Page 75 of The Bad Brother

“You’re being childish, Sloane.” The quiet admonishment in her tone makes me want to scream. “Every marriage has its trials. Every man?—”

“No, Mom.” I stop her cold with a small head shake. “Not all men are my father and not all men are Mark. Not every man cheats and whatever trials a marriage goesthrough, they should be mettogether. Fighting through it alone isn’t a trial. It’s torture.”

My mother blinks at me like she has no idea what I’m talking about and suddenly, I can’t take another second of it.

Standing up, I retrieve my purse.

“Where are you going?” she hisses at me before taking a discrete look around the room to make sure we aren’t causing a scene. She shouldn’t have bothered. We are most definitely causing a scene. “Sit back down. We’ll have a nice?—”

“No.” I’m done with being told what to do and how to feel. How much I should take and how to react. “I don’t want to sit down. I want to go to work, where I’m needed and I can do something with my life besides sit in some fancy cage with a bunch of fancy birds who secretly hate each other.” I say it loud. Loud enough to draw looks and elicit more than a few insulted gasps.

Looking down at my mother, I can see exactly where her mind is going. Exactly what she plans on doing, the second I turn my back to leave. Leaning down, I get in her face.

“Dr. Ragnar has made it clear that if you call herone more time, she’ll fire me.” I whisper it. This part of the conversation is just between us. “You might think that’s what you want Mom, but it isn’t because I’m good at what I do. So good that I receive job offers from all over theworld, almost daily. I love my hospital but if you get me fired, I won’t fight for my position there. I’ll just accept another surgical position—one as far away from you as I can possibly get. I’ll disappear and you will never,neversee me again.”

My mother stares at me like I just spit in her face while all the fancy birds stare at us over their anemic salads and chilled martinis and wish they could hear what I’m saying. “You don’t mean that, Sloane. You’d never just up?—”

“Try me.” My tone snaps her jaw shut for a moment but it doesn’t last long.

“What’s gotten into you?” She whispers back like whatever it is, it’s a disease. One she’s afraid of catching.

“The Grilled Cheese Guy,” I tell her before I straighten myself, laughing at my own joke. “I know this is a difficult concept for you to grasp, but I didn’t lose Ethan.” This part I say out loud, while looking around the room because I want them all to know that I haven’t shed a single tear over Ethan Pryce and I never will. “He lostmeand all he has to show for it is someone desperate enough to suck his dick on camera, just so he can hurt me.”

Like saying his name conjures him into being, I see him.

I seethem.

Ethan and Amy, sitting at a table, not far from where his mother ambushed me. They must’ve come in while I was being browbeaten into ordering a salad. He’s looking at me with barely controlled rage while Amy glares at me like I took her favorite toy and kicked her out of the sandbox.

She can have the toy and the sandbox too.

I don’t want to play anymore.

Tucking my clutch under my arm, I lean down again to press a soft, quick kiss to my mother’s cheek. “I’ll call you next week, on my day off. We’ll meet for coffee somewhere that isn’t here.”

Turning away from her before she has a chance to answer me, I weave my way through the silent restaurant,aiming myself for the door. Almost there, I stop on impulse. Snagging a waiter by the sleeve of his jacket, the same waiter I’ve seen at the Mill, I pull him close.

“Do you see that couple in the middle of the room?” I ask quietly while he scans the gawking crowd. “He’s wearing a douchey pastel polo shirt and she’s wearing the YSL sundress she stole from me?”

Even though my description of Amy’s sundress makes no sense to him at all, the waiter nods his head. “Yes.”

“Are they staring at me?”

The waiter nods. “Yes.”

“Do they look pissed?”

Another nod. This one accompanied by the slightest of smirks. “Yes.”

“Good.” Resisting the urge to turn around and look for myself, I open my clutch and pull out one of my precious fifty-dollar bills. “I’d like to order them the bananas foster,” I tell him while pressing the single bill into his hand. “And when they ask you what the hell is going on, tell them it’s with compliments from Jensen and Sloane.”

“It would be my pleasure, ma’am,” the waiters says while discretely pocketing the cash. The look on his face tells me he would have happily participated in my rebellion, free of charge.

“Thank you.”

Finalfuck youdelivered, I walk out the door without a backward glance.

I’VE BEEN SITTING IN THE DARK FOR Afew hours now. Steadily drinking myself toward drunk while driving myself crazy because I can’t stop thinking about her. Can’t stop wondering where she is. What she’s doing because Sloane left for her lunch date with her mother over twelve hours ago and she still isn’t home.

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