Page 20 of Try Line Hearts
She laughed.
Byrne stiffened.
“Honestly,” Kaine added, “I butchered half my reads. He’s carrying me.”
Siobhán turned the mic back to Byrne. “Is that true?”
Byrne could barely force the words out. “Training is for improvement.”
“Lovely,” Kaine said cheerfully. “And we’re late for recovery.”
He guided Byrne inside with a light touch at the elbow—innocent to anyone watching, intimate enough to twist something deep in Byrne’s chest.
Inside, Byrne pulled away.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Looked like you wanted an out.”
“I didn’t need help.”
“Right,” Kaine said softly.
The disappointment in his voice landed harder than any accusation.
Team pub night was mandatory.
Bonding. Camaraderie. Performance.
Byrne had learned early that refusing to show up marked you as a problem, but drinking marked you as worse. So he showed up. Sat down. Ordered water. Played his role.
The pub was loud and warm and smelled like spilled stout and old wood, the kind of place that absorbed years of sweat and shouting and pretended it was charm. The squad packed into a corner table, jerseys half-unzipped, cheeks already flushed, ordering enough alcohol to drown a village.
Byrne sipped water and pretended it was a choice.
He didn’t drink because he’d learned—painfully—that he couldn’t trust what loosened lips would do to him. Alcohol didn’t make him reckless the way it did the others. It made him honest. Soft. Stupid.
Nineteen had taught him that.
Nineteen and a mandatory pub night just like this one. A few too many pints. A laugh held too long. A hand on his shoulder that lingered. A crush he’d told himself was harmless because it was inevitable. The man had been thirty-one. Married. A kid at home. Straight. Kind in the way kind men always were—effortlessly, thoughtlessly.
Byrne, drunk on beer and hope, had decided he was going to say something. Just to clear the air. Just to be honest. Just—
Maeve had found him in the hotel corridor, halfway to the man’s room, eyes bright and glassy, rehearsing words that would have detonated his life. She’d grabbed his arm hard enough to bruise and dragged him outside into the cold, furious and terrified all at once.
“You don’t get to do this to yourself,” she’d said. “Not like this. Not to him. Not to you. Fuck’s sake.”
She’d stayed until he sobered. Until the urge passed. Until the shame settled in like a second skin.
After that, Byrne stopped drinking.
Kaine returned from the bar now with two pints and nudged one toward him. “Here.”
“I’m not drinking.”
“It’s one pint.”
“I said I’m not drinking.”
