Isn't It Bromantic?

by Lyssa Kay Adams

  “You need to stop drinking. That can’t be good for your stomach.”

  Vlad pointed. “Stop taking care of me. And you want to know what is humiliating? Watching another man kiss my wife right in front of me.”

  Indignation burned like a bite into a scalding pelmeni hot from the oil. “You have no right to be jealous, Vlad.”

  His voice dropped an octave. “He kissed you.”

  “He kissed my cheek.”

  “Only because you turned your face at the last minute. If you hadn’t, he would have shoved his tongue down your throat.”

  “Which is a lot more than you ever did to me!”

  “Maybe because you’ve never wanted me to!”

  Elena advanced on him in angry steps, drew back her fist, and socked him in the chest. He hopped back on one foot, blinking in surprise. Since he was obviously clueless, she did it again. Her fist landed in the valley between his pecs with a dull thud.

  “Elena—”

  “Of course I want you to kiss me. I’ve always wanted you to kiss me. I wanted you to kiss me when you proposed. I wanted you to kiss me on our wedding day. I wanted you to kiss me last night.” Whack. Another punch. “And I want you to kiss me right now.”

  Elena grabbed the front of his shirt, yanked him down, and smashed her mouth to his.

  For the first time since they said I do at the altar, she kissed him, but this time, there was nothing chaste about it. There was no pretense this time, no confusion. No one to convince but each other. She softened her lips against his, pressing gently in an unspoken plea to let her in. With a whimper, she nudged his mouth. Once. Twice. Until finally she felt him give in. Vlad parted his lips a fraction of an inch, and she slanted her mouth to go deeper.

  At the touch of her tongue against his, Vlad came to life. With a groan, he palmed the back of her head with one hand and pressed the other against her back, pulling her tightly against him. Together, they stumbled until she collided with the wall, never breaking contact, never letting their mouths lift. Her arms wound around his neck as she rose on tiptoe. He devoured her. Consumed her.

  Years of wanting, wondering, longing collided with a reality that exceeded all fantasy. His hands cradled her. His arms held her. His mouth made love to her. There was a sweetness to his passion, a tenderness in his brute strength. He kissed with an innocence that spoke of purity but a gentle proficiency that suggested experience, and she did not want to think about that.

  He manipulated the angle of her mouth to feast on what remained of her senses as she pressed into him, the front of her pelvis brushing against the bulge of his arousal. He made a noise that was part human, part animal. With a gasp, she wrenched her mouth away to gulp in oxygen, tilting her head back, eyes closed. Vlad trailed his lips down her jaw, her chin, her throat. Her fingers dug into his scalp as he tasted the delicate skin, breathed in her scent, nuzzled the tender pulse point that raced ever faster with every flick of his tongue.

  “Vlad . . .”

  He answered her whispered plea with a slow slide of his hand down her side, pausing as if to memorize every inch, every dip and curve. Then his fingers fumbled with the hem of her shirt, and her breath became lodged in her lungs as his fingers met her skin and began a journey back up her body.

  His fingertips brushed the underswell of her breast for a fraction of a second before his palm covered the lacy fabric standing between his exploration and the taut nub of her nipple.

  She gasped his name, arched into his touch.

  He groaned and jerked away from her. Vlad planted his hands on the wall on either side of her body and dropped his head between his shoulders. Defeated. Deflated.

  “Vlad?”

  He finally backed up, limping. “I can’t do this, Elena.”

  Elena tugged down on her shirt. “Do what?”

  “Whatever this is. For years, you’ve wanted nothing to do with me. You tell me you want to go back to Russia, to leave me, but then you come here and suddenly you’re hugging me and looking at me naked and telling me I’m beautiful and kissing me. Do you know what I’ve had to do to move on from you?” He smacked the center of his chest. “What I’ve had to do to move on from you in here? And now here you are, and I have no idea what is going on with us.”

  “I—”

  He grabbed her shoulders. “What the hell is going on with us?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  He let her go. “I need you to figure it out. Because I’m not a machine. You either want me or you don’t. Just please, God, make up your mind.”

  Elena peeled her body from the wall. “And what about you? When are you ever going to make up your mind?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You can’t ignore someone for almost six years and then show up out of the blue to say you want a real marriage now.”

  “Ignore you?” He slapped one hand into the other palm. “I married you. I vowed before my family, before our church, to marry you and protect you, and that meant something to me.”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “Wh-what?”

