”
They moved through the terminal, past closed shops and sleepy cleaners, past couples dozing against their luggage, past the glow of vending machines that promised snacks in neon desperation.
Lucas let the ordinary details settle him. Let the world feel real again.
It had been months since the kiss.
The phrase still made his mouth twitch when he heard it—the kiss seen round the world, as the tabloids had breathlessly named it. The clip had been replayed endlessly, slowed down, zoomed in, dissected by strangers with opinions and hot takes and far too much time.
For a while, it had felt like living inside an echo.
There had been the immediate aftermath—Aoife’s tight-eyed competence, Maeve’s profanity-laced triumph, the way the trainingfacility had looked at him with a mixture of awe and “you absolute lunatic,” the way the crowd outside the gates had held flags and signs and made him cry in a taxi like a man who didn’t know how to accept kindness.
There had been the press conference too… short, controlled, as Aoife had demanded. Lucas had kept his answers boring on purpose. He’d refused to turn his private life into a spectacle, even when every question tried to drag it there.
He’d said only what he could live with forever:
“Yes, I’m in love.”
“Yes, it’s real.”
