Page 4

“Fuck!” Kade yelled and threw his phone at the couch. He gripped his hair in the back and closed his eyes. This wasn’t his problem. It wasn’t his problem! He left that life behind long ago, and not a single person had clung to him, not even Jess. And fair enough! They were strangers. She hadn’t owed him anything! And he owed her nothing now.

They’d made a decision in another life, and it didn’t carry to the new one.

Why the hell hadn’t she moved on? Why was she still there? She’d been set free with his incarceration, so why was she still in that dead-end Crew claiming the Promise?

He blew out a shaky breath and rolled his head back, staring at the ceiling fan high above.

“Old life?” Cash asked.

Kade startled and glared at the man sitting on his kitchen counter, eating a carrot. “I locked the door.”

“Yeah, I know. So annoying. I had to use the back door, which was unlocked.”

“If I lock the door, it means I don’t want you showing up here.”

Cash arched his eyebrow. “Again, back door was unlocked. That’s an invite.”

“No, it isn’t!”

Cash narrowed his eyes at him and crunched another bite of carrot. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” he muttered, pulling his phone from the crease in the couch that it had sunken into. He pulled up the video again and zoomed in on Jess’s profile. Where were her scars? Was this really Jess?

“Who is she?” Cash asked.

Kade shook his head, denying him an answer. None of this was Cash’s business.

“Who is she?” he asked again.

“Fuck, Cash! Leave it alone!” He was going to lose his mind right now. Kade paced to the stairs and back, his mind racing.

“We’re friends,” Cash said softly.

“A friend who would run to his mate and to the rest of the Crew if I tell you.”

“I swear on my life, I won’t.”

“Your life is a trainwreck. Swear on something else.”

“Fine. I swear on my bond with Harley, I won’t say anything until you say I can.”

Kade let off an explosive sigh and sank down into the couch. “A hundred years ago, I had a woman. A stranger. It was an arranged thing.”

When he looked up, Cash was just standing there staring at him with his lips in the shape of an ‘O.’

“Well? Say something.”

“You have a mate?” Cash asked.

“No. Yes. Kind of. We never consummated the pairing, so it doesn’t really count.” He gritted his teeth. “There was a contract though.”

“This marriage sounds sketchy as hell.”

“It isn’t a marriage! It was just…” Kade shook his head, searching for a way to explain it. “Not all Crews are like this one.”

Cash nodded somberly. “Why didn’t you go get her when you got out?”

Kade huffed a humorless sound and looked away. He stared at the woodgrain in the fancy wood floors of this place. “I’m not the same as when I left, and besides, my incarceration was supposed to set her free from the pairing. She’d talked about wanting to leave Sister’s Edge—”