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

            “It’s barely been more than a week! How can I already be this confused? How can I already be reconsidering everything that I’ve been working toward? What does that mean?”

            Michelle shrugged. “That you’re human. That love is complicated.”

            Elena set her mug on the coffee table and stood, too agitated to remain seated. She began to pace. “I feel like I’ve been walking around my whole life with smudged glasses and have finally cleaned them or something. But instead of seeing things better, I’m just bumping into walls I never knew were there.”

            “Starting over is never easy.”

            “I’m not starting over.” Her words came out like a petulant child insisting she wasn’t tired.

            “Look, I know a little about what you’re going through. It’s hard to redefine yourself after so long of seeing yourself as one way. I was his wife. That’s who I was. I never stopped to ask myself if I was happy in that role. If I even recognized myself in that role. I think that’s why I ignored all the warning signs for so long. It’s not that I loved him so deeply that I couldn’t imagine not being with him. It was that I had lost touch with myself so deeply that I couldn’t imagine who I was without him. Redefining yourself is scary.”

            Elena understood that on such a deep level that she felt tears prick the back of her eyes.

            “When my ex-husband moved out, I spent about three weeks in this fog, you know? And then one day, I got out of the shower, all wet and naked. And I realized . . . I’m clean. I was really, really clean. I’d washed away all that disappointment and broken promises. I didn’t get dressed for an hour. I just walked around my house bare naked. I’ve never felt so free.”

            “But—” Elena returned on the couch and faced Michelle. She shook her head at the last second and took a drink of her coffee.

            “But what? You can ask me anything.”

            “When you were first together . . . you loved him, right?”

            “I did. I really did.”

            “So, what went wrong?”

            “He went wrong. I’m not saying I was a perfect wife or that I didn’t contribute to the problems in our marriage. But in the end, he just couldn’t stop chasing something that I could never give him.”

            Something sour sprouted in Elena’s stomach and began a slow crawl up her throat. “What was he chasing?”

            “I don’t think he ever really thought he was good enough. It makes me sad to think about it now, because he was so talented and smart. He had so much to offer, but somewhere inside him, something was broken. Something told him he always had to be better, make more money, chase the next big thing, the next big win. He forgot to appreciate what he had. And for so long, I let him run and chase those things. I thought I was happy to run along beside him. Until I realized I wasn’t beside him. We weren’t in the race together. He was running ahead, leaving me behind, and there was nothing I could do or say to make him slow down. It took me a long time to realize it wasn’t my job to convince him I was the prize worth fighting for.”

            Elena felt every word like a thousand tiny pinpricks.

            Michelle must have seen something in her face, because she rested a reassuring hand on Elena’s arm. “Elena, you and Vlad are not my ex-husband and me.”

            “But I’ve been chasing something, too, and leaving him behind.”

            “But I’m willing to bet that it’s not because you don’t love him.”

            It’s because I do. Elena looked at her lap. “He deserves better than me.”

            “He has a house full of romance novels that suggests he would disagree with that statement.”

            Elena lifted her head. “Romance novels? What are you talking about?”

            “The book club he has with his friends,” Michelle said. Her eyes widened. “Wait. You don’t know about that?”

            Elena blinked.

            “I just assumed you knew,” Michelle said apologetically.

            “Vlad and his friends read romance novels? Like, as a joke?”