Page 5 of Her Rustanov Husband (Ruthless Bullies #2)

Blessed Girlfriend Problems

LYDIA

Six Years Ago

“Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe we’re really doing this!” I squeed when I opened the passenger side of the yellow Mini that Merry was driving.

Technically, the car belonged to me. It had been a gift from my rich parents for scraping out of high school with a 2.

3 GPA and getting into exactly one college, the University of Minnesota-Gemidgee—less than a week after my father announced he would be donating an entire library to his alma mater. Pure coincidence, I’m sure.

Then, in what felt like a bid for the Stereotypical Rich American Parents of the Year Award, they pulled me aside at the engagement party to assure me that even though I was marrying a Rustanov (it was painfully obvious this was, in their eyes, my greatest accomplishment in life), they’d still be depositing my “graduation bonus” into my personal bank account.

Which was exactly what it sounded like: a completely unearned high-six-figure sum just for graduating—though this time I’d managed a stellar-for-me 3.1 GPA.

I almost never drove the Mini anymore, since Yom insisted on putting me under the same shadow-trillionaire-family 24/7 protection plan he’d been on long before we met—something I didn’t even find out about until he moved me in with him.

In any case, it meant either he or Rina, my assigned personal guard, drove me pretty much everywhere.

So, after my second-best friend, Merry, found out she was pregnant, I’d practically given my high school graduation gift to her. In fact, signing the deed over to her was on my long list of things to do before I officially moved to Minneapolis with Yom in a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, I’d figured out exactly what I wanted to do with that ridiculous (if not exactly unwelcome) graduation bonus my parents had given me.

“I’m surprised Rina’s allowing you to do this by yourself,” Merry said as I slid into the passenger seat.

Only because I’d let her drop me at my Thursday volunteer shift at the Gemidgee Dog Shelter…without mentioning I’d actually asked for the day off. After a quick hello to my boss, I’d slipped out the back to meet Merry.

I made a noncommittal sound, then, with the possibility of Rina still parked out front, suggested, “Probably easier to take the back access road to Highway East.”

“You didn’t tell her where you’re going, did you?” Merry guessed with a snort as she headed toward the access road behind the shelter.

“No!” I confessed, folding like a card table under all the guilt I’d been wrangling since I came up with my plan.

“I feel like the worst for misleading Rina, who’s just trying to do her job.

But if I told her, she’d tell Yom, and he’d just snap his fingers and make my idea happen without me ever knowing if I could do this on my own.

And by alone, I mean with you, because I’ll definitely be outsourcing all the executive function required to pull this off to you. ”

Merry didn’t say anything, which made me feel even more wretched.

I fretted my hands in my lap. “Blessed girlfriend problems, I know. I probably sound so silly and ungrateful to you right now.”

“No, I get it.” Merry’s eyes flicked down to her swollen belly. “You’d hate to feel like a complete charity case. Like me.”

I regretted my excuse the second it left my mouth. To Merry—who was driving my car and living rent-free in the two-bedroom I’d kept leased after moving out, even though Trish had moved in with Rina, now her official girlfriend and one of Yom’s personal guards—it must have sounded like an insult.

While Trish and I enjoyed our first carefree summer since high school, Merry was grinding herself raw, taking on more debt to graduate from UM-Gemidgee before the baby came. And she’d be getting zero help from the German guy she fell for last year.

She found that out a couple of months ago when she tried to tell him she was pregnant.

Apparently, he’d blocked her number and her email address. Even the texts and messages she sent from my phone had gone unanswered. And now she was… different. Not the girl I used to know.

My love of animals and her dream of becoming a vet had made us fast friends when we met in Intro to Animal Science. But that same girl with the wicked sense of humor had gone to Mannheim last summer searching for her father with hope in her heart—only to come back that winter a shell of herself.

Merry had the opposite of blessed girlfriend problems. And here I was, telling her the woes of how I wanted to use my totally undeserved high-six-figure graduation gift without my trillionaire-adjacent boyfriend finding out about it.

To her, I had to sound like the most out-of-touch rich princess who’d ever princessed.

“You know I’m going to be here for you every step of the way, right?” I reached over to place a hand on her shoulder. “Even after we move to Minneapolis, I’ll come so often. I mean, I’ll have tons of free time and an anytime/anywhere pass to use the Rustanov fleet.”

