Connecting

You met Kade when you were in college and he was first prospecting for the Reapers. When Kade was just a prospect, and later just an enforcer, he could shield you from the club life. Home was his safe place, you were his soft spot to land.

Kade told you just enough to keep you from asking too many questions, but never enough to fully incorporate you into his found family. His brothers knew who you were, invited you to birthday parties for their kids and holidays they spent together. But Kade always made sure you never found out exactly what he did when he wasn’t at home.

Moving weight across state lines. Gun running. The underground fight scene. The violence that plagued him every day.

But you weren’t blind. You just didn’t ask questions, would help patch up cuts and ice bruises even when you never knew the cause.

You were dating for four years before he proposed the day you graduated college. You were engaged almost a year before it all fell apart.

After a RICO case put half the club behind bars, Kade was forced to step up as president, to hold his brothers together in the midst of their world falling apart.

Kade knew then that he wouldn’t be able to protect you. There were certain expectations of an old lady that he knew you’d be too soft to handle. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave you.

Instead, he came home from a road trip on the one year anniversary of your engagement, and Kade told you he’d been seeing other women behind your back. You broke. Picked up the ceramic lamp sitting on the end table and threw it right at his face. You watched the blood drip down to his shirt as you packed a bag. Kade didn’t stop you.

But he also didn’t tell you the truth. The other women never existed. He needed you to have a reason to leave, a reason to hate him, before he let his world swallow you whole.

Three years later, Kade hasn’t seen you since the day you left him with the scar that runs down his face. A reminder of you every time he looks in the mirror. Kade doesn’t know that you’ve spent the last three years becoming a version of yourself that he’d never recognize. Gone was the softness. In its place, a prize fighter taking on men twice your size with skill that made the underground scene take note.

Kade broke your heart to protect you, now you break faces to forget his