Page 38 of The Bad Brother

“It means I don’t know what the hell you’re doing to me, Peach.

” Tossing his half-eaten sandwich onto the plate, he turns away from me and makes his way to the fridge.

“Flowers,” he mutters to himself while he yanks it open.

“I picked fucking flowers this morning.” Head stuck in the belly of it, he rummages around, the clink of cold glass accompanying his words.

Straightening, he turns to glare at me again, a pair of longneck beer bottles scissored between his fingers.

“Why the hell would I do that?” he asks while he slams the refrigerator closed.

“I’m not a pick her flowers guy.” Gesturing toward the stove with his empty hand on a what the fuck scoff, he looks at me like I have all the answers.

“And I’m not a make her a goddamned grilled cheese guy either.

” Setting the amber-colored bottles on the counter between us, he shakes his head while scowling at me like this is all my fault, somehow.

Like I did something to him. Gave him some sort of incurable disease he has little hope of surviving. “So, what the fuck am I doing here?”

Stung more than I have a right to be, I feel the tears I’ve been fighting off for hours start to crowd and sting my sinuses.

“I don’t know,” I tell him, dropping my sandwich into my bowl without taking a bite.

“I don’t know what you’re doing and I don’t know why you’re here.

” Standing on wobbling legs, I shake my head, desperate to get away from him before I burst into tears.

“What I do know is that I didn’t ask you to pick me flowers and I didn’t ask you to make me a goddamned grilled cheese—you did those things on your own.

I also know that I’ve had a very long, very shitty day and I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to help you figure out why. ”

Turning away from him with every intention of going upstairs and quietly crying myself to sleep, I don’t make it more than a handful of steps before I feel a rough hand close over my shoulder and spin me around.

“What happened?” I’m suddenly staring up at him, his grip on my shoulder shifting and tightening around my upper arm. When I don’t answer him, he gives me a short, rough shake. “What happened, Sloane? Did someone?—”

“No—not someone .” Reaching up, I shove his hand away from my arm. Instead of retreating when I’m free, I close in on him to drill a fingertip against the hard, muscled wall of his chest. “You. You’re what happened.”

“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. “ Fourteen and 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 wrapped around 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.