Heart-On: Turf Wars #2 Bella Jewel (books for 10th graders .txt) 📖

Adan glares at her. “Listen, you might be her mother, but if you call her that word again, I’ll take you by your fuckin’ ear and drag you the hell out of here.”

Mom leans in close. “Whore.”

Adan loses his shit.

He steps outside, takes her arm and starts dragging her down the driveway. Fuck. I rush after him because it’s super sweet that he’s defending me, but the last thing I need is for her to go and cry abuse because he laid his hands on her. That’ll just open up a whole new world of problems we don’t need.

“It’s okay,” I say when I reach Adan, grabbing his shoulder to stop him. “Let her go.”

“Nobody comes into my house and disrespects my woman,” Adan growls.

I lean in close so only he can hear me. My mother is currently screeching and clawing at him.

“She’ll report you. Let her go.”

Adan does as I ask; he lets her go. I face my mother. “Listen and listen good. You’ll get nothing from me. Not because I’m evil or shit or whatever it is you want to tell yourself, but because you’ve never done a damned thing to earn it. Do you want me in your life? Go get yourself clean, get a job, and prove to me you’re worth it.”

My mother bobbles her head around like a broken doll. She’s messed up, and I’m not cold enough not to see how that has impacted her life. “How am I supposed to get a job when I have nowhere to live?”

“You go to rehab. You get clean. Then, you go from there.”

She glares at me. “I can’t afford rehab.”

“You don’t need to afford it. Just go, and I’ll worry about the rest.”

Her glare fades. “You’ll pay for it?”

“If you’re serious about getting clean, yes. You only get one chance, though. You leave and touch another drug, it’s over. I won’t help you a second time. I’m not that stupid. The choice is yours. I can get my car now and take you, or you leave and never see me again. What’s it going to be?”

She stares at me, then her eyes flicker to Adan who is beside me, arms crossed, looking terrifying.

“Fine,” she huffs. “Let’s go.”

I’m shocked she picked rehab. I was confident she’d tell me to go fuck myself and be on her way. I don’t let her think too long about it. I go and get my keys, and then we get into the car. I assure Adan I’ll be fine, but he doesn’t believe me and insists on coming. Probably a good thing. We don’t know what she’s capable of in this state.

For all we know, it could be a setup.

We find out quickly that it’s not.

We arrive at the rehab center, and I check her in and pay for her treatment. If anything good can come out of the little money I have left that Riggs made sure I got, it would be this.

She deserves to be clean.

That much is true.

I turn and walk towards the door once she’s in her room and settled. It seems like a nice place and the nurses are friendly and kind. I hope it’ll be the thing that fixes her, really I do.

“Ramona.”

Her voice calls to me just before I exit.

I look back at her.

She holds her head high, jutting her chin out. “I’ll prove you wrong.”

I nod. “I hope you do.”

No really.

I hope she does.

25

My father’s eyes widen. “You checked her into rehab?”

I nod. “Yep. It was that or she leaves me alone forever. I was only offering my help once, and to my surprise, she took it.”

He purses his lips. “I gotta admit, I didn’t think she would. Maybe she does want to get better.”

I exhale. “One can only hope. I mean, there has to be a good woman in there somewhere, right? You loved her once, after all.”

He grunts. “Yeah, yeah, I fuckin’ did. I haven’t loved another woman since. Mostly because I thought she was it. When I met her, she was fuckin’ heaven and then somethin’ changed. Not sure what it was, but when it did, everything crashed. We only had a few good years before she became hell on earth. Then she took you from me, and any feeling I had left for her died.”

“That’s understandable,” I nod.

If someone took my child from me and turned them against me, I’d probably be pretty pissed, too. He didn’t get his chance with me, and he missed out on many precious years because of it. We might have a relationship now, but it’s almost too little too late. He’s already missed so much.

“Yeah.”

“You’ve never had another relationship?” I ask him.

“Nope,” he shrugs. “Not one. Been with plenty of women, but not a single one has sparked my soul.”

That makes me sad for him.

He’s a good-looking man and a great person. There must be plenty of women out there who would want that.

Maybe it’s all the illegal shit that puts them off?

Probably it.

“Maybe you should stop doing bad things, and you’ll find a nice lady,” I suggest with a grin.

He snorts. “Fuck no. She can’t accept me as I am, then I’m not wastin’ my time.”

“Fair call. Well, I better go. I’ve got my first shift tonight at the hospital, and I’m packing it. I’ll call tomorrow, let you know how it goes.”

He leans in and pulls me in for a hug. It still feels strange hugging my father, but I don’t hate it. Over time, I think it’ll become something I enjoy. When I was younger, it was all I lived for. I hope someday it’ll be that way again.

He steps back and wishes me good luck. Then he’s gone.

I wasn’t lying about packing it. I am. I have to be at my first shift in two hours, and I have no idea how it’s going to go. Working in the complete hospital environment is very different from working alone.