Six months ago
It’s all fun and games until someone shits their pants.
And for once, Vlad Konnikov wasn’t the culprit.
Luckily, however, he knew what to do. Because Vlad—a.k.a. the Russian, as his friends called him, since he was, in fact, Russian—had an unfortunate history of gastrointestinal catastrophes for which he’d only recently gotten a diagnosis. Now the man with an official gluten allergy and occasional irritable bowel symptoms never left the house without an emergency kit.
And this was definitely an emergency.
Vlad grabbed his bag from his hotel room five stories above the ballroom where he was a groomsman in his friend’s wedding and then raced back to the mezzanine floor. He found another groomsman guarding the door to the main bathroom.
“He is still bad?” Vlad asked, his heavy accent more pronounced than usual because he was out of breath and slightly tipsy. It was a wedding, after all, and his stomach be damned, he was Russian. Russians drank at weddings.
“Bad,” said Colton Wheeler, fellow groomsman and a country music star. “We’re talking full machine gunner.” Colton held up his hands to mimic the handles of the weapon and made a rapid pffft-pffft-pffft noise. “I wouldn’t go in there yet if I were you.”
“I have to. He is the best man. He must give the speech.”
“Unless he’s giving it from the toilet, I don’t see it happening anytime soon.”
The sound of dress shoes slapping on tile floor brought Vlad about-face. The groom, Braden Mack, slid to a stop. “Where the fuck is my brother?”
Colton hooked his thumb over his shoulder with a grimace.
“Still?” Mack wiped his hands over his head and then cursed, realizing he’d probably just messed up his hair. Mack was very particular about his hair. “Jesus, what’d he eat?”
Vlad shrugged. “Probably cheese.”
Cheese used to be Vlad’s nemesis, too, until he realized it wasn’t. He’d just been eating the wrong kinds of cheese and the wrong things with cheese. Now, he had a strict diet and daily medicine and could eat as much cheese as he wanted as long as he was careful. He was officially a new man.
“I know what to do,” Vlad said. He opened his emergency bag, pulled out a box of peppermint tea bags, and handed them to Colton. “Fast. Go ask the hotel staff to make a mug of tea with these.”
Colton studied the box. “Seriously?”
“Just go.” He shook his shoulders and stretched his neck. “Okay. I am ready. I am going in.”
Colton held up his hands in surrender. “It’s your nose.”
“I’ll go with you,” Mack said, tugging down on the jacket to his tuxedo. “He’s my brother. I can handle it. I grew up with that little shit.”
“Big shit,” Colton said, moving aside, hands still raised. “Trust me. Big shit.”
The heavy door creaked as Vlad pushed it open. “Liam?” he asked gently, approaching the row of stalls like a hostage negotiator closing in on his suspect. “It is Vlad. Mack and I are here.”
“Go away,” came the groaned response.
Vlad pointed silently to the last stall. Mack nodded, grimacing as he inched closer.
“How’s it going in there, man?” Mack asked.
Liam answered with another groan. Mack smothered a laugh behind his hand.
“Leave him alone,” Vlad whispered. “It is very not fun to have a stomach problem. Not funny like you think.”
“You’re right, man,” Mack said, straightening. “We’ve made fun of you too much for that. I’m glad you’re feeling better.” Mack patted Vlad’s stomach through his tuxedo shirt. He lifted an eyebrow and backed up. “Damn, dude. You’re hiding some steel under there.”
“I am a professional athlete,” Vlad said, shoving Mack’s hand away. “What did you think I had under there?”
Vlad was a defenseman for the Nashville professional hockey team, which is how he’d managed to meet and befriend this crew of star-studded degenerates. Colton was by far the most famous, but the entire crew was a who’s who of Nashville’s movers and shakers. Vlad wasn’t even the only professional athlete in the wedding. Three others—Gavin Scott, Yan Feliciano, and Del Hicks—were members of the Nashville Major League Baseball team, and Malcolm James played football for the local NFL team. In the six years since Vlad had immigrated to America to play hockey, these guys had grown to be the best friends of his life, and Mack was the glue that had brought them all together through the Bromance Book Club. Together, they read romance novels written by women to learn how to be better men. This group, these men, the books—they had changed Vlad’s life. He was not going to let Mack down by allowing his brother to miss the most important toast of the night.
