Page 18 of Forgiveness
CHAPTER TEN
Flux
The more Fluxstared at the bottles strewn across the kitchen countertop, the less he understood where he was going with his life. He could still taste Maggie on his lips and feel her delicately writhing beneath him. Nothing kept his concentration. He ran his hands through his hair and let out a long, slow breath. Maybe it was supposed to bring him back to his senses, but closing his eyes merely slapped a 3D montage of their make-out session across the backs of his eyelids.
He growled with the need to go back to the stables and possess every inch of that woman.Fuck!The whole thing had thrown him so out of whack, he didn’t know up from down anymore. There had only been one time in his life when he’d felt so torn up about a woman and that was when he’d met his wife, Alicia.
Flux cradled his head in his hands. There wasn’t a single fucking second that he didn’t think about her … aboutthem,unless he was so damn high or drunk to feel anything.High and drunk—sounds good to me, he thought, especially with his memories threatening to open up wide and swallow him whole again.Fuck!He grimaced. He wanted to be with Maggie in the worst way. Duchess was different than all the other women he’d taken to his bed—from that revolving door of his sex life. She was—
“Don’t say it, don’t you dare fuckin’ say it, asshole,” Flux said, looking deadass serious in the mirror. “She’s not special. She’s a piece of tail, just like any of the others, and if you’re smart, you’ll stay the fuck away from her for good and find someone who is more your goddamn speed. Some sweet piece who has more tits and ass than brains.” Flux clenched and unclenched his jaw. “Fuckin’ hell, get it together.” He leaned against the counter and found himself on the floor, knees to his chest and head in his hands. His fingers tightened around his skull until everything ached.
The idea of getting close to someone again drove him nearly out of his mind with fear. Only one other person knew him on that level, and she’d been dead and gone since he’d turned nomad after the funeral. Alicia would be his one and only, because he sure as fuck didn’t deserve anyone else. That’s why he only chose women for fucking and getting his basic needs met, not for dating or getting to know them. That was bullshit, and after what he’d done, he didn’t have the right to be happy and in a relationship.
Then there was Maggie, and damn, if she wasn’t different. She was quality, and that was why the best course of action was either to fuck Duchess’s brains out of his system or to ignore her completely and hope she took the hint.Fuck. Nothing’s ever easy.He brooded without touching his stash, all the while aware that the longer he remained sober, the quicker his demons would come out—and they never played nice.
But the way he felt after he’d had Duchess in his arms, with her hard nipples pressed against his chest and her soft moans that’d driven him crazy, it was fitting that the demons should torment him. Letting his guard down with Maggie was stupid as hell, so it was only right to be reminded of the stark reality that he’d brought the people in his life nothing but pain and death … That he was a selfish, narcissistic asshole at the end of the day, who didn’t deserve a second chance at any kind of life outside of being a walking skeleton. Flux needed to do penance for kissing Duchess and allowing his brain to think, for even a single second, that he was entitled to something for himself that made him happy.
How could he live with himself if he disgraced Alicia’s memory? The memory of their daughter—
Flux balled his fists and slammed his left hand down into the badly chipped bathroom floor tiles. Again. Again. And again. A burning ache washed up his arm from the ricochet working up his muscles. But nothing mattered, none of it mattered anymore.
There was nothing left for him aside from misery and pain.
Skank perfume still lingered all over his cut and jeans, soaking into the seat of his bike no matter how much driving wind ripped through his body. Flux had been gone on a charity poker run with the club. Alicia hadn’t wanted him to leave, but they’d been spitting insults at each other for a few weeks and he was fucking ready to break the cycle.
Now, he regretted spending the night three towns over with his brothers watching a bunch of strippers grind and wiggle all over a pole while his wife was home alone with their daughter. The least he could’ve done was come home after the run had finished that day, but he was still pissed at Alicia, and he needed to unwind after a long three days to throw back shots and shoot the shit with his friends. He should’ve ridden home, admitted he was being a bag of fucking dicks, and taken one on the chin so they could’ve made up and things would’ve gone back to normal around their house.
The way Banger had made it sound over the phone, Flux didn’t know if he would have the opportunity to make it right.
Banger had said it was bad. Really fucking bad. Hadn’t offered much more info than that though—just told Flux to ride like the devil was chasing him until he was home.
Goddamn, he couldn’t make it home fast enough. Early fall weather wreaked havoc with his brain and he’d ducked, dodged, and weaved around every slow asshole on the road to get to where he’d needed to be with one singular thought in his head.
Whatever had happened to them, it had to be okay. They would be okay.
When he’d pulled up outside his small house with the grinning pumpkins and plastic slide in the front yard, police cruisers were parked out front, lights flashing blue and red. The whole nine yards. A pit of fear dropped hollow and nagging into his stomach. Flux had barely stopped the bike and put it in park before he jumped off and dashed halfway across the front lawn.
People had tried to stop him. A bunch of them. All suits or badges.
It didn’t fucking matter to him. He’d blown through all of them, their words were like gnats in his ears as he’d forced the front door open and pushed past the yellow crime-scene tape.
The smell. That was what had hit him first before anything else.
Like unwashed pennies and something deeper, earthier, like rot in his nose. He was a member of an outlaw MC and knew that smell intimately. The reaper had come to his home to collect—and Flux hadn’t been there to stop the sonofabitch.
A jolt of shock had kept him locked in place. Disbelief. Denial.
The fucking badge’s words from outside the house came flooding back to him: “killed … sorry … don’t go in there … things you don’t want to see … death.”
Death. Death. Death.
The last one had pinged between his ears as a high-pitched ringing rocked through his skull like he’d been at a concert for too long.
Flux had walked like a zombie into the kitchen, following his nose.
Alicia was sprawled out on the hardwood floor, clothes ripped off her body, and so much fucking blood. Multiple stab wounds: chest, hip, back, hands. A disconnect had ripped through him while he tried to piece together what he was actually seeing in his family’s home.
With the image of his wife still fresh in his mind, he’d vaulted through the rest of the house.
