Chapter Thirty-Five
The butter in my cast iron pan sizzles, and the smell of rosemary emanates through the kitchen as I flip the chicken breast and add a little more seasoning.
I’m riding the high from earlier. Former teammates are now calling me, asking for more videos and pointers.
One former teammate Venmoed me a thousand bucks with the request I send him a twenty-minute tutorial of key barre work he can practice daily.
This viral disaster isn’t a disaster after all. I lean against the counter, checking my phone. Nothing from Petra yet.
When I hear the door creak open, I call out from the kitchen: “I have great news, Petra!”
Silence, so I continue.
“That video? The one that leaked? Actually the best thing that could’ve happened. Dewey and all the boys want you to give them lessons too! It’s like we started a revolution or something.”
Still nothing.
I wipe my hands on the dish towel—the one Claire insisted we needed because “real adults don’t dry their hands on their jeans”—and step into the living room where Petra stands just inside the doorway, still wearing her coat, hands clenched into fists at her sides.
Her hair looks like she’s been running her fingers through it, dishevelment that comes from barely contained panic.
Her eyes are red-rimmed, which means she’s been fighting tears and losing.
My stomach drops.
“Petra—”
“Nilas is threatening to expel me from the company. He suspended me today with the possibility of terminating my contract.”
“What?”
“He called me into his office today. Said I embarrassed the company. That I disgraced everything they stand for. That I might not have a future there anymore.”
My jaw tightens. “That’s insane. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Didn’t I?” She starts pacing, that restless energy that comes when standing still feels like drowning.
“I knew it was risky to bring you to the studio. I knew it wasn’t a good idea.
With the cameras there. Deep down, I knew if something got out, it could ruin everything.
” She turns to face me, and her expression is something I’ve never seen before: fractured.
“But I ignored my instincts. I was foolish, and now I might have just destroyed everything I worked for. Everything.”
I move toward her, slowly. “Petra, slow down—”
She steps back, creating distance between us. “You don’t get it.”
“Then help me get it. I mean, I literally had the entire team begging me to get them signed up for lessons with you.”
Her exhale shakes like a building about to collapse. “This isn’t just about teaching some hockey players ballet, Liam. This is my life. This is everything I’ve worked for. And now? It might be gone. Because of something so—so—”
Another bitter laugh escapes. “So trivial, so…stupid,” she says.
“Stupid?” I say.
She freezes.
“Helping me was stupid?” My voice goes quiet.
“That’s not what I meant,” she says.
“Really? Because that’s exactly what you said.”
“It was stupid to think we could get away with it.”
“You regret it, then?” I ask, voice low, each word carefully measured.
Her chin lifts, defiance mixed with desperation. “I regret not thinking about what could happen.”
“Right. So, it wasn’t worth it?”
The muscle at her temple pulses.
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“But it’s what you mean.”
“Liam.”
“No, seriously. Was it a waste of time? Were the lessons a mistake? Was I a mistake?”
Her nostrils flare with the type of frustration of someone being misunderstood on purpose. “You’re twisting my words.”
“I’m repeating them.”
She takes a breath like she’s trying to prevent an explosion. “You’re not listening.”
“Oh, I’m listening. I just don’t like what I’m hearing.”
Her hands curl back into fists, knuckles white. “You don’t understand what this means to me.”
“I don’t understand?” The words explode out of me. “I gave up everything for hockey! You think I don’t know what it’s like to put your entire life into something? To sacrifice for it? To be terrified of losing it and then to actually almost lose it?”
Her breath hitches, but the anger doesn’t fade.
I continue. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to have people doubt you? To feel like you’re one mistake away from everything crumbling?”
“Then you should understand why this is different,” she says.
“How?”
“Because hockey will always have your back. Your teammates, your coaches, they rallied behind you. They supported you.” She steps forward, voice trembling with barely contained emotion.
“But me? I’m alone in this. I don’t have a team to back me up.
I don’t have a locker room full of people telling me it’s all going to be okay.
I have Nilas telling me I should’ve taken the Saint Petersburg offer, and a fellow company member actively trying to sabotage me.
” She wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand.
“And I have you, standing here, trying to tell me that this is a good thing when I am watching everything I have ever worked for slip through my fingers.”
A silence follows.
Then I say it—the thing you can’t take back: “Maybe this was a mistake. The moving in. Maybe it was too much. Too soon.”
The temperature drops to absolute zero. Her expression wavers for a heartbeat, long enough for me to realize I’ve just lit a match in a room full of explosives.
“Yes, maybe it was,” she says, and her calmness is worse than screaming.
Neither of us moves. The apartment that smelled like domestic success now feels like a crime scene.
“You know what?” she says, that eerie calm now fully settling over her. “It was a mistake. Not maybe. Absolutely a mistake.” She laughs, short and bitter.
I step forward, desperation making me clumsy. “Petra—”
“I can’t do this right now. I don’t think we should do this right now,” she says.
“What are you saying?”
She looks at me, her face and eyes a portrait of exhaustion. “I think we should take a break…from us…from this relationship.”
“Are you serious?” My voice comes out barely audible.
She nods, and it’s the smallest, most devastating movement. “Yes.”
“You don’t just walk away because things get hard,” I counter.
“I don’t think we can fix this right now,” she whispers.
“So what? You’re just going to leave?”
She picks up her bag. I watch in disbelief as she zips her coat, her hands shaking slightly.
“Petra—”
But she’s already at the door, hand on the knob, back to me like she can’t bear to look at what’s being destroyed.
I open my mouth, but everything I want to say gets stuck somewhere between my heart and my throat.
She exits without looking back.
I’m left standing here in my apartment that smells like rosemary chicken and the complete collapse of everything that mattered.