Page 94 of Try Line Hearts
Lucas stepped forward without thinking. “Eli—”
Eli didn’t step back.
But he didn’t lean in either.
“I need you to understand something,” Eli said. “I’m not angry. I’m not trying to make you choose. I just need you to see that this costs me something every day. It’s killing me.”
Lucas’s throat burned. “I never wanted that.”
“I know,” Eli said again. “That’s the problem.”
They stood there, close enough to feel each other’s warmth, divided by something that wasn’t distance but timing and fear and all the words Lucas hadn’t said soon enough.
“I care about you,” Lucas said hoarsely.
Eli’s eyes softened, just a fraction. “I know. I wouldn’t be standing here if you didn’t.”
Then, quietly: “But caring isn’t the same as choosing.”
The truth of it rang between them like a bell.
Eli reached out then—not to touch Lucas, but to squeeze his shoulder once. Brief. Grounding. Final in a way that made Lucas’s chest ache.
“I’m not walking away,” Eli said. “I just can’t keep pretending I don’t want more.”
He stepped back.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he added.
Lucas nodded, unable to trust his voice.
Eli picked up his phone and headed for the door, pausing only once to glance back.
“Just—don’t ask me to be patient forever,” he said.
Then he was gone.
Lucas stood alone in the weights room, the hum of the lights suddenly too loud, the future he’d been postponing no longer waiting politely.
Eli didn’t turn the lights on.
He dropped his keys in the bowl by the door, kicked his trainers off without lining them up, and walked straight through to the bathroom – he stripped his clothes off and tossed them in the bin and wrapped himself in a towel. The thought of showering made him just feel more tired and he wandered out into the living room.The windows reflected him back at himself—bare skin, towel slung low around his hips, shoulders tight like he’d braced for impact and never come down from it.
He sat.
Just sat there on the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees, phone heavy in his hand.
He knew what was on it.
The knowledge sat in him like a pulse.
He told himself not to open it.
That he was tired. That this was a bad idea. That he’d regret it.
He unlocked the screen and navigated to the gallery anyway.
The image filled the phone, bright and unavoidable. Lucas—unguarded, offered, careless in the way men got when they believed themselves wanted without question. It wasn’t obscene. It didn’t need to be. The familiarity of it did the work. The knowledge of what that body could do. What ithaddone.
