Hesitation
1120 Words
Alex:
The diner on the edge of town smelled like scorched bacon, syrup-soaked regret, and yesterday’s secrets.
It was the kind of place where the coffee came black and bitter, and the waitresses are the kind of women who could take a punch and keep pouring your refills. The kind of place that belonged to us, not because it was claimed, but because it was feared.
Every booth was a battlefield. Every eye that looked up when I walked in was loaded.
And I f*****g felt it.
The heat. The suspicion. The shift in air like a storm crowding the room.
All because I’d been seen.
With him.
“Let them look. Let them whisper. I’ve survived worse than their judgment,” I thought to myself as I straightened my leather jacket.
I shoved the door open with my boot and didn’t wait for it to close behind me. My hips rolled with every step, keys hooked in one belt loop, confidence in the other. A walking contradiction—skin tight, heart armored.
The patch on the back of my cut marked me as one of them.
But the blood on my hands?
That was always mine.
“Alex,” Belle called from the booth in the back.
Her voice tried to sound normal. Light. Girlish.
But I heard the edge under it.
I slid in next to her, thigh to thigh, and dropped my sunglasses onto the table. My coffee was already there. Black. No sugar.
“You were late,” Evie muttered, chewing on a toothpick and not looking at me.
I shrugged off my jacket, letting it fall open just enough to show the knife clipped to my waistband. “Wasn’t sure I felt like coming.”
“You knew they’d be watching.” Belle’s eyes flicked past me. “Everyone saw, Alex.”
“Good.” I took a sip of coffee. “Let them.”
No one said his name.
But he might as well have been sitting at the f*****g table.
The cop.
Luke.
Broad-shouldered, quiet, and twice as f****d up as he pretended not to be.
He had no business touching me.
I had no business letting him.
But last night, on that hill, under the stars, I saw something behind his eyes that scared the s**t out of me.
Recognition.
Like he knew me. Like he could see me beneath the leather and the violence.
And if he saw too much, I’d have to bury him for it.
“You’re gonna catch heat,” Evie said, her tone clipped like she was doing me a favor by giving a damn. “Sparrow already said something.”
“Let her.” I leaned back, stretching one arm along the back of the booth. “She wants to talk, she can come to me.”
“She won’t talk,” Belle said. “She’ll act.”
That was the problem.
In the MC, everything was measured in blood and silence.
I’d bled enough.
But silence?
That still cut deeper than knives.
The bell above the door rang again, and the tension rolled through the diner like smoke.
It wasn’t the cops. Wasn’t feds.
Worse.
It was Max and a few of the boys from the local MC, the ones who sniffed around every rumor and turned it into a threat.
His eyes locked on me. Long. Hard. Sizing me up like I was meat that forgot it was on someone else's plate.
“Look who finally crawled out of a cop’s bed,” he muttered, loud enough for half the place to hear.
I didn’t blink.
I just smiled. Sharp. Slow. Dangerous.
“Keep running your mouth, Max,” I said, “and I’ll put you back in the hospital. I don’t need a badge to break your ribs.”
The whole place went still.
Evie snorted. Belle muttered “Jesus Christ” under her breath.
Max? He just grinned.
Because men like him don’t get scared of girls like me.
They get turned on, I know from experience.
I stood.
Finished my coffee in one long, deliberate swallow. Let it burn down my throat like gasoline.
Then I walked straight to his table, boots heavy on the cracked linoleum. I leaned in, got close enough to smell the cheap cologne and the fear he tried to hide behind his smirk.
“Try me again,” I said softly. “Pretty please, Maxie.”
Max didn’t move. Didn’t blink. But I saw the twitch in his jaw. The shadow of hesitation.
That was enough.
Because fear?
It wasn’t always loud.
Sometimes it was just the second too long it took someone to look away.
Back at the booth, Belle looked at me like I was a bomb with the pin already pulled.
“Are you trying to get killed?”
“Maybe.” I cracked my neck. “Or maybe I’m done pulling back on my punches.”
Evie nodded slowly. “You always were the meanest b***h in the room.”
“And the smartest,” I said, sitting down again. “Which is why I know what this is really about.”
Belle raised a brow. “Enlighten us.”
“They’re not mad I was seen with a cop,” I said. “They’re mad they can’t tell if it was strategy or sentiment.”
That shut them up.
Because it was true.
And I didn’t f*****g know either.
I thought about the first time I’d ever had to prove myself.
The day they made me hurt someone to belong.
They gave me a name. A time. A reason.
He was a dealer who crossed the wrong line. I didn’t ask questions. Just showed up and cracked his jaw with the butt of a pistol before putting his knee through a coffee table.
I left him with a concussion, a dislocated shoulder, and a reminder.
I belonged.
Because I was willing to burn for it.
But last night…
Sitting under the stars with someone who looked at me like I wasn’t just a weapon...
It made me wonder if maybe I’d forgotten how to be a person.
And that scared the f**k out of me more than any threat Max could throw.
“I’m not gonna apologize,” I said finally. “To anyone. Not for him. Not for me.”
They didn’t get it.
They never would.
But I wasn’t here to be understood.
I was here to survive.
When we stood to leave, the diner was quieter than before.
Not because they’d stopped whispering.
But because they were waiting.
Waiting to see who I’d become next.
And I was starting to wonder the same damn thing.
- Writer
