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

            He lifted his head. His red, glassy eyes were suddenly alert and wounded. “Are you serious?”

            “You get to ask me, but I don’t get to ask you? You’re a man. A very sexy man, and a professional athlete. I’d have to be the world’s most naive fool to think you’d go all this time without . . . that.”

            He opened and closed his mouth. Rubbed his hand over his jaw. A puff of sad air escaped his lips. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. Jesus, Elena, you have no idea how faithful I’ve been to you.”

            “What the hell does that mean?”

            Vlad limped back to the couch. He rounded to the front and sank onto the cushions. He stared with empty eyes at the dark TV screen. When he spoke again, his voice was flat and lifeless. “I’ve never been with anyone, Elena. Ever.”

            Elena shook her head as he tried to piece together the meaning behind those words. What . . . what did he mean? He couldn’t mean. Did he? “Vlad,” she whispered. “What—”

            “Yep,” he said with another one of those humorless laughs. “That’s right. Your husband is a virgin. A virgin who waited for you.”

            Elena pressed her fist to her mouth. The tick-tick-tick of a grandfather clock in the corner chronicled the seconds, but nothing could measure the chasm between them. “Vlad, I—”

            “I don’t need your pity.”

            “I don’t pity you. I’m angry with you. Furious, actually.”

            He turned around on the couch, his expression a twisted combination of surprise and confusion.

            “I never asked you to wait for me, Vlad. You did that all on your own, so don’t put that one on me. But I’m sorry, anyway. I’m sorry for messing up your life in so, so many ways.”

            She spun on her heel and stormed to the stairs. She had to leave. Now. She ran to her room and shut the door. Barely a minute had passed before she heard him on the other side of it, but by then she’d pulled out her suitcase and started throwing her meager belongings into it.

            “Elena, what are you doing?” He tried to turn the knob but she’d locked it. “Please let me in.”

            She threw her toiletries into her suitcase and zipped it shut. Vlad tried again. “Elena, open the door. Please.”

            The only thing left was her notes. She shoved them in her backpack and hauled it onto her shoulder. When she pulled open the door, he nearly stumbled into her. But then he saw her things—the suitcase, the backpack—and he sank backward on his crutches.

            “What are you doing?”

            “I have to go.”

            His head shook back and forth. “No. No you don’t.”

            “We both know it’s for the best.”

            He dropped one of his crutches and shoved his arm across the doorframe to block her path. “It’s not. Please, Elena.”

            “Don’t make this any harder than it already is.”

            He suddenly palmed the back of her head and pressed his brow to hers. “I don’t want you to go,” he choked.

            “You will,” she whispered, unable to find the strength to pull away from him. “Eventually, you will. Marrying me was a mistake. I’m trying to fix it. You have to let me.”

            He lifted his head from hers. Tears streamed down his cheeks and turned his eyes red.

            “I was wrong to come here. I thought I was doing something good for you, something to repay your kindness and your friendship, but I was wrong. You don’t need me here. You never did. You have your amazing friends, and your team, and even the neighborhood pets. And obviously you have Michelle. I’m just making things worse.”

            Elena dragged herself through the doorway and past him into the hallway.

            He didn’t try to stop her as she fled into the night.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN





Elena awoke just after dawn in a strange, cold room with a pounding headache and a hole in her chest. She’d barely slept, and even when she did, she’d clenched her jaw to the point of pain amid a movie reel of angsty dreams.