Her Rustanov Bully: the (possibly romantic?) tale of how I pucked around and found out
Her Rustanov Bully: Chapter 16

It all started toward the end of winter break, when a customer came into the Gemidgee Animal Shelter during one of my volunteer shifts, demanding an exchange for a puppy he’d bought.

Not from us, but from “one of them Yolks hockey players. Tommy somethin’ that starts with an H.”

The guy had some serious daytime alcohol breath, and he slammed a thirty-pack Natural Ice carton on the counter, claiming he’d been scammed out of fifty bucks.

Val, the shelter manager, and I exchanged a look. Fifty dollars was way below the standard rate for a puppy—even from backyard breeders.

“Can you tell us this Tommy person’s address?” Val asked in the flat tone she used with especially surly customers she had no intention of letting adopt one of our animals.

While Val questioned him, I pulled the topless beer carton the guy had used as a carrier toward me and found a sick black-and-tan male puppy inside. His square muzzle helped me identify his breed in an instant. A newborn pit bull—the runt of the litter and probably not even a week old, if his teeny-tiny size was any indication.

I wasn’t a vet. One shift back in high school, which was supposed to be a whole summer of volunteering at an emergency animal hospital, had made me let go of that teenage dream with a quickness. My heart was just way too fragile.

But judging from all the green gunk clotted around his square muzzle and his labored breathing, he was suffering from a respiratory infection—one of the many illnesses newborn puppies can fall prey to if not given adequate care after birth.

I gathered the supplies to clean his nasal passages and administer antibiotics while Val pried more information out of the guy demanding a trade-in for the “defective” puppy.

He eventually admitted that he didn’t know where Tommy H. lived because he’d answered a Craigslist ad.

“What happened to the rest of the litter?” Val asked while I tended to the poor puppy, wiping off his nose.

“Hell if I know,” the guy answered with a victimized tone. “Made the exchange in a parking lot at night. That’s why I couldn’t tell how sick it was. Thought I could trust him because ‘Go Yolks!’ but that hockey player totally screwed me. So how you gonna fix this?”

Val switched to a much firmer tone after that, and the man ended up storming out with an “Aw, you can keep it then!” when she refused to exchange the sickly puppy, who was barely holding on, for a “real dog” who could actually guard his trailer.

“What are you guessing, future social worker?” Val asked me after he left, switching into teacher mode.

I frowned, thinking back to my internship with the Animal Welfare Department last summer in Duluth, and came back with a sad, terrible guess. “Dog fighting? And that’s where the rest of the litter went.”

“Got it in one.” Val pointed at me and clicked her teeth like the host of the saddest quiz show ever. “And there’s still a puppy mama out there who’s probably not receiving even a minimum of care.”

My heart wrenched, but I didn’t even bother to suggest calling the Animal Welfare Department in Duluth. Interning there, I’d learned firsthand that they were inundated with welfare check requests. The chance of any of the caseworkers making the three-hour drive all the way to Gemidgee was pretty much nil.

But still, I hadn’t been able to sleep that night, and when I came in for my volunteer shift the next day, I got the news that the black-and-tan newborn had passed away.

“What can we do?” I asked Val as we prepared the poor little guy’s remains to be picked up by a local farm vet who also had a cremation business on the side. “We have to figure out how to save his mother.”

And that was how Operation Puppy Mama had been born.

Attracting Tommy’s interest had been easy enough. Between my last name and his particular brand of playboy narcissism—not to mention his delusion about his mediocre skill level as a hockey player being enough to earn him a spot on the Minnesota Raptors—he had no problem believing it when I “bumped into him” at the winter back-to-school event and immediately started coming on strong.

The only problem was, he wanted to swing by my place for our hookup. It had taken weeks to get myself invited to one of his games.

So, knowing I probably wouldn’t get the opportunity again, I ignored Claudia’s warning about staying out of Artyom Rustanov’s sight and took the chance of stepping into the same vicinity as him to seal the deal with Tommy.

Huge mistake.

In his thirst for vengeance, Artyom ruined all the setup work I’d put into getting myself invited to Tommy Hanson’s house.

Val and I had worried that all was lost. She’d even gone as far as to make a suggestion she never did, even though I’d used my Christmas bonus to gift a sizable donation to the shelter ever since I first started volunteering there as a freshman.

“Maybe it’s time to call your parents, kid? I mean, your father’s some kind of real estate guy, right? Maybe he can at least get us an address.”

It was funny; people always thought rich college kids had the same kind of access our parents had. But the thing was, we didn’t.

Okay, maybe Artyom Rustanov did. His appearance in my Clara Quinn seminar proved that.

But I highly doubted my father would be willing to help me, even as I sent him a voice text, asking, “Hey, Dad, can we talk? I have this problem, and I could really use your help.”

It took my father over thirty-six hours to call me back, and after I explained that I’d need someone to help me replace an address and maybe break into someone’s house, he asked, “Is this one of those viral social media pranks I was reading about in the National Review?”

“No, Dad. I’m really worried about the welfare of this puppy’s mother⁠—”

“The dead dog’s mother,” he clarified in the same tone he used when talking to his friends about various representatives who introduced bills to charge corporations at higher tax rates.

“Okay, the puppy didn’t survive,” I conceded. “But that doesn’t mean his mother can’t be⁠—”

“Speaking of mothers.” Dad made a dramatic noise somewhere between a raspberry and a sigh. “Why am I getting a call about this and not your mother?”

