Page 145 of The Pucking Arrangement

The climb up the stairs is endless. His shoulders are stiff, his silence heavier than the luggage in his hands. I count my breaths, trying to focus on anything except the burning need to stop him, to fix this somehow.

At my apartment door, my fingers fumble with the keys, clumsy and uncooperative. He waits, patient, unreadable, as I finally manage to get it open.

“Just...anywhere is fine,” I murmur as he steps inside.

He sets the bags down carefully, then straightens, his gaze sweeping the small space. Taking it in. Memorizing it, maybe. The way I’ve been memorizing everything about him.

I grip my keys too tight, the metal biting into my palm. Say something.

“We’re on for the lessons?” My voice barely makes it out.

He nods once. “Monday. Four o’clock.”

Two days from now. It feels like a lifetime.

“Right.” I swallow hard. “Please tell Ris, I’ll...I’ll see her then.”

Another nod. His body is already angled toward the door. Escape imminent.

But then he hesitates. His gaze flicks around my studio again, something shifting in his expression. Something almost reluctant.

“It’s smaller than I remember,” he murmurs, and there’s a trace of pain in the way he says it.

“It’s enough.” For one person. For a life without them.

He turns to me, and for a single, shattering moment, his mask slips. The raw need in his eyes slams into me, knocking the breath from my lungs.

“Erin—”

He doesn’t finish.

The silence stretches, thick and unbearable, every second a plea, a question, a goddamn heartbreak waiting to happen.

Ask me.

Tell me you want me.

But he doesn’t.

“Goodbye, Dmitri.” I finally break first, the words splintering as they leave my lips.

Something flickers across his face—anguish, frustration, something too quick to name—before he shuts it down completely.

“Goodbye, Erin.”

And then he’s gone.

The door clicks shut behind him, sealing the distance between us.

I watch from the window as his SUV pulls away from the curb, leaving me with the crushing weight of everything I couldn’t say.

My apartment feels wrong. Smaller. Quieter. Empty.

I sink onto the couch, curling into myself, clutching a pillow against my chest as if it could hold me together.

It’ll get easier,I tell myself.It has to get easier.

But all I hear in the silence is Ris’s voice echoing in my head.

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