“I don’t use a conditioner,” Gavin said, digging his fingers into Vlad’s hair like he was kneading dough. Vlad closed his eyes because it actually kind of felt good.
“And your hair is dry,” Mack pointed out to Gavin. “It would look better if you took care of it.”
“Not all of us are blessed with hair like you and Vlad,” Gavin said.
“And Noah,” Vlad added. “Noah has good hair.”
“Thanks, man,” Noah said. “Means a lot.”
“So does Malcolm. Very thick and soft.”
“I use expensive products,” Malcolm said. “Mack’s right, dude. You should be trading up from that store-bought stuff. You gotta buy from a salon. Hair like yours is a thing of beauty. You should protect it.”
“Tilt your head back so I can rinse,” Gavin ordered, reaching for the handheld showerhead attached to the faucet. Malcolm turned on the water for him, and a moment later, warm water washed over Vlad’s head.
“There,” Gavin said, standing. “We’ll turn around so you can wash yourself, and then we’ll help you out.”
Vlad grabbed the bar of soap and started to bathe as the guys looked away. Nearly all of them were professional athletes, too, and knew the rules. No staring during the washing part.
“I’m done,” Vlad said, breaking the silence. “Can you help me out?”
Noah reached in to drain the tub as Vlad used his good leg to scoot himself onto the edge of the tub again. Colton took one arm and Malcolm the other to help him stand. Gavin was waiting with a towel, which he wrapped around Vlad’s waist.
It started to fall, so Colton tugged it tighter and tied it. “There you go, little butt,” he said, patting an ass cheek.
Vlad glared over his shoulder.
Colton shrugged. “That’s what my grandma used to say when she gave me baths as a kid. She’d dry me off and say, There you go, little butt.”
Del shook his head. “We have spent a lot of time discussing the Russian’s ass tonight.”
“It’s worth talking about,” Yan said.
Malcolm gestured toward the bedroom with his chin. “Let’s get him back to bed.”
They hobbled out of the bathroom, Malcolm and Colton on either side of him, while the others trailed behind. After getting him settled back into bed, the wet towel still wrapped around his waist and his leg elevated on a pillow, Vlad braced himself.
“There,” Colton said. “You don’t stink anymore. Now you get to tell us why the hell your wife has never seen you naked.”
Vlad paused. Took a breath. Looked away as he searched for words they would understand.
After a moment, he looked up again. “Elena and I . . . we are in a marriage of convenience.”
They reacted like he knew they would. A moment of stunned silence followed by a slow exchange of glances and then . . .
“Holy fucking shit.” Mack dragged his hand over his perfect hair.
“Are you serious, dude?” That was from Colton.
Del and Gavin adopted matching poses—mouths agape, hands hanging loosely at their sides, and eyes full of what the fuck. Malcolm tugged at his long beard, and Noah made a noise like someone had just insulted his LEGO collection.
Yan shook his head. “I don’t understand. What does that mean?”
“What do you think it means? You have read the manuals. We’ve read a hundred marriage-of-convenience books.”
“Yeah, in historicals,” Mack said. “Are you saying she married you for your money?”
Vlad swore under his breath. “No.” He clunked his head against the headboard, suddenly weary and wishing he could just close his eyes and sleep for a week. Maybe fatigue was a defense mechanism. The body’s way of protecting you against the emotional onslaught of finally telling the truth. “It wasn’t about money,” he said, rolling his head to look at them. “She needed a way out of Russia. I offered to marry her so she could come to America.”
The guys processed the information in exhales and long glances between them.
Malcolm sat down on the edge of the mattress. “But . . . isn’t that illegal? I thought green card marriages were against the law.”
“It’s not a green card marriage,” Vlad snapped, defensiveness rising along with the hair on the back of his neck. “That’s when someone marries a stranger to avoid being deported. Elena was my best friend. We’ve known each other since we were children. Marriages have been built on far less before, so it was a real marriage. It just . . . it was not real in every way. Not in the way I always hoped.” His face flamed in humiliation.
“Just so we’re clear,” Colton said.
Vlad groaned. He knew what was coming, and so he answered before Colton could even finish the question. “No. We’ve never had sex.”
“You’ve been married for six years!” Colton choked.
“And she has lived in Chicago for most of that time,” Vlad ground out.
“Okay, but even from afar, the topic never came up?”
Mack coughed. “Bad choice of words, dude.”
Vlad glared. Mack had the decency to look chagrined. “Sorry.”
Malcolm stroked his beard. “Maybe you should start at the beginning.”
The beginning? Vlad wasn’t even sure what that was. Did he go all the way back and explain how their fathers had been friends at university? That after Elena’s mother died, she and her father moved from Moscow to Omsk and lived just a few blocks away from his family? Or did their story start when he was sixteen and he realized that his feelings for her had changed from friendship to something else? And that when she accepted his proposal, he felt like he’d just won the lottery. He was marrying the most beautiful woman in all of Russia.
And it was all a lie.
