by Jane Slate
Rebel Heart
Sons of War MC #2
By Jane Slate
Copyright © 2014 Jane Slate
[email protected]
All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Any similarities to anyone dead or alive are merely coincidental.
This novel is a sequel to Jane Slate’s best selling book Sons of War but it also works as a standalone novel. To fully understand some of the characters and their back-stories, you can purchase Sons of War here on Amazon and here on Barnes and Noble.
Warning:
This book contains adult themes, explicit language and sexual situations. Reader Discretion is advised!
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Table of Contents
Part One
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Part Two
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Part One
Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified.
Albert Camus
Prologue
Bonfires.
Kade lived for them.
Something about watching the glowing embers wave and curl, accompanied by the smell of burning oak, filled him with a sense of tranquility. He sat in front of the fire and lit a smoke, kicking up his boots on the metal fence that separated him from the flames.
He took a long draw of his smoke and sighed as the poisonous vapor slowly invaded his lungs. It was hard to tell the difference between the smoke from the fire and his breath when he exhaled. There was a petite blonde beside him but there wasn’t anything about her in particular that set her apart from all of the rest.
In fact, she bored him.
He couldn’t stand the way she would drone on and on about trivial bullshit. Her cosmetology classes, how annoying her parents were, how much she hated her job bagging groceries at Trader Joes. It was all so god damn boring. It wasn’t the soul cleansing relationship Kade secretly craved—the kind of transformational bond that would carve him into a better man, bit by bit. But what were the chances that he would find that in Falls Creek anyway?
Kade flicked ash from the end of his smoke and looked at the girl. She was just a time passer. That’s all they ever were. Pretty distractions that kept him occupied while his brothers were at war.
Fuck the war.
Kade cracked his knuckles then his neck and sipped his beer in somber reflection. Afghanistan was something he tried not to think much about. He was every bit as capable of fighting as Landon, Richie, and Nash. Hell, even more so. But his asthma had been the straw that broke the camel’s back, as it always seemed to be. And now, here he was. Bulking up, staying clean and childless, and counting down the days until his brothers returned home. He hoped, at least, that they would.
There weren’t too many Marines who left Falls Creek who ever came home. Not in one piece anyway.
The blonde, whose name Kade had already forgotten, wrapped her arms around his neck and brought her heart shaped lips flush against his earlobe. She tugged on it gently, attempting to pull him from his thoughts.
“Want to get out of here?”
Her breath was warm against Kade’s neck. He turned to look at her and flashed her a tight smile. Then, he shook his head, lowering her hands. She was an easy lay but weren’t they always?
“Maybe some other time sweetheart.”
The blonde sighed. Kade flicked the bud of his smoke into the fire and watched it burn. A look of defeat, or maybe offense, flashed across her pretty face.
“Fine.”
She stood up then and walked away, swinging her pert little ass from side to side to make some kind of point about what Kade was missing. Not that he had it in himself to care. He didn’t even give the girl a second glance as Maddox sat down beside him.
Maddox.
He was the archetype of an everyday man. Perfectly complacent and satisfied with mediocrity, at least on the surface. Life had a way of looking past him and he didn’t seem to mind it. Unlike Kade, Maddox didn’t spend his time wallowing in the could have beens. He just lived. Plain and simple.
Sure, he worked a dead-end job making barely enough money to support his kids and Scarlett, his girlfriend of ten years, but he did it all with a smile and a kind hearted attitude Kade had come to respect.
Maddox was a decent guy and a dedicated father. There was no denying any of that. But even the most holy of Saints have their flaws.
For starters, Maddox was unkempt. His dark hair was long and greasy. His features were gritty and worn in. His facial hair was unruly and overgrown. It had been years since Kade had seen him with a clean shave.
He also drank like a fish, slept with every bike warmer that looked his way, and didn’t have much of a filter when it came to light hearted conversation.
“Hey man.”
Kade nodded at Maddox as he finished the last of his beer and cracked another. Maddox shrugged a shoulder towards the girl Kade had rejected.
“What’s up?”
“You’re not going to get on that?”
Kade snickered, glancing sideways at the pissed off blonde standing with her friends on the other side of the fire.
“Naw,” he said with a shrug.
“Not really feeling it tonight.”
He handed Maddox a beer and he cracked it open, taking a long drink and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Well if that’s not a first I don’t know what is.”
Kade scanned the crowd of people gathered in the field as music blared from a sound system in someone’s car. It was then that his eyes stumbled upon a girl he vaguely recognized, although he couldn’t pin point from where. She was exactly the kind of girl he wouldn’t have appreciated in his youth. Her affronted laugh when she thought no one was looking gave way to her confidence and made Kade want to know more about her.
She wasn’t his usual type. Not by a long shot. For starters, she wasn’t a blonde. Her hair was dark and unruly. Her skin was pale with a nearly translucent quality, a stark contrast to the overly tan women Kade typically courted. And on top of that, she was short. Real short, especially in comparison to Kade’s stalky six foot four stature. Still, there was something about her. Something captivating.
