Page 167 of The Pucking Arrangement

Stop her.

But I just stand there. Frozen. Mesmerized.

Liam appears at my elbow, pressing a whiskey into my hand like he can sense I’m seconds from losing my goddamn mind. “Here,” he says. “You look like you need it.”

I grunt, tossing it back in one go, my eyes never leaving the stage.

“She’s really something,” Liam muses, watching his sister with the same quiet reverence I can’t seem to shake. “Talented as hell.”

“The best.” I nod, my throat raw.

Liam studies me over the rim of his glass. “You know, for a guy who just won the Cup, you look like absolute shit.”

“Jeez. Thanks.”

“I’m just saying.” He shrugs. “If I’d just watched my girlfriend play the most heartbreaking rendition of ‘We Are the Champions’ ever arranged—while knowing she was about to leave me for another continent—I’d probably look like shit too.”

I turn to glare at him. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Then what is she?”

The question knocks the wind out of me.

What is she?

The woman I can’t stop thinking about. The one who made my house feel like a home again. The one who understands my daughter in ways I sometimes can’t.

“It’s complicated,” I say finally.

Liam snorts. “That’s one way to describe it.”

On stage, Erin bows, soaking in the applause. To anyone else, she looks radiant—poised, confident, in control. But I see the truth in the slight tremor in her fingers. The way her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

Our gazes collide across the room.

For a split second, the world shifts.

Longing. Confusion. Need.

Then Luka fucking materializes in front of me, blocking my path.

I barely rein in my groan. “Not now, Havran.”

“Now, exactly now,” he says, his accent wrapping around the words like silk as he throws an arm around the shoulder of the tall, dark-haired man beside him. “I would like to introduce my boyfriend, Marko.”

My brain flatlines.

“Your…what?”

Marko extends a hand, looking far too entertained by this situation. “Pleasure to meet you, Dmitri. I’ve heard so much about the famous Russian bear.”

I shake his hand on autopilot, still recalibrating. “Uh...can’t say the same about you, I’m afraid.”

Luka beams. “Marko runs the music program in Dubrovnik.”

The picture in my head rearranges so fast I almost get whiplash.

I exhale, tension I didn’t realize I was holding draining from my shoulders. “Just for the record,” I say flatly, “if you were into women, I would have fought you to the death for her.”

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