Heart Broke
Broken Homes Series
Angela Stevens
Rey Ryan
Babe Fuel Books & The Cat’s Pyjamas
Copyright © 2018 by Rey Ryan & Angela Stevens
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Acknowledgments
About Angela Stevens
About Rey Ryan
Also By Angela Stevens
Also By BabeFuel
Chapter 1
RICK
Baby, wake up.”
A swat smacks across the top of my head and I jerk, coming fully alert. The rusty springs under my mattress squeak. “Ah, Ma! What the fuck?”
“Don’t cuss at me, Ricky honey. Get up. It’s your first day. You don’t want to be late. Teddy pulled a lot of strings to get you that job and you need to be on time.”
I roll over to my side and a wet kiss lands on my temple. “Oh God, Ma!" I jerk again. “That’s gross. Why are you in my room?”
“Because I love you and I need you to be the man I know you can be. Get out of that bed and go to work.” My mother runs her fingers through my wavy black hair, black hair that matches hers. Although hers, of course, is longer. “Why didn’t you get a haircut like I told you yesterday?”
She’s hovering. Her shadow floats above me, which is annoying, so I roll to my back, squinting my eyes open.
My blue eyes meet her dark chocolate ones. “I had other things to do.”
Ma pushes on my shoulder. “So, where’s the money I gave you?”
I look away into the window. “I had to buy gas, so I could get to the barber but then I got a call from a buddy who needed some help with his car and—”
“I don’t want to hear it, Ricky,” she hisses, “because I know what happened. By the time you were done hustling for car parts, you ended up with less money than when you started. Do you have any gas left to get to work?”
She asks like she thinks she knows everything. Although it’s true I used all the money and I’m out of gas, she has no clue that I was hustling booze and not auto-parts.
She sighs. “This is why you need a real job. It’s not just for the money. You need to stop getting distracted. I can drop you off, but you need to be dressed by the time I’m ready to leave. So, get your hand out of the front of your pants, stop playing with your willy, and wake up.”
As if she is trying to re-baptize me, my mother plants one more slobbering smooch across my forehead before I watch her turn around to leave my room. I’m forced to use the full length of my forearm to wipe my mother’s sacred saliva clean off my face and I hear a chuckle. As I pull my hand off my junk, Teddy appears in the doorway.
I’m not surprised he’s been watching us, and although the interlude between my mother and I is over, Teddy is still watching my mother. His eyes are fixed on her and I swear, it looks like he’s flexing his bare biceps and chest as she walks passed him. I’m thinking the white towel around his waist has been purposefully wrapped and tucked low at the hip to show off the bulge between his legs on purpose. I lean over the edge of the bed and all I see is an ashtray with a couple of cigarette butts. I pick one up and throw it.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I snap.
Teddy pales and quickly turns his head back in my direction when the butt hits him in the forehead. “What?” his hazel eyes blink and his shoulders shrug as if he doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about. He scratches his head of wet brown hair, which was cut—cropped in the back and parted to the side at the top—as instructed by my mother, yesterday.
“I saw you looking at my ma.” I roll out of bed, reaching back in the front of my pants to adjust the kink in my junk. “Don’t look at her like that again,” I warn, bending down to pick up another butt and flick it at him.
“Cut that shit out! You’re trashing the house. Have some respect for fuck’s sake.” Teddy bends down, picking up the butts. He looks angry. His brows furrow at the center, angling downward, which I’m not surprised to see considering his newfound superiority complex. But the way he bites his bottom lip and the redness in his cheeks says he’s guilty.
He was totally checking out my ma. Doesn’t he know she’s too old for him?
To think, a twenty-year-old and a thirty-three-year-old together is enough to make me nauseous... The idea of Teddy and my mother gettin’ it on is enough to make me—
Bile rises at the back of my throat. Fuck that!
I don’t even want to think about the two of them together.
“Good moooorning,” sings Zane, using his overly dramatic baritone voice, which quickly turns stern. “Hey, did one of you Pranks take my deodorant?” Zane flips his blond hair back and I’m beside myself. He got a haircut as well just like Ma told him as well! Though, I don’t know why he bothered as the back has been cropped but the top still falls long enough to cover his eyes and nose. What a dumb waste of money. And the dummy is also wearing nothing but his tighty-whities like he’s trying to show off his thighs in addition to his package.
I’m fuming again. “What the fuck is wrong with you two?”
“What?” cries Zane with a cock of his head and another flip of his hair. “What got you up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”
Of course, neither of them can see the inappropriateness of this situation as my mother walks by in the hall. “Can you not see my mother is walking around?”
Zane grimaces, “Yeah, so?”
So? So! “Put some damn clothes on!”
Zane laughs his typical open-mouthed, I-don’t-give-a-shit because I-don’t-know-any-better-I’m-a-jester laugh. “We’ve been living here for years, Riccardo,” he sings out of tune and points. “Your mom is pretty much our mom. She doesn’t give a shit about what we wear around the house.”
