by Jane Slate
“You’re drunk...”
There was a brief lapse of silence.
“Aren’t you?”
Kade shook his head. He was, but that didn’t matter. He had made this decision sober.
“I’m asking you to marry me.”
“I want to be able to call you my old lady.”
“But what about Stel-”
Mel started to interject but Kade held up a hand to stop her.
“Stella left five years ago.”
“This is about you and me, Mel. Not Stella.”
It couldn’t have been any further from the truth, but what did it matter? Mel gave Kade a skeptical look and dropped the subject. Neither one of them relished in talking about the past. Especially the aspect of it that involved Stella.
“Why?”
“Why do you want to marry me?”
Mel spoke in a hushed tone and looked over her shoulder at her daughter’s bedroom door. Kade nodded at it.
“I care about her.”
His words were precise and matter of fact.
“I cared about Maddox. I care you. I don’t know, Mel. It just...it makes sense doesn’t it? Us getting married?”
Mel sighed and reached for the glass of wine she had poured for herself prior to Kade’s arrival, taking a long drink. When she spoke her voice was laced heavily with sarcasm.
“Gee, that sure is romantic.”
Kade gave her a nudge and cupped her chin in his palm.
“Come on...”
"Would it really be so bad? You know Dice would be thrilled. And you know Stevie would be...”
Mel shook her head and cut Kade off before he could continue speaking.
“What about me?”
Kade pulled back.
“What’s wrong?”
“You don’t want to marry me? Is that it?”
Mel sighed and picked up the ring box, holding it in front of Kade’s face.
“This is what’s wrong, Kade.”
Kade was dumbfounded. In the entirety of his relationship with Mel he had been led to believe that this was what she wanted.
“If you don’t want to marry me just say it.”
Mel sighed and stood up. She paced from one end of the small kitchen to the other as she tried to collect her thoughts.
“No Kade. I do. It’s just...I want to hear you say it. I mean, you’ve never even said it! And I get it. It’s not your way. But here you are...”
Mel paused and waved a hand over Kade’s large frame.
“Asking me to marry you when you’ve never even told me you love me! God! When Richie told me you were going to do this I didn’t even believe him!”
Mel’s voice cracked.
“I need you to say it, Kade. Do you love me or not?”
There it was. The straw that always seemed the break the camel’s back. It wasn’t like Kade hadn’t expected the question to arise eventually. Still, he couldn’t seem to get past the last part of what she had said.
She knew he was going to propose?
Richie was a dead man.
“When did he tell you?” Kade questioned, tensing his jaw.
Mel shook her head and laughed stoically.
“Really Kade? After everything I just said, that’s what you ask?”
Kade lit a smoke and shrugged. Mel snatched it from him and put it out.
“He called shortly before you got here.”
What the fuck?
“But he didn’t just tell me you were going to propose.”
Mel placed her hands on her hips and stared Kade down.
“He told me why.”
Kade’s heart sunk as he remembered his drunken words to Richie. He started to speak but Mel spoke over him.
“I’m marrying her because it’s what she wants and the free sex for life is sure as shit a plus.”
Kade groaned and ran his fingers through his hair. Stupid. That’s what he was. A stupid fucking idiot. He tried to reach for Mel’s hand but she snatched it away. She threw the ring box at Kade and he caught it with unsteady hands.
“Look at you!”
“You can’t even say the word love and here you are wanting to get married!”
Her voice sounded empty and far away but it wasn’t quite as vacant as her eyes—two pools of blue that reflected her loneliness and longing for something more.
They always wanted more.
Here Kade was, offering Mel exactly that, but it wasn’t enough for her unless a blatant declaration of love was attached.
She wasn’t usually this cryptic.
They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity without speaking. For the first time in his life Kade felt romantically vulnerable. Here he was, as far out of his comfort zone as he could possibly fucking get, asking a woman to marry him, and all she could find it in herself to give him was silence.
Kade relented, pushing the words from his throat. He couldn’t take it anymore.
“I love you.”
“If that’s what you need to hear to know how serious I am, then there it is.”
“I love you and I want you to be my wife.”
Mel turned to look out the window in quiet contemplation. Snow had begun to fall and white flakes covered the glass. She looked down at the ring on her finger and sighed, gripping the counter and turning to look back at Kade, eyes blazing.
“Alright.”
Kade frowned.
“Alright?”
Mel nodded.
“I’ll marry you.”
Without another word, Kade jumped to his feet and embraced her. He pressed wet kisses along her jaw and neckline, taking his time to make her feel good.
It wasn’t love...but it was something.
Chapter Nine
Nash secured Richie’s arms behind his back as he struggled. Kade met eyes with him. A bonfire was burning a few feet away. Landon, Sergeant-of-arms of the club, held Richie’s cut over it, waiting for his order.
Nash had returned to Falls Creek early, three days after Kade’s proposal to Mel. When he had found out about everything that had transpired in his absence, there was no transparency made about what the consequence would be.
“Richie Kane. You have been stripped of your cut and disowned by the Sons for repeated acts of dishonesty at the expense of the club and your brothers, specifically, the deadly hazing of a prospect without orders. Your punishment will now match your crime. Is any of this unclear?”
