Chapter Twelve Smoke And Mirrors
Lucas knew the exact second the thing became real.
It wasn’t when his agent said the words just a dinner, nothing dramatic.
It wasn’t when the club’s media manager smiled too brightly and handed him a schedule like it was a prescription.
It wasn’t even when Lucas watched his own name appear in a neat little typeface on a reservation card, as if that made it less absurd.
It was when he tugged on his jacket in the mirror and realized he was doing the same thing he did before a match: checking seams, checking posture, checking for anything that could be used against him.
Except tonight there would be no whistle.
No set plays.
No clean parameters.
Just a room full of people who made a living off seeing through things.
He adjusted his tie. It sat perfectly.
His phone buzzed, once.
Eli: you still coming to physio or u already in full James Bond mode?
Lucas stared at the message longer than he needed to.
His thumb hovered over the keyboard. A dozen replies came and went—jokes, deflections, something honest, something that would only make it worse.
He typed: Late. Talk after.
Then, because he was a coward and a captain and a man who’d learned to survive on the smallest truths possible, he added: Not a big deal.
The dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Then:
Eli: [thumbs up emoji]
One emoji. Clean. Neutral. Professional.
It was somehow the most vicious thing Eli had ever said to him.
Lucas pocketed the phone like it burned.
Downstairs, the lobby had been polished into a kind of soft glow—glass doors, muted music, a few people who smelled like finance and expensive cologne. Lucas crossed it with the practiced ease of a man who had learned how to inhabit attention without letting it touch him.
Declan waited by the revolving door, smile locked in place.
“There he is,” Declan said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Captain. Golden boy. Ireland’s favorite jawline.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Declan laughed like Lucas had made a joke. “You look sharp. Good. That’s half the battle.”
“Half the battle is playing rugby.”
Declan’s smile didn’t slip. “Rugby is your job. Your image is your career.”
The word career landed like a weight.
They slid into the car. The city passed in reflections—wet pavement, streetlights, the river catching light in lazy silver streaks. Lucas watched it and thought, unhelpfully, of Eli’s apartment. The view. The couch. The way Eli had looked at him like Lucas wasn’t something owned by a country.
Declan talked the entire drive.
“Evelyn’s team is smart,” Declan said. “She’s a singer, not an influencer. She’s got credibility. Chart presence. A tour coming up. She needs grounded. You need uncomplicated.”
“I’m not uncomplicated.”
Declan’s smile widened, patient and practiced. “That’s why we curate.”
Lucas pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek.
Declan leaned back, folding his hands. “You’re on a winning streak,” he went on, tone easy but deliberate. “People are already talking about trajectories. If you keep playing like this, you’re not looking at a World Cup someday—you’re looking at this one. Sooner rather than later.”
Lucas didn’t look up.
“There’s chatter about hosting, too,” Declan added, as if it were idle. “UK cities in the mix. London, Cardiff… there’s even a serious push for Dublin if the numbers line up.”
That got Lucas’s attention, sharp and unwelcome.
“Imagine it,” Declan said smoothly. “Home soil. Global eyes. A final that turns captains into monuments.”
He held Lucas’s gaze now. “Which means every photo, every rumor, every association matters. You don’t get to be anything but polished. Not messy. Not complicated. Not right now.”
Lucas nodded once, jaw tight.
Polished, he thought.
Like something meant to be looked at—not touched.
The restaurant was everything Lucas expected: warm light, money disguised as taste, privacy that existed only because it had been purchased. Declan escorted him inside—and then, mercifully, peeled off.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” he said. “Text when you’re wrapping.”
Evelyn Cross stood when Lucas approached.
She didn’t perform it. She just… stood.
Tall, composed, dark hair loose around her shoulders, eyes sharp but kind. She wore something understated that cameras would love because it didn’t look like it was trying—clean lines, soft fabric, the sort of outfit stylists called “effortless” and spent weeks engineering.
“Lucas Byrne,” she said, offering her hand. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he said, shaking it. Her grip was steady—firm enough to be real, not the polite suggestion of contact he’d half-expected.
“Thank you for doing this,” she added quietly, voice pitched just for him. “You look like a man being marched into diplomacy.”
Lucas blinked, then let out a short, surprised huff of laughter. “That obvious?”
She smiled—not wide, not dazzling. Knowing. “Painfully.”
They sat. Wine appeared. Water appeared. The choreography of expensive normalcy unfolded around them without either of them really participating in it.
