Page 29 of The Bad Brother

I F I HAD TO GUESS, JENSEN IS RIGHT. IT’S a clean cut. Whatever was used to cut him slid right through him which means it’ll be an easy stitch. The downside is that the wound is deep enough to need internal stitches to ensure proper healing.

As soon as River left with Austin, I used a hastily wrapped ACE bandage around his middle to hold the towel in place while I went about preparing to perform minor surgery in my kitchen.

Dragging another chair into the kitchen, I opened my kit and pulled out everything I’d need to stitch up Jensen’s back while he sat quietly, forehead resting on the back of the chair, hands hanging loosely at his sides.

He hasn’t moved past breathing in over an hour, only giving me a terse no drugs when I offered him a local anesthesia to help with the pain.

Rather than argue with him that lidocaine isn’t a narcotic, I settled into the chair behind him and pulled sterile gloves onto freshly scrubbed hands.

“It’s going to hurt without a local,” I warned him with a frown.

“That’s alright, Peach,” he said quietly, his voice slightly muffled. “We both know I deserve it.”

Again, rather than argue with him, I let it go and got to work.

“Still with me?” The bleeding has slowed considerably now that I’ve started to close the wound. I’m halfway through, the internal stitches already set, but I’m still worried about blood loss. If he passes out, all bets are off. I’m calling an ambulance and then I’m calling his cousin, the sheriff.

“I’m still here,” he says on a low chuckle. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy, Peach.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?” I’ve never had a nickname before.

My mother isn’t the type and looking back, I’ve never had any friends that were close enough to ever call me anything but my given name.

Even Ethan, when he was still pretending to be my devotedly doting fiancé, never called me by a pet name.

Sure, he called me babe or sweetheart on occasion but those aren’t nicknames.

They’re just generic terms of endearment.

Peach is a nickname.

A very specific nickname.

“Peach?” He gives me another chuckle. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Yes,” I tell him, my own tone slightly exasperated. “That’s why I asked.”

This time Jensen doesn’t chuckle, he laughs outright. “I don’t think telling you would earn me any points and I’m already in the hole as it is. Ask me something else. ”

“Okay.” Working the clamp I’m using to keep his wound closed, I set another stitch before snipping the suture with a pair of surgical scissors.

“Who did this to you?” Releasing the clamp, I reset it a little bit lower on his back in preparation for another stitch.

“And don’t tell me you don’t know. From what Sera says, you’re well respected around here. I don’t think?—”

“Feared.”

Stopping mid-stitch, I lift my head to peer at the back of his. “Excuse me?”

“I’m not respected, Peach,” he says quietly. “I’m feared .”

Something unsettling and not completely unpleasant snakes down my spine when he says it. Probably because I recognize it as the truth. “I’m not afraid of you,” I tell him before forcing myself to lower my gaze and get back to work.

“Yeah…” His tone goes soft, barely above a whisper. “I noticed.”

There’s only one way I want to make you scream... Did that feel good, Peach? Then do it again. It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone… it’ll be our little secret.

Like he can read my mind, Jensen makes a sound in his throat like he’s trying to clear it. “Distract me. Ask me something else.”

“You still haven’t answered my first question,” I tell him while fighting off the urge to squirm in my seat because this is a new one for me. I’ve never been turned on while treating a patient before. Again, unsettling but not completely unpleasant. “Who did this to you?”

For a long moment, he doesn’t answer me. Just sits there and breathes .

Sure he isn’t going to answer me, I nod. “I patched up four of your victims tonight?—”

“It wasn’t any of them,” he says on a flat chuckle. “And they were hardly my victims, Peach—no one made them fight me and they’d have sent me in their place if they’d been any good at it.”

“Okay…” Flicking a glance at the back of his head, I feel my brow crease in confusion. “So, if it wasn’t one of them, then?—”

“My brother.”

Remembering what Sera told me—that Jensen’s fiancé cheated on him with his own brother, I look up again to peer at the back of his curved neck. “Your brother did this to you?”

“Well…” He gives me another rusty chuckle. “Not him personally. He’d never come at me directly like that. He’s too much of a coward. He paid someone to do it.”

I process what he’s telling me—that his own brother hired someone to attack him, as if sleeping with the woman he was going to marry wasn’t enough. “Why would he do that?”

