Page 32 of Her Rustanov Husband (Ruthless Bullies #2)

I Wasn’t Until I Was

LYDIA

The thing was, I hadn’t lied to Tasha. I despised lying—at least I did when I was twenty-two and my worldview was black and white.

Two days before that panicked call for rescue, I’d just finished the one withdrawal bleed my doctor told me to allow every few months.

I was on continuous birth control for my bonkers periods; the official guidance was a short hormone-free break about every three months, but I’d stretched it to six for reasons that began with Y and ended with “my boyfriend-turned-fiancé is an absolute animal in bed.”

The beginning of that break also introduced me to another fact about Yom: he gave exactly zero “ews” about having sex with me while Aunt Flo was in town.

And that reveal was soon followed by another revelation—sex is great for period pain.

The insane cramps that put me on the no-period birth control plan in the first place dulled when he moved inside me, whispering in my ear, “See, zayka , your Yom soothe all the pain away. I’m your medicine, your cure for everything. ”

I was on my period. I thought it was safe—and I thought I was telling Tasha the truth when I insisted I wasn’t pregnant.

But I wasn’t until I was.

Six months later, when it was overdue time to take another hormone-free break from the pill, I waited for the bleed and it didn’t come.

For days. Dread clawing at me, I searched the internet on my work computer, since I still hadn’t replaced the laptop I’d left at Yom’s lake house.

With shaking fingers: Can you get pregnant on your period?

Can stress delay a bleed? How long should I wait to take a pregnancy test after going off birth control?

Answers: yes, yes, and one week after a missed period.

It had been ten days. And a test picked up on the way home to my shared apartment in Delta soon let me know that it wasn’t grief that had caused that rapid weight gain… or the persistent rumbly tummy issues, even though I’d given up dairy.

My first thought was clinical, practical: it had been six months since I last had sex. That meant my options were limited to keeping the incoming baby or putting it up for adoption.

My second thought came through on a burst of emotion: I couldn’t give this baby up, I just couldn’t. I loved it from a couple of shocked moments after the second red line appeared on the test. I’d figure it out. I’d have to.

But then, my third thought came in much, much darker. I could absolutely not tell the monster who’d put this baby inside me of its existence.

I still saw Paul in my nightmares—hanging from creaking chains in Yom’s barn as the man I loved gave his guard an order that wouldn’t even come out of the worst anime villain’s mouth.

Yom and I weren’t just opposites on the personality spectrum, as I once na?vely believed. We were opposites on the empathy spectrum. Yom was obviously a sociopath. And I was the girl who couldn’t even squash a daddy longlegs when she went to get into her own bathtub.

I carried insects outside to safety in a hastily thrown-on robe, while Yom had no problem stringing humans up and torturing them to death.

No, I couldn’t tell him.

And then, a few days after my first prenatal appointment—I learned that definitely wasn’t breakup weight I’d gained, but a baby already at six months’ gestation, like some kind of miracle—Merry called.

She was the only one with my new Canadian number, the only person I’d trusted with it. She wanted to know about a certified letter she’d just received. From Yom Rustanov.

“He gave me the Hanson Farm,” she told me. “Just signed it over to me, no questions asked. Is this his weird idea of a push present or something? Or just another way for him to try to get to you?”

I wasn’t sure, having blocked him from my email address in a fit of panic after I discovered something with his DNA would be delivered in six months. But…

“Mer, I think we might be able to turn this into an opportunity and help each other.”

That was how Paws I hadn’t.

And Gemidgee prided itself on being an LGBTQ haven in a sea of rural small.

So, when I moved in just three months before I gave birth, everyone assumed Merry and I were a couple, and that I was a stranger who’d just moved there.

We never corrected them. It was easier that way.

For six nonstop years, I happily played the part of Skye Nelson—Merry Winters’s business partner, co-parent, and “roommate,” with question marks we let the town assume.

I was busy. I was tired. Bully was a handful, a growler and a barker with a disturbingly long list of people he was willing to revenge-bite.

But I loved him fiercely. I loved Chris, too, as if he were mine. It was what it was. Merry and I were figuring it out.

Until the tornado came.

And by tornado, I meant Yom Rustanov.

“Wow,” Tasha said when I finished telling her the Hey, Lyds, you’re six months pregnant! story. “And Yom just accepted that he has a five-year-old son, without any repercussions? I mean, I know he’s a Rustanov, but that doesn’t sound like him.”

A brisk knock sounded on the door before I could answer. “Dessert is about to be served,” came Ingrid’s crisp voice from the other side. “As you know, we’re on a tight schedule, and Yom would like you to join us.”

The AudacitYom always gets what he wants.

I boxed everything back up—the guilt, the secrets, the shame—and pasted on a smile as I headed toward the bedroom suite’s door. “We should get back down there.”

Tasha didn’t say anything, but she followed me out, her flats brushing along the carpeted hallway runner as we headed for the steps. Just before we reached the part of the staircase visible from the dining room’s glass doors, she caught me by the arm, her kind eyes burning into mine.

