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“Tell me that you’re not here,” Raven snapped.
“Sweetheart,” Connor murmured, tugging at her arm. “Let’s just go inside and the cops can take care of this—”
“I’m here and I willkeepbeing here until you show me some respect.”
“You mean until I give you money or put my job on the line and give you drugs,” Raven said.
A narrow-eyed glare. “That isnotwhy I’m here.”
Right.
She huffed out a sigh. “Oh, so you’re here to assault another one of my nurses?” she asked sarcastically. “Or maybe break equipment we need to take care of other patients so you can get your next fix? Oh!” She tapped her chin. “I know! You want me to write a prescription that could put my medical license at risk!”
“You are such a little cunt,” her mother snapped.
“And you aresucha good mom.”
Her mother lurched forward, got even more in Raven’s face.
For a second.
Because then Connor was there, putting his body between Raven and her mother. “I warned you before,” Connor gritted out. “Don’t talk to her that way. Don’t get in her face. Leave or I—”
Her mother scoffed. “You’ll what?You’regoing to take care of it?”
Connor stiffened, but her man didn’t take the bait, just kept his gaze forward, directed at her mother, and his body between them, a protective shield. “Go inside, sweetheart,” he told Raven. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Sylvia scoffed again. “Sweetheart.”
Raven’s temper flared, but she tamped it down. This wasn’t helping, this didn’t make the scars go away on her legs, didn’t make the abuse not happen.
“You can come every single day,” she said, voice quiet but firm, fierce,resolute.“But I will never, ever do anything to help you again. No drugs. No money. You can yell and scream and get in my face, but this is the last time I will acknowledge you.” She held her mother’s eyes, let her see the truth in her words. “You’re nothing to me.”
“You—”
“Go home,” she ordered.
“You can’t do that.”
Raven already had. She reached forward, snagged Connor’s hand.
“Raven Montergo! You will—”
“Let’s go,” she told him softly.
Connor glanced at her, eyes searching, then nodded, turned as she drew him back toward the doors, toward the department, toward a future that didn’t involve this woman.
That didn’t involve her past.
She swiped her badge at the reader near the door. It unlocked with a beep, and she’d stretched out her free arm to hit the button to open it when she heard it.
Footsteps moving quickly.
Rubber soles scuffing on the floor.
Her fingers hit the square metal plate. The door whooshed open.
“You ruined my life.” Hissed-out words.
