Page 59 of The Players

I shook her shoulder. “Savannah.”

Nothing.

I shook her harder. “Savannah.”

Then a coughing fit hit me. The smoke was bad. It burned my eyes, nose, and throat. Every breath was like inhaling embers. I coughed and tried to rouse her. She didn’t move.

“Vivian!”

I blinked up. It was my grandmother’s voice.

“Gram!” I stumbled to my hands and knees and then my feet, but couldn’t tell between the fire and the smoke where she might be. I took tentative steps with my hands out as I coughed and coughed. The smoke was so thick. Everything was on fire.

“Gram!”

More fire rained down. It sounded as if the roof was going to go. The metal shelves roared with burning cardboard boxes and bags of blackening chips. The walls and ceiling seemed to be alight too. If we didn’t get out of here soon, we’d all be dead. But where were the exits? Where was my grandmother? I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face anymore.

Suddenly, a hand was on my wrist. I started to yank it away, thinking it was Savannah back for more, but a male figure appeared through the smoke.

Easton.

He wore his dress shirt wrapped around his face, something he whipped off and tied around mine, giving me a filter to breathe through that helped a little. Then he grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the blaze.

“My grand… mother…” I said between coughs.

He didn’t look back, yanking me with urgency toward a rectangle of light.

We burst out of the building and into fresh air just in time. I fell to my knees on the sideway, gasping and coughing.

“My grand… mother…” I repeated, gasping and gagging.

“There,” Easton said before he doubled over with a bout of coughing.

I looked to where he was pointing. Mills was helping my grandmother in an ambulance. Randy, Lowell, and Hector stood beside him, their faces marked with concern. An oxygen mask obscured my grandmother’s face, but she appeared to be alert. She waved a hand at me.

“Gram.” I peered through tear-stained eyes at her, hoping my face offered some calm and not the utter panic that was still blasting through my system. Then I turned to Easton. “Sa…van…nah.”

He blinked back at me, his face as expressionless as stone. “Who?”

I stared at him. He was going to leave her there? That didn’t seem right, even with all that she’d done. If she was alive, she should be brought to justice, not roasted alive beside the canned beans. I opened my mouth to speak, but only coughs came out. An EMT appeared, taking my hand and leading me to the ambulance.

“Are you alright, miss? Any burns? Are you having trouble breathing?”

Soon, I was on a gurney with an oxygen mask in another ambulance, my ability to speak rendered useless by the coughing fits that seemed endless. Before I knew what was happening, I was being whisked away to the sound of sirens, leaving the store and the awful events of that night behind me in a cloud of smoke.

THREE WEEKS LATER

There was a knock on my bedroom door shortly before it blasted open. Randy stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips and her mouth pursed in an amused smile.

“Are you ready yet, or what? Come on, slow poke! The boys are out in the driveway.”

I glanced at her from the lighted mirror propped on my dresser. She wore a cute red top, black leggings, and combat boots. It wasn’t hard to note Lowell’s influence on her style. There were fewer wild bows and more leather, less rainbow and more black, but I thought it suited her tough but vibrant personality nicely.

Randy wasn’t the type to change her personality for a guy, even if the guy was super special.

The day after a fire consumed most of Randy’s parents’ grocery store, Lowell had shown up. With gloves and a no-nonsense attitude, he worked alongside Randy and her parents to salvage what they could. She said he didn’t ask for a single thing, didn’t say much at all really, but worked twelve hours that day and twelve hours the next.

After that, it was inevitable that they would become a couple. And a very cute couple they were at that.

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