Walking over to the corner, I flip through a pile of clothes in a laundry basket. “She’s not your mom. She’s my mom, which means even if she doesn’t give a shit, I do!” I throw on a tank and then the navy-blue, short-sleeve, button-up collared twill shirt—my new uniform—over my head and slip off my jeans. Pulling up the matching twill navy pants, I zip up my fly and stomp between the Pranks still standing in my doorway, pushing them out of the way to walk out.
“Jeez. Fuck. Fine,” says Zane. “But I’m not the one you need to worry about. We all know it’s Teddy’s dream to move to Cougar Town and marry your mom one day.”
“Oh, fuck you,” snarls Teddy as his fist lands hard somewhere against Zane’s bare upper torso.
Zane chokes on his own air but it’s Teddy that needs a punch, because Zane is right. I suspect Teddy has been crushing on my mom.
Some days, I hate these jokers and wonder why I ever brought them home and why I ever convinced my mother to let them stay the night. If I’d known then that one night would’ve turned into weeks and then a whole four years, I would’ve l
eft those assholes on the streets.
Making my way into the bathroom, I lock the door behind me. I don’t want to be bothered by those Pranks. Zane is nineteen but still behaves like a twelve-year-old who wants to be like Justin Bieber. Ever since Zane saw a bunch of girls on the bus years ago ogling Bieber in a Calvin Klein ad wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, Zane decided he wanted to be a pop star and it’s the reason he walks around singing in his tighty-whities all the time.
It isn’t as bad as Teddy though, who’s suddenly turned fifty. He’s been behaving like he’s somebody’s dad lately. If he keeps it up, I might have to kick his not-old-enough-to-drink, twenty-year-old ass out.
Me? I’m eighteen, which sucks because it makes me the youngest in the house. They remind me every day about it—treating me like I’m some dumb kid. And I don’t know why, but Teddy has been behaving like he’s found some morals and it pisses me off. More recently, he’s even been siding with my mother on my behavior, like he thinks he’s my father.
But I’m no man’s kid. I’m a self-made man. If my ma knew half the shit I do to help keep our household together, she’d freak. And I’m not the only one. Zane and Teddy have always been hustlers like me. It’s how we ended up coming together. A while back, we ran drugs for a guy who we saw get shot by a competitor. Luckily, we were hiding and the killer never saw us, but we ended up in possession of some high-quality dope. As teenagers, we were admittedly scared of getting shot ourselves so we hid the drugs, waiting for someone to come looking for it.
But nobody did.
Zane and Teddy slept over the night of the shooting. Scared to go home where they’d virtually be alone because their own parents never cared about either of them, Zane and Teddy stayed a second night and then another. Just a few months after we hid the drug stash and they’d pretty much moved in, Teddy ran into this rich Prick, a junior in high school from Uptown willing to pay a load of cash for some real dope...
And hence the real reason I’m starting this job today.
Smearing toothpaste across my toothbrush, I wonder if rich Pricks use the same kind of toothpaste as we do. Uptown rich Pricks like the same kind of drugs as Pranks from Downtown do, so I don’t see why they wouldn’t use the same kind of toothpaste.
As I brush my pearly whites, I get excited thinking about all the money we’re going to make from those rich Uptowners. Teddy got me a job, working in maintenance, at a private school after he screwed a rich Prick’s mother who was an instructor at the school. Teddy gave the Dean some sob story about me being a lost youth who needed direction and pitched me as a charity case who could learn from the high standards of the school and its students. The pitch worked, and I was sold to St. Mary’s Preparatory Academy of Excellence as a slave laborer for twenty-five cents above minimum wage.
Maintenance, however, is not my real job. It sucks knowing I’ll be sweeping floors, emptying trash, and shit but I like the idea those rich Pricks will be at my mercy—dipping into their trust funds to get high.
Wetting my hair and raking my comb against my scalp, I look in the mirror and give my reflection a smirk—a cocky smirk—that makes the dimple in my right cheek bury deeper. It’s the smirk chicks can’t resist.
Teddy says the brats at this school are so hard up for bad boys, the chicks will be unable to resist me.
Which, I’m sure they won’t.
I’ve never been with an Uptown chick before, but I’ve caught plenty of ‘em looking. If what Teddy says is true, then there’ll be plenty of added benefits to this job and my cock will get plenty of Uptown play.
Not to mention, Teddy says Francesca Hancock is a student at St. Mary’s and suddenly, my dick is about to poke its way out my pants when I hear Francesca’s voice blaring out the television from downstairs.
Quickly, I spin around and my angst is heightening as I fumble with the lock on the bathroom door. I finally twist and pull on the handle, then hustle down the stairs, flying over the last five steps with a single jump.
Zane, the fucker, is still in tighty-whities and has his hand on the remote control, teasing me with it.
