Crazy Stupid Bromance Read online

  Praise for the Bromance Book Club series

  “This is a lovely and sweet story, an honest and hopeful portrayal of the hard work of marriage.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “Lyssa Kay Adams hits a home run when it comes to the most inventive, refreshing concept in rom-coms this year.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Adams’s words help you believe that the right people find the right people.”

  —Shondaland

  “A fun, sexy, and heartfelt love story that’s equal parts romance and bromance.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Adams weaves in humor, complex emotions, and excerpts from the motivational story itself to create a satisfying courtship.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Sweet and funny and emotional.”

  —Nalini Singh, New York Times bestselling author

  “The Bromance Book Club is a delight!”

  —Alexa Martin, author of Intercepted

  “The perfect mix of laugh-out-loud and swoony moments—every town should have a Bromance Book Club.”

  —Evie Dunmore, author of Bringing Down the Duke

  TITLES BY LYSSA KAY ADAMS

  The Bromance Book Club

  Undercover Bromance

  Crazy Stupid Bromance

  A JOVE BOOK

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Lyssa Kay Adams

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  A JOVE BOOK, BERKLEY, and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Adams, Lyssa Kay, author.

  Title: Crazy stupid bromance / Lyssa Kay Adams.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Jove, 2020. | Series: Bromance book club ; 3

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020016133 (print) | LCCN 2020016134 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984806130 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781984806147 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Love stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3601.D385 C73 2020 (print) | LCC PS3601.D385 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016133

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016134

  First Edition: October 2020

  Cover art and design by Jess Cruickshank

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise for the Bromance Book Club series

  Titles by Lyssa Kay Adams

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Tweny-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To Gerry,

  my husband, best friend, and dirty-joke maker-upper

  CHAPTER ONE

  Noah Logan always knew the day would come when he officially morphed into someone he no longer recognized, and apparently his thirty-first birthday was going to be it.

  But only if he didn’t put up a fight.

  And, hell yes, was he going to fight.

  He folded his arms across his chest, adopted a you wanna say that again stance he’d learned from his military father, and clenched his jaw beneath the scruff of his beard. “No. No way. Not in a million fucking years.”

  His friend Braden Mack stuck out his bottom lip. “Come on, man. It’ll be the best birthday present ever.”

  “It’s my birthday, dipshit,” Noah grumbled. He threw his hand out wide to gesture at the large circle of men and one woman who gathered around a table near the empty dance floor in Mack’s country and western dance club, Temple. “And you can save that pouty thing for them. It doesn’t work on me.”

  Which was a lie. Mack’s pouty face was how Noah got here. At first, he’d been honored and humbled when Mack asked him to stand up with him in his upcoming wedding alongside his other close friends. But then came the bottom-lip thing, and the next goddamned thing Noah knew, he was doing all the shit he thought brides were supposed to do. Apparently, Mack’s fiancée, Liv, had turned all planning over to Mack, who in turn had deemed it only fair that his male buddies get a small taste of what society usually required of women.

  Which, hey, Noah was all for. But Christ, in the past eight months, he’d helped Mack pick out flower arrangements, considered lighting schemes, debated the mixed messaging of a particular Bible verse, and gotten into one singularly heated exchange with another groomsman over whether Mack should abandon the outdated tradition of tossing the garter. The wedding was next month, and Mack had officially reached epic levels of groomzilla.

  And today? Oh, today they were crafting. Mack wanted a handmade archway at the entrance to the reception hall.

  Which is why they were all gathered at his club at three o’clock in the afternoon on a Thursday in October to make about five hundred paper flowers. But clearly, it was all a ruse to drop the latest what the fuck.

  Mack wanted them to perform a dance routine at the reception. A dance routine.

  “Let me put this in words you understand,” Noah said. “Fuck. You. I’m. Not. Dancing.”

  Mack glared with all the frustration of a kindergartner who’d been denied a second chocolate milk at snack time. Behind Noah, the scruff of shoes on the well-worn wooden floor told him that Mack was about to get backup. Seconds later, a calloused hand clapped him on the shoulder. Noah pitched forward, and his thick, black-framed glasses slid down his nose.

  “We dance for Mack,” said Vlad Konnikov, a hockey player they all just called the Russian because he was, in fact, Russian. His heavy accent dipped into the or else territory.

  Which sent Noah’s voice higher into the oh shit range as he tried another tactic. “What about Liam? Your brother lives in California. How’s he going to learn the dance routine if he’s not even here?”


