All the Lies We Tell (Quarry Road #1)(13)

She forced herself to remember him as the guy who’d made her feel like she was somehow lacking in comparison to her sister. That she hadn’t been enough for his brother.

And there it was, she thought, watching Nikolai tip back in his chair and lift the bottle of beer to his lips. The real reason she’d been so angry at him for so long. All he’d done was reinforce the feelings she’d been pretending she’d gotten over. Hell, the ones she wanted to pretend she never had.

“You were right,” she said quietly.

He’d been telling her about working in the kibbutz’s apiary, taking care of dozens of hives and harvesting gallons of honey. Now Nikolai stopped, looking her over.

“About?” he asked.

“Me and Ilya.” She didn’t say the rest, but his expression told her he understood.

“Oh. That.” He looked uncomfortable and scrubbed a hand through his hair, pushing it off his face. “I was a dick then, too. I thought we’d established that already.”

“You were still right. You were the only one to say so out loud, though. That’s why we fought.” Alicia laughed ruefully and shook her head. “I was so furious with you.”

“You and I always fought,” Niko said. “We were constantly at each other. It was kind of the way we worked, I guess.”

She nodded, thinking of all the insults and teasing. “This was different, though. What you said hurt so bad. That somehow I wasn’t as good as Jennilynn—”

“Wait, what? No. No, Allie.” Nikolai wiped a hand over his mouth and looked stunned. “That’s not what I meant at all.”

“It’s what you said,” she told him.

He shook his head. “It’s not what I meant. When I said you’d never take her place, I didn’t mean because you weren’t good enough. I meant that my brother wasn’t capable of giving you the relationship you needed or deserved. You weren’t your sister. She might’ve put up with his bullshit and been satisfied with it.”

Alicia swallowed a weakly bitter taste. “We won’t ever know.”

“No. We won’t. But dammit, I’m so damned sorry if you thought back then I meant that somehow you weren’t as good as she was. I never meant that. How could you ever have thought it? God, no wonder you haven’t talked to me in years. What the hell must you have thought about me?”

The truth was, no matter how often she’d found herself thinking of him and what might have been, she’d always pushed those thoughts away so fiercely there’d been only one way to remember him at all.

“I thought you were a know-it-all jerk,” Alicia admitted, certain he’d frown.

Nikolai smiled. “I thought you were smart and beautiful and amazing, and it made me nuts that you were with him, when he so clearly didn’t deserve you.”

Silence, a beat of it. Then another. The clock ticked, and so did her heart. She smiled.

“Maybe,” she said, “we can get over all that crap and put it behind us. Be friends.”

Nikolai leaned over the desk to offer her his hand. “It’s a deal.”





CHAPTER SEVEN


Then


Babulya and Galina were fighting again.

Dinner had been a disaster, with Galina leaving the table to go out back for a smoke and Babulya clattering pots and pans and slapping plates of food on the table before leaving the room without eating anything. Ilya didn’t seemed to care. He shoveled his mouth full of food while he read some comics, ignoring everything around him. Niko wasn’t able to eat, though. Too much tension. It left him with a sour stomach.

The women had always gone at each other, Babulya with her muttered, under-the-breath criticisms and her daughter with her too-loud defenses. Sniping and griping. It had been better when Barry and Theresa lived here, because Barry seemed to keep Galina in check, at least a little. Of course, that had gone tits up years ago. Niko had come home from school to find Barry’s and Theresa’s stuff moved out; their names had become persona non grata.

His mother hadn’t said much about it, only that it wasn’t working out, and that she and Barry would be getting a divorce. No counseling, no trial separation. Definitely no reconciliation. You didn’t dare mention Barry or Theresa now, either, not unless you wanted Galina to totally lose her shit, which is what happened tonight when Babulya had made an offhanded comment about her daughter finding herself a new husband that she could toss aside after only a few months.

They were at it again by the time Ilya got home from work, and something about this set Galina into another rage. Something about doing his own laundry. Paying rent.

“Niko doesn’t pay a damned cent,” Ilya shouted, loud enough for Niko to hear him all the way upstairs. “If I’m going to pay, he better pay, too!”

Niko couldn’t even be pissed off that his brother was throwing him under the bus. Three weeks past his high school graduation, Niko was already bored and tired of his job at the car wash. He’d quit two days ago. Hadn’t told his mother yet. Not sure he planned to.

But Ilya knew. “Of course he’s not going to be able to pay a damned thing without a job.”

Niko groaned, wishing he hadn’t told his brother about quitting. Things had been kind of messed up between them since Jennilynn died. It had been over a year, and Niko had started to think it was never going back to the way it was before. Nothing would. Across the street, the Harrisons functioned like a broken music box, playing a song that missed all the important notes. He’d hardly spoken to Allie since the night of the funeral and what happened between them. He wanted to, but he didn’t know what to say.