Skater (Seattle Sharks 6)

“It looks like you’re high as a kite in my apartment with two assholes who definitely don't’ belong here!” I snapped.

“Hey, dude. Who are you calling asshole, asshole?” One guy stumbled to his feet, the second one following shortly after.

Jess laughed at his repetition.

“Leave,” Porter said, stepping forward.

I was tall, built, even, but Porter was a fucking brick house. They didn’t call him a bruiser for no reason.

The guys shot a look at Jessica and scrambled out, leaving us in the bedroom.

“Really? Guys, come on!” Jess called after them.

“What happened to Joe?” I asked, all my hopes of her at least staying sober while she was with him shattering in an instant.

“He left me! Happy now?”

“Did you seriously just fucking ask me that?” I was seeing red.

The front door slammed, the sound of Jessica’s junkie friends bolting.

“Now look what you’ve done!” She furiously began to throw things into her bag.

“What? Scared off the guys you abandoned your daughter for so you could get high?”

She stopped, glaring at me. “Nice. Real nice.” She slid her feet into flip-flops and headed for the door.

“Jess, where are you going?”

“Not here, apparently. Not that you’re using it. Doorman said you bought some big fancy schmanzy place.” She stumbled into the wall but shook off my hands when I tried to keep her upright.

“You need to get sober.”

“You need to leave me the hell alone.”

Porter shot a look my direction, and I shook my head, giving him permission to let her pass when she reached the door. I wasn’t going to make her a prisoner. She had to make her own choices. It wasn’t like I could drop her at a rehab and force her to get clean.

She flung the door open and headed toward the elevator.

“You need to get clean, Jess. Please let me help you,” I pled, standing next to her as she punched the down button. “You have to. For Hannah.”

Pain shot across her face for a fleeting second. “You’re ruining my high.”

Fuck, I hated her like this. She wasn’t her. She was whatever the monster created, and nurtured.

“Sorry to be a downer,” I quipped back.

“Fuck this,” she muttered and opened the door to the stairwell. I followed her in and motioned to Porter to take the elevator down.

“What, now you’re going to follow me down the steps?” She clung to the banister.

“Yeah, professional athlete, remember? Steps don’t intimidate me. Even five flights of them.” I stayed right behind her step for step as she stumbled and cursed at me.

Every flight of steps broke my heart a little further. It was one thing to be pissed at her from a distance, to see what her choices had done to Hannah, but it was another to be forced with those repercussions up close.

My strong, kind, protective sister was in there somewhere, buried under the high and the withdrawals that would come. It would be her decision if she fought her way back to herself.

She burst through the door into the lobby, startling a few of the residents on their way in. “I swear, if they left me here, I’m going to be so mad at you,” she hurled over her shoulder as she stumbled through the lobby.

“I don’t care if you’re fucking furious, Jess. I need you to get clean, for Hannah’s sake, at least. Even if it’s just for a few days, I need you to sign papers to protect her.” I threw out the last as she pushed open the main doors, nearly falling onto the sidewalk.

Porter caught her and she staggered back.

“You’re one of them, aren’t you? His jock friends?” she spat at him, wiping a strand of stringy, oily hair out of her face.

“Yep,” he answered, zero emotion on his face. The guy was a rock.

Eric would have been heartbroken to see her like this.

“Jess!” I called out as she walked down the sidewalk. “Hannah needs you!”

“No! She doesn’t! She needs you. She’s always needed you. I just gave her what she needed. It’s been the most decent move I’ve ever made as her mother so stop giving me shit.” She looked at the street corner and started to wave her hands. “Wait! John! Ian!”

The two junkies got into a cab, shut the door, and sped off into traffic.

“No!” she shouted, “You ruin everything!” Her toe caught on the sidewalk, and she fell, sprawling on the concrete.

“Jessica!” I quickly kneeled beside her. “Are you okay?”

“No! I’m not! Just leave me alone!” She scrambled to her knees and started to shove the spilled contents of her purse back in.