  “I’m sending him a video to learn on his own.”

  Noah pushed his glasses up and turned around and found an entire table of upturned faces watching him in anticipation of his inevitable defeat. “You all agreed to this?”

  “Friends don’t let friends embarrass themselves alone,” said Del Hicks, a player for the Nashville Legends Major League Baseball team. His thick fingers were surprisingly nimble as they folded a piece of tissue paper into something that remarkably resembled a carnation.

  “My wife threatened me with bodily harm if I didn’t do it,” added Gavin Scott, another baseball player whose wife, Thea, happened to be Mack’s fiancée’s sister. Del smacked Gavin upside the head. Gavin winced and quickly amended his statement. “I mean, I’m happy to do it.”

  The sole woman in the group snorted and dropped a pink tissue-paper flower into the box next to her chair. Sonia was Mack’s longtime club manager and the crankiest person Noah had ever met. “Give it up, Noah. If Mack can convince me to craft, you can set aside your ego enough for one dance.”

  It wasn’t ego. It was self-preservation. Yeah, he still wore his hair too long and his clothes too casual, but even with his man bun and geeky comic book T-shirts, his former hacktivist pals would never recognize him today. The man who’d once been arrested by the FBI for attempting to hack into a university research center was about to become a tuxedo-wearing dancing monkey at a million-dollar, Pinterest-worthy wedding alongside the rich and famous.

  True, Mack and the rest of the guys were nothing like the warmongering scumbags he used to try to bring down with his computer skills. In fact, these men were the most decent people he’d ever known. But still, he’d come a long way. He was a successful businessman now, the owner of a growing computer security company catering to celebrities and other high-profile clients. He was officially respectable. A millionaire before he was even thirty. He was finally fulfilling his father’s last, dying wish. Do something with that genius brain of yours.

  A cheesy-assed groomsmen dance was definitely not what his father had in mind.

  He grasped at his last, best excuse. “Dude, how do you even think Liv will respond to this? She hates this kind of romantic stuff.”

  Mack shrugged. “But she loves to laugh.”

  “So the point is to humiliate ourselves?”

  “No. The point is to allow ourselves to be vulnerable in front of the women we love.”

  Mack said the last part with a pointed emphasis that made Noah squirm. It was a low blow, and Mack knew it. But Mack never missed an opportunity to harangue Noah about his relationship with his best friend, Alexis Carlisle. Mack and the guys couldn’t understand why Noah had kept things platonic with Alexis, and he was damn tired of trying to explain it.

  Noah reached around to squeeze the back of his neck where his bun had become loose. He jerked out the ponytail holder and quickly twisted his hair back up.

  “Alexis will love it,” Mack said, eyebrow raised. “You know she will.”

  And just like that, Noah let his arms fall limply to his sides. His next words came out in a defeated sigh. “What do I have to do?”

  “Just show up Saturday to start learning the moves. I’ve hired a choreographer and everything.”

  “Oh yay.”

  Mack pounded Noah on the back. “This means a lot, man. And you’ll see. It’s going to be fun.”

  More like torture. Noah trudged behind Mack back to the table and dropped into his seat. Sonia slid a stack of pink tissue paper toward him. He mumbled a thanks, but then returned his glare to Mack. “But I swear to God, if there’s twerking involved, I’m out.”

  “Dude, no one wants to see the Russian twerk,” snorted Colton Wheeler, a country music star who’d gotten his start in one of Mack’s four Nashville nightclubs and was now a friend to them all. He was also Noah’s newest client. And he happened to be right about the Russian. The hockey player was big, hairy, and had a tendency to fart in public.

  “What is twerking?” the Russian asked.

  Colton dug out his phone and quickly found a video. The Russian’s face turned beet red, and he returned his attention to his paper flowers. “No twerking.”

  “Speaking of your birthday,” Mack said, bending in his seat to grab something on the floor. He sat back up with a plastic bag and passed it to Colton, who handed it to Noah.

  Noah peeked in the bag and groaned. A paperback book stared up at him with the title Coming Home. The cover image was of a man and woman embracing, and the man held a football in one hand.

  Noah tried to hand it back to Colton. “No. It’s bad enough you’re making me dance.”

  Colton pushed the book back at Noah. “Trust us. You need this.”

  Noah dropped it on the table. “No, I don’t.”

