HEARTBURN
An Everyday Heroes World Novel
Tarrah Anders
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead are entirely coincidental.
© 2021 KB WORLDS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
Published by KB Worlds LLC.
Cover Design by: Sinful Cover Hoarder
Cover Image by: Deposit Photos
Editing by: Astronima's On Pointe
Formatting by: Tarrah Anders, LLC
Published in the United States of America
Contents
Introduction
Prologue
1. Kindra
2. Rogan
3. Rogan
4. Kindra
5. Rogan
6. Kindra
7. Rogan
8. Kindra
9. Rogan
10. Kindra
11. Rogan
12. Kindra
13. Rogan
14. Kindra
15. Rogan
16. Kindra
17. Rogan
18. Kindra
19. Rogan
20. Kindra
21. Rogan
22. Kindra
23. Kindra
24. Rogan
Epilogue
THE KB WORLD
Also by Tarrah Anders
About the Author
Also Written by K. Bromberg
Introduction
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the Everyday Heroes World!
I’m so excited you’ve picked up this book!
This book is entirely the work of the author who wrote it. While I allowed them to use the world I created and may have assisted in some of the plotting, I took no part in the writing or editing of the story. All praise can be directed their way.
I truly hope you enjoy HEARTBURN. If you’re interested in finding more authors who have written in the KB Worlds, you can visit www.kbworlds.com.
Thank you for supporting the writers in this project and me.
Happy Reading,
K. Brom
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK ALL THE FRONTLINE WORKERS. YOU ARE HEROES AND ANGELS.
THANK YOU FOR ALL THAT YOU DO!
Prologue
The Past
11 Years Ago
“Come on, Kindra, it’s not going to do anything if you have a hit. In fact, it’s medical grade shit, so it’s totally okay to smoke and I promise you, the best that you’ll ever get.” Smiley tells me with a gleam in his eyes as we all sit around the campfire.
Rogan has his arm slung over my shoulder, the glassy look in his eyes and the Cheshire cat grin on his face tells me that he’s high as a kite and likely isn’t even on this planet at the moment.
I look back to Smiley, who is holding out the joint in my direction.
“Medical grade shit, eh? Like doctors would prescribe it?” I question contemplating the escape from reality for just a short amount of time. It has been months since I’ve smoked anything.
I’m sure that a hit can’t hurt.
I reach out and low cheers erupt from our small group as I take a long hit from the blunt and hold it in, then blow it out a moment later. Rogan swings his head in my direction.
“How you feel there, babe?” Rogan asks with a sloppy smile.
I cough as I let the smoke out, and Rogan’s hand squeezes my shoulder as I take another long drag.
“Nice, babe, nice.” He nods, closing his eyes.
1 hour later
My face is hot, smoke fills my lungs, and my heavy eyes open to flames less than a foot from my face. The blood has rushed to my head as I’m upside down with the seatbelt being the only thing that is keeping me in place. My stomach, I feel a pinch, more pressure, and then all I feel is pain.
My stomach.
I’m pinned.
Pain.
No! No! No! This cannot be happening.
Turning my head to the passenger seat, pulling through the pain to look at Rogan. He looks asleep with blood dripping from the large cut on his forehead onto the roof of the car that is currently acting as the floor.
“Ro. Ro, baby. I’m going to need you to wake up.” I try to say calmly. “Ro!” I scream when that doesn’t work.
He doesn’t move.
I look down and see nothing but blood, and my entire body remains in pain.
What the hell happened?
1
Kindra
“Are you sure you’re wanting to move out of the city and go back and live in a small hokey-doke town?” My best friend, Cassandra asks loading a box into my truck.
“I’m pretty sure that the city cannot contain me anymore, so moving back home seems like the only logical reason. Besides, I feel like the city has given me all the tools that I needed in order to return home. That was always the plan in the long run.”
“You really think that just because you did what your family said you never would, that they would accept you with open arms?” she asks. “They weren’t the nicest, at least from what you’ve told me. They didn’t sound very accepting.”
“Cass, I’m not banished from Sunnyville, I’m just proving to them that I’m better than they said I would be.”
“And then what? You going to stay there and keep trying to prove to them that you’re different from they remember?”
“What’s the problem, Cass?” I ask.
