“Her name is Rina,” Yom answered Trish. He then turned back to Lydia. “Da, I will send Rina to your place to pick up the suitcase, and she will drop it off at my house.”
Lydia blinked at him. She looked like she wanted to argue. But then she seemed to notice all the onlookers in the food court openly watching them have this conversation.
“Fine. You can drive me to the shelter,” she muttered, lowering her voice. “I’ll just take the bus to the library after my shift.”
Yom furrowed his brow, his chest tightening at the brittle edge in her voice. The fake cheer she’d been clinging to had splintered completely. He didn’t miss the way she self-consciously glanced around, her shoulders curling inward, as if trying to make herself smaller.
“Can we go?” she asked again, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Like, now?”
Yom followed her gaze to the crowd that was still gaping at her, their curious eyes burning into her like a thousand tiny daggers. Then his eyes returned to her face—her wide, wounded eyes. Her trembling hands as she wiped at the sticky soda clinging to her skin. Something sharp and primal erupted in his chest, slicing through his usual calculated control.
Nyet.
The word roared through his mind. He could not—would not—leave this here.
“Not yet,” he said, his voice flat but resolute.
Her wary expression returned, and she glanced up at him, her brow furrowing. “What do you mean, not yet?”
Instead of answering, Yom turned and climbed onto the nearest empty table. The vinyl surface groaned under his weight, but it held. He barely noticed it—his focus was laser-sharp now.
“Yom? Yom? What are you doing?” Lydia’s voice rose, tight with worry.
But Yom couldn’t stop. The memory of her face—the shock, the humiliation, the pain she tried to hide—was like gasoline on the fire already raging inside him. Galvanizing him to act.
“Listen, everyone! I am making an announcement,” he called out, his heavily accented voice cutting through the murmurs of the crowd. “And I want you all to hear it.”
He didn’t have to glance around to know every eye in the food court was now on him. But his gaze stayed locked on Lydia whose expression was a mix of shock and dread.
“Especially Lydia,” he added, his voice steady as a storm settled over him.
Lydia
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—theseuntruerumors.”
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.
