Page 70 of Secondhand Smoke
Nell barely registered them before she recognized Barrett’s voice. It was different than she’d ever heard it.
Even when he was serious, he never sounded it. There was always some facetious hint in his tone to keep her happy.
But right then, it sent a chill down her arms. It was hard, curt, and venomous.
Jake didn’t falter. He didn’t even acknowledge the sound; his mouth kept moving and words kept spilling out. Loud. Loud enough to be heard by the people around them.
“I wish every fucking day that it had been you. You know that? I’d give everything I have to see you dead instead,” Jake said.
Each word was like a hammer to the skull and a nail to the heart. Nell thought she might be crying, that there might be tears.
There was a sound of something that she couldn’t see falling behind him and a wave of raucous shouting that Jake ignored.
“And I want you to do it to yourself, so you know what it fucking feels like to be killed by someone as sickening as you.”
For a moment, she thought she’d blacked out. There was the sensation of moving and the room spinning and then . . . darkness.
Until she realized she was staring at the back of a black shirt and a hand was holding her behind it.
Barrett was in front of her, shoving Jake backward into the bar.
28 - Barrett
Barrett was a lover, not a fighter.
Despite what people might like to believe about him, he’d never gotten into a fight before. He’d run away from plenty, and talked his way out of others, but never thrown a punch.
And he most certainlyneverthrew the first one.
But right then, that Jake guy?
He was looking pretty punchable.
“Didn’t your parents ever teach you to keep your hands to yourself?”
Jake, who had infuriatingly not taken his hateful eyes off of Nell, finally glanced at Barrett, scrutinizing him up and down. “Get out of my way, freak.”
“Aww.” Barrett sneered a sarcastic smirk. “That’s not very nice either. No can do, though. I was in the middle of a show, which you rudely interrupted. Do you mind getting the fuck out of here?”
“All that to stoop tothis?” Jake’s voice rose.
Barrett furrowed his brows in confusion, wondering what the hell that meant, until he realized Jake was speaking to Nell again. Barrett swore he could feel her breath—a rapid, cool breeze—on the back of his damp shirt. It was as distinct as the shaking in her arm where his hand held firmly around her wrist to keep her behind him.
He had no idea if she could see Jake’s face; he hoped not. There was a sick, twisted hatred there meant for her, and Barrett would have liked very much to block her from it.
“You all belong in hell.”
“Well, aren’t you original?” Barrett chuckled, wiping Jake’s stray spittle off his face as his voice lilted the way someone would compliment a child.
Nell must not have thought it as funny, though, because her hands shook harder.
He could stay here and rile up this bastard, or he could get her out of here and calm her down.
Only one of them had any importance in his eyes.
Barrett, with his hand still gently holding Nell, pulled her with him past Jake’s red glare and ignored the radiating rage that bounced off his body.
He chanced a glance behind him to Nell and found her pale-faced and glassy-eyed, staring at the stage like she couldn’t bear to look anywhere else. Which was probably true. All around them, people stared, waiting for something to happen. The bartender eyed them all cautiously.
