Page 82 of Secondhand Smoke
Barrett tilted off balance, gasping again as he caught his balance with one hand on her soft shoulder and one hand digging into the sharp gravel.
He’d imagined this more times than he cared to admit, in more ways than one.
But . . .
Kissing her—no,herkissing him—was the stuff of fantasies.
But not . . .
Her chest was against his, the air filled with heavy breaths and the soft sound she made in her throat. Her rapid kisses were dreamy, desperate, and damning. Detached. Destructive.Dangerous.
Not like this.
His eyes widened, and he stumbled back, catching himself with his elbows as he fell backward to the gravel. The press of it cutting into his skin was barely noticeable.
She looked at him, her eyes still disconnected, confused. Then they snapped into understanding, and she gasped. Her trembling hands covered her mouth in shock.
He knew it.
She wasn’t in her right mind. Her body still shook, for god’s sake. She didn’t know what she was doing.
Fantasies or not, he couldn’t kiss her in this state.
“You’re not feeling well. Let’s get you home.”
She avoided his eyes as he helped her up by her scraped elbow, left his van parked on the road, and walked her home.
33 - Nell
It felt wrong to leave things like . . .this.
Whatever “this” was.
Nell’d gone out of her mind with remorse and regret, and pulled Barrett down with her all in the name of “healing”. Or what she’d thought was going to heal her.
She still couldn’t get in a car, she still couldn’t go to Bellevue, she still had nightmares, and she could now add kissing Barrett in the heat of the moment to the list of things wrong with her—a list that grew the more she lived, it felt like.
Thanks to her timing, she would get three extra days to stew in it all since she knew he could be leaving at any moment for the weekend in Bellevue.
“Something wrong with your egg?”
She looked up.
Her mother scurrying around the kitchen with flour and baking trays and cookie dough had become background noise. She’d only stopped momentarily in front of the kitchen table with oven mitts on her hands and a concerned look on her face as she watched Nell mindlessly poke through the yolk of the perfectly cooked sunny-side-up egg.
“Does it need more salt?”
Nell shook her head and made it a point to take her first bite. It’d grown lukewarm.
Sunny side up had always been her favorite, but she’d become more interested in over-easy eggs recently. “It’s delicious.” She smiled. “Thank you for making me breakfast.”
Her mom’s shoulders relaxed, but Nell could sniff out her anxious mix of worry and hope from miles away. It was potent, filling the entire room with its familiarity.
“I’m so happy you’re feeling better, honey. You must be starving.”
She was. She’d been puking out what little food she managed to eat since Sunday. Half of it was from hangovers, and half was from being lucid enough to think things that just made her sicker.
She preferred the hangovers.
