Page 31 of Forgiveness
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Flux
By the timetheir food had come, Maggie had managed to get a few more details out of Flux. The more he let go, the easier it was to give her the small stuff. Silly bits like his favorite color being green, or the fact that he didn’t watch TV but kept it on in the background at night because the voices helped him fall asleep. Real amateur bullshit. But Maggie ate it up as if he were feeding her filet mignon. It baffled the hell out of him, but it gave him plenty of wiggle room to ask some questions of his own.
“Why do you hitch a little bit when you take a deep breath?” Flux put another nasty ass bite of overdone strip steak into his mouth and chewed until his jaw hurt.
He watched as she stilled, her fork hesitating over her salad before she caught herself and shoved the utensil into the dish so loud that the noise seemed like it ricocheted across the diner. Maggie winced, tucking her shoulders in before chewing the bite for too long. Putting the fork on her plate, she looked at the table and wiped away imaginary crumbs before speaking.
“One of the first professional matches I competed in when I started racing didn’t go well.” She left it at that and Flux blinked, completely unsatisfied with the answer.
“Yeah, I’m gonna need more than that, Duchess.”
Her eyes narrowed as if she was trying to judge how far he was going to take things. Flux had no intention in letting up until he got the full answer. Double standard? Fuck, yeah. Did he care? Not one fucking bit.
After probing for the next several minutes, Maggie finally threw back her head in frustration then glared at him. “Enough already.” She took a sip of water. “My first horse took a turn too quickly and missed one of the barrels. I overcorrected with my hands at the reins, which was a stupid newbie mistake. Totally my fault …” She paused, playing with the fork in her salad. “When I pulled my horse too tight, he tripped and floundered, and I went flying into a fence rail. I suffered a bunch of bumps and bruises, and one of my ribs punctured a lung, so the doctor said I’d probably have to do some therapy to get it back to working properly.”
Maggie wouldn’t look at him. The aversion made him tense as their moods shifted, and he tried to think of what to say since Maggie was obviously upset.I shouldn’t have pushed it.
“Let me guess, you didn’t do the therapy?”
“It interfered with my training schedule.” She gave him a brief little smile before her emotions closed up again. “My horse went lame. He had to be put down because we couldn’t guarantee his quality of life, and I didn’t have the money to pay for his upkeep as well as my new horse’s. It fucking sucked.” She went back to brushing away crumbs that weren’t on the table.
Flux leaned forward. “You feel guilty.”
Maggie’s gaze snapped to his. “Wouldn’t you, if you took a life like that?”
He plopped another shitty steak bite into his mouth, giving him an excuse to avoid her scrutinizing look or answering that question. No need for Maggie to know the nitty-gritty of the outlaw lifestyle. She didn’t have to know Flux had killed many times before and it hadn’t been animals. That shit could stay where he’d left it, with the Insurgents, until he needed to pick it back up again.
“Hey, Maggie, I didn’t think I’d see you here today. What luck for me to see my pretty girl.”
Flux stiffened as anger pulsed through his veins. He didn’t have to turn around to know it was Chet. Flux looked at Maggie and her face was tight and pale, but her eyes pleaded with him to ignore the fucker, so Flux took a large gulp of Coke and stared straight ahead.
Then, Chet stood in front of their booth with a cocky smirk plastered on his face, but his brown orbs shot daggers at both of them. “I’ve seen you two around together lately, so our girl here must’ve gotten sick of good dick and gone looking for something easier. And to imagine, she decided to go slumming instead of going with the obvious choice.”
“Clearly you weren’t the superior choice,” Flux growled before he slowly rose from his seat. “And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll apologize to the lady and get the fuck outta here. It’d be a shame if you couldn’t compete for that prize money tonight.”
Flux took a step forward into Chet’s personal space. To his credit, the fucker didn’t back down, but then Flux didn’t think he had much in the brain department—too many falls on his head in the arena, he supposed.
“Flux,” Maggie said gently, almost a warning.
Too fucking late.
He took another step until he was standing right in front of Chet. Flux watched out of the corner of his eye as the diner’s owner stepped behind the counter and signaled for the waitresses to stay behind as well. Flux wasn’t planning on making the diner a blood bath, he’d do it on the concrete in the alley.
“Let’s take this outside, and I’ll fuckin’ teach you how to respect a woman.”
Chet’s face clenched down and Flux watched a hint of uncertainty ripple through his expression. Yeah, Flux was fucking used to that: big boys always wanted to puff their damn chests out until Flux called them on it. The majority of the pussies ended up backing the fuck off, and he figured the cowboy asshole was going to talk some shit before he took off in his pickup, forgoing the alley entirely. Too damn bad—Flux was itching to beat the shit out of him.
Flux cracked his knuckles then clenched his hands into fists. “You apologizing to the lady, or are we gonna settle this in the alley?”
Chet stood up straighter and thrust his chest out. “Hell, no. I’m not saying jack shit to your biker bitch. You want my leftovers, you take ’em. But you better believe she’ll be thinking of me when you’re between the sheets.” He wrinkled his nose and fixed his gaze on Maggie. “Trash should be with trash.”
Flux shot a look at Maggie to check how she was handling everything. She was tense in her seat, hands clasped in her lap as her lower lip trembled.
“And trash like you needs to be taken the fuck out.” Before Chet could reply, Flux nabbed Chet’s jacket as the guy tried to shake him off with surprise written all over his movie star mug.
“Get your hands off me,” Chet snarled, batting away at Flux’s grip as he escorted him farther away from Maggie.
