Chapter Twelve Smoke And Mirrors #2
He felt it then. The burn. Hot and ugly and immediate.
Not surprise.
Not betrayal.
Jealousy.
Pure and vicious and deeply unfair.
It climbed up his spine and settled behind his eyes, a pressure that made his jaw lock. His expression didn’t change. Anyone looking at him would’ve seen nothing but stillness. Blankness. Control.
He knew better. He knew exactly what this was.
He knew Evelyn was a bystander, a willing cog in a machine that chewed people up and called it strategy.
She didn’t know Eli existed. Didn’t know how Lucas’s hands felt when they shook afterward.
Didn’t know what Lucas sounded like when he said Eli’s name in the dark—quiet, like it was something he wasn’t sure he was allowed to want.
Eli couldn’t be angry at her.
Which meant there was nowhere for the feeling to go.
He locked his phone.
Set it facedown on the coffee table with deliberate care.
Then he stood.
At first, he just paced.
Back and forth across the apartment, bare feet silent on the wood floor, hands flexing and unclenching at his sides. The city lights bled in through the windows, painting everything in silver and shadow. His breath stayed even. In through his nose. Out through his mouth.
Again.
Again.
His shoulders stayed loose. His face stayed empty. The kind of calm he’d learned young—when reacting only made things worse.
He turned at the end of the room and paced back the other way.
Again.
The image replayed anyway. The angle. The closeness. The way Lucas looked like he belonged there, like he fit into that world of curated softness and strategic affection.
Something inside Eli snapped—not loudly. Not all at once.
Just enough.
He stopped short in front of the refrigerator.
Didn’t think. Didn’t wind up.
He hauled off and punched it.
Metal rang sharp and ugly through the apartment. The door buckled inward with a dull, concave thud. Pain flared white-hot across his knuckles—bone-deep, immediate, probably bad.
Eli didn’t make a sound.
He stared at the dent for half a second, blood already beading at the skin, and then—calmly—turned away.
Walked back to the couch.
Sat.
Dropped forward, elbows braced on his knees, hands dangling uselessly for a moment before he brought them together and pressed his forehead into them.
In.
Out.
In through his nose.
Out through his mouth.
He couldn’t cry if he wanted to – he felt nothing other than the sickly sour of that jealous feeling in his gut.
Slow. Controlled. Measured.
His knuckles throbbed in time with his pulse. He didn’t look at them. Didn’t curse. Didn’t shake.
He just breathed.
Let the jealousy sit there, burning and sour, eating at the edges of his ribs.
He told himself—again—that this was what careful looked like.
That this was the cost of wanting someone who didn’t fully belong to himself.
That he could live with it.
The jealousy didn’t disappear.
It just settled in deeper.
Lucas got back to his own apartment and stood in the entryway like he’d forgotten how doors worked.
It was quiet in the particular way expensive places were quiet—thick walls, sealed windows, city noise reduced to a distant hush. The lights from the river made pale stripes on the floor. His suit jacket still smelled like restaurant air and someone else’s perfume.
He stripped his tie off like it had tried to choke him. Tossed it onto the counter. Kicked his shoes off with less care than usual.
His phone buzzed again.
Another tagged photo. Another angle. Another caption.
He didn’t open it.
He opened his texts instead.
Eli’s last message still sat there like a bruise: how’s Hollywood?
Lucas stared at it until his vision blurred slightly.
He typed: Can I come over?
His thumb hovered.
Then he sent it.
He paced while the dots didn’t appear.
His chest felt too tight. His skin felt too warm. He wanted something—relief, absolution, an anchor. He wanted Eli’s laugh. Eli’s body in his space. Eli’s mouth on his neck, like a reset button.
He didn’t think.
That was the problem. Thinking required space, and space was the one thing he couldn’t tolerate right now.
The photo of himself and Evelyn sat behind his eyes like a bruise. The ache in his chest had nowhere to go, nowhere to settle. He needed to redirect it. He always had.
His body had learned that trick early.
When feelings got too big—when confusion or loneliness or want threatened to crack him open—there was always the same shortcut: skin. Proof. The blunt language of flesh when words failed.
He pulled his phone back out before he could talk himself out of it.
His hands shook as he undid his trousers, movements clumsy and rushed. There was no heat there, not really—no sharp hunger, no spark—but his body was still his body, familiar and unignorable. Even soft, even slack with tension instead of arousal, he was large. He always had been.
It had mattered before.
