Chapter Three Pressure Lines
Morning film review always felt a little like confession.
A dark room, too quiet, with every mistake magnified to stadium size. No hiding places. No excuses. Just grainy footage and the collective judgment of men who understood exactly how small a fraction of a second could ruin you.
Lucas Byrne took the captain’s seat beside the projector, notebook open, pen aligned with the spine. Ritual mattered. Control mattered. If he could order the small things—the angle of the page, the weight of the pen in his hand—then maybe the larger things would stay in line.
Something he could hold.
Chairs scraped. Laughter rose and settled. Someone coughed.
Kaine slid into a seat two rows back, stretching his long legs out like he owned the floor and the space around it. He had a way of occupying a room that felt instinctive rather than claimed—no sharp edges, no defensiveness. Just presence. Comfortable. Unselfconscious.
Infuriatingly at ease.
Carmody dimmed the lights. “All right, lads. Yesterday’s scrimmage. Pay attention.”
The projector hummed to life, light flickering across the wall. There it was—the run everyone had already been talking about in lowered voices and not-so-lowered group chats.
Byrne stepping inside a defender at exactly the wrong moment.
Kaine streaking down the sideline like a goddamn comet.
The ball threading between them with impossible timing, finding Kaine’s hands as if it had always known where it was going.
Someone whistled low.
“Jesus, look at that,” Rory Keane muttered from the back.
Carmody rewound it. Played it again.
“Kaine,” the coach said, satisfaction naked in his voice, “this is good work. Sharp line. Clean footwork. Byrne—excellent read.”
Groans of mock approval rolled through the room.
“A love story in motion,” one of the props called out.
“Captain’s got a favorite,” Darren Morris added, delighted.
Kaine grinned, wide and unbothered, accepting the attention like it weighed nothing.
Byrne’s stomach tightened into a knot that could have anchored a ship.
Chemistry was dangerous when people pointed at it.
Chemistry was even more dangerous when he couldn’t deny it.
The clip played a third time, too smooth, too effortless. Byrne dropped his gaze to his notebook, pen hovering uselessly above the page. He hadn’t written a word.
Carmody clapped his hands. “Warm-ups in ten. And Byrne—stick around a minute.”
Kaine glanced forward, something questioning and warm flickering across his face. For half a second, their eyes almost met.
Byrne looked away.
He didn’t dare.
“Good leadership yesterday,” Carmody said once the room emptied. “And good protection.”
Byrne’s shoulders went tight. “Protection?”
“When Kaine got hit late.”
“That was enforcing standards.”
Carmody’s brow lifted. “Sure. If that’s what you want to call it.”
Byrne bristled, heat flaring sharp behind his ribs.
He hated how people seemed to see through him. Hated how easily intent got written onto his actions, whether he wanted it there or not.
“Look,” Carmody went on, softer now, “you and the new lad work well together. Use it. Don’t shy away from it.”
“I’m not shying away,” Byrne said.
He was absolutely shying away.
Carmody clapped him on the shoulder. “Then keep at it. And maybe breathe once in a while.”
Byrne nodded stiffly.
He didn’t breathe properly until he stepped outside, cold air snapping into his lungs like punishment.
Training kicked off under an iron-colored sky.
Warm-ups were crisp. Passing drills sharp. Byrne anchored the structure the way he always did—calm, efficient, disciplined to the point of rigidity. Kaine matched him stride for stride, joke for joke with the others, flash for flash of speed.
They were opposites in motion.
And yet—Lucas couldn’t stop noticing how their rhythms locked together. How Kaine anticipated him without trying. How it felt less like learning and more like remembering something they hadn’t done before but somehow already knew.
During a line attack drill, Kaine cut late on a read—the kind of gamble rookies weren’t supposed to take.
It should’ve blown up.
Instead, Byrne felt the shift a heartbeat early and fired a pass he had no business making.
Kaine caught it clean and split a gap that hadn’t existed a second before.
The squad erupted.
“For fuck’s sake, boys,” Cillian Ward laughed. “Leave some chemistry for the rest of us!”
“Captain’s new golden child!” someone shouted.
Byrne jogged back into formation, face carefully blank, neck burning.
Kaine fell in beside him, breath puffing white in the cold.
“You felt that, right?”
“Run it again,” Byrne said flatly.
Kaine’s grin turned feral. “So you did.”
“Again.”
They ran it again.
The line cracked open again.
By the third repetition, Byrne felt the weight of attention settle like a hand between his shoulder blades—teammates watching, coaches watching, the shape of a narrative forming whether he allowed it or not.
He didn’t have room for narratives.
He had room for structure.
For duty.
For nothing else.
So when Kaine offered him a water bottle during the break, holding it out with an easy, wordless question, Byrne didn’t take it.
He couldn’t.
Kaine hesitated, then nodded once and took a drink himself, no comment. No pressure.
That, somehow, was worse.
The incident came during the afternoon scrimmage.
Not the usual roughness—the accidental collisions and hard landings that came with the territory. This was sharper. Internal.
Cillian, hungry for selection and running hot, charged too hard into Kaine at a breakdown.
Shoulder to ribs.
Late.
Unnecessary.
Kaine staggered, breath tearing out of him in a sharp hiss.
Before Byrne’s mind caught up, his body was already moving.
He grabbed Cillian by the jersey and shoved him back with a force no one expected from someone as controlled as Byrne.
“What the fuck was that?” he snapped.
“It was a contest,” Cillian shot back, startled.
“That was late. And stupid. And you know it.”
“Relax, captain,” another forward muttered.
Byrne turned on him, glare sharp enough to cut steel. Cillian lifted his hands, jaw tight, backing down.
Kaine touched Byrne’s arm—light, grounding. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
Byrne recoiled like the contact burned.
Kaine blinked, something unreadable crossing his face before he stepped back. “Right. Okay.”
Carmody’s whistle shrieked.
Practice moved on.
Byrne felt every eye on him—teammates, coaches, Kaine.
He hated every second of it.
By the time training ended, daylight had bled out of the sky, grey sinking into darker grey. Byrne showered mechanically. Dressed mechanically. Breathed like it was a chore.
Everything inside him felt overheated and brittle.
He needed silence.
He did not get it.
Outside the facility doors, Siobhán Kelly waited—local press, sharp-eyed, the kind who smelled blood in water.
“Captain Byrne! Quick word about the scrimmage?”
“No comment.”
“Lucas—your connection with the new winger—”
He froze.
She’d used his first name.
“Byrne,” he corrected.
“Right—Byrne. People are impressed with you and Kaine. Some say you read each other instinctively. How do you explain that?”
“I don’t.”
“But it’s unusual chemistry for day three, isn’t it?”
“No comment.”
“And earlier—were you angry when Kaine was hit?”
“No comment.”
“Fans online are already calling you two—”
“Kaine is a member of this squad,” Byrne cut in sharply. “Not a headline.”
She leaned in—
And then Kaine appeared, voice bright and smooth as sunlight breaking cloud.
“Sorry, is this on me? Didn’t mean to steal the captain’s spotlight.”
He stepped neatly between Byrne and the microphone.
“I’m still adjusting to Ireland,” Kaine went on, smiling. “So if I look good next to Byrne, it’s because he’s doing all the thinking.”
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.”