Page 18 of The Bad Brother
“Tell me what I have to do to make it stop,” I say quietly, sliding onto one of my newly polished barstools.
“Make what stop?” Cade shoots me a quick look before going back to slicing oranges. It’s been nearly a week sinceBilly pulled my truck from the river and he got over being mad at me days ago.
“You knowwhat,” I mutter, careful to keep my voice down when a pair of them hustle past me on their way to the dancefloor carrying mops and buckets. He knows exactly what I’m talking about. He’s playing dumb because he thinks it’s funny.
“Oh, you mean your fan club? Kick ‘em out,” he tells me with a shrug. “You’ll probably have to get loud and make a couple of them cry, but you’re an asshole, so that shouldn’t be too hard for you to do.”
It would be.
I’d rather play in traffic than get in an old lady’s face and kick her out of my bar, especially if it involves making her cry.
“You do it,” I tell him miserably. “They already hate you.”
Cade shoots me a grimace. “They don’t hate me,” he tells me while tracking one of them while she vacuums one of the pool tables. “They’re afraid of me—big difference.”
Fuck.
“Look—”
“Don’t apologize,” Cade says, flicking me a quick look before he goes back to slicing oranges. “You’re not the one who got my ass thrown in prison. I did that all by myself.”
Maybe so—but hearing him say it doesn’t really make me feel any better.
“Why the hell are they even here?” I ask, changing the subject so neither of us have to rehash the past. “You’d think the fear of eternal damnation would keep them as far away from this place as possible.” While Barrett’s isn’t theonly dive bar, this side of the river, it’s earned itself a pretty rough reputation over the years and it started well before Tank handed me the reins. The only difference between then and now is that Tank was a Barrett—a real Barrett. Being a member of the town’s founding family provided him with a certain amount of grace. As a convicted felon and a Clearwater defector, I’m afforded no such luxury, no matter what my last name is now.
“Well…” Setting his knife down, Cade leans his elbows on the bar and laughs. “If you wanted to maintain your hard ass reputation, you shouldn’t have set up a coffee and water station in the parking lot after the crash and you sure as shit shouldn’t have paid the hotel bill so its survivors had a place to sleep.”
“What was I supposed to do?” I hiss it at him like a snake. “Make them camp by the fucking river?”
Cade laughs again at my obvious distress. “I’m not saying you did the wrong thing, man.” Straightening himself, he starts in on the lemons, slicing them into perfectly proportioned wedges. “I’m just sayin’ that according to them—” pausing for a moment, he jabs the end of his knife at the dance floor. “you did something right and to their way of thinking, that earns you a fair share of Christian charity.”
“Well, Idon’twant charity,” I gripe back. “Christian or otherwise.”
“Yeah…” Slicing the ends off a lemon, Cade gives me a shrug. “I don’t think they give a shitwhatyou want.”
That much is obvious.
“You want them to leave?” Cade asks me before I can form a reply. “Ask one of them to mop the basement.They’ll take one look at the floor down there and fly out of here like their granny panties are on fire and never come back—guaranteed.”
“Oh, they’d come back,” I tell him, careful to keep my voice down. “With your fuckin’ brother. I’m not interested in getting arrested again. Once was enough.”
“Colt isn’t stupid,” he says like my worry isn’t even worth considering. “He knows what goes on down there. If he arrested you, he’d have to arrest me and we both know that’s not happening.” Cade laughs a bit before he grows serious. “Is that why we’re just letting those creeker assholes get away with what they did to your truck? You afraid if we hit them back that?—”
“My brother sent them.” I cut him off before he has a chance to finish. “Apparently, he’s getting married. I guess there was some big party at their country club to celebrate the engagement that night and he wanted me to know I wasn’t invited. My guess is he upped the ante when I didn’t run off and cry about it like he wanted me to.” Saying it out loud stings, even though it shouldn’t. It's been so long and my brother has kicked sand in my face so many times that you’d think I’d be immune, but I’m not.
It still stings, every single time.
Cade barks out a harsh curse that earns him a quick, disapproving look from the closest church lady. Ignoring her, he shakes his head. “I really,reallyhate that slimy little prick.”
“Same,” I tell him quietly. “But I alsoknowhim—retaliation is exactly what he wants from me, which means I can’t hit him back, no matter how much I want to.”
“Then let me,” Cade says, taking us right back to wherewe started. “I’d happily go back to prison over that motherfucker.”
“I don’t think Gunner would appreciate the sentiment,” I say, reminding him that he has a son to consider. As a single father, Cade has way more to lose than I do. “Not to mention the fact that your mom would disembowel me if you went away again over my personal family feud.” My Aunt Penny is not a woman you want to mess with. “Trust me—Ethan isn’t worth the effort. The less attention I pay to his bullshit, the sooner he’ll get tired of playing his games and find someone else to torture.” Saying it makes me think of the woman he’s engaged to, for some reason. To marry a man like my little brother, she’d have to either be a doormat or just as sick and twisted as he is.
“Well, I guess if you’re gonna be all logical about it...” Cade says while slicing his last lemon. “I just hate the fucking thought of him getting away with this shit.”
“He’s not getting away with anything,” I tell him, my tone barely reaching across the bar. “I just have to be patient. Sooner or later the perfect opportunity to get some payback is going to drop itself, right into my lap and when it does, you bet your ass I’m going to take it.”