“Don’t change it!” I call out and attempt to snatch the remote from Zane.
He’s laughing and I’m about to tackle and choke him but I’m easily distracted by the girl on TV. Leaning over the back of the couch, I’m mesmerized once again by Francesca. Blonde hair, blue eyes—she’s like an angel. The only thing missing on TV are her wings.
The commercial is for Spin Motors, the car chain owned by her father. It is ridiculously cheesy but I know I’m not the only one that stops to watch Francesca when she’s on the tube. Even Jimmy, the ten-year-old Prank from next door, gets a woody whenever he barges into our house to steal after-school snacks and watch television because his chronic opiate-addicted mother can’t keep her fridge stocked—unlike her medicine cabinet.
On screen, Francesca smiles and I lean further over the couch. This is my favorite part! The camera zooms in and there’s a sparkle in her eye. She blinks distracted by something in the distance. Her smile widens as if she was instructed to regain her focus and then...
There it is.
The dimple that matches mine, except it’s on her left cheek instead of right.
The television turns off. No! I feel like I’ve suddenly gone blind. My eyes burn—I’m so pissed! There was another part! One more part to the commercial at the very end that I hate to miss.
“Motherfucker!” I snap and whip my head to look in Zane’s direction. I’m going to kill that fucking Prank.
Except, it’s not Zane, it’s Ma holding the remote. She cocks her head. “Ricky, are you ready to go?”
Ma has her red waitress uniform on. I hate that uniform. It’s too short and I hate that diner, as well. It’s too fucking crowded and I’m not allowed to go in there. The owner caught me stealing utensils—a couple of forks—and warned me never to come back or he’d fire my mother.
In her hand, she has another uniform. A green floral printed shirt with dark green pants pressed and folded underneath. I hate that hotel. I hate that my mother is a cleaning lady at that hotel, which I’m also not allowed to go into either after I got caught stealing sheets, which is why my mattress still has none.
At least, there’s not a third uniform. There used to be a third until Teddy took the job at the school and he started paying some of the bills. He keeps the money he hustles for himself though and I often wonder what he does with all that cash. He doesn’t buy cigarettes like he used to and he doesn’t waste it on car parts or partying anymore like I admittedly have a tendency to do.
“Ricky?” Ma calls out again. “Are you ready to go?”
Clearly, I’m ready. “Don’t I look like I’m ready to go?”
“Mmm, you look very nice, honey,” my mother replies.
Nice? That’s not exactly the look I was going for. A wickedly handsome devil is what I was thinking, but I can’t trust my mother’s opinion. She did try to re-baptize me with her divine spit earlier.
“Hey, Teddy,” I call out to him in the kitchen. He’s finishes spreading peanut butter on a couple of slices of toast. Teddy comes over, handing a piece of toast to my mother and then to me, giving me a quick look over. “Well?” I ask. “How do I look?”
Teddy takes a bite of his toast and his speech is garbled from the peanut butter pasted between his teeth. “Like you’re going up in the world.”
Chapter 2
FRANNY
Bathroom. Now.”
Shoot, why hasn’t my father left for work already? “Daddy…?”
“Get that muck off your face.”
He slams his paper on the table and glares at me. I could argue but that would lead to yet another scene and I’m already running late. Bambi and Krystal will be here any minute and I’m not going to give him the pleasure of embarrassing me in front of my girlfriends.
Back in the bathroom, my face is redder than the blush I applied fifteen minutes ago and, while I scrub at the mak
eup, I sweep my high-end mascara wand, blusher compact, and lip gloss into my school bag so I can reapply later.
It’s so damn annoying because when I look in the mirror I see this young woman of eighteen—well, not quite, I have another few weeks to wait—but when my father, Brock Hancock, looks at me, all he sees is a Goddamn six-year-old!
When I storm back into the kitchen, there’s a beaming smile on his smug round face. “Better. Now fix that skirt.”
“Daddy…” I let my objection trail off as I unfold the top of my plaid skirt. Another f-ing yard of material appears and the pleating now hangs below my knee. Who the hell was in charge of deciding the length of this crappy skirt? Tall or short, the thing looks frumpy on everyone. Even my great granny would balk at wearing this, and she reminisces about the good-old-days of the fifties!
“Happy now?” I try to keep the insolence out of my question, but I have never been good at biting my tongue.
Daddy glares back at me and I lower my eyes. If I say much more, he’ll blow up in my face. It’s not the yelling I dread, but the list of stuff he’ll threaten to take away from me. He follows through too, and I only just got my car back from last time.
He grunts a reply and his eyes fall to my shirt.
Seriously?
Every freakin’ morning it’s the same old shit. I’m never allowed to leave without looking like the second grader he wants me to still be! I fasten the next button on my starched white blouse and untie the front of it, tucking it inside my pleated skirt. “No one wears it like this, Daddy. Do you want me to get laughed at?”
Heart Broke (Broken Home Book 1) Page 1