Her Rustanov Bully: the (possibly romantic?) tale of how I pucked around and found out
Her Rustanov Bully: Chapter 23

My heart raced wildly, and my mouth went dry. Yom easily arrested everyone’s attention—including mine.

“Oh hell, Lyds, what’s he doing?” Trish asked, running up to stand beside me. Now that Rina was gone, she shifted back into best-friend mode.

Great question, to which I answered, “Absolutely no idea,” while staring at Yom standing on top of the table—along with Trish and many others, who had phones held up to record.

“This is Lydia,” he called out to the people at the surrounding tables, pointing a full hand in my direction.

My cheeks burned when several eyes and phone cameras turned to stare at me.

“Lydia,” Yom repeated, drawing their attention back to him. “Not Restraining Order or any other insult nickname she is not liking. Lydia. My announcement is that you can no longer call her whatever you want. But you can call me this kind of terrible name because the truth is I am one who is starting these rumors about her—these untrue rumors.”

My stomach dropped, and a collective gasp went up all around me. Safe to guess, UMG’s star hockey player announcing he was a huge ol’ liar wasn’t on anybody’s Random Monday in February bingo card.

“She is not throwing herself at me like a slut in Berlin, as I said before,” Yom admitted to everyone staring up at him. “I am throwing myself at her. And she rejected me for reasons I am not understanding yet. So, I became jealous when I see another player flirting with her. And this is turning me into, how would you call it…?”

He looked down at me for vocabulary assistance.

But I could only stare up at him, mute with horror. Now, instead of just a few nearby people watching, the entire food court seemed to have gathered around the table, drawn by Yom’s commands.

Trish, on the other hand, was born ready to yell out, “Petty-ass bully!”

“Da,” Yom nodded at her. “Lydia’s lesbian friend is correct. I am becoming, as she called it, petty-ass bully. But in truth, I am only jealous rumor-spreader. So, call me what you want. But you will not be calling Lydia anything but her true name from now on, or…”

His face darkened as he looked around the room, his hard gaze meeting several eyes and video recordings as he declared, “There will be consequences.” In the same tone the Terminator used to promise he’d be back.

Then he clapped once and said, “Announcement done.”

As Yom climbed down from the table, the cafeteria erupted in murmurs and the rabid clicks of unmuted, fervid texting.

“Okay, well, that was wild,” Trish whispered. “But I’ll give him a solid seven out of ten, with points deducted for not actually apologizing, the problematic use of the word slut, and reducing my identity down to my sexuality.”

I didn’t answer her. I could only stand there, rooted to the spot, looking at all the people staring at me.

Until, suddenly, a certain tall hockey player blocked out my view of the gaping crowd.

“Now we can go,” Yom said with one of those lip-curling sneers he seemed to love.

The way my brain was set up guaranteed I’d be replaying this maximum-cringe event in my head for months—possibly years. So, when Yom took me by the hand and escorted me toward the parking-lot-facing exit of the student center, as if he wasn’t affected by all the eyes and phone cameras following us out, I let him.

But this time, our car ride was not silent.

“That was crazy!” I exploded as soon as we were enclosed in his truck, away from the prying eyes of students and smartphones. “Why did you do that?”

“So that there will be no more misunderstanding.” Yom twisted the key into the ignition, and his gargantuan truck roared to life with a growl that somehow felt personal. “That way, no one else is getting hurt.”

“No one else?” I repeated, alarm bells starting to go off in my head. “Who else got hurt?”

Yom didn’t answer, just pulled out of the space he’d somehow managed not to get towed from, even though it was clearly marked for University Employees Only.

Yom Rustanov didn’t strike me as the type of guy who’d willingly take a personality test. But I didn’t need to see his results to know that compliance would likely be his lowest score on the DISC Assessment Trish made me take for her Organizational Psychology class.

“You’re not going to hurt that guy who threw pop at me, are you?” I asked, fretting my hands as he zoomed out of the parking lot.

“Why can you not study at my house?”

“What?” I blinked at the question that didn’t answer mine at all.

Yom’s hands tightened on the wheel. “You said you will go to library after shift. Why? When I have so much room? What does library have that my house does not?”

“Um…” I bit my lip.

“It is because of glitch in your brain, nyet?” he asked as we rolled to a stop at one of the two traffic lights between school and the Gemidgee Animal Shelter.

I froze, my breath catching in my throat. “How did you…?”

I looked over to replace him watching me with a sharp, intense gaze, like a hawk about to swoop. “You have brain glitch that is making you feel stupid. This is what you yelled at me about. After calling me sociopath.”