“I know all of us joke about being trapped some way by our husbands. But what you’re seeing down there are the Rustanov wives whose stories end happily ever after. Not the ones who are miserable and wish they never met a man with the last name Rustanov.”

My heart sped up at the mention of the miserable, unseen, trapped in ruthless marriages. The ones I’d never met. The ones like Chess’s and Yom’s mothers.

“I don’t know what’s going on here,” Tasha whispered, “but I’m gonna need you to take this.”

Tasha slipped her heavy-stock business card into my pocket—just like she had, in a much friendlier manner, when we first officially met under rather embarrassing circumstances in the bathroom of a Chicago hotel room where Yom had kept me trapped with outrageously good sex for days.

“If you need anything—anything at all—you call me, okay?” Tasha insisted.

“I assure you, that will not be necessary, Tasha.” A low voice rolled up behind us, like dark smoke.

Then Yom appeared on the stair below mine and wrapped an arm around my waist. Even with the step difference, he still towered over me.

“This time she understands exactly what she has signed up for. Nyet , Lydia?”

“Yes, and I’m so happy I got this second chance with Yom.” I forced a smile to my face. For Tasha’s sake.

As someone who’d just spectacularly failed to save a friend, I knew how she must be feeling. And peace of mind was sometimes the only gift you could give someone who wanted to help but… just couldn’t.

“Come on. Let’s eat dessert,” I said, tilting my head toward the dining room.

“There is sweet potato pie laid out,” Yom added. “I hear it is quite delicious.”

For some reason, Tasha—who’d told me she loved to cook and eat soul food—looked stricken instead of excited.

But Yom was right. The dessert buffet the caterers laid out was delicious—especially the sweet potato pie.

There was more conversation, more laughter, more toasts, and a lot of howling at the full moon before we all went back inside and our guests began to depart for various other gatherings and their own homes all over the world.

In my time with Yom, I’d learned that Rustanovs rarely stayed the night because they always had a jet at their disposal to take them home to their oversized, luxurious beds.

“Why’s everybody leaving?” Bully whined. He’d never had anyone more than his small, hastily constructed family of me, Merry, and Chris at Thanksgiving, and occasionally college students who blew in and out of Paws & Claws like semester-length winds.

His eyes brimmed with tears at the thought of losing the magical new family who’d embraced, barked, growled, and howled with him, no questions asked.

To my surprise, Yom crouched down to talk to him before I could. “We are sad for our family to go on Thanksgiving, but we know we will see them again on Christmas at Uncle Nikolai’s house. And you know what Uncle Nikolai has?”

“What?” Bully asked, tears receding to his curiosity.

“Real pit bull.”

Bully’s eyes widened. “Like me?”

“No, not like you.” Yom’s lips thinned, taking on a stern look, and I braced for him to finally lose patience with Bully’s I’m a dog, too act. “Their pit bull, P.M., is much better behaved. She is so well-trained. No barking ever, only happy licks.”

“Unless you are squirrel,” Nikolai, whose family were the last of the guests, came up to add.

“If you are squirrel, she will bark very hard at you, and only then will she lick you. I truly do not know how Yom managed to find yet another useless guard dog for my wonderful zhena to love and not make do any job.”

Bully giggled at their antics, then promised to be ready, teeth brushed, when Yom came up to tuck him in.

Meanwhile, we walked Nikolai, Sam, and Ruthie out.

“Such a sweet boy, and such a beautiful evening,” Sam said, squeezing my hand after Yom and I walked them to the last Titan in the driveway. “We’d love to have you over to Indiana soon to introduce Bully to P.M.”

“I’m still the best babysitter in the family,” Ruthie, who worked with Sam at her Indiana domestic abuse shelter now, preened, sliding two thumbs under the lapels of her soft wool winter jacket.

“Bully and I would have so much fun. And maybe Lex can make it, too. I mean, you can only be depressed over a breakup for so long, right? And they didn’t even make ninety days, like you two are about to. ”

I squinted a little. They were tracking how long Yom and I had been married?

And for some reason, Nikolai threw Yom a significant look before saying, “No matter if either of my sons make it, the three of us look forward to spending more time with your beautiful family. Perhaps we will make sure this happens for Bully before Christmas.”

“Perhaps,” Yom said with a cool smile. Then, before any of them could suggest anything else, he told them: “I am in charge of Dmitri’s bedtime routine now, so we will have to end this talk here.”

Nikolai smiled. “You are good father, Yom. I am glad you are getting chance to know this special joy.”

His words—his too-true words—stabbed me in the chest.

But somehow I managed to keep a smile on my face as we exchanged more hugs and cheek kisses.

Yom took me by the hand again, and we both waved at them until the taillights disappeared down the long drive.

The moment they were gone, Yom dropped my hand like it were a snake he’d been forced to hold, coiled in his palm, and turned to walk back to the mansion’s open front door.

“I will see you in the nursery after I am done tucking in Dmitri,” he said, without looking back, before retreating into the house.

And left me there shivering for reasons that had nothing to do with the cold November night.