Page 144 of Try Line Hearts
“No, I won’t apologize.”
And then he’d gone home—to Eli’s flat, because “home” had changed shape without anyone writing it down.
They’d lost a handful of sponsors. Predictable ones. Brands that had already felt hollow. Lucas had signed the termination paperwork with a strange calm, as if he’d known, somewhere deep down, that those doors were never meant to stay open.
He’d expected that to hurt more than it did.
But then the offers had poured in.
New partnerships. Better ones. Campaigns that didn’t flinch. Invitations to appear, to speak, to exist as himself without qualifiers. Not because he wanted to be a symbol—God, he didn’t—but because people kept telling him, quietly and earnestly, that it mattered to see someone survive what they were still afraid to name.
There had been letters, too.
Not the creepy ones, though those existed—there were always creeps. Lucas had learned to live with creeps the way celebrities did, by trusting Aoife and locking his doors.
No, the ones that stayed with him were simple.
A teenager from Donegal:I watched you and didn’t feel sick with fear for the first time.
A man in his forties from Limerick:I didn’t come out till last year. I was so tired. I’m happy you’re free now.
A woman who wrote she’d never cared about rugby until she saw two men kiss in the rain and then she cried in her kitchen like she’d been watching her favorite daytime show.
Lucas had read those late at night with Eli’s hand on his back, both of them quiet.
He didn’t think about Declan much anymore—in the days after the cup match Declan had used the words “We can fix this” and Lucas had promptly fired him without expression. Declan’s little narratives had crumbled on impact with real life. The tabloids had tried to twist it into scandal, but scandal required secrecy, and Lucas had taken that weapon and snapped it in half on live television.
And then there had been his father. His father was different. His father lived in Lucas’s chest like a stone.
The message that had come.
We will pray for you and the country to find the way back to God.
No “I love you.”
No “Are you safe?”
No “I’m proud.”
Just prayer as a weapon, disguised as kindness.
Lucas had stared at that screen until the letters blurred.
He’d broken in Eli’s arms so hard Eli had gone silent—no jokes, no lightness, just steady breathing and hands that held him the way you held something fragile you refused to drop.
They’d talked later. Slowly. Carefully. Lucas had admitted things he’d never let himself say before: that he’d been afraid of losing his parents because they’d built their love like a contract. That he’d always suspected he was one misstep away from voiding it.
Eli hadn’t tried to fix that. He’d only said, softly, “I’m sorry. That’s shit.”
Then he’d called his mum.
Not to complain. Not to ask permission.
Just to hear her voice.
And Mereana had said, without hesitation, “Take care of Lucas. Feed him. That boy needs feeding.”
Two weeks later, the Kaines arrived in Dublin for the first time.
