Rebel Heart (7 page)

“Still,” she continued with a pout.

“Why must he be so hot?”

Stella laughed and raised her glass in the air.

“To Maddox,” she said with a nod.

“May he crash and burn.”

Mel chuckled.

“Stel! That’s awful!”

“I’m kidding,” Stella said.

“But really, to us. Girls rule. Boys drool.”

She clanked her glass against Mel’s and took a sip of her drink.

They wouldn’t realize the irony of her words until the following morning.

Chapter Five

I
t was pouring. Kade turned on his wipers and silently thanked himself for not taking out his bike. He felt sorry for Maddox though. It was getting dark and the rain was making it hard for Kade to see the road.

Luckily, he could still make out the reflective lights of Maddox’s Harley a few feet ahead of him.

After a damn long day at Blessing of the Bikes, after briefly regrouping at the clubhouse, the men were en route to the bar.

The rain began to pour relentlessly and Kade’s wipers struggled to keep up. A melancholic feeling washed over him as he reached down to turn on the radio, feeling suddenly uneasy by his lack of visibility as he readjusted his grip on the steering wheel and rubbed his calloused palms over the worn leather. He tried to distract himself but try as he might, he couldn’t get Stella off his mind.

All he could think about was her smile. The way her hair fell into her face when she was distracted. The way she talked, walked, and laughed. All of it was engraved into his mind, never to be forgotten.

Kade didn’t think it was possible to care about someone as much as he cared about her but he sure had a shitty way of showing it.

He was doing her a favor though, by staying away. He didn’t deserve her. She was too good for him.

He couldn’t allow himself to fantasize.

It wasn’t safe in the current conditions. Kade could feel the car struggling to keep its footing on the rain-slick road. With a sigh, he pulled himself back down to reality as the dull murmur of soft rock seeped from the truck speakers and surrounded him. He continued down the road and altered his speed to match the conditions, reaching down to adjust his seat.

He tailed Maddox from behind, keeping an eye on him. They drove in a staggered formation, clearing a path for themselves so that other vehicles could easily pass. This is the way they did things when conditions were bad. Whoever was on a bike would rely on a watcher, someone in a truck, to keep them safe.

Now, that was Kade’s duty, one that was proving easier said than done when rain began to pour harder.

Out of nowhere, a shitty SUV piled down the road, catching Kade off guard. Dozens of stickers were plastered over the back bumper and windshield, including a few confederate flags. Maddox shook a fist in the air and gave the driver the finger, picking up speed.

The driver lost control and everything seemed to crumble at once.

A blare of a horn and the screech of tires grabbed Kade’s attention, followed by a deafening boom and the sound of metal on metal. He swerved off the side of the road and into the gravel. Time moved in slow motion. A thousand thoughts ran through his head all at once. He parked the truck and stumbled frantically towards the crash.

Maddox was laying face first on the cement a few feet away from his bike. His legs were twisted in unnatural directions and his fibula bone had cut clean through the fabric of his blood-soaked jeans. The driver of the SUV that had hit him was dead.

Kade fell to the ground like a stone beside Maddox. The scenery blurred around him. Fire spread and engulfed Maddox’s bike and the car, scorching it as the flames grew brighter and more intense. Black smoke filled the air. Sirens blared in the distance, a reminder that help was coming. It was just a matter of whether or not it would come in time.

“You’re going to be alright man,” Kade lied.

He wiped Maddox’s hair away from his face. Blood began to bubble from his mouth. His flesh was clammy and cold.

It wasn’t looking good.

“Kade,” Maddox choked out.

“I’m a real piece of shit.”

It was the kind of revelation a man only ever had on his deathbed. Kade tensed his jaw and willed himself not to cry.

“No you’re not man,” he insisted, shaking his head.

“Don’t go saying your goodbyes.”

“No,” Maddox interjected. He gripped Kade by the collar and tried his best to force the words out.

“Please just take care of my family.”

“And Mel.”

Kade began to sob.

“Please don’t go.”

He was begging now. His voice cracked under the weight of his words. The light in Maddox’s eyes went out. His hand fell limp in Kade’s as he took his final breath.

You don’t think you can feel a man’s soul leaving him but you can. Kade dry heaved into the grass and sobbed, clawing at the dirt as he pulled himself up. Maddox’s lifeless body fell onto the ground.

Kade tried to scream but the sound caught in his throat and came out strained.

At the hospital, a million things seemed to happen at once. Kade sat in the waiting room, bloody and frozen in shock. A nurse approached him with a look of dread in her expression. She wasn’t supposed to share any news with anyone but family, but she couldn’t help but feel sorry for the broken man before her.

She shook her head without speaking, averting her eyes to the ground.

He didn’t make it.

Kade winced and slammed a fist against the metal armrest of the chair he was sitting in. The nurse scurried away when someone was rushed through the ER doors on a stretcher. Kade recognized him as the driver of the SUV that had hit Maddox.

All hell broke loose.

Kade didn’t reassure himself that everyone would be okay. He didn’t fall into the lucid trap of denial.

Maddox was gone.

He watched as Scarlett rushed into the ER, frantic and soaked from the rain, but he couldn’t bring himself to stand up.

“Kade!” she yelled, breathless.

She came to an abrupt halt in front of him. Her eyes were wide with fear, which was soon to be replaced by sorrow.

“Where is he? Is he alright?”

Kade didn’t speak. Scarlett began to make a scene, growing increasingly more agitated.

“Where is he? Where is my fiancé!” she yelled, pounding her fists against his chest.