“Her father was a journalist,” Vlad finally said. “He wasn’t home very much, and since her mother died when she was nine, Elena spent as much time at my house as she did at her own. Maybe more. She became very close to my family.” He took a breath to continue. “Her father made many enemies uncovering corruption in industry and government. A couple of months before we were married, he was working on a story, and he went missing.”
The gravity of the statement sucked all the air from the room. “Jesus,” Malcolm breathed. “What happened to him?”
“We still do not know. But after her father disappeared, Elena was all alone and frightened. She had my family, of course. She is like a daughter to my parents. But she has no other family. No siblings or grandparents. She needed a fresh start.”
The guys exchanged silent looks, starting to fill in the plot holes on their own.
“I had just finished my first season here in America. I went home to Omsk to see if I could help or just to see how she was doing. My mother . . . she knew I always had feelings for Elena. She suggested that I—that I propose to her. If we were married, she could get a visa to come live in America with me as my spouse. So she could start over in America.”
“And she said yes?” Del asked.
“Yes.” Elena took one step forward and threw her arms around his waist.
The air vacated his lungs in one exhale, and Vlad quickly returned her embrace. “It’s going to be okay now, Lenochka,” he whispered, using her nickname. “It’s going to be okay.”
“We got married right away. Very small ceremony. Just my family. I thought she would come back here with me immediately, but there was delay in getting her visa approved. Probably because of her father, but that was never explained. I had to get back to America for the start of the summer training camp, so I had to come back without her at first. She finally came over a month later.”
The next part was difficult. “But when she finally got here, she . . . things weren’t easy. She cried a lot. Locked herself in her room. Wouldn’t talk to me or open up to me. It was like we were strangers. When she said she wanted
to go to college in Chicago, how could I say no? I thought it would be good for her. She was obviously miserable here with me, and her visa does not allow her to get a job. I thought she just needed space. I thought that if I was patient, she would eventually come back to me and we could officially start our lives together. I was wrong. She told me at your wedding that she wants to return to Russia and be a journalist like her father.”
“I don’t understand,” Mack said, shaking his head. “In all that time, you guys never talked about the future? About what this marriage would eventually be?”
“There are a lot of misunderstandings between Elena and me.”
“Horseshit,” Mack snapped. “Misunderstandings can be fixed with a simple conversation. You’ve had plenty of time for that. So something tells me that’s not really what’s going on here.”
“People only let misunderstandings linger when they’re afraid to talk about them,” Malcolm said, nodding in that annoying we’ve got you figured out way of his. “Or when they’re too afraid to hear the truth.”
“Even if that were true at one time, it’s too late,” Vlad said.
The guys exchanged long looks. He knew those looks. He’d been in on those looks before. The guys were starting to read something into all of this, and that meant they were going to try to make him read something into all of this, and that would be a mistake because there was nothing to read here. And even if there were, he’d already skipped to the end of the book, and it was not a happy ending. Something he would need to remind himself repeatedly over the next several weeks.
A tear dripped down his cheek. “I know what you are thinking, my friends, but this isn’t a situation the book club can fix. There is no manual for this one.”
“That’s why you’ve been avoiding us,” Noah said. “Isn’t it?”
Vlad looked at his lap. “It was too humiliating. I couldn’t tell you the truth.”
“But that’s what we do in book club, man,” Malcolm said. “And I know you didn’t mean to deceive us maliciously, but I feel a little betrayed right now.”
Yan pouted. “After everything we’ve been through, the way we’ve all spilled our guts over the years, and you never once told us what was going on in your own marriage?”
“I’m sorry,” Vlad said. “I did not want to burden you. Not with everything you’ve all been dealing with.” That, at least, was true. The things these men had endured over the past few years—from Gavin’s marriage troubles, to Mack and Liv’s struggle to get together, to Noah and Alexis’s fight to turn friendship into love—had always made his own issues seem small.
“How can you say that?” Mack crouched next to the bed and met him eye to eye. “We’re a family, Vlad.”
“We’re brothers,” Malcolm said, clapping a hand on Mack’s shoulder. “We are always here for you.”
“I’d b-be divorced right now if not for you,” Gavin said, his lifelong stutter emerging with his emotion. “D-do you really think I wouldn’t drop everything to do the same for you?”
Vlad’s eyes blurred with tears. He might have screwed up so many other things in life, but finding these guys, joining them in their effort to become better men, was the best decision he’d ever made. “I’m sorry,” Vlad said, voice tight. “I should have told you. But it would not have made a difference.”
“I don’t believe that,” Del said.
Vlad shook his head. “It is too late.”
“It’s never too late,” Mack said. “Haven’t you learned that yet?”
“Russian,” Yan said reverently, “think about it. You are living a real-life romance novel.”
Vlad frowned. “No, I’m not. A real-life romance novel would have a happy ending. My story will not.”
“You don’t know that,” Noah said. “Trust me. When you guys brought me in, I thought it was a hopeless fantasy to think Alexis and I could ever get together. But you made it happen for us.”
Vlad scoffed and looked away. “It’s not the same.”
Noah crouched beside Mack on the floor next to the bed. “Why not?”
