Isn't It Bromantic (Bromance Book Club #4) by Lyssa Kay Adams

            Malcolm sat down on the edge of the mattress. “But . . . isn’t that illegal? I thought green card marriages were against the law.”

            “It’s not a green card marriage,” Vlad snapped, defensiveness rising along with the hair on the back of his neck. “That’s when someone marries a stranger to avoid being deported. Elena was my best friend. We’ve known each other since we were children. Marriages have been built on far less before, so it was a real marriage. It just . . . it was not real in every way. Not in the way I always hoped.” His face flamed in humiliation.

            “Just so we’re clear,” Colton said.

            Vlad groaned. He knew what was coming, and so he answered before Colton could even finish the question. “No. We’ve never had sex.”

            “You’ve been married for six years!” Colton choked.

            “And she has lived in Chicago for most of that time,” Vlad ground out.

            “Okay, but even from afar, the topic never came up?”

            Mack coughed. “Bad choice of words, dude.”

            Vlad glared. Mack had the decency to look chagrined. “Sorry.”

            Malcolm stroked his beard. “Maybe you should start at the beginning.”

            The beginning? Vlad wasn’t even sure what that was. Did he go all the way back and explain how their fathers had been friends at university? That after Elena’s mother died, she and her father moved from Moscow to Omsk and lived just a few blocks away from his family? Or did their story start when he was sixteen and he realized that his feelings for her had changed from friendship to something else? And that when she accepted his proposal, he felt like he’d just won the lottery. He was marrying the most beautiful woman in all of Russia.

            And it was all a lie.

            “Her father was a journalist,” Vlad finally said. “He wasn’t home very much, and since her mother died when she was nine, Elena spent as much time at my house as she did at her own. Maybe more. She became very close to my family.” He took a breath to continue. “Her father made many enemies uncovering corruption in industry and government. A couple of months before we were married, he was working on a story, and he went missing.”

            The gravity of the statement sucked all the air from the room. “Jesus,” Malcolm breathed. “What happened to him?”

            “We still do not know. But after her father disappeared, Elena was all alone and frightened. She had my family, of course. She is like a daughter to my parents. But she has no other family. No siblings or grandparents. She needed a fresh start.”

            The guys exchanged silent looks, starting to fill in the plot holes on their own.

            “I had just finished my first season here in America. I went home to Omsk to see if I could help or just to see how she was doing. My mother . . . she knew I always had feelings for Elena. She suggested that I—that I propose to her. If we were married, she could get a visa to come live in America with me as my spouse. So she could start over in America.”

            “And she said yes?” Del asked.

            “Yes.” Elena took one step forward and threw her arms around his waist.

            The air vacated his lungs in one exhale, and Vlad quickly returned her embrace. “It’s going to be okay now, Lenochka,” he whispered, using her nickname. “It’s going to be okay.”

            “We got married right away. Very small ceremony. Just my family. I thought she would come back here with me immediately, but there was delay in getting her visa approved. Probably because of her father, but that was never explained. I had to get back to America for the start of the summer training camp, so I had to come back without her at first. She finally came over a month later.”

            The next part was difficult. “But when she finally got here, she . . . things weren’t easy. She cried a lot. Locked herself in her room. Wouldn’t talk to me or open up to me. It was like we were strangers. When she said she wanted to go to college in Chicago, how could I say no? I thought it would be good for her. She was obviously miserable here with me, and her visa does not allow her to get a job. I thought she just needed space. I thought that if I was patient, she would eventually come back to me and we could officially start our lives together. I was wrong. She told me at your wedding that she wants to return to Russia and be a journalist like her father.”