Unconsciously, my body swayed toward him, like a compass finding 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 finding 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,anythingto 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…”