“I can’t believe this,” Liam moaned from inside the stall. He followed it with a noise that made Mack reel back in horror. “What am I going to do?”
Vlad stood in solidarity on the other side of the stall door. For years, he’d been known among his friends as the man most likely to clog their pipes. A reputation he was happy to put behind him. No one understood what it was like to be at constant war with your own body. Yeah, yeah, nothing funnier than an ill-timed fart, unless you’re the one doing it. Nothing quite like the panic of being in a public place and suddenly having your insides seize up in warning with nary a public bathroom in sight. “I can help,” he said simply.
“You don’t have to stay in here,” Liam said. “In fact, I’d kinda rather you didn’t.”
“Friends do not let friends suffer bad bowels alone.”
“They do, actually,” Liam moaned. “Just go.”
“You are the groom’s brother. The best man. You have to give the toast.”
“I can’t.” He made a noise that proved it.
Vlad winced in empathy. He opened his emergency kit and pulled out a vial of essential oils. He slid it under the stall door. “Rub some of this on your belly.”
“It’s my goddamned asshole that hurts!”
“This will ease cramping,” Vlad said. “Trust me.”
Next, Vlad pulled out a packet of fast-acting Imodium capsules and slid it under the stall door. “Take two of these now. They will not work immediately, but they will help.”
A shiny black-shoed toe dragged the packet out of sight. “Thanks, man.”
Lastly, Vlad pulled out a brand-new package of men’s underwear. He slid those under the stall. “Just in case,” he said, standing.
The door swung open, and Colton walked in, mug in his outstretched hand and a napkin tied around his face like a mask. “Here’s your peppermint poop tea.”
Vlad scowled and took the mug from Colton’s hands. “Liam,” he said calmly. “I am leaving some tea on the counter for you to drink. It will soothe your gut.”
“Mack,” Liam groaned. “What am I going to do about the toast?”
“You can give it later, if you feel up to it.”
“Yeah, about that,” Colton said, his voice muffled through the napkin. “Liv is outside. She wants to know what’s up.”
Mack and Vlad tensed in unison. Liv was Mack’s bride—an amazing, badass woman who scared the shit out of every man in the group. Mostly Liam, apparently.
Mack clapped his hands on either side of Vlad’s shoulders. “You feel like giving a toast?”
Vlad’s stomach seized. “M-me?”
“I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have fill in for my brother, man.”
“I—I haven’t written anything,” he said, voice thick as tears turned his vision blurry. It was the other thing he was known for in the group—spontaneous displays of emotion. It was the Russian in him. He couldn’t help it, and there was no medicine or diagnosis that could cure it. He cried at weddings, books, songs, commercials, cute animals. But this? Giving a toast at Mack’s wedding? He’d never make it through.
Mack looped his hand around the back of Vlad’s neck and squeezed. “I’d be honored to have you say whatever comes to mind. No one has a heart like you.”
Vlad wiped a tear away. “I am the one who is honored.”
Liam squeezed out a noise that brought an abrupt end to the tender moment.
“Maybe we should continue this outside,” Mack suggested.
Vlad nodded, and Mack called out to Liam, “We’ll be back to check on you later, okay?”
“Love you, big brother,” Liam groaned.
“Love you too—”
Another noise sent them scurrying for the door.
Outside, Liv was pacing in her wedding gown, arms crossed. “Finally,” she said, throwing her hands up. “I was about to come in there. Is he okay?”
“He will be,” Vlad said, “but not for a while.”
Mack patted his back. “Vlad is going to give the first toast so we can keep things moving.”
Liv’s face softened into the kind of smile that he knew was the reason Mack fell in love with her. Beneath her tough exterior, she was as soft as a baby chick. She hugged her arms around Vlad’s chest. “I’m going to cry.”
“So am I,” he said, squeezing her back.
“I hate crying,” she said.
“I know you do. I will cry for us both.”
Mack tugged her away and plopped a heavy kiss on her upturned lips. “Let’s get this party started.”
Back in the ballroom, the DJ made a quick announcement that there was going to be a minor change in the night’s festivities. Everyone accepted a flute of champagne from the serving staff who wandered through the crowd, and then Vlad took the microphone.
