Rebel Heart by Jane Slate

was making a huge fucking mistake. Every part of him told him to run away while he still could. But drunken ideas had a way of taking hold.
    Kade could hear Mel inside talking to her daughter Stevie, who had just turned six. She probably didn’t even know that he was outside. There was still time for him to turn back and go on with his life, or at least what was left of it.
    It wasn’t like Mel was incapable of finding someone else. Hell, there wasn’t a warm-blooded man within a hundred miles that wouldn’t have dropped his hat at a chance to be with her. But for whatever reason it was Kade whom she fancied herself with.
    It was an accident really.
    A decision made in the heat of the moment on a night when they had both found themselves missing Stella and Maddox. It had started with a shared cigarette outside the SOW clubhouse but magnetic warmth brought them together. Kade’s hands explored Mel’s body with a hunger he hadn’t experienced since Stella had left. But it was the reminder that Mel wasn’t her, could never be her, which kept him grounded.
    When it was over, Kade didn’t chop it up to much. He figured it was a onetime thing. A fluke encounter. But as usual, life had a way of making other plans.
    This time around Kade made sure there were no secrets. He was honest with Mel in a way he had never been with Stella. He told her that she deserved to be happy in the long term but that he didn’t think he would ever be. Through years of precise practice he had learned how to fake it. How to put on a face and appease people when he needed to, but Stella was the only person who had ever dug deeper. The only one who had ever seen Kade’s self-destructive behavior for what it was. And even though he was a complete basket case, she stuck around for as long as she could. She loved him and she persevered.
    Still...
    Kade couldn’t allow another woman to make the same mistake. His misery was nagging and perpetual in nature and it wasn’t up to Stella, Mel, or any woman to save him.
    When he shared this fine print with Mel, the look in her eyes told Kade it was okay. She didn’t understand it. She couldn’t have, at least not fully. But regardless, she was sweet about it.
    That was her problem. She was sweet about everything . There was none of the fire in Mel that had burned incessantly inside of Stella. But Mel, like Kade, was broken. All she wanted was someone to pass the time with. Someone her daughter could call a father. And if a couple silly vows spoken in front of a holy man and a crowd of people dressed in their finest was what could make that happen for her, well then Kade figured it was the least he could do.
    Sometimes when he was with her he felt like he actually wanted to be. Sometimes he thought it was love, or at least a semblance of it.
    Kade’s internal monologue was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. Mel stood in front of him with a confused expression etched across her classically pretty face.
    And it was then that Kade had an epiphany. A single stream of thinking took over the entire moment. He would marry this girl. And even if he didn’t love her yet, he would learn to.
    “Kade?”
    Mel reached up to touch the bruising on Kade’s face with a look of horror.
    “What’s going on? You’re bleeding.”
    She stepped aside and allowed him to pass her, calling out to her daughter, who was glued in front of the TV with her thumb in her mouth.
    “Stevie, go into your room sweetie. I’ll be in soon to say goodnight.”
    Stevie nodded and gathered up the heap of stuffed animals that surrounded her. Kade gave her a wink and a smile and she giggled before entering her small bedroom. She was all too familiar with his battered appearance. It was Mel who found it uneasy. She entered the kitchen and grabbed a rag and some alcohol, nodding at an empty chair at the table.
    “Sit down,” she instructed, “I’ll clean you up.”
    Mel never asked what happened, and for that much, Kade was