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?”