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

            “Because it hurt too much.”

            “And that’s why . . . why everything?” He threw his arm out with the word.

            “I was twenty years old. I was scared and confused and—”

            “Six years, Elena!” He cut her off, smacking his hand into the wall. “Six years of our lives!”

            “I know,” she whispered, because that was all she could muster in the face of his rage.

            “Why didn’t you just talk to me?” His voice was a sonnet of agony.

            “Because I didn’t know how! I was humiliated and—”

            “Bullshit. We were friends, Elena. We used to talk about everything.”

            “Yeah, and then we got married.”

            Vlad stacked his hands on his head and looked at the floor.

            Weariness stole all her fight. She sank back against the wall. “The girl you proposed to, she wasn’t the one you knew when you were younger. That girl was gone. She disappeared along with her father. And in her place was a terrified and lonely person who had no idea what she was supposed to do next, and then you came along like a white knight. When you proposed, it was like you’d thrown me a life preserver. I clung to it. To you. But when I overheard that conversation with your father, it was like finding out the life preserver was actually an anchor. It just dragged me further under. Once again, I was nothing but a burden. And I was so mad. So humiliated.”

            He looked up, his eyes dark with regret.

            “And everything you did after that let me believe I was just a burden. You filled my bank account and paid my tuition and bought me a car. But you never once told me that it was because you cared about me. You let me go to Chicago without ever once telling me that you didn’t want me to go. Or, God forbid, that you loved me.”

            His face scrunched up in pain.

            “I would have been a wife to you if you’d asked me to, Vlad. But you never asked me to. Not until six months ago. And by then it was too late.”

            She whispered the words, but their truth was as loud as a shout. They stared at each other, chests rising and falling in a unified battle with oxygen and anger. And hovering above it all was the potent realization that perhaps things could have been different if they’d just been honest with each other back then.

            Except no.

            Things could not have been different because they had not been different. They were stuck with a present defined by a past that could never be changed.

            Vlad sucked in a shaky breath and turned his face away from her, but not before she saw a tear drip down his cheek.

            “Vlad—” She reached out to him.

            “Don’t.” He shook his head and let out a noise that was half agony, half anger. “I swore I’d never ask you this, but I’ve had about four of those drinks tonight, and even that hasn’t been enough to erase the memory of you staring at me in the bathtub, and now I get to add on top of that the image of another man kissing you. So fuck it.”

            Elena steeled herself, but nothing could have prepared her for what came next.

            Staring straight ahead, he swallowed hard and rasped, “Have you been with anyone since we’ve been married?”

            “What . . .” she breathed, too hurt and shocked to say anything else.

            “Don’t make me repeat it.”

            Her indignation returned. “How dare you? That’s what you want to say to me right now? That’s your only burning question? To ask if I slept with anyone in Chicago?”

            His hand shot out and braced against the wall so he could lean against it. His voice was a tortured plea. “Just tell me. Please.”

            “No!” Elena threw up her hands. “No, I have not been with anyone since we’ve been married.”

            He turned into the wall and dropped his forehead against it. “Thank God.”

            “But can you honestly say the same?”