  “But you’ll like it,” Mack prodded. “It’s about this professional football player who comes back to his hometown and discovers that his old girlfriend is still there and—”

  “I don’t care what it’s about. How many times do I have to tell you that I am never joining your book club?”

  Noah was the only guy there who was not part of the Bromance Book Club, Mack’s male-only romance-novel book club. The guys believed romance novels held all the answers to relationships. And while Noah couldn’t argue with their results—Mack was happily engaged, and nearly all the other members had saved their marriages using the lessons from the books they read—Noah had rejected all of Mack’s literary advances to lure him into the club.

  Mack propped his elbows on the table. “All you have to do is read and listen to us, and we can fix this little problem for you.”

  Noah ground his molars. “My relationship with Alexis isn’t a problem that needs to be solved. We’re friends.”

  “Sure,” Colton snorted. “Just friends. You only spend every other minute with her, go running whenever she calls, play some stupid word game with her on your phone—”

  “It’s called Word Nerd.”

  “—have a nickname for her that no one else uses, and hang out with her even though you’re allergic to her cat. Did I miss anything?”

  “I’m also allergic to Mack, but I still hang with him.”

  Mack slapped a hand over his heart. “I’m hurt. Truly.”

  Colton raised his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying that I don’t understand why you’re friend-zoning yourself on purpose.”

  “Leave him alone,” came a calm but commanding voice from the other end of the table. It belonged to Malcolm James, NFL player, resident feminist, and Zen master. “Men and women can be friends without it needing to be sexual.”

  “Except in his case, he actually wants to have sex with her,” Colton said.

  Noah clenched his fist against the table. “Watch it.”

  “Yeah, dude,” Mack said, shaking his head. “That was uncalled for. We don’t talk about women like that.”

  Colton shrugged sheepishly and mumbled an apology.

  Malcolm spoke again. “The so-called friend zone is nothing but a social construct designed to give a man an excuse to justify why a woman might not want to have sex with him. It’s a bullshit lie, and we all know that. So leave Noah alone about his relationship with Alexis. We should be commending him for proving that men and women can truly be friends.”

  Like a class that had just been chastised by their favorite teacher, the table fell silent but for the crinkle of paper.

  It didn’t last long. Mack finally looked up with a sigh. “All I’m saying is that maybe she’s ready, Noah.”

  Noah felt something pop in his brain.

  “It’s been eighteen months since—”

  “Don’t say it,” Noah snapped. As if he needed Mack pointing out the calendar. Noah knew exactly how long it had been since he’d met Alexis. It wasn’t the time that mattered. It was the circumstances.

 
And they weren’t right. Not then. Not now.

  Maybe not ever. Which was as depressing a thought as the idea of dancing.

  Noah stared at the plastic bag on the table. He didn’t want it or their help. And he sure as shit didn’t need romance novels to remind him that he was currently a walking romantic disaster. Unrequited love made for a pathetic happy ever after.

  But when things broke up an hour later, Noah took the book with him. Because if he had to pretend to read a damn book to get Mack off his back, so be it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  This was it. Alexis Carlisle could feel it. This was the day the shy young woman was finally going to talk to her.

  For a full week, the woman with the long brown hair and rotating collection of sweatshirts had been coming into the ToeBeans Cat Café—the coffee shop Alexis owned—to sit quietly in a corner with a book, alternating between petting one of the café’s resident felines and shooting nervous glances at Alexis.

  But today, she didn’t have a book. Today, she simply looked around, her gaze lingering on Alexis whenever she thought Alexis wasn’t paying attention.

  In the eighteen months since Alexis had come forward as one of more than a dozen victims of sexual harassment by celebrity chef Royce Preston, Alexis’s café had become a gathering spot for other survivors of harassment and violence. Nearly every week brought a new woman to the café in search of a supportive ear, an understanding hug, or guidance on how to get out of a bad situation. Alexis didn’t choose this, but it had become her responsibility. Along the way, she’d learned to spot the signs of a woman ready to talk.

  She turned to the barista—her friend and fellow Royce survivor, Jessica Summers. “Can you handle the counter for a little while? I’m going to try something.”

  Jessica nodded, and Alexis jogged into the back and through the kitchen to the closet where she kept the box of gardening supplies she used to maintain the brick landscaping beds that flanked the front door of the café. They were in desperate need of weeding and pruning, and this idea could maybe kill two birds with one stone. She lugged the box through the café, pretending to struggle more than she really was with its weight. As she approached the door, she wedged the box against the window and once again pretended to struggle as she reached for the handle.