She was beautiful; there wasn’t any denying that. She wore a pair of distressed shorts that accentuated her backside pretty damn nicely, accented by a pair of black cowboy boots – the real kind – not those fake shits they sold at the mall, and a simple white tank top highlighted a conservative amount of her cleavage.
It wasn’t often that Kade referred to women as stunning, but whoever this girl was, she had that going for her.
Kade tore his eyes from her and looked over at Maddox. He was rolling a sloppy joint using a bent knee as a makeshift table. He brought it between his lips but struggled to close it.
“Less spit,” Kade instructed.
Maddox rolled his eyes. Kade nodded at the girl he had been eyeing, changing the subject.
“You know her?”
Maddox looked up and lit the end of the joint, furrowing his brows as he trained his vision on the girl in question. He
nodded, exhaling a ring of smoke.
“That’s Stella, man. Trigs daughter.”
Trig.
Kade recognized the name. He was one of the founders of the SOW—a meaty son of a bitch who didn’t talk much but never seemed to have a problem getting his point across.
He was also the town drunk.
“I never really see her at these kind of things though,” Maddox added, handing Kade the joint.
Kade took a hit and remained quiet as he stared at the girl. She was dancing, swaying her slender hips from side to side in tune with the music. Beside her was another girl Kade didn’t recognize, a mousy blonde who seemed a bit on the uptight side. While Stella danced, she stood with her arms crossed self-consciously over her chest with a bored expression etched across her face.
Maddox chuckled.
“What?”
“You really don’t recognize her?”
Kade shook his head and inhaled another sharp hit. Maddox laughed and slapped his knee.
“Well holy shit are you in for a surprise!”
Kade furrowed his brows, still not following.
“What?”
Maddox cleared his throat and exhaled a wave of smoke.
“Does the name Christella Waters ring any bells?”
Kade was dumbfounded. No, that was an understatement. He took another look at the girl with a slack jawed expression on his face. This was not the shy, unsuspecting braniac he had vaguely knew growing up.
“What, you never realized she was Trig’s kid?” Maddox continued.
Kade shook his head.
Christella Waters, at least the one he remembered, was a know it all—a geek right down to the braces, thick bottle glasses, and high IQ. She wasn’t the type of free spirited girl to let loose at a bonfire thrown by a bunch of bikers.
“Holy shit...”
“That’s frizzy Chrissy?”
It was a cruel nickname bestowed upon her in high school—a petty jab at her thick, unruly curly hair, which she had clearly grown into.
Looking at Stella brought Kade back to 1994. A time when he was addicted to bedroom eyed girls with bottle dyed blonde hair and lipstick the color of fresh blood. Kurt Cobain had just died, movies like Pulp Fiction and Natural Born Killers glorified hedonistic behavior, and Pamela Anderson was as hot as she would ever be. It was a time Kade looked back on fondly.
His high school girlfriend was a girl far different from Stella. Her name was Kelly Canner. She was the kind of girl who didn’t need an introduction—a redhead with big green eyes, heart shaped lips practically built for kissing, and effortlessly perfect hair that curled around her breasts. She had preoccupied Kade’s every thought from the moment he had hit puberty. She was a pursuit, albeit an easy one.
They ran in different circles. Hell, Kelly was practically in a circle all of her own; one paved with thorns capable of tearing through even the strongest of hearts. But attractive people always did have a way of finding each other.
Kade would find out later that she had died young, just on the edge of her life. Depending on who you talked to in Falls Creek, the cause of her death was always different. Some claimed she had died with a nose full of coke and a bottle of liquor in her hands. Others swore it was an accidental overdose on sleeping pills.
Either way, she was gone.
Her death shook Kade and turned him away from love.
Maddox’s deep belly laugh interrupted Kade’s thoughts. He handed over the joint to Kade,
“Damn right that’s her.”
Kade glanced over at Stella once more, and this time, she noticed him staring. She smirked at him mischievously. The look in her dark eyes was enticing, daring him to come closer.
Kade never was the type to back down from a good dare. He stood up and gave the half-smoked joint to Maddox for safekeeping.
“I’ll see you later brother.”
With a nod, Kade made a beeline for Stella, pushing through a crowd of sweaty, gyrating bodies.
“Just be sure to wear protection!” Maddox yelled crudely.
“You can never be too careful! Even with the sweet ones!”
Kade rolled his eyes. Maddox was a type-A shit talker.
Everything he said had to be taken with a grain of salt.
Chapter One
Stella ignored the conversations going on around her and lost herself in the music. Mel’s high-pitched protests to leave were drowned out by heavy bass that clashed against the soft strum of someone’s acoustic guitar–two very conflicting sounds. Stella took a long drink of her beer and continued dancing, swaying her body in time with the tempo as her clothing began to cling to her. It was nights like this that she had come to live for. Nights where she could forget who she was—the infamous Trig “Hijinks” Waters only daughter—and what that meant; at least for a little while.
