For some reason, the coffee tasted bitter. It was funny; after what they had just shared, Alyssa would have thought anything would have tasted sweeter. But reality crashed back on her, fast and furious and unavoidable.
Prince seemed to share her feelings, because he was quiet as he nursed his cup of coffee. Eventually, though, he spoke, albeit uncertainly.
“Should we…”—he began—“…uh…should we talk about what just happened?”
Alyssa looked up, studying him from over the brim of her mug. “I don’t know, should we?”
She could feel herself slipping back into a defensive attitude, but she couldn’t help it. She hated the thought of her heart getting broken again, and yet she had the sinking feeling that she would be unable to stop it.
Prince seemed to think about it for a moment. “I think we should,” he finally said.
“OK.” Alyssa took a sip of her coffee, wishing that it was alcohol. “Did it mean anything to you?”
Prince blinked, taken aback. “Of course it meant something to me!” He hesitated. “Didn’t it to you?”
“It did,” Alyssa admitted. As much as she wanted to protect herself, she also knew that being honest about her feelings (to Prince as well as to herself) was the only way she was ever going to get out of this alive—emotionally speaking.
Prince nodded. “So what do we do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I…I think I never stopped loving you.”
Alyssa stared at him in shock. A million things she could say flashed through her head. Of all of those, for some reason, she blurted out the less kind: “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Prince’s eyes widened in surprise at such brutality. “I…uh…I’m not. I told you; it wasn’t easy for me either.”
Alyssa scowled fiercely. “You can’t just drop a bomb like that on me, Prince.”
“What else do you want me to do? Lie? This may be the only chance I get to say it. You’re going back to Canada in two weeks.” He hesitated. “Are you?”
“Yes,” Alyssa said firmly. “I am.”
“Maybe you could consider—”
“No. I couldn’t.”
“Oh.”
“I love you, too,” Alyssa said, unable to stop herself. She smiled at the shocked expression on his face. “Come on, I know you knew.”
He smiled weakly. “Frankly, I was starting to have my doubts just now.”
Alyssa rolled her eyes, but she sobered up quickly, the weight of their situation rapidly squishing any humor out of her. “We both know it can’t work, Prince.”
Prince nodded sadly. “I guess not.” He hesitated. “Maybe we could make the best of these two weeks?”
Alyssa shook her head. “No. We can’t.”
“Why?”
“It would be too hard.” It was only a half-truth, but it was a truth nonetheless.
Unfortunately, Prince picked up on it instantly. He looked at her carefully. “What is it that you’re not telling me, Aly?”
Once again, Alyssa didn’t bother to tell him not to call her Aly; after what had just gone down between them, she figured it would be quite pointless.
“Nothing,” she said quickly. Too quickly, she realized.
“Alyssa,” he said pointedly.
Alyssa sighed. “Bennie paid me a visit early this morning.”
Prince’s handsome face darkened instantly, and that was when Alyssa recognized the shadows on his features and in his eyes for what they actually wore—the Devil’s Fighters.
“What did he want from you?” he all but growled.
Alyssa shivered at the fierceness in his voice and eyes. Not for the first time, she wondered what Prince was truly capable of. She quickly decided it would be wiser to tell him the truth. He would find out for himself anyway; she knew that as well as she knew her own name.
“He gave me a warning,” she said. “He told me to stay away from you.”
“Son of a bitch!” Prince hissed furiously.
Alyssa cringed. “Should I, Prince?” she said after a moment. “Should I stay away from you? He knows I want to take you away from here.”
There it was, the whole truth. Somehow, Alyssa still hoped.
Prince smiled at her with a mixture of fondness and sorrow. “I love you for saying that, I do,” he said. “But I told you, I can’t leave.”
“Why?” Alyssa asked again. “What’s in Pinebrook that holds so much power over you? What’s your obligation, Prince?”
He shook his head, lapsing into a silence that tore at her heart.
Alyssa reached across the table and took his hand in hers. “Please,” she said, squeezing his fingers. “Help me understand.”
Prince entwined their fingers together in an almost automatic gesture. He took a deep breath, and she knew he was finally about to talk. When he did talk, however, his answer was unlike anything Alyssa had imagined.
“My dad,” he said.
She blinked, stunned. “Your dad?”
