Her Rustanov Bully: the (possibly romantic?) tale of how I pucked around and found out
Her Rustanov Bully: Chapter 34

“You love me?”

I immediately, and I mean immediately, tried to pull back.

But Yom clamped his large hands around my waist and asked again, “Did you just say you love me?”

Did I just say that?

Out loud?

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

But maybe if I froze and stood there with my mouth clamped closed, he would forget all about those words I didn’t mean to say.

That tactic worked for an entire three beats before he asked me, “Why do you not tell me you love me before now?”

“I don’t… I don’t love you,” I clarified—as best I could, considering that I was choking on my own spit. “I’m actively trying not to fall in love with you. Because you’re a walking mixed signal. Also, possibly a complete psycho.”

I finished that explanation off with another Black Hello Kitty wave.

And he finally let me go… to lean back and regard me with a heavily hooded and anime-nonchalant-villain-level skeptical gaze.

I did not last long under his silent interrogation.

“Okay, if we’re being honest, you’ve been making that really hard.” I took several steps back as the whole truth came rushing out of me like air from a slashed tire. “I mean, that kiss after your game and all the dinners and handholding. Don’t even get me started on that study haven—which just might be up there with Beast gifting Beauty a library in terms of, like, absolutely perfect gifts.”

“Beauty and Beast.” Yom rose to his feet and narrowed his eyes. “This is another Disney movie reference. Like Mulan.”

“Yes, it’s another Disney movie reference,” I practically yelled, waving my arms in total frustration. “The main point is, you’ve been giving me the total boyfriend experience without demanding anything of me. Plus…”

I circled my palm in the general vicinity of his perfect everything. “You’re all sorts of blessed in the face, and I’m sure you’re aware you’ve got a completely banging body. So yeah, I guess I’m in love with you? Or in Weird Anything List Stockholm Syndrome with you? Bruh, I honestly don’t know how to label all these feelings.”

I stopped talking abruptly, grabbing onto my forearm like an uneasy Steven Universe character.

There. There. I’d said it. As best I could.

I stared sullenly at the floor, unable to bring my eyes up to see how he was receiving all of this.

“Lydia. Come here.” The flat command tone had returned to his voice. Maybe it had never left. Maybe I’d only imagined it sounded like he was getting emotional when he asked about whether Paul had ever hit me.

I didn’t move.

“Lydia. Come here to me. Now.”

“Why?” I asked, still unable to look up.

“You will not let me go back upstairs and finish what I started with your ublyudok brother, so I am going to kiss you now. Again.”

Unconsciously, my body swayed toward him, like a compass replaceing its orientation.

But… a kiss, I’d found out just last night, wasn’t the same as “I’m falling for you, too.” And I’d always had the worst sense of direction.

“No.”

“No?” His voice remained too flat to read. Was he mad at me? Disappointed? Another compass tug.

God, this guy made me want to do what he said.

But I stood my ground and repeated, “No.”

I clasped my palms like a namaste in front of my chest as I explained, “You know what? I am so appreciative of everything you did for P.M. I truly am, but I can’t do this with you anymore. I just don’t have the emotional fortitude to continue being this confused by you.”

“Lydia.”

“Keep the room,” I said, looking everywhere but at him. “I’ll go downstairs and get Mom’s key.”

“Lydia.”

“Yeah, I’ll just…” Moving toward a pair of jeans I’d left crumpled on the floor, I told him, “You can stay here, and tomorrow I’ll fly back to Minnesota and move back into my place.”

Or at least onto my couch. Merry had made the difficult decision to keep the pregnancy, and there was no way I was kicking my gestating friend out of my room.

Either way, come Monday, I’d be living somewhere not confusing that wasn’t Yom’s lake house.

“Lydia.” Yom got in front of me, blocking my access to my jeans. His face hard as granite, he held one hand up like an ancient king. “You will not run out on me again as you did in Berlin.”

Some emotion I didn’t quite understand flickered in his light gray eyes. ”Lydia, you are not leaving me again.”

A rush of emotions surged through me—anger, confusion, disbelief, and something dangerously close to hope. They overwhelmed me, overwhelmed my manners.

“Why are you keeping me here?” I exploded. “What the hell do you want from me?!”

“I want you to love me!” he roared back. “I want you to love me. I want you to make relationship with me. That is my whole plan. Has been my plan since Anything List.”

I blinked, stunned by the force of his words.

“What?” My mind trembled, threatening to give out.

“I am sorry, Lydia.” Yom scraped a hand through his dark hair. “I am sorry to be confusing you. I realize I want love relationship from you—well, not from start of semester. At start of semester, hate is burning like pile of coal in my chest because I think you do not want me. You want Tommy. I do not understand why you are wanting this creep. I am bully to you because I do not understand your why.”

His face was no longer expressionless. Wretched looks of regret and remorse flashed in his eyes before he told me, “Then I am replaceing out you are trying to rescue dog, and I am hating myself, hating myself for how I treat you.”

For a moment, that scene in Tommy’s backyard rewrote itself in my mind. But then I shook my head because…

“That doesn’t make any sense. If you were so upset with yourself, so remorseful, why did you blackmail me into agreeing to do anything to get your help?”

“Because I am not like you, Lydia. I am not good person.” He slapped his hands against his tuxedoed chest. “Also, I am still having these feelings for you, so I decide to do anything, anything to keep you close. I make new plan then….”

He lowered his hands. “I create for you this Anything List. Make you stay with me and give you, as you call it, the Boyfriend Experience. But I do not give you long-term contract, as every Rustanov is supposed to when he enters into new sexual relationship.”

He regarded me with a pained, helpless look. “I tell myself, ‘Artyom, you will not—you cannot—let yourself touch her. Not until you have proven that you are opposite of guy who bullied her. That you can be best boyfriend she ever is having, if only she let you.’ I tell myself that. I say to myself…”

He visibly swallowed before continuing with a much softer, much quieter tone. “I will make her love me. Love me—if not like I have loved her from first sight, then enough to make me feel like she wants to be here with me. In true relationship with me. That is my new plan.”

I took in his words, my heart pounding as if it were trying to break free from my chest. He loved me—from the very start? I tried to understand what this all meant.

“I knew I had to wait for you to come to same realization as me. But I want no more misunderstanding between us, Lydia. I love you. I am very, very much, no questions to be asking, in love with you. So…”

He lifted his head to regard me with sorrowful, burning gray eyes. “Will you love me back?”