Heathens & Hold Ups (Book 2 of the Heathens Duet)

Chapter 32- Riggs

Goosebumps coat my skin. My head is heavy and cloudy. Shivers rack my body and my lips are cracked. I'm so thirsty. My eyes are gritty and glued together like I've slept for far too long, days instead of the few hours I grab after switching with my relief.

Voices laughing nearby have me shifting and I almost black out at the blistering white spots that coat my vision and the pain all over my body that has me thankful for my thirst. Any water left in my body would be spilling down my cheeks. I imagine this is what it feels like getting tackled by the entire defensive line of a professional football team. A good one too. If the very thought of moving didn't send echoes of pain flowing through me, I'd curl into a ball to protect myself.

I'm going to be late to poker.

I almost choke on a laugh that I taper down at the absurd thought. Not the time Landry, I chide myself. Bigger problems right now. Moving for one. Not sure if my body will even cooperate or where I would even move too. A starting point would be great, but opening my eyes is a struggle and from the voices nearby, I'm still thought to be unconscious. Might as well be. My brain is the only thing running and it's hardly firing on all cylinders.

Bits and pieces float to me. Jenkins, his body twisted into unnatural angles, his eyes empty and unfocused. Buzzing, ringing ears. Rossi trapped, staring at me in fear, begging me with his eyes to fix things.

My nails dig into the skin of my palms. The ground beneath my body is solid. Cement or something similar. Manmade. It's cool to the touch. In a way, I'm grateful that I'm not stuck somewhere blistering hot. It's hard to thing when your brain is too busy cooking in your skull.

I can hear Gran's voice now telling Pop as she pours water on a towel for his head and neck, hands him a glass of sweet tea, and sends him on his way with a kiss before he would head back out to work on the farm. I miss Pop every day, but Gran practically raised me. Her last letter she filled me in on all that was going on at home. The damn Hamiltons were still asking about when she planned to sell the old farm. They'd stopped by a few times when Pop was alive, but he always cut them off before they made it to the front porch. Since his passing, they'd been insistent that Gran couldn't handle the place alone. They clearly hadn't expected that to just make her dig her heels in. I make sure when I was home, she doesn't have to lift a finger. Kace too. The rest of the Walkers help when they can. She employs a few people from town when she can, but does as much as she can herself.

She'll be alone if I don't make it home.

The Walkers will be sure to look after her I know. Kace's parents and sisters think of her as family and she them, but she'll be the last Landry left. I can't do that to her.

I find myself praying and wincing in guilt for all the times I dragged my feet when Gran would insist we go to church every Sunday morning. It's not that I don't believe exactly. More so that I don't believe in the institution. The way my Gran talked about the Holy Spirit and God and all that, it didn't seem to matter all that much if my butt was in a pew or not. An omnipresent entity that saw everything would care more about what kind of person I was rather than some perfect attendance award at some church filled with part time Christians. At least that's the way I always saw it.

As I clench my eyes shut, silently asking for help and hoping that at the very least Rossi was able to get away. Last I saw, he was still alive. I pray that if I'm not t able to make it out of this that Kace won't feel too guilty. He tried to talk me out of joining when a bad tackle took away his dreams of college ball. Fat chance. My brother from another mother. Together or not all. He never anticipated those words coming back to bite him.