For the first few minutes, Lucas stayed braced, shoulders held just a fraction too tight, answers clean and noncommittal. He’d done this before—panels, charity dinners, sponsor luncheons. Smile, deflect, don’t bleed.
Evelyn didn’t push.
She asked about the season in a way that suggested she actually understood the grind rather than the highlights. Asked what it felt like to captain at home versus away, how noise changed decision-making, whether leadership ever got lonely.
Not are you lonely?
Just… does it get lonely?
It was a small difference. It mattered.
She talked about touring like it was both a dream and a tax on the body. About waking up in hotel rooms and having to check the city name to remember where you were. About crowds that loved her and didn’t know her at all.
“You get used to people wanting access,” she said at one point, swirling her wine without drinking it. “They don’t actually want you. They want the version of you that proves something to themselves.”
Lucas felt something twist low in his chest, sharp and familiar.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “That tracks.”
She glanced up at him then—not searching, not prying. Just… attentive. As if she were filing something away without needing to label it.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Once.
Then again and he drew it out and glanced at the preview on the lock screen.
Eli: how’s Hollywood?
Lucas ignored it on instinct, the way he ignored pain until it mattered.
Evelyn noticed. He could tell—not because she looked, but because her attention shifted, gentle and deliberate, like she was giving him space rather than taking it.
She didn’t ask who it was.
Didn’t tease.
Didn’t make a joke about rugby emergencies.
She simply continued talking, steering the conversation somewhere safer without making it feel like a rescue.
By the time the plates were cleared, Lucas felt wrung out in a way that had nothing to do with Evelyn and everything to do with the role he’d been wearing all evening. Like he’d been holding a pose for hours and had only just been allowed to breathe.
“Can I say something mildly inappropriate?” Evelyn asked suddenly.
Lucas startled, then nodded. “At this point, I’d welcome it.”
She smiled. “You’re very good at this.”
“At what?”
“At being… acceptable,” she said, choosing the word carefully. “Palatable. You give people exactly what they expect and nothing they could misuse.”
Lucas swallowed. “Occupational hazard.”
“Mm,” she murmured. “It looks exhausting.”
He laughed again, softer this time. “You’re not wrong.”
There was a pause. Comfortable. Earned.
Evelyn took a sip of her wine at last, then set the glass down with decision. “For what it’s worth,” she said lightly, “I don’t feel like I had dinner with a headline tonight.”
Lucas looked at her.
“I feel like I had dinner with a person,” she continued. “Which I appreciate. Even if the internet won’t.”
Something in her tone—casual, generous—made his throat tighten.
“Thank you,” he said, meaning it.
When they stood to leave, the shift in the air was immediate.
The restaurant door might as well have been a curtain. On the other side waited light and lenses and the unspoken agreement that whatever they’d been inside, they were now something else entirely.
Evelyn paused just before stepping out, close enough that only Lucas could hear her.
“We’ll be fine,” she said quietly. “We’ll give them what they want to see. And then we’ll go back to our actual lives.”
Her gaze held his for a beat—steady, kind, and knowing in a way that didn’t demand anything.
Lucas nodded.
Outside, cameras snapped. Arms linked. Smiles placed where they belonged.
And when it was over—when they reached the car and the moment loosened its grip—Evelyn leaned in, kissed his cheek, hugged him briefly, warm and genuine, and whispered against his ear:
“Now they’ll talk. And hopefully everyone will be happy.”
Not relief.
Gratitude.
Because she hadn’t asked him for the truth.
She’d simply treated him like someone who deserved to keep it.
She smiled once more, stepped back, and slid into her waiting car like this was all part of a language she spoke fluently.
Lucas stood there a moment longer, the echo of it still buzzing under his skin.
Eli saw the photo twelve minutes later.
He was still at home, towel over his shoulder, phone in his hand, telling himself he was fine. That this was expected. That this was the price of proximity.
Then the image loaded.
Lucas in a tailored jacket. Evelyn Cross smiling beside him. Her lips brushing his cheek. Her arms around him in a way that looked—out of context—intimate.
The caption beneath it read something breathless and stupid.
Eli stared.
The photo sat there on his screen, frozen and perfect in the way only things designed for consumption ever were.
Lucas in a dark coat, posture easy but controlled.
Evelyn Cross close enough to read as intimacy if you wanted it to.
Her hand at his arm. The cheek kiss—soft, familiar, harmless to anyone who didn’t know what it was erasing.