Oh, right. I did say that. If it were anyone else, I probably would have apologized for using what Trish called “problematic, psychology-shaming language as an insult.”

But after being served with the Anything List and having to stand by while he did damage control on the misleading rumor he’d spread about me, I had to wonder if I’d called it right.

Maybe if I sat quietly again, he’d forget he asked me a question.

“You will explain this brain glitch to me,” he commanded, returning his eyes to the road when the light turned green.

Dammit.

So, I guess we were having this conversation. “It’s a couple of brain glitches, actually,” I told him. “Dyslexia with a serving of ADHD on top.”

“I do not know either of these terms,” Yom said.

His voice was flat, and his eyes were on the road, making him even more unreadable than usual.

“Well, for the purpose of this conversation, I’ll just say dyslexia is the brain glitch that makes it really hard for me to read, write, and spell without pouring a ton of concentration into every task. And ADHD is the opposing brain glitch that makes it hard for me to actually concentrate. Unless it’s something I really enjoy—like physically working with animals. Then I get hyper-focused.”

“Hyper-focused?” he repeated.

“Yeah, like obsessed, to the point where it’s hard, if not impossible, for me to concentrate on anything else.”

“I understand.” Yom frowned over at me in a way that appeared more thoughtful than judgmental. “This is why you give so much attention all weekend to puppy you rescued.”

“Exactly.” I let out a breath of relief that I’d managed to get my point across in a clear and coherent way, which was not always a given, considering how my brain was set up.

“So maybe you can see why my study environment has to be on point and super-specific. No noise. No distractions—visual or auditory. Notice I picked a carrel facing a blank wall. Also, coming back to the same carrel day after day is good for me. It acts as a cue for my brain to work and concentrate. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” he answered. “The library is, as you call it, safe space. And I am taking this safe space from you.”

“You were mad.” The nice part of me wanted to wave off losing the library when he was determined to punish me. But the part of me struggling to keep up with my assignments since he dropped into my life like a nuclear bomb had to agree. “But yeah. Basically. I’m behind in all my classes now because my study haven is gone.”

Yom went silent, and I waited for him to respond, but he didn’t speak again until we pulled into the shelter’s parking lot.

And then it was only to command, “Stay in your seat.”

That morning, I’d scrambled out of his truck and tried to run off to class as quickly as my much shorter legs would carry me. But Yom caught up easily and, to my shock, took me by the hand with, “Remember item number six on the Anything List.”

I didn’t have the list completely memorized, but I knew he was referring to the rule about him walking me to my first class of the day.

Escorting me into work wasn’t on the Anything List, but I stayed put as instructed while Yom crossed in front of his truck’s massive grill to open my door for me—like an ever-scowling gentleman.

“You are forgetting your coat,” he said, scanning me up and down as I climbed out.

“Yeah,” I admitted, hugging myself as I shivered in the frigid Minnesota winter air. “I’m a frequent visitor to every lost-and-found center on campus. Plus, a lot was going on back at the student center.”

Yom made a sound in the back of his throat, a cross between a hum and a harrumph.

Then he began unwinding the scarf from around his neck. It was the only winter accessory he’d bothered with—apparently, being impervious to the cold was one of his many physical talents.

“Oh, you don’t need to⁠—”

He lifted my dreads and started wrapping his thick scarf around my neck before I could finish my protest.

Leaving me no choice but to accept his gift of manly scented warmth with a nervous, “Okay, thanks.”

I cleared my throat when he was done. “Anyway, thanks for the ride. What time did you want to pick me up from the library?”

“I am having to attend extra practice tonight,” Yom answered with a flex of his jaw. “I cannot drive you back to lake house.”

“Oh, that’s totally cool,” I assured him. “I can just⁠—”

“So, Rina will pick you up,” he finished before I could offer to catch the college bus, which may or may not go to Gemidgee Lake.

“Okay, do you want to give me her number so we can coordinate the pick-up?”

Yom flicked his gaze down to his watch. “You should get inside. In five minutes, you will be late.”

He didn’t wait for me to reply before returning to the driver’s side of the truck.

I stood there, still wrapped in the warmth of his scarf, watching him pull out of the parking lot. My breath misted in the cold air, but my mind felt even foggier.

What had just happened? Yom had been nothing but cold to me, even when he was technically being kind. And yet, I could still feel the heat of his hands lingering where they had touched my skin.

I was no closer to understanding him now than I had been this morning. And for some reason, that unsettled me even more than having everyone in the food court stare at me while he commanded them not to call me Restraining Order.