Page 5 of Forgiveness
CHAPTER THREE
Flux
Flux scrubbed ahand down his face and took another sip of water from his bottle. The late afternoon sun beat at his back, and the idea of hiding out somewhere to take a nap seemed damn appealing, but then it wasn’t as if he ever slept anymore. Not with the nightmares—they were always there waiting to haunt him.
A shiver licked down his spine and his breathing hitched. Vague images pushed their way through the back of his brain and played across his memory like an old VCR tape. All of his muscles tightened on instinct, and reality wavered around him for a second.
No. Fuck, no.He was locking that shit down. Not here. Not now.
The memories threatened to swamp him as he screwed his eyes shut and tried to focus on his breathing. A steady rhythm of in and out—it was some meditative BS he’d picked up in passing, and sometimes it threw the deadbolt back on the stuff that haunted him second to second, heartbeat to heartbeat. His jaw clenched as he vaguely heard the water bottle crunch beneath his fingers.
The goddamn blood.
There was so much red smeared across the countertops and on the hardwood floor. Pancakes were still sitting out. The griddle was smoking. He remembered thinking that the pancakes must be hard as bricks by now. A weird, detached fragment of a thought. More than a few of them were burned, which was typical for Alicia.
Emily’s toys were still scattered across the living room carpet.
She wasn’t in the room with her mother.
There was only one body lying naked and unseeing on the floor in the kitchen.
Flux grimaced and shook his head. Nothing cleared out the horror scrolling through his brain. Reality ripped into two pieces. He was somewhat aware that someone was speaking to him, but he couldn’t respond. As if he were someone else, he sensed his body lean against the rails of one of the animal pens, head down, while the reality of terror and agony from that day continued to play out before he could rub it away again.
Her limbs were bent at odd angles, her mouth open in a silent scream. One of her hands was formed into a claw, and he swallowed past the horror that prickled across his skin.
Someone’s hand landed on his shoulder, dragging him backward from the kitchen.
He flung himself at them, fighting to stay near Alicia. There were words, soothing at first, and then pissed, but he didn’t hear any of it as his brain snapped and he fired off words of rage and self-hatred. He became a tornado of hate, singularly focused on staying with his wife and their—
“Yo, Flux. You okay?”
The voice shot through him and he struggled to stand up straight and pay attention while the painful memories of his past still clung to him like cobwebs.
“Yeah. I’m … uh, solid,” he rasped out, stumbling as he blinked against the suddenly overwhelming glare of the sun. Bit by bit he clawed back to himself as memories faded into the background where they belonged, and he shoved the lock back on the evils of his past.
“You look a little pale. Do you want me to get you some juice or something?”
Flux blinked and focused on his bullfighting co-worker, Pete, as the guy took a step further into his personal space and sized him up. They worked together hand in hand in the ring, and lives counted on them being in sync, but Flux didn’t consider Pete a friend. Since Flux had gone nomad, he lived a solitary life, and on the road, his only friends were bitterness and recriminations. Once in a while, he’d return to Pinewood Springs and meet up with his brothers. He’d crash at the clubhouse and lose himself in booze and club girls—anything to stop the memories and numb the pain. His brothers saw the hollowness in his eyes, they’d pointed it out to him, but he didn’t need the brothers to tell him he was a shell of his former self. That was what guilt, self-loathing, and loss did to a person—it made them not give a shit about anything.
“You still with me, dude?” Pete flicked his Stetson up onto his head.
“Uh … yeah. Just didn’t sleep much last night.”
A grin cracked his face. “Did you get lucky?”
Flux shook his head. “No, nothing like that. It’s just so fuckin’ hot around here.”
“Isn’t your AC workin’ in your room?” Pete’s eyes narrowed as he leaned in closer, his gaze running over Flux’s face.
“It is.” Flux stepped back.
“Jesus, you look like you just upended three pounds of raw hamburger meat into your system.” Pete sniffed and grimaced. “And you smell like a fucking bar. What’s going on with you, man?”
“I’m good … just didn’t get much sleep, like I said.” Flux pulled off his bandana, wiped the cold sweat prickling across his face, and retied it back on his head. “I’ll be cool. Don’t fuckin’ fuss about me, dude.” He knew he’d overdone the boozing and the smoking the night before, especially since he had to be on his game in the arena—the bull riders’ lives depended on it. But deep down, Flux knew that after the rodeo closed up for the night, he’d pull a repeat of the night before and the one before that … and all the other nights. They were all the same except the chick never got away. Duchess was a first for him.
Flux kicked at the dirt, coughing when dust invaded his nostrils. He was still pissed that the sweet chick hadn’t come back to his room the night before.What the hell went wrong?All the cards in his hand had been laid out perfectly, and she should’ve been his in a heartbeat. He’d be damned if he admitted that taking her back to his place would’ve meant more to him than just hooking up with the average biker groupie.
“Sure,” Pete said, still eyeing him up.
