Page 93 of Try Line Hearts
Eli lifted a hand—not cutting him off, just… pausing him.
“Let me finish,” he said gently. “Please.”
Lucas closed his mouth and nodded.
Eli stared at the floor again, choosing his words with care. “I thought I could do this. I really did. Be careful. Be quiet. Be patient. I told myself it was temporary. That it meant something because you were choosing me at all.”
Lucas’s chest tightened.
“But then,” Eli went on, “I watch you on television smiling about not kissing and telling, and I hear people talk about you likeyou’re… available. Like you’re an idea they can all project onto. And I realize I don’t actually exist in that version of your life.”
Lucas shook his head. “That’s not true.”
Eli looked up then. Met his eyes.
“It is,” he said. “Not because you don’t care. But because you’ve made room for everythingexceptme.”
The words landed heavy and final.
Lucas ran a hand over his face. “I just need time.”
Eli’s mouth curved, faint and sad. “That’s what I keep hearing.”
“I’m not asking forever,” Lucas said quickly. “Just—until the season ends. Until things settle. This is a bad time.”
“For you,” Eli said softly.
Lucas stilled.
Eli continued, voice steady. “I wake up sore and smiling because I was with you. And then I go to work and listen to people speculate about your love life like I didn’t fall asleep with you still inside me. And I can’t say anything. I can’t evenlooklike I belong to you.”
Lucas flinched.
“I don’t need public declarations,” Eli said. “I’m not asking you to blow up your life. I just—” He stopped, breath hitching once before he smoothed it away. “I don’t want to feel like I disappear every time you step into the light.”
Silence pressed in around them.
Lucas searched for the right words, the responsible words. The ones that had always served him before.
“I’m trying to protect us,” he said.
Eli nodded. “I know.”
“And it won’t always be like this.”
“Maybe not,” Eli agreed. “But this is what it isnow.”
Lucas frowned. “What are you saying?”
Eli stood, slow and deliberate. He didn’t move closer. Didn’t move away.
“I’m saying I can’t keep doing this halfway,” he said. “Not quietly. Not invisibly. Not while everyone else gets a version of you that looks whole.”
Lucas’s heart began to pound. “Are you ending this?”
Eli hesitated. Just long enough to be devastating.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t want to. But I can feel myself shrinking to fit into the space you’ve left me. And I don’t like who I am when I do that.”