Prince’s father was the source of all of his problems. He was a drunk and a gambler who had spent most of Prince’s childhood beating up his mom, whom everyone regarded as a heroine for having somehow managed to avoid that her husband’s fists never once connected with Prince’s face. After his mother’s death from cancer, Prince had left the house at the age of fourteen and never looked back. His father still lived in Pinebrook, but as far as Alyssa knew, they had no contact.
Prince sighed heavily. He took his hand away from hers to run his fingers through his hair in a nervous gesture. Alyssa noticed that his hand was trembling.
“Tell me,” she said gently.
Prince swallowed visibly. “You know he has a gambling problem,” he said.
“Amongst many others,” Alyssa spat, unable to stop herself. She cringed. “Sorry.”
Prince smiled. “No worries. It’s the truth.” He took a long sip of coffee, and Alyssa was pretty sure he was also wishing it were alcohol. “Anyway, it turns out he was indebted up to his ears, and the worst part is that he was indebted to the club.”
Alyssa stared at him in shock. “He was indebted to the Devil’s Fighters?”
Prince nodded. “He still is, actually,” he said.
“How much does he owe them?”
Prince waved a hand dismissively. “It’s not important,” he said, with a finality that Alyssa didn’t feel like arguing with. “Anyway, they came collecting that summer.”
“The summer of eight years ago?” Alyssa asked. Her stomach was in knots. She had the horrific feeling that she might know where the whole sordid tale was headed, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it. But she had asked, and she would have to sit through it.
“Yes,” Prince said. “He kept saying he would pay them back, and in the meanwhile he kept gambling and his debt kept growing. He never so much as gave them one instalment as proof of his good faith. They were fed up with it. They made it very clear that he was to pay them back soon or they would kill him.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Alyssa blurted out without thinking.
Prince arched an eyebrow at her. “Really?” he said pointedly.
She blushed. “Right,” she said, clearing her throat in embarrassment. “That was an idiotic question. Go on.”
Prince sipped from his coffee again. “Dad didn’t have that kind of money, and I sure as hell didn’t. Bennie suggested an…uh…alternative solution.”
Alyssa narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “What alternative solution?”
“He’d seen me fight once or twice, you know, when I got into a fight at the bar those couple of times.”
Alyssa groaned. She remembered those two occasions all too well, and even though Prince had admittedly been provoked, she didn’t like to remember them. She nodded and gestured for him to continue.
“He said I could earn the money to pay them back by fighting in their rings.”
There it was. Alyssa had begun to suspect it ever since Prince had started his tale, but hearing it out loud made it all too real. She suddenly felt like throwing up.
“Oh, Prince,” she said, horrified, her voice coming out in a choked sound. “And you said yes?”
“What choice did I have?” Prince said. “I know you may think my dad did not deserve anything from me, but he is my dad.”
Alyssa thought exactly that, but she knew better than to say it out loud.
“I’ve been earning that money since then. It’s a lot of money; it’ll probably take me a few more years.”
Alyssa thought about it. “I’m selling the house, you know,” she said after a moment. “Would that cover it?”
Prince smiled. “Thank you,” he said sincerely. “But no, it wouldn’t cover it. Besides, I’m pretty sure Bennie will never let me go, even once I’ve earned my fee. I’m too good.” There was no hint of bragging in his voice as he said the words, and there shouldn’t have been; they both knew it was more of a curse than anything else. “He’ll keep me until I’m too old to fight.”
Or until you end up dead, Alyssa thought bitterly, but she didn’t voice that either.
“All these years, you never told me,” she said. “Why?”
“I didn’t want to pull you into it,” Prince said. “And you didn’t want to listen, anyway.” He wasn’t being accusatory; once again, he was merely stating a fact.
“Maybe,” Alyssa admitted. “But all these years, you let me believe you didn’t love me anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “I’m so sorry about that, Aly, but I had no choice. Please, you have to understand that.”
“I don’t,” Alyssa admitted again. “I don’t understand any of this. I’m not mad at you,” she said quickly when she saw his face fall. “But I don’t understand it.”
He nodded. “I know you don’t. I guess I understand why you don’t understand.”
“So where does that leave you?” Alyssa finally found the strength to us.
Prince was silent for the longest time. “Nowhere,” he finally said, shattering all of their dreams and hopes—as false as those hopes might have been—with one single, final world. “It leaves us nowhere.”
Alyssa knew he was right, but she couldn’t find it within herself to let that word be the final one.