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“The only fuckin’ thing she fussed about was that they took her damn scratch. That was it.” Couldn’t buy drugs if you didn’t have the green to pay for it. Instead, she had to score her smack in other ways.
“Well, of course. Then she didn’t have money for food and rent, right? To help take care of you?”
“Had nothin’ to do with takin’ care of me. Ended up raisin’ myself, mostly. It had to do with her drug habit.”
Syn shifted until she could see his face, planting her forearm on his chest and leaning into it. Why did the talk of his mother’s addiction make her perk up like that?
That night so fucking long ago, the night he found her in that crack house and ran from the pigs, she somehow survived that overdose. How? He had no fucking clue. Maybe at the time she was indestructible as a roach, too. Like her brother, Breaker, and that useless fuckhead who wanted him to call him Dad for whatever fucking reason.
Dodge had no idea why since the fucker had the paternal instinct of a flea. It was probably just a ploy to stay in good with his mother. And maybe even his uncle.
Dodge didn’t know, he also didn’t fucking care.
After that night, she cleaned up her act for a while. The main reason was she did some jail time, rehab and then had to live in half-way house where she was forced to stay clean.
The other reason was while she had been hospitalized, they found out she was pregnant.
Fucking pregnant.
How that baby survived, he had no fucking idea. He also never got to meet the kid since his mother gave it up for adoption at birth. For once she did something smart and unselfish. Though, he guessed she might have been pressured to do it.
“What was she doing?”
What?
Fuck.
“Anythin’ cheap and everythin’ she could get her hands on.”
Once she was done baking that kid and was free of the half-way house for good, she slipped right back into her old ways. She refused to talk about the baby. Dodge didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl, nothing.
He only hoped the kid had a better life wherever they ended up. Someone who actually cared and made the kid feel loved and wanted.
“What happened to her?”
“Five years ago, while I was doin’ a short stint in county, got notification that she was found dead after being raped and assaulted in a crack house.”
Another fucking crack house. The only thing that surprised him at the time was that she’d survived that long. He thought she’d eventually die of an overdose but he’d been wrong.
His lip curled up as he remembered the moment he found out. A screw had told him through the solid locked door of his cell.
She must have had his information on her somewhere. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d had his name and number tattooed onto her in case she turned up dead.
He cared as much about her dying as she had cared about him while she was living.
But then, nobody mattered to Sandra Duke. Not Dodge. Not the baby she gave up. Because if they mattered, she would’ve stayed clean and kept that kid. Not to mention, took care of the one she already had.
The one she forgot time and time again.
“Holy shit.”
Her whisper drew him from thoughts that could quickly send him down a dark and dangerous path. One he worked hard to stay off. “Let’s just say, it wasn’t a shock. The only thing that surprised me was that it hadn’t happened sooner. If she wasn’t gonna get clean for her kids, who the fuck was she gonna get clean for? Certainly not her damn self.”
“But she raised you, right? Even though she was an addict?”
“Barely. When all you do is focus on where your next high’s comin’ from, you forget to focus on your kid. Sometimes you even forget you have one.”
During her time served and also her time in recovery, he’d been thrown into a temporary foster care. Surprisingly, his uncle came and got him two months later. Most likely to try to collect the checks. Breaker had taken Dodge to some scummy apartment, stuck around for a few days, then left him there alone to raise himself.
So, Dodge did that. He finished raising himself.
He stole for scratch. He stole for food. He forged any checks that came in the second they landed in the mail slot so Breaker and Smokey couldn’t steal them. Those included the child support payments forwarded to that apartment.
Dodge did whatever he had to do to survive.
What he did not do was go back to Kevin Collins.
He did not need that motherfucker. He might not have much but he had his fucking pride.
Dodge basically turned feral and ran wild while learning how to stay off the pigs’ radar as best as he could. He also learned to talk his way out of a lot of situations and use his age as an excuse. He was “too young” to know better.
