Page 128 of Try Line Hearts
His eyes flicked from Lucas’s face to the television mounted discreetly behind the bar, where the sports recap was looping silently. Then back again.
Lucas felt his shoulders tense automatically.
The clerk smiled instead. Not wide. Not performative. Just… warm.
“No one will bother you here,” he said quietly, handing over the keycards. Then, after a pause, he looked directly at Lucas. “Thank you. For being brave when some of us can’t.”
The words landed harder than any cheer.
Lucas nodded, unable to trust his voice, and followed Eli toward the lifts.
The room itself was quiet in that way only good hotels ever managed—thick walls, distant city hum softened into something almost soothing. Rain streaked the windows, blurring the lights below into watercolors.
They stood there for a moment, neither quite sure what to do now that there was no one watching.
No cameras.
No questions.
No microphones hovering at chest height.
Just them.
Eli broke first, because of course he did.
“Well,” he said, voice light but frayed at the edges. “This is… dramatic.”
Lucas huffed a quiet laugh. “Maeve said it qualified as an emergency.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Eli said. “You kissed me in a monsoon on live television in front of the literal world. That’s at least a category four.”
Lucas stepped closer without quite meaning to. “You okay?”
Eli considered that honestly. “Ask me again in twelve hours.”
They moved through the space slowly, like they weren’t entirely convinced it was real yet.
Shoes were kicked off without ceremony, landing wherever gravity took them. Jackets were draped over the backs of chairs they’d probably never sit in, expensive fabric sagging under the careless weight of damp wool and adrenaline. The room was quiet in that thick, insulated way only good hotels ever managed — the city muffled into a distant, abstract hum.
Lucas stood near the window for a moment, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his hoodie, watching rain smear the lights below into soft, bleeding color. His reflection stared back at him in the glass, older somehow. Hollowed. Changed.
Behind him, Eli wandered toward the television, drawn by instinct more than intention.
“Maybe don’t—” Lucas started, the words already too late.
The screen flickered to life.
Immediately, it was noise.
Rain and stadium lights and color flooded the room, too bright, too sharp against the calm they’d just stepped into. The footage cut between angles rapidly; sideline cameras, overhead shots, shaky close-ups—the broadcast already packaged into something consumable.
Lucas froze.
He saw himself.
Not as he felt: not the tight, terrified coil of resolve in his chest, but as helooked. Soaked through, hair plastered to his forehead, eyes bright and a little wild. He looked… unmoored. Like someone who had just stepped off a ledge and was still falling.
He hadn’t realized his hands had been shaking.
