Page 48 of The Bad Brother
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 terseno drugswhen 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 freshlyscrubbed 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 mebabeorsweethearton occasion but those aren’t nicknames. They’re just generic terms of endearment.
Peachis 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’mfeared.”
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 myvictims,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. “Yourbrotherdid 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.”
