Page 50 of The Bad Brother

F OR A SECOND, I JUST STAND HERE, staring at the empty doorway, at the place Sloane used to be because I don’t know what to do.

I know what I want to do.

I want to follow her. Chase her down. Make her look at me.

Listen to me. Let me explain what happened.

How things spun so out of control so quickly but I don’t.

The one thing I know about Sloane for sure is that her entire identity is wrapped up in this job.

It’s who she is. The thing about herself she’s most proud of.

If I embarrass her here by airing our dirty laundry in public, she’ll never forgive me.

Besides, how the hell am I supposed to explain something I don’t even understand myself. Something I’m still trying to navigate.

Because I can’t do what I want and because I know that she’s serious about calling security on me, I do what Sloane asked me to do and leave .

Because Colt dropped me off and Cade would probably bash my head in if I called him for a ride, I call the only other person I know who will come pick me up, no questions asked. Fifteen minutes after sending out my SOS, River pulls into the emergency room parking lot.

“Cal almost didn’t let me leave,” she says with a tired smile that tells me she’s been up and worried sick since Colt banged on her door and dragged her to his dad’s house at 4AM.

She worked last night so, I doubt she even had a chance to go to bed before shit hit the fan.

Picking up her cell phone, she shows me the screen.

“He made me FaceTime him before I left.”

“Looks like you’ve got a fuckin’ mess on your hands, kid.” Despite his casual tone, I can tell by the way he’s looking at me through River’s cell screen, he’s not happy. Not with the situation and not with me.

“Yes, sir.” I nod, suddenly feeling like I’m sixteen again because Cal Montgomery was there the day my life changed. He was one of the cops who arrested me.

“Whatever you’ve got planned to get back at him—forget it,” he tells me in that stern don’t fuck with me cop tone he used to scare the shit out of an entire generation of dumb, impulsive teenagers.

“You let Colt handle it the right way. And you can tell that other son of mine if you see him that he’s got too much to lose to go fucking it up over some creeker with a death wish. ”

I give him another nod. Don’t mention that his other son is running around town with a baseball bat, unattended, or that I haven’t seen or heard from him since he left me at the hospital, hours ago. “Yes, sir.”

“Keep your head on a swivel. When he comes, that little snake is gonna come at you sideways.” Waiting a beat, Cal gives me a sigh. “Give me back to River.”

Gladly handing the phone back to Riv, I listen while Cal gives her the stay safe and don’t be stupid speech.

After reassuring him that she won’t go anywhere without FaceTiming him, she hangs up with a thanks, Cal.

Dropping her phone into the cupholder of her jeep, River gives me a commiserating smile, shifts into drive, and points us toward home. “How’s Red?”

“Out of surgery and from what Sloane says, doing okay,” I tell her, repeating what I overheard Sloane telling Reese. Looking out the window, I note that the street is clear. “She’s pretty mad at me.”

“Reese?” River’s face scrunches up while she hangs a left out of the parking lot and heads for the bridge that’ll take us back to Barrett. “I’m sure she’s not?—”

“Reese is pretty pissed at me but that’s not who I’m talking about.” I shake my head while I take Cal’s advice, keeping myself focused on our surroundings. “I’m talking about Sloane.”

“Sloane?” I can hear the confusion in her tone. “I thought things were better between the two of you,” she says, her tone unmistakably disappointed. “I thought you were starting to get along.”

“We were.” I wouldn’t classify what Sloane and I have been doing as getting along, but I nod my head anyway. “We have been, but—” Shit. I shake my head because even though I don’t want to say it out loud, I’ve got to tell the truth to someone. I might as well start here. “she knows Ethan.”

Guiding the Jeep onto the bridge, River gives me another face scrunch. “Jen, you’re being crazy again. Sloane is?—”

“Ethan’s ex,” I finish for her, pushing the words out of my mouth on a hard shove.

“He’s her ex-fiancé. The guy who cheated on her with her best friend.

Took her for all she had. Left her homeless and without a dime to her name.

Ethan did that.” Saying it all out loud, I don’t understand how I didn’t figure it all out sooner, on my own, because what he did to Sloane is textbook Ethan.

“How do you know that for sure,” she asks, throwing me side-eye. “Clearwater is a veritable breeding ground for slimy douchebags. Just because?—”

“She told me, Riv,” I tell her bluntly. “Sloane told me that Ethan is her ex-fiancé.” Off the bridge and across the highway, the turn off for The Mill looms ahead and I start to tense up, suddenly sure that Ethan is there, waiting for me so he can gloat.