I grabbed a spoon, tourniquet, and needle that were all in a little bag. “Are you fucking kidding me? You’re telling me this shit is more important than Hannah?”

“This shit is all I have!” she wailed, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Now get out of here. Go back to your mansion. Your perfect life.”

She tripped over her own purse strap.

“Fuck this,” I muttered, gripping her bag in one hand and tossing my sister over my shoulder with the other.

“Put me down!” She yelled, slamming her fists into my back. “Leave me alone!”

There were more than a few looks as we walked down the street to my SUV, but no one stopped us. I was torn between feeling relief that no one questioned me and anger that no one seemed to care that she was shrieking.

“I need you to listen to me for two damned minutes. If you won’t stay after that, I’ll let you go,” I promised. “You know I will.”

She stilled on my back, and I opened my passenger door. Then I put her down and tucked her sideways onto the seat. She narrowed her eyes at me and Porter, who was hanging back.

“I told you I won’t force you to go. But I get two minutes.”

“And then I get my bag back.”

Holy. Shit.

Did she really care more about the drugs than Hannah? Than me? Than everything our lives had been built on?

“Your losing time, Connor,” she reminded me.

My jaw locked, but I popped the glove box open and took out the tissue-paper wrapped present Hannah had left on the table on Mother’s Day.

“Open it,” I ordered her.

She swallowed and had the sense to be a little nervous, but she opened it. “Hannah,” she whispered, laying her own hand across the pink and purple plaster cast of Hannah’s.

“Yes. Hannah. She sat at my dining room table for twelve hours waiting for you to show on Mother’s Day.”

Jess’s eyes flew to mine.

“Yeah. Twelve hours. She had such faith that you’d show. That you still loved her. And when you didn’t, it broke her in a way that made me hate you. I’ve pulled you out of some shit before, Jess, but this is different.”

She looked up at me and then back to Hannah’s handprint. “She’s better off with you.”

“Yeah, she is. I’m not arguing that. But you didn’t sign your rights over, so she’s stuck going through court dates and technically in foster care—”

“She what?” Jessica screamed. “How could you let that happen?”

“Chill out!” I yelled back, not caring that we were probably causing a scene. “I have her. She’s safe. I’m her ‘foster parent’ or whatever. And you’re the one that let it happen, so don’t you dare blame me. You have to sign over your parental rights. The courts are getting ready to terminate them, but until I’ve adopted her, she’s in danger. They can pull her from my house at any minute if they think I’m unsuitable. Do you get that?”

She focused on the handprint. “You’re going to adopt her?”

“Yeah. It’s the only way to keep her safe.”

Her fingers traced the indentations in the plaster. “And I won’t get to see her, right? You’ll cut me off like mom. Because I am Mom.”

A stabbing sensation hit my heart.

“You get clean, and stay clean, and you can see her whenever you want. She’ll never be around you while you’re using. You know that. It’s why you left her with me in the first place.”

“And if I don’t want to get clean? If I think I’m fine just the way I am?” She met my eyes, blunt, but drugged honesty staring back.

“Then I’m here to beg you to go to a place where you can at least get clean enough to be declared competent enough to sign your rights over.” My voice softened. She held all the power, and I hated it—Hannah’s life was too important for this.

“I signed my rights over,” she countered.

“You sent her with a note that was written like a school excuse. There’s a bit more to it than that.”

“Just clean enough to sign her over? And then you can adopt her? She’ll be safe?” she asked.

A trickle of hope slid through my chest. Maybe I was getting through to her.

“That’s it. And then it’s up to you if you want to get clean, or do...whatever the hell it is you’re doing. Just please don’t take Hannah down with you.”

She didn’t look up, just kept tracing Hannah’s handprint.

“I’ll go.”

The relief that swept over me nearly took me to my knees. She’d be safe. At least for a few days, she’d be safe and cared for, and sober. And she just might stay clean long enough to protect Hannah by signing her over.