Richie nodded and remained quiet. Nash gave Kade a nod and he stepped immediately forward, coming face to face with the man that had put him through so much shit just a few days prior. At first it felt impossible. Laying hands on a man he had once known as a brother. But an order was an order and retribution, in this case, was deserved.
Kade swung, making impact with Richie’s temple. Once he began throwing punches it was hard for him to stop. He made sure Richie felt tenfold everything he had felt. The prospects that surrounded them behind the SOW clubhouse began to cheer at the savagery, lapping it up like the sick puppies they were.
Kade gravitated closer to Richie, throwing a sloppy lunge that nicked him in the jaw. He corrected the motion and regained his balance, spinning on his feet and bringing his fists crashing down against his left cheek. Richie made a gurgling noise and snapped backwards from the force of the blow. A dazed, almost goofy look surfaced in his expression. Kade could tell that he was seeing stars now.
Regardless, Richie smiled through the brutality and spit blood into Kade’s face.
It might as well have been his death sentence.
Kade took a deep breath, allowing his instincts to take over. He could feel his pulse pounding. Every nerve in his body aligned.
The cheering prospects fell silent and awaited Kade’s next move. He slammed into Richie like a bull going in for a kill, lunging for his legs. He dodged but fell to the ground anyway. Nash let go of him and stepped toward Landon, giving him a nod that indicated it was time for him to drop the cut.
>
The piece of leather was engulfed in flames and disintegrated against the burning embers. The stench made Kade feel lightheaded. It was disgusting, to say the least, but the burning of an exiled brothers cut was a club tradition.
It wasn’t something that could be undone.
Sheer adrenaline pumped through Kade’s veins. He pounded into Richie’s face. Blood and phlegm flew from his bruised mouth. The prospects erupted into applause, yelling catcalls of approval.
When Richie was close to unconscious, Kade relented, leaving him bloody and bruised in the muddy snow. Then, he remembered Richie’s final act of treason—his phone call to Mel—and things took a dark turn.
“Stick that motherfucker where it hurts,” Nash ordered. His eyes shifted to meet Landon’s, who nodded in agreement.
Without further ado, Kade delivered a well-angled curb stomp to the battered man’s abdomen. A dead silence fell over the air. Nash bent down to feel for Richie’s pulse. It was there, but it was weak.
Sometimes Kade felt addicted to violence, or more so, the rush that came with evoking it. The bruises, open wounds, and lacerations on Richie’s face were proof of that. His eyes were glazed over. Kade knew that if the beating didn’t kill him, the dropping temperature would. He pushed through the crowd of men, still reveling in his victory. Nash slapped him on the shoulder approvingly and with Landon and the prospects in tow, they entered the warmth of the clubhouse for celebratory beers.
For once, Richie had gotten exactly what he had bargained for.
Mel was inside sitting behind the bar with the rest of the old ladies. She smiled slyly at Kade when he entered the clubhouse, shaking her head in disapproval. Still, she knew better than to ask what had happened.
Kade ignored the prospects that shouted compliments at him and cracked a beer handed to him by Nash, straining to hear what Mel was saying to Maria and Grace, Nash and Landon’s old ladies. Normally the talk of women didn’t much interest him, but Mel had been acting differently ever since the proposal.
“That rock is huge,” Maria commented.
Kade eyed Mel. She blushed and smiled coyly, looking down at her hand. She responded to Maria with something Kade couldn’t quite hear, making brief eye contact with him.
Landon lit a joint and passed it. Kade took a hit, flicking the end of it.
“So, you and Mel huh?”
Kade nodded.
“You pick a date yet?” Nash called out over the heads of a few prospects.
“Naw, not yet,” Kade answered.
“We’re thinking spring.”
Landon nodded and gripped Kade by the shoulder.
“Who would have hunk it? Lover boy Kade! Getting hitched!”
Nash and Landon laughed. Kade snickered and took a long drink of his beer, sliding into an empty barstool.
“Very funny. You two are everyday comedians.”
Nash snickered, spitting into an empty beer can. He nodded at Mel, who still appeared distracted by the girls.
“How is Stevie?”
“What does she think about all this?”
Kade shrugged.
“That girl loves me,” he said.
“She thinks of me like a daddy. Hell, I was there when she was born.”
Kade could recall the day clearly in his mind. It was one of his last moments with Stella. He had stood beside her silently, in front of a row of windows that separated the NCUI and crying babies from the rest of the hospital.
Stevie had weighed 7 pounds 9 ounces when she was born. She was healthy and perfect in every way.
If Maddox could have seen her, even just once, there was no way he would have denied her as his own.
Nash and Landon nodded.
“Lucky girl,” Landon spoke up, lifting his beer to toast Kade’s.
Nash changed the subject to something club related and the conversation tapered off. Kade stood up and pushed through the crowd toward Mel.
“Well look what the cat dragged in,” Maria spoke up.
There was a glimmer in her eye. Grace snickered and they exchanged a glance. Mel blushed, keeping her eyes glued to the ground.