He scanned the room, and a different kind of emotion washed over him, one he’d become too familiar with lately. Envy. His best friends nuzzled their wives and girlfriends as they waited for him to impart a bit of wisdom for the new couple, but Vlad had none to give. He was a fraud. He’d joined the book club because Mack had said “the manuals,” as they called the romance novels they read, would help him be the best husband he could be to his wife, Elena, but, of course, he had failed.
Because his marriage had never been real.
And though he hated deceiving his friends, the idea of telling them after all this time that Elena had only married him to find a way out of Russia and to attend university in America was too humiliating to consider.
He’d learned one important thing, however, from the manuals. He’d learned that he deserved more than this one-sided relationship. He wanted love. He wanted a family. He wanted the grand gesture and the happy ever after. So, one month ago, he’d finally taken a step toward a new story for his life. He’d done the scariest thing he’d ever done. Scarier than his decision to leave Russian professional hockey to play for the NHL. Scarier than his hasty proposal to Elena. Scarier than his decision to let her leave him for school in Chicago after they’d moved to Nashville.
One month ago, he’d mustered every lesson he’d learned from the manuals and told Elena that when she was done with school next spring, he wanted them to have a real marriage.
He had hoped she would throw her arms around him and kiss him. Tell him she had loved him all along and just never knew how to tell him. Instead, she’d just quietly told him she needed time to think about what he’d said. And though that broke his heart, he felt more hopeful than he had in a long time. He’d finally done something to push beyond the state of limbo he’d been living in for nearly six years.
“My friends,” he finally started. Everyone quieted and turned their smiles his way. “I am Russian—”
“No shit?” one of his friends shouted.
He held up his hand appreciatively. “I am Russian, so I will not make it through this without crying. I must warn you of that. When I came to America, I did not know what to expect, and the first few months were . . . they were lonely.”
He looked to his right, where Liv and Mack had their arms around each other as they listened to him speak. “But then I met Mack. He is very, how do I say this, annoying.”
A collective burst of laughter filled the ballroom.
“That is not what I mean. Confident is what I mean. He is very confident. I myself was not.”
This time, the crowd said, “Aww,” together.
“Mack was the first person who made me feel like leaving my country and coming here was a good idea. He was my first friend in America and my best. But he was really, really bad with women, you know.”
More laughter.
“He was, as Americans say, all talk. Big confidence but no game, like, like the sportswriters who say they play hockey better than us, but then they get on skates and break their faces.”
He looked at Mack again in time to see Liv kiss his cheek as the crowd roared with laughter. Mack was scowling playfully in his direction.
“But Mack, he was lonely too. He never found the right woman, until he met Liv. And we all knew the first time they met, we knew, she was going to be the one for him because she did not like him at first. She thought he was annoying. And I do not mean confident. Annoying.”
Liv laughed and buried her face in the crook of Mack’s shoulder. Vlad smiled as he watched Mack drop his lips to the top her head.
“It has been the honor of my life—”
Vlad stopped and cleared his throat, and the crowd once again let out an aww. Vlad sniffed. “It has been the honor of my life to be part of Mack’s life and to watch him become an even better man than he already was because of Liv.” Vlad wiped away a tear. “I love you both so much.”
Liv peeked out from Mack’s shoulder, her eyes glistening with tears.
Vlad raised his glass, and everyone in the room followed. “I know you will be happy together forever, even when Mack is annoying. Thank you for letting me be part of this. So as we say in Russia, Zhelayu vam oboim more schast’ya. Wishing the both of you all the happiness in the world.”
Vlad sipped his champagne as applause erupted and everyone drank. Mack and Liv walked over to him and hugged him together.
“Jesus, man,” Mack said, weepy. “I love you too.”
Liv kissed his cheek. “The only thing that could have made any of this better is if Elena could be here with you.”
A tear dripped down his cheek, and Vlad hoped his friends thought it was from the emotion of the toast and not because of the mention of the woman they’d never even met.
“No more crying,” he said, forcing laughter into his voice. “This is a party.”
Mack grinned down at Liv. “I have a surprise for you.”
Yes! Vlad had been most looking forward to this part. He and the other groomsmen had been practicing for weeks to perform a surprise dance routine at the reception. Vlad knew he was big and goofy-looking, but he loved to dance. Wiping the tears from his cheeks, he pointed at the DJ to let him know it was time to start the music. The rest of the groomsmen pulled Vlad and Mack on the dance floor, and as the guests hooted with laughter, they thoroughly humiliated themselves for Liv, the love of Mack’s life.