Stella had convinced Mel to come to the bonfire on a whim. It was a beautiful summer night and she was tired of the monotonous, boring cycle that had become her post high school life. Smoking joints and losing herself in bad reality TV wasn’t doing it for her anymore.
Sure, the sea of leather clad men and scantily dressed groupies were hardly she and Mel’s usual crowd, but they didn’t really have a crowd. In high school they were loners conjoined at each other’s sides. Like Stella, Mel was sheltered. Her father Dice was an outlaw not much different than Trig and he was just as dead set on sheltering his little girl from the lifestyle.
The problem, of course, was that little girls didn’t stay little forever. As Stella and Mel got older, they began to rebel against their parent’s strict upbringing. Not that Mel would have if it hadn’t been for Stella’s encouragement. With her, the good girl thing wasn’t an act as much as it was a reality. She didn’t feel as stifled as Stella did, not in any faction, but she always did have a problem saying no—which was exactly what had brought her to the Bonfire.
As the song came to an end, Stella reached into the cross body leather purse around her chest and pulled out a pre-rolled joint, lighting it and taking a hit. She tried to hand it over to Mel but she held up her hands and shook her head.
“More for me then.”
Stella smiled as she inhaled another long hit. Pot never really was Mel’s thing, but that never seemed to stop Stella from offering.
Suddenly, a feeling of uneasiness settled over her; the kind of feeling that only came when she knew she was being watched but didn’t know by whom. She blew a ring of smoke from between her pink lips and eyed the crowd. Her heart stopped and her brain froze in mid-thought when her eyes fell on him.
Kade Colton—a man known around Falls Creek for his hot temper, whore tendencies, and annoyingly good looks. Stella sighed and tensed her jaw, trying her best to feign self-assurance as she stared him down. Every book she had read about confidence had said the same thing in different terms—that she had to own every situation that made her feel uncomfortable—but it wasn’t something that came easy for a girl that spent her formative years being made fun of for her unruly hair, short stature, and bunny teeth (which four long years of braces had improved).
Unbeknownst to Kade, Stella had silently crushed on him all throughout high school. When Kade would pass her in the halls, the mingled scent of cologne and Marlboro cigarettes would never fail to catapult her into temptation.
Not that it mattered.
The type of girls Kade courted were blonde’s with long legs, large breasts, and no moral compasses—the kind who currently surrounded him. They strutted back and forth in front of the fire in their high heels, tube tops, and leather miniskirts, attracting the attention of the men they yearned for without much effort.
Part of Stella pitied them. It couldn’t have been a good feeling, existing solely to keep men happy and at bay. They sold themselves short in exchange for the promise of being courted and transformed into old ladies—the women who got the highest level of respect and honor in the club.
Not that it ever happened.
Even so,
these were the kind of women who garnered the attention of men like Kade. High confidence bimbos Stella had always wished she could be more like. She had bloomed out of her awkward stage a long time ago but the insecurities associated with that awkwardness never seemed to go away; at least not fully.
It bothered Stella that most of the girls in her graduating class had been with Kade at least once. She wasn’t even entirely sure why everyone was so infatuated with him. I mean, sure. He was gorgeous, with angular features, a strong jaw, full lips, dark blue eyes, and a flowing head of hair that tapered off near his temples. But there didn’t seem to be much substance behind all of that.
Kade very rarely, if ever, dated any girl for longer than a week. He broke every rule worth breaking, and when it came to academics, he was mediocre at best. As far as Stella could tell, fighting was the only thing he seemed to be good at aside from being pretty.
Of course, it wasn’t always that way. Stella could remember hanging out with Kade and the boys when they were kids. Kade’s father, Kade Sr., was another one of the founders of the SOW, although he held a lesser rank in the club than Trig and Dice.
Even so, what that meant was that Stella saw a lot of Kade growing up, at least, enough of him to know that his brutal tendencies were just a cleverly crafted façade to cover up the fact that he was hurting.
At the age of thirteen, the summer before their freshman year of high school, Kade’s mother died from stage-four breast cancer. The most invasive kind.
It was a blow that hit the Colton family hard and catapulted Kade headfirst into rebellion. That event, paired with the natural ebb and flow that came with growing up and entering a new stage of life, ended Stella and Kade’s friendship long before it ever really began.
The fact of the matter was, they were on different parts of the social ladder and try as she might, Stella just couldn’t seem to catch up.
Mel spoke up with a frown.
“Who are you looking at?”
Stella looked over at the statuesque blonde and sighed. A hefty man she recognized from an outside club tried to hand her a shot of something, most likely whiskey, but Stella shook her head. She looked back at Kade and shot him an inviting smile, turning her attention back to Mel.