Page 62 of The Bad Brother

D R. RAGNAR PERFORMED MY SURGERY. Nearly eight hours that cost me three shattered ribs, a punctured lung, my kidney, my spleen, a part of my liver, and nearly a month in the hospital.

Every time I asked when I could go home, Jensen and Ragnar would step into the hall, only for Ragnar to come back in a few minutes later to tell me we’re going to give it a few more days.

I don’t think it’s at all a coincidence that the announcement for a new pediatric trauma center was announced in the midst of my hospital imprisonment.

For his part, Jensen never left. He ate, showered and slept in the same space I did. Even when I told him to go home so he could sleep in a real bed, he just laughed at me and shook his head.

You’re here. That means I’m here. I’m not sleeping in that bed—not one goddamned night—without you in it, Peach .

Your job will be here, waiting for you, when you get back, Dr. Merrick. The only thing you need to worry about is healing.

Turns out the new waitress Jensen hired isn’t just a waitress.

She’s also a home health nurse. She got certified so she could take care of her grandfather.

Jensen hired her, putting her waitressing gigs on hold, so she could sit with me at night while he worked downstairs—even though he ended up spending more time checking up on me than he did behind the bar.

It took River a while to come see me. Not until I was finally home. I woke up from a nap on the couch to find her sitting on the coffee table, watching me sleep, Gemma nowhere to be found.

“You said jump,” she told me, tone sharp, sky blue eyes flooding with tears. “ You told me to jump . You were supposed to ?—”

“I couldn’t,” I said, sitting up on a slow head shake.

“I couldn’t jump. I had to stay in the car to make sure Ethan stayed too.

I had to make sure that you and Jensen were safe.

” When her brow crumples, I take a chance and reach out to her.

“In that moment, keeping you two safe was all that mattered to me.”

“He shot you,” she said on a watery huff before taking my hand. “ That asshole shot you .”

“He shot you too,” I reminded her. Just the thought of it makes me dizzy. The bullet grazed her head. Another inch, just a second faster, and she’d be dead.

“It doesn’t even really hurt.” Reaching up with her free hand, River rubs the patch of blonde stubble surrounding the quartet of staples in her head. “Itches like crazy but it doesn’t hurt.”

“I’m sorry, River. I know...” My throat tightens and I shake my head. “I know what happened. To your parents. How they... Jensen told me. If I’d known, I?—”

“No.” River leans into me with a sad smile. “Don’t do that. Watching you recover has been better for me than the last ten years of therapy and a million NA meetings.” Squeezing my hand, she gives me a head shake. “But if you ever pull something like that again...”

“No more driving my car into giant oak trees,” I promise her quietly. “We’re safe.”

We’re safe.

Neither one of us say it but we both know what that meant. It meant Ethan is dead.

Because Jensen killed him.

There was a huge uproar when their parents found out.

Monica Pryce—their mother—wanted Jensen arrested for first-degree murder, claiming he’d planned it.

That her estranged older son, after years of being on the outside looking in, killed Ethan out of jealousy and spite.

That somehow, Jensen was responsible for everything that happened.

It was River who set the records straight while I recovered. Told Colt that Ethan confessed to killing Amy. That he planned on killing Jensen and kidnapping me and that Monica not only knew about it—she helped him plan it .

Colt found Amy in their condo, strangled and stuffed into a closet.

After that, every carefully stacked Pryce family domino began to fall.

When questioned, their private pilot confessed that Monica paid him fifty-thousand dollars to file a false flight plan to London, marking her as his only passenger, the day of the accident.

Orton Redford woke up and identified Ethan as his attacker and the man who set fire to Jensen’s truck.

Jensen turned the razor blade his brother gave him over to Colt.

Prints and blood evidence led them to a man from San Antonio with an extensive and violent record that included assault with a deadly weapon and second-degree murder.

When questioned, he admitted to being hired by Ethan to attack Jensen.

Rich dude paid me five-grand to kill some guy but I ain’t killin’ no one for a measly five-grand so I just cut him instead.

Told rich dude there was too many witnesses.

Called me again—this time offered me fifteen-hundred to torch some truck but I ghosted him.

