Isn't It Bromantic (Bromance Book Club #4) - Lyssa Kay Adams Page 0,11
moan as he rolled his head back and forth twice on the pillow.
Elena leaped up and quickly walked back to the bed. Was he in pain? Was he having a nightmare? His head rolled again in her direction, and his breathing picked up. Beneath his closed eyelids, his eyes moved rapidly. Elena reached out her hand and, after a moment of hesitation and second-guessing, lowered it to his forehead. She smoothed his thick hair back.
“It’s okay, Vlad,” she whispered in Russian.
He relaxed beneath her touch, so she repeated the gesture and the words. But instead of falling back to sleep the second time, his eyes opened. They were glassy and red, but he appeared neither confused nor surprised by her presence. He held her gaze, blinking slowly, before saying, “My leg is broken.”
Elena ran her fingers through his hair again. “I know. But everything is going to be okay.”
“I can’t lose hockey. I can’t lose that too.”
The pain on his face combined with that one word—too—broke her heart in half. This beautiful man deserved so much better than her. “You’re not going to. You are going to heal stronger than ever. Just go back to sleep for now.”
“Don’t want to,” he said, but it was a losing battle. His eyelids were dropping again. “Don’t want you to go.”
“I’ll still be here when you wake up,” she said, but she had no idea if he’d heard her.
He’d already fallen back asleep.
* * *
* * *
“Vlad.”
He didn’t want to wake up. The dream had been too good this time, too vivid. He could almost feel her hands on him and hear her voice reassuring him that everything would be okay. This time, she’d promised to stay, and he wanted to stay too, stay in that place where she was touching him.
“Vlad, can you hear me?”
Light and sound broke through the weightless haze, and with a groan, he opened his eyes. Morning sunshine cast a long, bright streak onto the floor. He squinted at the silhouette of a woman next to his bed. A moment of hope surged that maybe he’d manifested Elena into existence, but when the woman stepped out of the glare, he saw that she wore blue scrubs and a nurse’s badge. His hope went as numb as his broken leg. Whatever they’d given him last night after carting him off the ice had yet to wear off.
“Good morning,” she said. “Can you tell me how your pain is?”
“Fine,” he rasped. His mouth was fuzzy and sour, and his throat felt like he’d swallowed sand.
“How about some water?” the nurse offered, handing him a disposable cup with a lid and a straw.
Vlad lifted his head from the pillow to accept a long, much-needed drink. “Thank you.”
After returning the cup to the table next to his bed, she did something on an iPad before smiling down at him again. “Dr. Lorenzo will be in soon to discuss the procedure. Your wife should be back in just a minute. She was exhausted from sitting up all night, so I sent her down to get some coffee—”
Vlad’s brain was sluggish, so it took him a second to catch up to what she said. “My what?”
The nurse looked up from her iPad. “Your wife? Elena?”
“M-my wife is not here.”
The nurse’s smile turned amused. “You don’t remember her getting in last night?”
Vlad shook his head as his heart began to pound. No, that was a dream. Wasn’t it? But the wisp of a memory pulled his eyes toward the couch by the window. On the floor was a suitcase and a backpack. Her backpack.
Everything is going to be okay.
The sound of the door brought his gaze in the other direction. He rose up on his elbows as she walked in with a to-go cup of coffee, her fist pressed against a wide yawn. Her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and she wore a large sweatshirt with the word MEDILL emblazoned across her chest.
She stopped short when she saw him, and the yawn became a gentle smile. “You’re awake,” she said in English.
Vlad coughed against his dry throat. “You are really here?”
The nurse laughed and looked at Elena. “He doesn’t remember much about last night. I was just telling him that the surgeon will be in in a few minutes. Do you need anything until then?”
The question was directed at him, but Vlad was still staring at Elena. She answered for him with a quiet, “No, thank you.”