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

            “You don’t want a divorce,” Malcolm said. “And neither does she.”

            “That’s not true. She’s leaving.”

            “Because you’re letting her.”

            “No,” he said, choking on that damn emotion he knew he couldn’t hold back much longer. “Because I told her the truth, and it was too much for her.”

            Mack groaned. “The truth about what? You keep talking in circles.”

            Vlad shook his head. He knew how these guys worked. Once you started talking, it was all over. They wouldn’t let you stop until you had spilled your guts and were a weeping mess on the floor. The good thing about his friends is that they would be there to pick you back up again with some tissue for your snotty nose and a shoulder for your heavy head. The bad thing was, emotions were flying at him like a speeding puck across the ice. At least with the puck, he could visualize the scene and make the kind of split-second decision that had made him one of the best defensemen in the NHL. But right now, he was useless. The puck was going to hit him square in the face.

            He scanned his friends, all waiting patiently, except for Colton, who had sunk to the floor to play with Hazel. Mack sat down on the narrow edge of mattress next to his hip. “Listen, man. We’ve all had to share our secrets before. You know how this works.”

            Yeah. He’d just never been on this end of it before.

            “You can do it, man,” Del encouraged.

            Noah nodded. “Just tell us—”

            “I’m a virgin!” He held his breath as his blurted confession settled on the group.

            He expected an explosion.

            He got silence.

            “No shit?” That was from Noah. “Huh.”

            He looked around the room, incredulous. “That’s it? That’s your only response?”

            Malcolm shrugged. “So you’re a virgin. Big deal.”

            “It is a big deal. I am an almost thirty-year-old professional athlete who has never had sex, even with his wife of six years. I’m a living, breathing—”

            “Human being,” Mack said.

            Vlad muttered obscenities in Russian. “You are missing the point. I told her I am a virgin, that I’ve waited my entire life for her, and she ran off saying she has ruined my life and she could never repay me and that it was a mistake to come here, and then she left me. Again.”

            “Something tells me there was a little more to it than that,” Del mused.

            Vlad’s cheeks grew hot and he looked at his lap. “She might have kissed me.”

            “Wait, what?” Mack squawked.

            Vlad lifted a single shoulder. “She kissed me.”

            “Holy shit,” Colton breathed with a grin.

            Malcolm lifted an eyebrow. “And then what?”

            “I pulled away.”

            And then came the explosion.

            Mack swore and tugged at his hair. Malcolm pointed at Vlad, sputtering nonsense. Colton and Noah both stood at the same time and accidentally clunked their foreheads together. Del muttered, “I give up,” and started to leave.

            Hazel squawked like she’d laid an egg.

            “Why the hell did you stop her?” Mack seethed.

            Del turned around and returned to the side of the bed. “I’m not leaving until I hear this. Not because I think it’s worth hearing, but because I want to file it away the next time we think we’ve met the dumbest fucker on the planet, and I can say, ‘Oh, no, remember the fucking Russian?’ ”

            “I was confused, okay?” Vlad protested in his own defense. “One minute, she wants to go back to Russia. The next she is kissing me and looking at me naked and—”

            “Uh—” Colton held up his hand. “What is the naked part?”