“Because you and Alexis loved each other. You wanted the same things.”
Mack softened his voice. “Are you sure that you and Elena don’t?”
“I’m sure.”
“Then why is she here now?” Yan asked.
“Because she feels obligated. She said she wants to pay me back for everything I’ve done for her. Like our marriage was just a business deal.” He wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands, but another tear quickly dripped down Vlad’s cheek. Then another. And suddenly it all came out. Vlad covered his face with his hands and released all the pent-up emotion he’d been holding in for months. Without words, his friends gathered around him in a silent, supportive huddle, waiting him out as he got his shit together. Usually, he was the one giving the hugs, letting someone cry it out on his shoulder. He hadn’t been prepared for it to be his turn. But it felt good. He’d missed them so much.
Malcolm finally pulled back and patted his leg. “You gotta find a way to move on, man. You owe it to yourself to find some kind of equilibrium. Because you can’t go on like this. We won’t let you.”
Mack stood. “And if there’s truly no hope, then you’re going to need some way to distract yourself while she’s here.”
Vlad glanced at his nightstand, where the pages of his manuscript were stacked in a neat pile. He’d forgotten to put them back in the drawer last night, but at least he’d turned the pages over to hide the words. Unfortunately, these guys missed nothing.
“What are you looking at?” Colton asked, eyebrow raised.
“Nothing.” Vlad tore his gaze back to the group. Insecurity made his heart pound. He’d never told a single soul about his book.
“You’re obviously looking at something,” Mack said. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
Del crossed his arms. “You just admitted that you’ve been lying to us for years. You going to keep doing it?”
Dammit. Vlad banged the back of his head against the bed several times. What did it matter? He was already humiliated. Why not make it complete? He sucked in a breath and spoke on the exhale. “I’m writing a book.”
“You’re doing what now?” Colton said.
Vlad groaned. “I’m writing a romance novel.”
For the second time that morning, confused silence descended on the room. His dread deepened as the guys had another conversation with their eyes.
“That’s it,” Mack finally said, grinning.
“Totally,” Colton laughed. “I’m so fucking in.”
Vlad fisted his fingers into the blanket. “Oh shit. What are you talking about?”
“Same, dude,” Del said, doing the man-clasp with Colton. “This is going to be awesome.”
Vlad hugged the pillow again for support. “What are we doing?”
Colton planted his hands on his hips. “We’re going to help you finish your book, little butt.”
Vlad coughed. Tiny explosions inside his brain made dots dance across his vision and the blood roar in his ears. If he shook his head any harder, he was going to end up with a concussion. Nope. No way. They were absolutely not going to help him write a book.
His protests were pointless, though.
“Don’t even bother saying no,” Colton said, waggling his eyebrows. “I’m already thinking about the sex scenes.”
Noah scoffed. “We’re not letting you anywhere near the sex scenes. I’ve worked on your computer security. I’ve seen the links you click on. You’re twisted as fuck.”
“Hey,” Colton said, pointing. “Don’t yuck someone else’s yum.”
Vlad gulped. “How can you help me write a book? You’ve never written one.”
“But we’ve read a million,” Del said. “We know what readers want and expect. That’s gotta
help, right?”
“My friends, please—”
“Look, man,” Malcolm said. “We’ve missed you. You’ve been avoiding us and keeping a lot of secrets from us. It’s time to let us in.”
Vlad gulped. “If I do this—”
The guys whooped in unison. Vlad held up his hand and glared. “If, I said. If I do this, it is only about my book.”
Colton shrugged innocently. “Of course. What else would it be about?”
“I mean it. If any of you think you are going to use this to try to save my marriage, I will put a stop to it.”
They all raised their right hands as if swearing an oath.
“Just about the book,” Yan said. “Promise.”
For the first time ever, Vlad wasn’t sure if he trusted his friends.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When Elena got home two hours later, she eased the car into the garage but didn’t immediately get out. The guys were still there, so there was no avoiding them this time, and she needed a few minutes to gather her strength.
The first and only time she’d met Vlad’s friends, it was through a sheen of tears as she fled Mack and Liv’s wedding. She doubted they would welcome her warmly today. But this wasn’t about her. It was about Vlad. So, if she had to endure another round of skepticism and hostility from another set of his friends, so be it. Elena gulped down two deep breaths of oxygen and slid out of the car.
The door from the garage led to a back room, which opened into the kitchen. She walked in to find six men circling the island. There were seven of them in all—two Black men, a Latinx man, and four white guys—and together they looked like a photo from a sexy calendar shoot. They were whispering like conspirators, but when she cleared her throat, they jumped apart, looking guilty.
She lifted her chin. “Good morning. Thank you for being here. I’m Elena.”
A heavy pause followed her words, but then the guys all began to introduce themselves at once. She could barely keep their names straight as they went around the room. Malcolm. Mack. Colton. Del. Gavin. Yan. Noah. She recognized most of them even though she’d only seen them from afar at Mack’s wedding.
Isn't It Bromantic? Page 9