She crosses her arms over her chest and defiantly looks at me. “I think you shouldn’t need to prove yourself to family. If they took the time to come here and see for themselves, they would get all the information that they need. But no, they haven’t once come to the city to see you. You don’t get phone calls from them, no mail, nothing. I just don’t want you to get disappointed when you’ve worked so hard.”
She has a point.
“I think that I need to do this for myself. Maybe it’s not for them. Maybe it’s only for me.” I mumble.
“Can’t you just send a holiday newsletter like most folks do?” She grins.
“I already got the position at the hospital; I need to see this through. Just think of it as an extension of my work experience.”
“And it won’t be forever?” She bats her eyes.
“I don’t want to make any promises. But you know that Sunnyville is only a few hours away. Remember, we’ve got all the wine that you could ask for too, you like wine, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I do like wine.” Cass nods.
“See, so when you come and visit me, it won’t be so bad.”
“You promise that we won’t stop being friends?” Cass asks.
“I promise you.”
She steps forward and hugs me. “This will just be like a break, and then once you get settled, once you
get used to whatever your new schedule will be, then we will plan for me to come out, right?” She says into my hair.
“Sounds like an absolutely awesome plan.” I reply, feeling a little choked up. I hug her a little harder and then we separate.
“Gosh, I feel like this is a breakup. Okay, before we start crying like babies, I think that was the last of the boxes. Are you going to be okay to drive, you can stay here another night and I really won’t complain.” She sniffs.
“I’m not going to prolong the inevitable. I’ve got to do this, and it’s going to be great.”
I rented a cute little place on the side of a hill. It’s a small cottage with plenty of character and just far enough away from my parents that they won’t immediately know that I’ve come back into town. I need a few days to acclimate and to figure out what I want to say to them before anything. It’s not like I haven’t had over ten years of conversations in the mirror, practicing my coming home.
Everything is different here in Sunnyville from when I was a teenager.
Ten years ago, my life fully went to hell. When my father took one last look at me in that hospital bed, shook his head and told me that I was never welcome back into their home. I took the rest of the money out of the bank account that I knew my parents would drain as soon as they remembered, got the hell out of town, and didn’t look back.
Now here I am. I’m back in Sunnyville with a plan to show those that thought so lowly of me, that I resulted to something and not nothing—as they continuously told me that I would. And with a plan to see the man who I loved and left without a word.
I know that I’m torturing myself by coming back here, but I’ve always been a glutton for punishment. What if my ex wants nothing to do with me? It would be understandable. Or what if he’s married now, happy with children of his own?
Things that I’ve wondered about over the years; and have kicked myself in the ass for not keeping track of life back home or reaching out all these years.
Can that be forgivable?
My truck is unpacked and I’m standing at the kitchen counter waiting for the frozen pizza to finish cooking. I grab one box that I left out and rummage through it. At the bottom, I find my senior year yearbook and place my hand on the cover.
This was a year that I didn’t want to happen. I wanted a do-over, asked for it so many times, but I never got it. I made mistakes, a lot of them.
But I was young, dumb, and thought that I knew all the answers.
I hated my parents and would defy them at every turn. However, I never asked for them to hate me back.
My crush became a reality when I turned from the ugly duckling to the beautiful goose the summer before senior year. You could say that I was a bit of punk and a whole lotta rock ’n roll with curves and sass. I knew it walking onto campus on the first day of school in a short skirt and with a sway of my hips—he took notice.
We were inseparable all the way until the day that I left.
The very same day that my life changed.
2
Rogan
The Past
11 Years Ago
The constant beeping is pissing me off, but my entire body is in pain with a heaviness on my left shoulder.
Even my eyes are hurting. I can’t open them, they feel too heavy.
What the hell happened?
Where am I?
“Doctor, any idea when he will wake up?” I hear my mother say in a worried tone.
She’s close in the same room, but I can tell that she’s not exactly right beside me.
“Don’t worry, it will be soon enough,” the other voice says in response.
“How long will he be here in the hospital? I don’t want to get a hefty insurance bill.”
“Ma’am, after his shoulder surgery, he will probably be here for about 3 days. We’ll remove the bandages and sutures and have him meet with a physical therapist. The physical therapist will give you take home exercises and additional information. He also must see an ortho in six to eight weeks about removing the cast on his leg. We’ll put in the orders to assure that at that time, the physical therapist switches up and begins strength training on his leg as well. There are public programs that you can sign up for that can assist you with medical bills, but it’s imperative that your son gets all this treatment. I would hate to see permanent damage from not getting the medical attention that he needs to heal from this accident.”