“Because he hates me.” The hard edge to his tone tells me that he’s done.

He’s not answering another question on the subject of his brother.

“You went to Duke?” he asks, changing the subject completely.

Remembering that I was wearing my Duke sweatshirt the night I opened my front door to find him in the hall and that he eventually took it off me, I fight the urge to squirm again.

“I did,” I tell him while I tie off the suture in my hand before clipping it. “For med school. ”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven,” I answer him. “I’ll be twenty-eight in September.”

“That’s young for a surgeon, isn’t it?” Instead of the suspicious accusation I’ve grown used to hearing in his tone when it comes to the subject of whether I’m really a doctor or not, all I hear is curiosity and maybe a little admiration.

Feeling myself flush with pride, I’m glad he can’t see me.

“I’m a little ahead of the curve,” I admit.

“I started my residency in Chicago but transferred here when they opened the trauma center and finished right before Christmas last year. After that, I gained my board certification and accepted a full-time surgical position in January.”

“Colt says you’re one of the best surgeons on the trauma team,” Jensen says, turning his head ever-so-slightly to give me a glimpse of his near perfect profile. “He’s pretty impressed by you.”

Since I’m not quite sure what to say to that or what it’s supposed to mean, I don’t say anything. Setting and clipping the final stitch, I lean away from him I sip the ends off one of his sutures. “How old are you?”

“Right now, I feel like I’ll about a hundred and five,” he tells me with a laugh. “But my driver’s license says I’m thirty. Thirty-one in July.”

Making an acknowledging sound in the back of my throat, I give him a final snip.

“I thought about what you said,” I say quietly, setting the clamp and scissors aside in favor of a bottle of antiseptic and a few sterile pads.

“What you asked me… about why I’d let a lowlife asshole like you put his dick in me . ”

As soon as I say it, his spine stiffens and he starts to turn around. “Sloane?—”

“No.” Laying my hands on his shoulders, I turn him back around, facing him away from me again. “Let me say it, okay? It was a good question and you deserve an answer.”

“It was a shit, asshole question,” he shoots back, pushing the words between his clenched teeth. “One I never should’ve?—”

“I’m not heartbroken.” I say, cutting him off before he can finish. “I should be, considering I was supposed to be married in a few weeks, but I’m not.”

“Married?” His spine stiffens again. “You were engaged?”

“I was…” Nodding while I pour antiseptic onto the pads before blotting them against his back, getting as close to his stitches as possible.

“When I found out he was cheating on me, I was angry and sick to my stomach—but I wasn’t sad.

I wasn’t heartbroken. Not like you were.

” When he doesn’t say anything like I wasn’t heartbroken either or maybe fuck you, Sloane, I keep talking.

“And now here I am, a few weeks later, looking at it all with perfect clarity. I never wanted to marry him—not really. I only said yes because it’s what was expected of me.

” Setting the sterile pads aside, I reach for the roll of medical tape.

“My mother never wanted me to go to med school,” I confess quietly while I pull several long strips of tape from the roll.

“That I didn’t go to college, simply to find a successful husband to take care of me was something she could never understand.

Such a waste of time, Sloane. Women like us don’t have to work this hard .

” Pressing a clean, dry pad against his wound, I begin to tape it on.

“So, yeah—” Suddenly embarrassed, I shake my head.

“That’s why. That’s your answer. And I knew Hanna’s name because Sera mentioned her when they were here that night.

Throwing it in your face like that was a horrible thing to do. I’m sorry.”

“I’d basically just called you a whore, Peach,” he reminds me, his tone low and rusty. “It was less than I deserved. In hindsight, it’d served me right if you had zapped me in the balls with your stun gun.”

“Well, I’m sorry just the same,” I tell him quietly, attention focused on taping the bandage to his back. “Not about what happened… after but about losing my temper. Believe it or not, I’m usually pretty level-headed.”

Jensen laughs, turning to give me a glimpse of his profile again. “I tend to have that effect on people.”

“I’ve noticed,” I answer him with a dry chuckle. “I’m finished back here,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “If you want to turn your chair around, I can see to your hands and that cut above your eye.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he tells me while straightening his back slowly. “I can handle?—”

“I didn’t ask you what you can handle ,” I tell him, my tone going flat with exasperation. “I told you to turn around so I can finish doing my job.”