Her Rustanov Bully: the (possibly romantic?) tale of how I pucked around and found out
Her Rustanov Bully: Chapter 44

“Looks like Lydia Carrington had no idea this moment was coming!”

My stomach dropped when I returned from the restroom of BierHaus, a sports bar located in the Benton Las Vegas, to replace that annoying PlayZone Channel documentary Born to Rustanov the Rink blaring on every TV behind the bar where my new conference friend Tess sat.

Crap! Crap! Crap!

As invited speakers of the EmpowerHER Summit, a conference for women of color who’d founded or wanted to start nonprofits, we’d received surprise tickets for the sasha x kasha residency concert at the Benton Grand. Tess had pulled me into this sports bar for pre-concert drinks, guessing correctly that we wouldn’t have to compete with a ton of the singing twins’ other fans here to get a couple of glasses of wine.

She was right. We’d found two stools at the bar, no problem.

However, if I’d known this particular documentary would be airing here tonight, I would’ve chosen to deal with the fans over risking this.

I hurried back to Tess, thinking the rest of the night could still be salvaged. Maybe I could convince her to move to a quieter table with our backs to the screens before she recognized six-years-ago me on the⁠—

“Hey, Skye, isn’t that…?” Tess squinted at me, then back at the screen. “Isn’t that you on the TV?”

More mental craps tumbled through my mind, and I suddenly regretted leaving Merry back in Gemidgee to hold down the fort at our Black woman-owned nonprofit—or, as I’d phrased it in my speaker bio, Paws & Claws Café, “a cozy coffee shop where you can replace your fur-ever friend.” Merry and I had debated who’d go to this summit, but she’d guilted me with the “single mom/child who requires extra support” card and made me come.

Ugh. I should’ve fought harder. I could have taken amazing care of Chris while Merry fielded questions about the one sports documentary that just happened to feature me—back when I was still going by Lydia Carrington.

“Um…” I climbed up on the stool beside her and followed Tess’s gaze to the row of screens where my former best friend Trish was giving me an enthusiastic shove, urging me to go down to the ice after our hometown announcer called me out by name.

Trish had stopped calling and texting nearly six years ago after I’d ignored her every attempt to reach me. Yet, seeing her now made my heart ache. She’d been my best friend, and I’d let her go. I’d been right about her and Rina going the distance, and I hadn’t wanted her to have to choose between her future wife and me.

The scene cut to another shot that wrung my heart even tighter: me, running onto the ice, shrieking, “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” as tears streamed down my face.

I watched that naive girl from my past leap into Yom’s arms before he even had the chance to pop the question while George “Squeaky” Mandel laughed about how I was “just losing it.”

The camera zoomed in on my tear-streaked face as Yom picked me up and spun me around, sealing the moment with a kiss that could’ve closed out any rom-com.

“So that is you,” Tess said beside me.

I guess sitting there frozen while the memories hit me like a tidal wave had given it away. Seeing no path to plausible denial, I sighed and admitted, “Unfortunately, yes.”

“What?! Your real name’s Lydia? And your dad owns the Minnesota Raptors?” Tess slapped me on the shoulder, eyes wide. “Why didn’t you tell me that while I was pouring my heart out about my crazy single-mom life? And why didn’t you mention you were engaged to freaking Yom Rustanov?”

Right on cue, the PlayZone narrator chimed in: “That kiss—and Yom’s engagement to Lydia Carrington—captured national attention. But sadly, the two broke up shortly after Artyom Rustanov joined the Minnesota Raptors. However, that didn’t stop him from leading Lydia’s adoptive father’s team to their first of three cup wins the following season.”

A source from the Raptor’s front office came on screen to add in a thick Minnesotan accent, “I don’t wanna say Carrington chose Rustanov over both his kids. I’m just saying, after the engagement broke off, Carrington kept Rustanov on the roster, and we didn’t see Lydia or Paul after that.”

Tess winced. “Ooh, that’s tough. But, hey, that’s kind of cool, dating a big hockey star for a while.”

“Is it?” I asked as the bartender placed the two glasses of pinot grigio we’d ordered in front of us.

“I mean, he’s not hard on the eyes,” Tess noted as I took the stool beside her. “But… I get the feeling from you that he wasn’t exactly a dream ex?”

“Ruthless, actually,” I corrected, and even that felt like an understatement.

Continued coverage of a kiss that should’ve never happened was one of the biggest reasons I’d legally changed my name to Skye—the middle name I’d always loved, paired with the last name I’d been born with before the Carringtons adopted me.

Another pang struck my heart as I thought of the parents I hadn’t seen since breaking off the engagement with Yom.

“Could you… could you turn that off?” I asked the bartender.

“No can do,” he replied, his thick Minnesota accent unmistakable.

Having learned long ago not to argue with a rabid hockey fan—especially one from Minnesota—I ducked my head, hoping he wouldn’t recognize me as that naive girl from years ago.

But Tess, who was from Ohio, scrunched her brow and, unbothered by any hockey allegiance, demanded, “Wasn’t the last Stanley Cup final back in May? It’s August. Why can’t you at least change the channel?”

“Why do you think?” the bartender replied, jerking his head toward something over our shoulders—or someone.

My stomach dropped, even before I turned around and saw a booth full of suited men. Two of whom I recognized immediately.

One was Lukas Brandt, the no-longer-super-young CEO of Weiss Fox Beer. And the other…

Behind me, “When You Were Young” by the Killers abruptly started blasting. The doc must have gotten to the montage of Yom’s first few golden seasons with the Raptors.

“Hey, Skye,” Tess said beside me as Brandon Flowers insisted that Yom didn’t look a thing like Jesus. “Isn’t that your Ruthless Ex?”