“Three days is going to cost so much,” she complains.
I force myself to open my eyes. It hurts, they feel swollen, and the room is bright.
But I do it.
“Ah, speaking of the devil.” A blurry figure steps closer to me, the man who has been speaking to my mother.
I blink a few times and finally my blurry sight gets better. The man next to me is wearing light blue scrubs with a stethoscope around his neck. He looks at his watch and then takes a pen out of his shirt pocket and writes something on the clipboard in his hand.
“Nice to see you awake, Rogan. How are you feeling?” He asks, leaning over my bed and waving a small light in front of my eyes.
“What happened?” I ask with my voice hoarse and my throat feeling like fire ripping through the tissue.
“You were in a car accident. You will have surgery on your left shoulder later this evening, but everything will be fine, and you’ll be out of here in a few days.”
“Kindra. Where is Kindra?” I ask.
“Who?” The doctor asks with confusion.
“Kindra is his girlfriend,” my mother answers him. “Were you guys together tonight?” she asks, turning to me.
“Yeah, we were both partying tonight at Smiley’s and—”
She stands up and her face goes rigid. “What do you mean by partying?” She takes a deep breath. “Kindra shouldn’t have been partying, you need to be more responsible, are you stupid, Ro?”
“Mom, where is Kindra?” I try to sit up, but I push up without thinking about my shoulder, and pain shoots up my neck and down to my fingertips as my back hits the bed, and I fight the scream that is threatening.
“Ah yes, you want to take it easy. You won’t be able to do the standard movements that you are used to. Pushing up on your left side will be one of them.” The doctor tells me, ignoring my angry mother opposite of him.
“Thanks Doc.” I grit my teeth.
“I haven’t seen Kindra. I’m not sure if she’s here, what her status is, nothing.” My mom throws up her hands in frustration.
“Doc? Can you tell me if there is a Kindra Mason here?”
“Well, I can tell you this much, her name isn’t on my list of rounds. But I know who you’re talking about. That’s Mike and Melanie’s kid, right?”
“Yeah, her.” I say, the lingering of my movements piercing through my body.
“I’ll see what I can find out,” he turns on his heel and walks out of the room.
My mom waits until he is out of the room, then she leans down.
She’s pissed off. Her nostrils are flaring and her jaw clenches.
“You idiot! What the hell were you thinking? You were partying? You let Kindra party? I swear, you better turn your shit around and make some heavy changes before it’s too late. Get a job, go to college, and start being a man.”
A moment later, the doctor returns by sticking his head into the doorway.
“Ms. Mason checked herself out, a little over an hour ago.”
3
Rogan
The Present
My feet carry me across the linoleum floor, into the elevator and up to the heli-pad to wait for Grayson to land his bird, so I can bring in my next patient.
I see Grayson in the pilot’s seat as he lowers his bird and sets it down on the rooftop. He salutes as I nod when the doors of the bird open.
“Twenty-six-year-old, male Caucasian. Bone protruding from the shin on his right anterior lower limb, likely a fracture on the right arm and broken ribs.” The medic yells over the roar o
f the blades as we rush to the elevator’s doors to the hospital.
“Superficial and deep wounds apparent across torso,” the other medic shouts and places a clipboard on the side of our patient while the elevator doors shut behind us.
Once the patient is situated in a private space in the emergency room, we have interns and nurses surrounding him, waiting for my orders.
I look at the chart, then lean over the patient.
“Mr. Barnes. Mr. Barnes, can you hear me?”
The man opens his eyes slowly and tries to speak.
“Hurts.” He hoarsely whispers.
“You’re going to be fine, you have some fractured bones, but we’ll get you all set in no time. Were you alone on the trail?”
“Yes,” he whispers.
“Okay, just sit back and hold tight.” I pat his shoulder lightly.
“I need a nurse. Where’s our nurses?” I ask the room.
“There’s only one nurse here and she’s tending to a car accident.”
“God damnit! This hospital needs more staffing.” I mutter under my breath.
Heartburn: An Everyday Heroes World Novel (The Everyday Heroes World) Page 1
