“No, Uri—I’ll be fine on my own. There’s a house full of staff and I still haven’t visited Lev today. Both of you can go.”
“No.”
“You stay then,” Nikolai decides, dropping his cards onto the bed. “I’ll—”
Uri cuts him off. “No. The two of you look pretty cozy here anyway. I’ll let you know if it leads to something.”
He whips away before either Nikolai or I can say another word. “Weirdo,” I mutter under my breath.
Nikolai, however, seems less amused and more… anxious? He doesn’t sit back down on the bed. Instead, he drops into an armchair and sets his chin in his palm, murmuring something I can’t make out under his breath.
I watch him for a while as his eyes churn with thoughts. “What’s the deal between the two of you?” I ask bluntly.
“Nothing.”
“You sound like a teenage boy.”
“I am, at heart.”
“Cut the shit, Nikolai. I’m pregnant, not stupid. You’re avoiding the question.”
He sighs. “We’re brothers,” he says simply. “Some days, we love each other. Some days, we hate each other. It’s just normal brother stuff.”
I’m guessing there’s a lot more to it than that but Nikolai doesn’t seem eager to go there. So I don’t push him. Especially because I’m grateful for how amazing he’s been with me the last few days. He checks up on me almost as much as Uri does—though never at the same time. I’ve come to see him as a real friend.
I glance out the window and see it streaked with rain. “Ziva loved rainy days,” I whisper softly. “Any excuse to stay home under a thick blanket and make hot chocolate. To this day, I can’t see rain without also smelling hot cocoa.”
Nikolai laughs bitterly, to my surprise. “Our rainy days were a little different.”
“Oh, yeah? What did you guys do?”
“It was just Uri and me. Polly hadn’t been born yet and Lev was just a baby. Our father used to take us to the shed out back and we used to have target practice. Any time the skies got dark, he told the men to set the dummies up. When I see rain, I smell metal and gunpowder.”
“My God, that’s bleak.”
“Not exactly the wholesome childhood story you were expecting, eh?”
“Yeah, I’d say it’s a little light on sunshine and rainbows.”
Nikolai shrugs. “The thing is, it felt pretty wholesome to me. At least, it did before Otets decided to become a raging asshole.”
“What do you mean?”
Nikolai clears his throat and I get the sense that he regrets saying anything at all. He’s fidgeting a lot more than he was a second ago. “Nothing. Just typical alpha male shit. He’d constantly pit Uri and me against each other. Make everything a competition. I just wanted to shoot guns; I didn’t care if there was a winner.”
“This might not be the right question to ask, but was there a winner?”
His lips purse up. “It was always Uri. That little fuck was a damn natural with a gun. Actually… he was a natural with most things.”
“Sounds annoying.”
“Incredibly. Especially since I was the older brother.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Trust me, it mattered. Our father expected me to be the stronger one, the faster one, the more capable one. Most of my adolescence was, Why can’t you be more like your little brother? Or Uri should have been the firstborn.”
My jaw drops. “You’re kidding. That’s horrible.”
“That was my dad.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he says in a clipped voice. “I stopped placing my self-worth on my father’s opinion a long time ago.”
“If it’s any consolation, my dad wasn’t much better. He was an asshole, too—just in a different way.” I fidget against the pillows. “I guess his only redeeming quality was that he ignored both Ziva and me. Mom did, too, if I’m being brutally honest. Maybe that’s why it felt as though I lost everything after Ziva died. It really did feel like I didn’t have anyone anymore.” I glance at Nikolai out of the corner of my eyes. “Which is why it was so easy for me to bond with Lev and Polly. I suppose that’s the kind of family dynamic I always wanted for myself.”
Nikolai raises his eyebrows. “Dysfunctional, you mean?”
“Ha-ha. You guys may be dysfunctional but at least you have each other’s backs. You care about one another. That’s family.” I start picking at my fingernails, trying to keep the hope from getting the best of me before we have a real reason to believe. “Do you think Uri will find Polly tonight?”