There was always something so endearing about her embarrassment. Kade couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He acknowledged Grace and Maria but bent down so that he was ear level with Mel.
“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered, pushing a strand of her hair behind her ear.
Mel nodded and stood up, waving goodbye to the girls as Kade pulled her toward the door and outside the clubhouse. The cold air greeted them, making Mel’s cheeks flush pink.
“So,” she spoke up, nodding at the blood on Kade’s curled knuckles.
“How bad was it?”
Kade shrugged and pressed his back against the brick wall, lighting a smoke.
“Not too bad,” he answered with a crooked smile.
Mel nodded and took a hit off of Kade’s smoke. She followed him over to his Bonneville and climbed on after him. They took off down the wet road and when they arrived at Kade’s trailer, passion was unleashed well before his front door was even unlocked.
Kade picked Mel up and slammed the door shut with his boot. He tore off her clothing piece by piece in the darkness, taking his time as he roamed his hands down her body. Her naked form was well toned but soft in all the right places. They tumbled onto the couch, knocking over empty beer cans on Kade’s coffee table in the process.
Mel gave Kade a naughty smile and pressed a hand against his manhood through his pants. Emotion ran wild. A deep groan escaped the corners of his mouth. He tightened his grip on Mel’s waist and kissed his way down her neck, pausing when he noticed her engagement ring glimmering in the moonlight.
It removed Kade from the moment, bringing him back to his hasty decision a few days prior. It wasn’t that he regretted asking her. He didn’t. It was just...one hell of an adjustment.
Kade was used to seeing rings on the fingers of the women he courted, but they were mostly just bored housewife types who saw danger in sleeping with a gritty biker. Seeing the ring on Mel’s finger was a little too personal.
“What’s wrong?” Mel asked with a frown, sitting up.
Kade shook his head and pulled away from her, running a hand through his hair. He felt bad, but the mood had been broken.
“Nothing,” he lied.
“I’m just tired babe. That’s all. The whole Richie thing...”
Mel held up a hand to stop him, standing up to gather her clothing. She flashed Kade a smile, bending down to kiss him on the cheek.
“I understand.”
Of course she did.
Mel was anything if not understanding.
“I should get going anyway. Stevie’s babysitter is going to want to be paid extra if I’m not home soon. Get some rest...I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Remember, we’re meeting with the wedding planner at one.”
Kade nodded. A second later, the front door slammed shut. He stood up and peeked out the blinds, watching as Mel climbed in her Corolla and pulled out of the driveway. When she was gone, he exhaled a deep breath.
Marriage.
Kade threw around the concept in his mind. He opened his fridge and reached for a beer, cracking it open and taking a long drink.
What the hell was he doing?
Kade sighed and opened a drawer in his living room, where he kept his stash of uppers and downers. Mel didn’t know that he was using (albeit occasionally), but what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
At least, that’s what he told himself.
The truth was, the pills were the only thing that ever seemed to slow down his thoughts. They leveled him out or picked him up, whatever was needed in the moment, and they got him to the place he needed to be.
Kade popped the cap off a bottle of oxycodone and poured two pills into his palm, swallowing them with a sip of his beer. He lounged back on the couch, feeling the leather fiber press and stick against him as the high set in. His head lolled back as h
e rode the wave, pushing Mel and the engagement and Richie and Stella and everything else temporarily out of his mind.
A strong urge passed through Kade. It was what always happened. A single thought ran through his mind, branching off into a bunch of different, equally stressful, thoughts.
He should just leave. Get out of Falls Creek in the same way Stella did. Give Mel a normal chance at a life and marriage and love.
Since Maddox had died, there hadn’t been a single day where Kade went without thinking about death. It wasn’t that he particular craved it. He just didn’t fear it. Death wasn’t romantic or beautiful or any of the things people wanted it to be. It just was. And that, in and of itself, intrigued Kade into subtly speeding up the inevitable.
It was the real reason he put so much stock in the pills.
Yeah. Kade and death weren’t strangers who fearfully walked past each other without making eye contact. They were close acquaintances, two entities that often tangled but had yet to fully merge, and Mel didn’t deserve a husband with that kind of darkness in him.
Kade stretched his arms over his head and popped three more pills into his mouth, then a fourth. And this was the way it always went, usually until the bottle was empty and sleep hit him all at once.
He felt good. Relaxed. At ease.
He wasn’t on the sofa anymore. Now he was miles above it, floating amongst stars. Astronomy had never really been his thing, but the tranquility that came with the night sky had always given him comfort.
With unsteady hands he popped the lid off another bottle, ignoring the label as he shoved the pills in his mouth. An icy sensation ran through his veins and was met with fire. This was different. This was new.
Something told Kade that he was teetering on the edge. That if he didn’t do something, and fast, he wouldn’t live through the night. Mel would find him tomorrow morning, or whenever, and she would hate him.
She didn’t deserve that.
But the course of action had already been set into motion.
A sickening feeling surfaced in Kade’s stomach. He closed his eyes, feeling euphoria settle over him. If this was what death was then it wasn’t half as bad as he had imagined. He looked at the blinking red of the alarm clock on the table beside him. It was almost 1 A.M.