  Her hands balled into fists. “I heard you!”

  “Heard me when?”

  “With your father. The night of the wedding. I heard you. I know the truth, Vlad. I’ve always known the truth. You proposed out of a sense of obligation, not love or passion. You proposed because your mother told you it was the right thing to do.”

  In her mind, she was a cartoon character with her legs spinning in the air as she tried to grab the words back. But it was too late.

  He winced. Deeply, until lines formed around his eyes. “No. That’s not . . . Elena, you misunderstood.”

  “Did I? You didn’t even kiss me after you proposed.”

  “You didn’t kiss me either!”

  “Because I had no idea if you wanted me to.” Her voice came out a whimper, and she hated it, the weakness of it.

  “I can’t believe this,” Vlad breathed. “Why . . . why didn’t you say something?”

  “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?”

  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.

  After leaving Vlad’s last night, she’d chosen the first generic chain hotel that came up in her search results, and as soon as she checked in, she booked the first available flight to Chicago she could find. She snagged a last-row middle seat leaving at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. She’d have to text Vlad the location of his car in the airport parking lot before she left. Maybe one of the guys would help him get it back.

  She rose gingerly, feeling like a bruise. Everything hurt. Two Tylenol and a hot shower eased some of the physical pain, but there was no medicine for the other kind of hurt.

  For the first time in a long, long time, she felt the full weight of her loneliness. She had no schoolwork to distract her, and the thought of poring through her stack of dead-end clues in her investigation had all the appeal of a Pap smear. But the idea of staring at the lonely white ceiling all day in a bland white room was only slightly less tempting.

  She wondered if he was awake yet. Did he even go to bed last night or just go back downstairs and pass out on the couch?

  A twinge of alarm made her breath catch in her lungs. What if he fell? Elena grabbed for her phone and called up the number she’d programmed in for Colton. He’d likely ask questions, but she had to contact him. She hammered out a quick text.

  Will you check on Vlad? I’m not there anymore. Want to make sure he is okay this morning.

  It was several minutes before Colton responded.

  colton: What do you mean, not there anymore?

  elena: I’m going back to Chicago.

  colton: Oh.

  That was it. Oh.

  elena: Will you check on him?

  colton: Yes

  Another one-word answer. They were back to hating her. It shouldn’t matter, but it did.

  Before she could talk herself out of it, she got dressed and went out to the car. And even though she didn’t make a conscious deci
sion about where she was going, it also seemed inevitable when she pulled along the curb in front of the house two blocks away from Vlad’s.

  She ambled along the sidewalk, indecision turning her feet to cement blocks. They weren’t friends. They barely knew each other, and as an added bonus, Michelle was probably going to start dating her husband the minute Elena boarded her plane.

  Yet she still walked up to her front door and knocked. A few moments later, Michelle opened the door wearing a surprised expression and a typical Sunday-morning suburban mom outfit. Leggings. T-shirt. Messy bun. Her disheveled appearance was actually a relief. Even Michelle could do sloppy.

  Her expression quickly softened. “Oh my gosh, Elena, hi.”

  “I’m sorry for just showing up like this,” Elena stammered. “I didn’t really think this through, but you made me promise to come see you, and I just . . . Can I come in?”

  Michelle blinked rapidly but then backed up. “Of course. Please.”

  Elena crossed the threshold into Michelle’s house. Her house was nowhere near as big or grand as Vlad’s, but it was nice. To the right of the entry was a wide staircase leading upstairs, and to the left was a formal dining room that looked like it doubled mostly as a place for the kids to do their homework and Michelle to fold laundry. Straight ahead was a long hallway that led to a kitchen.

  “I’m sorry about what happened at the party,” Elena said.

  Michelle swung the door shut and laughed softly. “Don’t be.”

  “Vlad should not have done that.”

  “Truly, there is no need to apologize.”

  They hovered awkwardly in the entryway. Elena looked around, biting her lip. Michelle finally gestured toward the kitchen. “I just made some coffee. Would you like some?”

  “Oh, I—I don’t want to impose.”

  “Not an imposition at all.”

  “Then yes,” Elena breathed. “Coffee would be very nice.”

  Elena’s stomach churned as she walked down the hallway. The walls were lined with framed professional photos of Michelle and her girls. This was a happy family. This is what Vlad wanted. What he deserved. What she had denied him with her immaturity and selfishness.