Fiancé.

Kade swallowed down the lump in his throat.

He hadn’t known they were engaged.

An orderly noticed what was going on and rushed over, pulling Scarlett aside to break the news to her. She crumbled to the ground in a fit of screams and it took two more orderlies and a tranquilizer to subdue her.

Kade had never seen someone shatter so quickly. It was like she was made of glass. She curled into a ball on the ground and rocked back and forth. When the tranquilizer finally set in, she was lifted onto a stretcher and moved into a room.

Kade watched all of this unfold but found himself unable to react.

He couldn’t believe it.

He had just seen Maddox alive, and now he was gone. He would never hold his children again. He would never laugh again. He would never make bad jokes again.

Kade drowned in all of these realities, one by one. When he felt a hand press against his back, he jumped, but it was only Nash. His face was swollen from crying, something he rarely did. He was normally stoic. Emotionless. Two prospects stood behind him, a few inches away from the ER entrance with their heads hung low.

Kade blinked once then twice in an attempt to register what was happening, but it was all still a fog. Nash pulled him into a tight hug and they sobbed together.

Two nurses stepped out of Scarlett’s room then, nodding that it was okay for Kade and the boys to enter. They turned on their heels and did just that. She and the kids would be in need of the Sons’ support now more than ever, but that didn’t make it any easier.

How was Kade supposed to face the wife of a man whose life he valued more than his own? A man who he had watched die?

He felt like a failure. But it wasn’t about him right now. It was about Scarlett and the kids. Their feelings took precedence.

“Scar,” Nash spoke up, reaching out to touch her shoulder.

“The club is here for you. Always.”

Scarlett turned around and faced the wall. It was clear that she wasn’t in the mood for conversation.

“Fuck the club,” she muttered, not sounding like herself.

It was clear that she was in a daze, and rightfully so.

“It was the club that killed him. Every year that damn Blessing of the Bikes festival kills someone. This year it was Maddox.”

Nash hesitated, not wanting to sound insensitive.

“I’m sorry you feel that way Scar. But regardless, we’re going to be here for you and the kids. That’s a promise.”

Scarlett shook her head and laughed a sad laugh.

“I appreciate your camaraderie, boys, but I’m taking my kids and getting the hell out of Falls Creek.”

“And don’t think for a second that I don’t know how disloyal Maddox was to me,” she added.

She turned around then, pointing at Kade.

“I’m not a stupid woman.”

Kade remained quiet and looked away. Nash glanced back at the prospects, nodding for them to pile out.

“You get some rest,” he said to Scarlett before following them out of the room.

Kade did the same.

At precisely 6:07 A.M—a time Stella would never be able to forget—the phone rang. Mel, always an early bird, yelled from the other room that she would answer it and Stella was grateful. She had drank a little too much the night before and has opted to crash at Mel’s instead of making the long trek back to her place.

She rolled back over on her stomach with the intention of falling back asleep but was interrupted a few seconds later by a high-pitched, guttural scream that tore her from her bed.

Mel stood in the middle of the kitchen and was as white as a sheet. The phone was lying on the floor in front of her and Stella could hear Dice’s voice coming from the receiver. She picked it up and asked him what was going on, and then, time came to a sudden halt. The words Maddox, car accident, internal bleeding, and
dead
collided together into something inaudible.

Stella struggled to make sense of it all.

Mel tore through the house and out the front door, crumbling into a ball on the lawn. She began to pound the ground until her fists were spotted with blood and encrusted with tiny pebbles.

As though on autopilot, Stella told Dice she would call him back and hung up the phone. She grabbed Mel by the shoulders and pulled her up, dragging her back inside the house as she sobbed and choked out another soundless scream laced heavily with agony.

The following morning, the newspapers would say that it was a combination of poor visibility, bad weather, and poor judgment that had taken Maddox’s life along with the life of the man who had hit him.

The funeral was three days later on a Tuesday.

Funerals always felt the same to Stella. She had never been to one that didn’t feel contrived and phony in nature.

Death had a way of doing that to people. But it was never the death that bothered Stella. It was the way it affected the living. It was never her belief that when one life ended another began. It seemed too melodramatic to even consider.

There was a lot of life unlived stuffed inside Maddox’s coffin.

Scarlett and the children didn’t cry. They howled. Their grief was hard to bear witness to but so was Mel’s. She stood in the back of the church, quiet and ghost like. She had lost her first love in a brutal way. The forbidden foundation of their relationship didn’t seem to matter. Not anymore.

Mel was young and inexperienced in nature but there wasn’t a single part of Stella that undermined the way she had felt about Maddox. Their relationship had value no matter how brief and taboo. Mel’s pain was as real and valid as anyone else’s.

A whiff of familiar cologne tore Stella from her thoughts. It was funny in a way, how a scent could bring you back to a certain time and place. Stella could remember smelling the cologne during drunken conversations with Kade, followed by days of fucking and lying sprawled out and half naked in a lust-induced haze.

Kade approached Stella with a nod and reached for Mel’s hand, giving it a squeeze. The three of them stood in silent understanding as the Priest Maddox’s father had hired spoke of all the high points of his sons shortly lived life.

Mel tensed her jaw and didn’t cry. Death surrounded her but inside of her a life was blooming. A few cysts on her ovaries and the sporadic behavior of her menstrual cycle had left her with the notion that she would be unable to ever conceive a child of her own. But life, it seemed, had a way of making other plans.

The scare had happened weeks ago.

“Don’t worry,” Mel mumbled as she stepped out of the bathroom.