More than once, it had been enough. A look. A reveal. A quick escalation that let him skip the part where he had to explain himself. Men had responded to it eagerly, greedily, like the size itself was an invitation, like it excused everything else he didn’t know how to offer.
It had worked.
Too well.
He swallowed, staring down like he was assessing a tool rather than himself.
This isn’t about sex, he thought dimly.
Which was how he knew it was a mistake.
He angled the phone anyway. No theatrics. No posing. Just skin and scale and vulnerability caught badly in low light—undeniable, unsoftened. The kind of image that said look instead of listen.
The shutter clicked.
The sound made his stomach drop.
He didn’t check it. Didn’t adjust. Didn’t give himself a chance to back out. He hit send on instinct alone, like muscle memory kicking in after a hit.
Gone.
The silence afterward was immediate and awful.
Lucas stood there with his trousers still undone, pulse roaring, shame blooming hot in his chest. He fixed himself with numb fingers and shoved the phone away like it might accuse him.
That wasn’t desire.
That was habit.
And he’d just aimed it at the one man he didn’t want to reduce himself to that with.
Eli’s phone buzzed on the couch.
He barely registered it at first.
His knuckles throbbed in time with his pulse, skin split, metal refrigerator door dented inward where his fist had connected. He’d felt none of it when it happened. Even now, the pain was distant, muted by the heavy, hollow pressure sitting behind his ribs.
He picked up the phone without looking.
Then he did.
The image filled the screen.
Eli sucked in a sharp breath through his nose.
Fuck.
Even soft, even unready, Lucas was… a lot. Broad. Heavy. Familiar in a way Eli’s body reacted to before his brain caught up. His mouth went dry, traitorous heat flickering low in his gut despite everything.
And then the second wave hit.
Not want.
Hurt.
Because Eli knew exactly what this was.
He’d been on the receiving end of it before—this kind of offering, this shortcut. Flesh in place of vulnerability. A body saying here, take this because the person attached to it didn’t know how to ask for comfort any other way.
It made his chest ache.
He stared at the photo, jaw tight, emotions colliding ugly and sharp—desire tangling with resentment, longing with the sour taste of being handled wrong.
Not like this, Luke.
Not after everything.
His thumb hovered over the screen.
Delete, the sensible part of him said. Don’t reward this. Don’t let him turn you into a pressure valve.
Instead, his phone vibrated softly as the image saved to his camera roll.
Eli closed his eyes.
Fuck.
He hated that part of himself—the one that wanted it anyway, that catalogued the familiar lines of Lucas’s body even while his heart was bruised and raw. The one that could feel used and still crave.
He set the phone face-down on the coffee table like it might burn him.
Then he sat back on the couch, elbows on his knees, head dropping into his hands. His injured knuckles throbbed, blood tacky where it had smeared earlier.
He breathed in through his nose.
Out through his mouth.
Slow. Controlled. Contained.
The way he always did when he refused to let himself break.
He didn’t text back.
He didn’t delete the photo.
Both felt equally impossible and in that moment, that’s when he felt the first tears start.
Lucas’s stomach dropped.
He typed immediately: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—
He stopped.
Deleted it.
Typed: Talk to me. Please.
Sent.
No response.
He waited, staring at the screen like he could will it to light up.
Nothing.
He tried again, softer this time, as if softness could undo the photo he’d sent like a weapon disguised as a gift.
Lucas: I shouldn’t have done that.
Lucas: I wasn’t thinking.
Lucas: Are you okay?
Delivered.
Silence.
The kind of silence that wasn’t absence—it was a door shut carefully, deliberately, with fingers still on the latch.
Lucas sank onto the edge of his sofa, elbows on his knees, phone heavy in his hand.
He’d wanted Eli close enough to drown out the world.
And instead he’d reminded Eli, with one impulsive picture, that Lucas still reached for the easiest escape when he was scared: sex, speed, distraction—anything but sitting in the mess and owning it like a man.
The realization made him feel sick.
His phone buzzed.
For a second his heart leapt.
Then he saw the name.
Maeve Donnelly.
Maeve: Call me. Now.
Lucas swallowed hard.
Lucas: I’m fine.
Maeve: Bullshit
Maeve: Call me right now or I’m getting in my car and driving to your building, and I will scream in the lobby until someone calls the Gardaí.
He stared at that for half a beat—because even now, some part of him wanted to laugh.
Then his thumb hit call.
She picked up on the first ring.
“Luke, what the fuck were you thinking,” Maeve said, skipping hello entirely.
Lucas closed his eyes. “Maeve—”