When it was over, Vlad watched the other guys return to the arms of their wives and girlfriends. Fighting jealousy again, he walked to the bar for a glass of water. Colton, who was double-fisting a whiskey and a beer, started to speak to him but stopped mid-sentence. The noise he made was pure hot woman, right ahead. Vlad turned around to see who had caught Colton’s attention. A tall woman in a long red dress with brown hair swept over one shoulder stood regally in the doorway. She was, indeed, gorgeous. She was . . . holy shit.
Vlad coughed as everything stopped.
Time. Motion. His heart.
His vision narrowed as if he were following the puck on the ice. Colors faded. Noises silenced. The milling crowd disappeared into the periphery until all he could see was her.
Elena.
A whiskey-clenching hand passed back and forth in front of his vision. “Yo, dude. You’re a married man, remember?”
“Yes, I remember.” Vlad’s heart pounded and his knees went weak. “And that is my wife.”
Colton snorted and then stopped himself. “Holy shit, dude. Are you serious?”
His chest fizzed and buzzed with anxious joy, as if the bubbles from the champagne had risen again. Was this her answer? Was this her way of telling him she’d made a decision? Elena’s eyes found his from across the ballroom. Vlad opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He tried to go to her, but his feet wouldn’t move.
Without warning, Elena spun around and walked back out.
A wave of déjà vu washed over him. Only a few months after she joined him in America, he watched her sling a backpack over her shoulder and disappear into a security line at the airport for a flight to Chicago. His heart had begged him to go after her, to tell her to please stay with him, but his mama—always the romantic—had told him it would take time.
“Be patient with her. ‘I let a captive bird go winging . . . ’ ”
Vlad forlornly finished the stanza of the poem. “ ‘To greet the radiant spring’s rebirth.’ ”
“She needs time, Vlad. If she needs to go away to find herself, to find her rebirth, you have to let her. She will find her way back to you.”
Had she finally found her way back to him? Vlad broke free of the shackles of indecision and forced his feet to move. The hallway outside the ballroom was crowded with wedding guests and sloppy drunks who’d just returned from a night of honky-tonking. He spotted Elena about fifty feet ahead, walking so fast it might have just been easier for her to break into a jog.
He raised his voice above the din of conversations and laughter. “Elena, wait.”
She kept walking, so he broke into a jog and switched to their native Russian as he caught up to her. “Elena, please stop. Where are you going?”
She stopped so quickly that she skidded and nearly toppled over in her high heels. Her long red dress swirled around her legs. On instinct, he shot out his hands to steady her, wrapping his fingers gently around her bare elbows.
“Be careful,” he whispered, his voice a low rasp because the shock of touching her had stolen all the air from his lungs.
She slowly turned around, and with regret, he let his hands fall away. She radiated heat and smelled like comfort. “I can’t believe you’re here,” he said, still speaking Russian, because that’s what they did. They always used their native language with each other. “You look so beautiful.”
Elena shook her head and refused to meet his gaze. “I’m sorry. I should have called. I shouldn’t have surprised you like this.”
He reached again for her elbows. “This is the best surprise of my life.”
Her eyes darted left and then right. Anywhere but at him. “Vlad, maybe I should just wait for you at home. I don’t want to interrupt—”
“You’re not interrupting. I want you here.”
She bit her lip and hugged her torso.
“Hey,” he said. He took a bold chance of caressing the underside of her chin to encourage her to look at him. “Are you nervous to meet my friends? You don’t need to be. They will love you. I promise. They’ve wanted to meet you for so long.”
“Vlad, you don’t understand. I thought . . . I thought this would make it easier. I thought I could come here, and we could meet on friendly terms and it would be easier this way. But then I heard your speech, and I saw you with them, and I—I don’t belong here. I’m not part of this. I never was.” Her voice shook, and her lip began to tremble.
And suddenly, reality was like a hard hit on the ice. Cold and jarring. His stomach pitched as he put an extra foot of distance between them. “Elena, what—what are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry . . .” She barely got the words out. “I’m going back to Russia.”