Dude’s entire vibe was off—seriously something wrong with him. Like puppy strangler kinda vibes.

After that, no one listened much to what Monica Pryce had to say.

She hid behind her army of lawyers while the evidence against her and her son piled up and when Colt finally had enough to get an arrest warrant, she was gone.

The flight plan said she and her husband flew to New York on business but while that’s exactly where Jensen’s father was found, in some billionaire’s boardroom, when the US Marshals crossed the street to storm their hotel suite, Monica was gone.

From what I heard, the billionaire in question cut ties with the Pryce family immediately, sparking an onslaught of abandoned deals and lawsuits. Nathaniel, Jensen’s father, has been calling him, begging for a reconciliation. Jensen isn’t returning his calls.

For our part, Jensen and I have barely paid attention to any of it because none of it matters. All that matters is that Ethan is gone and that we’re together. Missing kidney and extensive hospital stay notwithstanding, the last three months have been the happiest of my life.

When I came home, Jensen was already moved into the loft—his extensive collection of bar T-shirts hanging side-by-side with my scrub tops.

His toothbrush in the caddy next to mine.

Not long after Jensen moved in, Cade and Gunner moved into Jensen’s old apartment.

Listening to the two of them bicker at each other from across the hall like a couple of old biddies is one of the highlights of my day.

As promised, Jensen only hired Gemma to be my caretaker for the first two-weeks after I was released from the hospital.

After that, he had a revolving door installed on the loft and everyone has been taking turns visiting me.

If it’s not my mother breezing in with shopping bags from every designer boutique in Clearwater with a it’s only a few things, just in case then it’s River coming up here to say hi.

If it’s not River or my mom then it's Sera or Gemma. On Monday nights, it’s all three of them—Sera with a bottle of wine, River with a pizza, and Gemma with dessert while Jensen disappears downstairs to play pool with Cade and Gunner.

I think even Colt swings by on occasion.

No matter how busy they are, Jensen abandons ship and comes upstairs at midnight so he can make me a grilled cheese sandwich before he carries me to bed.

That’s where he is, right now—frying buttered bread and cheese while I wait impatiently on the couch. Not impatient for my sandwich. Impatient for the surprise he’s been hinting at all day.

“Can you at least give me a hint?” I ask over the back of the couch.

It can’t be a new car. He gave me one of those last week.

When I mentioned in passing that my 90 days was going to be coming to an end and that I needed to go car shopping before then so I had a way to and from the hospital, Jensen didn’t have much to say.

The next day, he carried me downstairs (the man is still refusing to allow me to walk more than ten feet on my own) to show me a brand-new, red Ford Bronco, the size of a small tank.

“No, I cannot give you a hint , Peach,” he tells me with an exasperated laugh while he plates my grilled cheese.

I’ve been hounding him non-stop since he came home.

“You’re just going to have to sit there and work on your patience.

” Sandwich plated, he carries it to where I’m waiting in the living room.

Setting it on the end table, he checks the temperature on my tea before he sits down on the coffee table, facing me. “How was your visit with your mom?”

“My visit with my mom was fine.” I give him an eye roll. “She wants us to have dinner with her and Mark at the club next week.”

Jensen gives me a wry smile. “Well, at least she’s stopped pressuring you to move home to convalesce .”

I laugh when he says it because convalesce is the exact word she used when she showed up at the hospital, the day I was released, to take me home with her.

You can’t think I’d actually allow you to go home with that man, Sloane.

He put you in danger and murdered your fiancé.

Come home with me, where it’s safe. After the truth about who Ethan Pryce really was and that their mother not only knew about but encouraged and enabled his escalating psychotic behavior, my mother quieted down considerably.

For the last several weeks, she’s settled on near daily visits, usually with some sort of service provider in tow.

Today it was a mani pedi. Yesterday, it was a full body massage.

The day before that, it was exfoliating facials.

“If you want to have dinner at the club, we can have dinner at the club,” Jensen tells me while reaching under the cashmere throw to pull one of my legs from underneath it.

Settling my foot in his lap, he starts to give me one of his magical foot rubs.

“We can do whatever you want, whenever you want.”