Throw what he did to Red in my face. Let me know that he's not done. That he’s going to get away with it, just like he’s gotten away with everything else.

“She told you that—” River gawks at me, sure she heard me wrong. When I confirm that she didn’t with a head nod, she shakes her head. “Oh my god, Jen—” Shifting into a lower gear, she prepares to turn into the Mill’s parking lot. “Holy shit. This is my fault. If I’d known, I never would have?—”

“She didn’t know either, Riv.” I say it quickly because River blames herself.

Blames Sloane. Thinks she put a snake in my boot without even knowing.

“When she told me—” She’d been half asleep in my arms after a hard day at work and a pretty healthy yelling match.

“She didn’t know what she was telling me.

She mentioned her ex by name— Ethan —but she didn’t know who he was to me when she said it. ”

“She didn’t know…” Pulling into the lot, she drives slowly so as not to kick up dust. “But she knows now.”

The lot is empty. My bar is still standing.

Nothing is on fire because Cal is right.

When Ethan comes at me, he’s gonna come sideways.

He’s never had the guts to face me head on.

Everything he does, he does when I’m not looking.

Distracted. Happy. “Yeah.” Thinking about the way Sloane looked at me when she asked what my last name was before it was Barrett, I feel my chest go tight and my stomach try to turn itself inside out.

“She knows now and she’s pissed because I’m not the one who told her. ”

“Who told her?” River asks while she rolls to a stop, as close to the bar as she can get.

“I don’t know.” I shake my head. “She threw me out of the hospital before I had a chance to ask her.”

“Okay.” Shifting into park, River turns in her seat to look at me. “So, why didn’t you?”

Unlatching my seat belt, I shake my head. “Why didn’t I what?”

“Men.” Riv sighs like I’m too dumb to live. “Why didn’t you tell her that Ethan her ex-fiancé , is Ethan your crazy, asshole brother ?”

“Because I was scared.” Looking at River, I find myself face-to-face with my second hard truth for the day. “Because by the time I figured it out, it was too late. I was already in love with her.”

When I say it, River doesn’t look surprised or concerned. She looks relieved. Satisfied. Like this was her plan all along. “I guess that means I can tell Mindy you don’t want to meet her for that drink after all.”

Laughing, despite everything that’s happened over the last twelve hours, I shake my head. “No—I don’t want to meet big sister Mindy for a drink.”

“That’s okay,” she says before killing the Jeep’s engine and plucking its keys from the ignition. “I like Sloane way better anyway.”

“She’s mad at me, Riv.” I shake my head, trying to manage her expectations. River is still a kid in a lot of ways. Despite all the things she’s been through, she still has a tendency to see things through rose-colored glasses. “Like really mad. Like she fucking hates me mad.”

River gives me a quick, sunny smile before hopping out of the Jeep. “She’ll get over it.”

Climbing out after her, I shake my head. “I don’t think this is something she can just get over and I don’t know where I’d even start to try to make this mess okay.”

Because Ethan isn’t just her ex.

He isn’t just my brother.

He’s dangerous and determined to hurt me, every chance he gets, for reasons I’ve never really understood.

“Does she know how you feel about her?” The look she’s giving me tells me she already knows the answer but I tell her anyway.

“No.” I shake my head. “She doesn’t know how I feel.”

Sloane knows that I want her.

That I pick her flowers and make her grilled cheese sandwiches at 3AM even though it makes me mad.

That I don’t want her to move out.

That she belongs here .

Belongs to me.

But she doesn’t know that I love her.

I don’t think something like that would even occur to her. That’s the kind of damage my brother can do to a person.

The kind of havoc he wreaks.

He wears you out. Grinds you down. Takes every part of you that makes you you and kills it. Suffocates it until you’re nothing more than a shadow of who you were before you met him. It’s a slow death. You don’t even know you’re dying until it’s too late and you’re already gone.

Does Sloane know that I’m in love with her?

No.

But she should.

Even if she doesn’t believe me, she deserves to hear me say it. Even if it doesn’t change a fucking thing, I owe it to her—fuck, I owe it to myself —to look at her and say the words out loud. To let her know that Ethan didn’t break her. No matter how hard he tried, he didn’t break either of us.

Staring at me from across the Jeep through its open doors, Riv shakes her head on another men are dumb sigh. “Well, if I were you, that’s where I’d start.”