Page 63 of The Bad Brother

“Me?” Glaring down at me, Jensen looks like I just slapped him in the face. “What the hell did I do?”

“I had to amputate a little girl’s leg today.” Saying it out loud is like taking a sledgehammer to the wall I’ve managed to build between who I am and what I do. I can feel it crumble and crack under the force of it—a dam on the verge of giving way. “She’s fourteen. Out with her older brother and a bunch of their friends on a Friday night, doing something stupid they’d probably done a hundred times—” I feel my breath hitch in my lungs. My entire body begin to shake. “Fourteenand when she wakes up, I’m going to have to explain to her why I had to take her leg. That I wasn’t good enough to save it.” My vision goes blurry and the finger I have pressed against his chest starts to tremble. “And now here you are, in my fucking house—uninvited, by the way—pissed off about the only good things that happened to me today when all I wanted was to take a shower and?—”

“Shit.” He hisses it out on a harsh breath while he reaches up to push my hand away from his chest. Before I know what’s happened, Jensen has his arms wrappedaround me, holding me against him. “I’m sorry, Sloane,” he whispers it against my neck, wide, rough palms pressed against my back. “I’m so fucking sorry—Jesus, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me.”

The second he touches me, my body tenses up with every intention of pushing him away, a split second before the dam breaks and I begin to cry in earnest. “I know what’s wrong with you,” I yell at him, the words wedged between big, gut-wrenching sobs that make me feel like I’m drowning. “You’re a fucking asshole.”

I feel his chest rumble against mine on a laugh while he stoops to fit his arm under my knees. Before I can tell him not to, that he’ll rip his stitches, Jensen has me lifted into his arms. “It’s alright, Peach,” he tells me on his way to the couch. “I was stitched up by a bonafide surgeon. They’ll hold.” Sitting down, me nestled in his lap, he sighs. Holds me against him while I cry without telling me to stop. That my feelings are ridiculous. That by choosing to become a doctor, I did this to myself. That my emotional outburst is dragging him down. It takes what feels like years before the tears run dry and I’m all cried out. “I’m sorry.” Looking down at me, he lifts a hand from my hip to gently brush my hair away from my face. “This shit with my brother is making me crazy. He was here today, making threats. I’ve been worried sick about you all fucking day and I don’t know what to do with it. I’ve never felt—” He stops short and shakes his head on a scowl. “That’s not your fault and it was shitty of me to try to make you think that it is.”

“It’s okay,” I tell him, the dismissal automatic. Pushed out of my mouth by years spent denying my own feelings. Believing everyone else’s are more important than my own.

Still scowling down at me, Jensen slips his hand around the back of my neck. “No it isn’t.” Stroking his thumb across my wet cheekbone, he leans down to press his lips against my forehead. “Tell me what happened today,” he says quietly.

“You don’t want to hear about my day,” I tell him, my chest going tight again. “It’ll just?—”

“Yes I do.” Mismatched gaze centered on mine, Jensen nods his head. “Start at the beginning and tell me everything.”

I hesitate again, but only for a moment, before it all comes pouring out. Not just about the hard things I had to do as a surgeon. About everything. My mother and how close I am to being fired because of her. About Ethan and how he texted me, demanding that I return his mother’s ring.

“Jesus,” Jensen says on a quiet laugh. “Your ex sounds like a real douchebag.”

“He is,” I confirm, feeling lighter and freer than I have in years. Suddenly tired, I close my eyes on a drowsy sigh. “I even made it my new Netflix password—ethanpryceisadouche. No caps—he doesn’t deserve them.”

“Ethan Pryce?” Jensen says the name carefully. Like he’s not sure he heard me correctly. “Your ex-fiancé is Ethan Pryce?”

“Yeah… do you know him?” The word floats away from me, muffled and muddled as, exhausted, I drift off to sleep.

ETHAN’S FIANCE´.

Sloane is Ethan’s fiancé.

Correction: Ethan is Sloane’sex-fiancé.

Which makes absolutely no sense at all because I met my brother’s fiancé. Iknowher—and she is definitely not Sloane.

But there’s no denying what she said.

Ethan Pryce is a douche.

I even asked her again to make sure I heard her correctly and I had. My brother is the man who cheated on Sloane with her best friend. Left her broke and homeless, just weeks before their wedding. Amy must be the best friend. With Sloane out of the picture, Ethan would have to marry her. His twenty-seventh birthday is next month. He doesn’t have time to waste on finding someone else.

Maybe not.

Maybe your first impression of Sloane was the right one. Maybe she’s just as sick and fucked up as Ethan. Maybe she’s here, working her way under your skin, fucking you—making you fall, fast and hard—just another of the twisted games your brother likes to play at your expense… because let’s be real here—she’s a creeker. What could a woman like her possibly see in a guy like you?

Looking down, I expect to find a stranger. Someone I don’t even recognize. Someone who’s spent the last several weeks reeling me in with perfectly placed lies and the best sex I’ve ever had in my life. Someone who is going to show her true colors and stab me in the gut, the second my little brother snaps his fingers and calls her home.

But when I look at her, all I find is Sloane.

The woman who’s had enough backbone to go toe-to-toe with me more than once. The woman who’s befriended River and somehow managed to gain Sera’s trust. The woman who just cried herself to sleep in my arms because she had to take a girl’s leg today and blames herself.

A woman like that would never come running for a man like my brother—but she could be fooled by the slick, pretty mask he wears to hide just how psychotic he actually is and I can’t fault her for that. Not when there was a time I’d been fooled myself.

And honestly, all of this is irrelevant. Who Sloane really is and why she’s really here—none of it matters because it’s too late.

I’m already in love with her.

That’s what freaked me out earlier. Hit me hard and sent me reeling. The realization that I’d fallen in love with hersomewhere between shaking her hand and making her a fucking sandwich. That thewhenis impossible to pinpoint because Ikeepfalling hopelessly and desperately in love, every time I look at her.

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