I crinkled my nose. “You really think she’d be able to⁠—”

“No, but she would have dissuaded you from wasting my valuable time with this request,” Dad answered before I could finish. “And what’s this she tells me about you not coming to Paul’s birthday party?”

So, not only had the phone call been a bust, but my Dad sharked me into agreeing to come to Chicago for Paul’s birthday party after all. Double damn.

Luckily for me, Trish ended up saving the day—in the midst of a lot of crying.

Technically, she was pursuing a degree in psychology to better help BIPOC queer youth navigate a world that didn’t always support them.

But she wasn’t above using what she’d learned about the male brain for my side project.

“They revert to primal urges and ego when sex is on the table,” she assured me with a smirk. “If you throw yourself at him hard enough and suck his dick with compliments, he’ll eventually crack.”

To my shock, Trish’s advice to act as thirsty as possible—and her help composing text messages that sounded like they were sent from some sort of porn bot—had actually worked!

Tommy finally got back to me the following Tuesday about hooking up… only to hem and haw about letting me come to his place.

“I can’t even,” I said, flopping back on the couch when I got the message. “This guy is seriously the worst!”

It had been Trish’s idea to sell Tommy on the fantasy of me waiting for him naked on the bed. And when that worked, she’d just grinned and said, “See, that’s why every major marketing firm in America has someone with a psychology degree on staff.”

I’d been so excited when I received the address right before the game.

But I didn’t tell Trish where I was going before I left the house—for the same reason I hadn’t sent Val an update on my progress. If I faced any legal repercussions related to what I was about to do, I didn’t want her caught up in the charges that would follow. Neither of them had a rich dad who would roll his eyes but, nonetheless, quickly (if reluctantly) bail them out of jail and then sic one of his lawyers on the case to ensure they never faced any charges.

But going alone turned out to be another mistake.

I’d come with a backpack equipped with everything I might need: a flashlight, antibiotics stuffed in peanut butter treats, a soft muzzle, bite-resistant gloves, just in case she wasn’t on a chain, and a chain cutter, just in case she was.

What I didn’t expect to replace was a pit bull lying broken and beaten in a frigid doghouse in Tommy’s snow-covered backyard.

This asshole! He’d not only bred this poor girl for puppies, but after either selling or giving her litter away, he’d put her in a dog fight. One she hadn’t won, judging from the many gashes on her body, scratches, and open bite marks caked with blood.

She was also noisily wheezing. When I tipped the flashlight toward her muzzle, I observed clear passageways, though. That made me suspect that, unlike the puppy we lost, the wheezing was due to something internal, like a broken rib pressing into a lung.

She weakly lifted her head to lick my hand as I checked her nose, revealing woeful brown eyes.

A rage like nothing I’d ever known pushed past the mix of Adderall and Wellbutrin I’d been on since high school and caused my vision to blur with red.

Tommy had just left her here to suffer without even attempting to tend to her wounds. Not in the basement I’d checked before coming outside—but in his freaking backyard. In the middle of winter!

Licking my hand seemed to sap the little energy she had. P.M., as Val and I had been calling her between ourselves, flopped her square muzzle back down on her paws and whimpered in that low, steady way that dogs did when they were in excruciating pain.

I had to get her out of there. Get her the medical attention Tommy had denied her.

But this was the one scenario I hadn’t prepared for.

If she’d been malnourished or sick, I could still have walked her out of here on the harness leash I’d tucked into the easiest-to-reach outside pocket of my backpack. However, carrying what looked to be at least a 50-pound bulldog up and down two sets of steps wasn’t a feat I could accomplish, even with the extra strength the medical urgency of the situation might have provided me.

Okay, righteous loner act done. I pulled out my phone to try Val. But… no answer. From her or Trish.

Most likely because most people didn’t spend their Friday nights executing rescue missions.

My knees were starting to go numb in the snow, and the clock was ticking down until Tommy’s game finished and he headed here for our supposed hook-up session. Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! What am I going to do?

I couldn’t leave her here and risk him returning before I could get help. I just couldn’t.

The scrape of the back porch’s screen door brought my head up.

Oh no, Tommy’s back already! Wait, no…

My chest just about collapsed with relief when I saw Artyom Rustanov standing underneath the dim porch light, not his heartless and unconscionable teammate.

It didn’t matter that Artyom Rustanov had made the last week of my college life miserable.

It didn’t matter that, if not for his interference, I might have made it into Tommy’s house much sooner.

I’d never been so happy to see someone in my life!

“Oh my God, thank goodness you’re here! Can you help me? Please, you have to help me! There’s a dog here, and she’s been…”

My eyes filled with tears. “…just horribly hurt.”

But I couldn’t let myself break down. I sniffed back my tears for P.M.’s sake. “She needs medical attention, and I need your help getting her to my car!”

My tone was as urgent as it could get, but Artyom just stared back at me, his face stonier than the concrete beneath his feet.

And that was when one terrible memory came back to me.

Him waiting outside the hallway for me on Tuesday, just to say, “I still hate you… You will still be made to pay for crossing me.”

Yes, Tommy was cruel, but he wasn’t the only one on the Yolks who could claim that label.

What if Artyom Rustanov truly was the sociopath I’d accused him of being in the heat of the moment?

What if he would really go to any lengths to spite me? Even let an innocent dog die of her wounds in some creep’s backyard?

But I refused to be prideful. The stakes were too high.

“Please,” I begged, my voice cracking with emotion. “I’ll do anything if you help me. Anything.”

A long, terrible silence followed my plea.

Then he said, “Anything?”