Her shoulder stiffened. “That wasn’t an invitation to feel even more sorry for me.”

Anger practically radiated off her as she growled through clenched teeth. “I’m not one of your dogs. If that’s what you think, you can take this car and this opportunity and shove it.”

“That’s not…” My hand fell away from her shoulder. “That’s not what I meant. I was only trying to?—”

Merry pulled over to the side of the road before I could finish.

And I drew in a breath to beg her not to jump out of the car I was planning to give her anyway.

But before I could get the words out, she burst into tears.

Huge, racking sobs that made her swollen belly heave up and down.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, girl! What I should have said is thank you!

Thank you! I’ve just been drowning in worry about my future, and then you offered me this opportunity, and it felt like somebody throwing me a lifeline.

But this isn’t how my mother raised me. And she hates me now, and I feel so… ”

Her mouth opened and closed over several hiccupping sobs before she was able to wail, “Helpless! And stupid! And whatever the opposite word of independent is….”

I winced. “I think that’s just dependent.”

“Yes, dependent ! Can we talk about this stupid brain fog?” Merry hiccupped out another sob. “It’s like I’m swimming in hormones and can’t even make words anymore!”

“Good,” I said after a long moment of consideration.

“What?” Merry gaped at me as tears continued to flow down her face. “Did you just say good ?”

“I mean, good for me, at least,” I clarified. “Now you know how frustrated and helpless I felt trying to navigate classes at the university level.”

I turned in my seat to face her all the way. “I’ve been super-dependent on other people my entire life since my diagnosis, and if you think that makes me a total charity case, I guess I’m okay with that.”

“No!” Merry rushed to assure me. “That’s different. Being dyslexic isn’t something you could have prevented.”

“So, if I’d had an accident that was totally my fault and left me like Tovah, then I wouldn’t be deserving of help, either?” I raised both eyebrows at her.

“No, that’s…” Merry trailed off from defending the other student she’d assisted all throughout college, a quadriplegic who’d sustained life-changing injuries after a crash caused by her own careless texting and driving.

“My point is that no matter what society tries to condition into us about it being some kind of moral failure to ever need or accept help, everyone needs some form of charity.”

I shook my head. “I mean, Yom is talented, for sure. But hockey is one of those sports you can’t get pro-level good at without a lot of money going into your development.

And his whole life in America is sponsored by his trillionaire family.

They’d probably call it legacy or being ‘fortunate.’” I rolled my eyes and made finger quotes around the word my mom was so fond of when speaking of being born with a silver spoon in her mouth.

“But it’s all charity. We’re all dependent on the benevolence of others, no matter how the so-called fortunate try to spin it.”

I reached out to lay a hand on top of the one still clinging to the gear shift. “So, hopefully, you get why I’m so eager to return the favor. You’ve helped me so much, given me so much charity—and now I’m the one who gets to help you.”

Merry shook her head. Sniffled. Then finally released a watery laugh.

“Giving me a place to stay, a car to drive, and, like, an entire business before I squeeze something the size of a bowling ball out of my vagina is way more intense than me taking a few notes for you and transcribing them to audio.”

“Is it?” I tilted my head to the side, then shrugged. “I guess we’ll have to find out. Want me to drive us the rest of the way?”

Merry did, and she took the opportunity to wipe her face and redo her makeup while I followed the GPS instructions. A few minutes later, we reached the main part of Gemidgee proper and parked in front of a small white office building with a sleek sign that read: HEADWATERS COMMERCIAL REALTY.

Too soon. I sighed as I pushed the engine-off button for the first time in months.

I’d been hoping to use our drive over to pitch Merry on finally telling her mother about the impending birth of her first grandchild.

Sure, Joy had kicked Merry out of their home for lying about spending the summer in France and secretly traveling to Germany instead to find her birth father. But Joy was a good person, and I knew she’d forgive everything if she realized that she had a grandbaby on the way and a terrified daughter.

Also, I’d only been able to extend the lease until the end of August because my landlord already had another rising sophomore ready to sign the same three-year contract I did when I’d decided dorm life was not for me.

But with five minutes to go until our appointment, I shoved that item onto a mental future-to-do list—fingers crossed I didn’t forget.