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.
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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
