Prince’s head ached, and it had nothing to do with the fight and everything to do with Alyssa. As far as he could remember, no one could give him headaches like she did.
The more he thought about it, the more he could not believe he’d had to walk away from her for the second time in his life. He also couldn’t believe that he had found the strength to do it, and the fact that he had…scared him. Turning his back on Alyssa had been the hardest thing he ever had to do, harder than the fighting. He thought he would never have it in him to do it again, but as it turned out he was wrong. He wondered what that meant. Could he really be so jaded that he was able to walk away from the woman he loved not once, but twice in one lifetime?
He shook his head and downed the shot of burning whiskey that Greg had put in front of him.
“Whoa. You might want to pace yourself there.”
Prince snorted. Rick was one to talk; he would down a lot more than one shot after a particularly bad fight. And Prince considered the one he had with Alyssa earlier that night a particularly bad fight.
“Hit me again, Greg, will you?” he called out in a voice already roughened by alcohol.
The bartender didn’t object. He was used to members of the club coming over to his bar to drown their sorrows. He didn’t particularly like it, but he didn’t complain either. Bennie always made sure no trouble would be brought to the joint, and in turn Greg served them all the alcohol they asked for. It was a win-win situation for all parties involved.
Rick settled on the stool at the bar next to Prince and eyed him curiously.
“What’s up with you, anyway? You had a pretty clean fight tonight.”
“It’s not about the fight,” Prince said, downing yet one more shot.
He wasn’t normally a heavy drinker, and he decided right then to stop there for the night—he could already feel himself getting lightheaded from the combined action of the whiskey and the beer he had earlier at Alyssa’s. He couldn’t afford to get drunk. Maybe he was paranoid, but he would much rather remain sharp at all times.
“What’s it about then?” Rick asked, motioning for Greg to pour him a pint.
Prince arched an eyebrow. “Should you be drinking?”
Rick was doing considerably better, but he was still on a mild dose of painkillers for his cracked ribs.
“Relax, I’m fine.”
Prince eyed him skeptically, but he knew better than to argue. After all, he wasn’t exactly in the position to dish out lectures on safe drinking.
When the beer was placed in front of him, Rick nodded his thanks and took a hearty swig. Then, he turned his unrelenting attention back to Prince.
“So,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on.”
Rick arched a dark blond eyebrow at him. “Please. I know you so much better than that.”
Prince sighed. He stared down at his empty glass, as if it contained all the answers when—in fact—it felt to him like no answers could be found anywhere.
“It’s Alyssa,” he said quietly.
It was just Rick and a few other patrons in the bar, and none of the others had anything to do with the Devil’s Fighters, but he still felt the need to be cautious.
“Ah.” Rick lit up, and Prince had the feeling it wasn’t just because Alyssa had pretty much saved his life.
He narrowed his eyes in suspiciously. “What are you looking so stoked about?”
“I like her,” Rick said. “And by that I mean that I like her for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know.”
“No,” Prince said, “I don’t.” But he did, of course.
Rick stared at him. “Come on. I know she’s the one you told me about when we met.”
In spite of his best efforts, Prince felt himself flush. He was extremely grateful for the bar’s poor lighting. It had come natural for them to swap stories with each other. Like him, Rick had been forced into the rings by circumstances.
Originally from New Orleans, he had escaped the big city and a family whose levels of dysfunction (understatement) put Prince’s own family to shame. The Big Easy, as New Orleans was sometimes called, had no soft or easy side for Rick, and so he turned his back on it the same way it had turned its back on him, and he went looking for something better. He had found the Devil’s Fighters instead.
Penniless and with his only skills within the field of MMA fighting, it was a matter of a very short time before he was recruited. Just as it had happened with Prince, Rick’s fighting skills had come to the club’s attention during a bar brawl. Over the years, Prince had come to suspect that causing bar fights to spot potential recruits was the Devils’ go-to scheme whenever the ranks were low in number. It hadn’t taken much for Bennie Lenday to charm Rick—he was barely in his twenties, he was naïve, and he was desperate. By the time he had figured out what he had signed up for, it was too late.
They had bonded quickly over their no-choice fate, and Prince had spilled his guts about the decision that had broken his heart…and about the woman who would always occupy a spot there. He had never mentioned her name, but apparently it had been very easy for Rick to put two and two together.
“It is her, isn’t it?” his friend asked now—although they both knew it was an unnecessary question.
“It’s her,” Prince finally admitted. “But it doesn’t matter.”
Rick stared at him in disbelief. “What do you mean, ‘it doesn’t matter?’ She’s back. You have a second chance.”
“She’s only here temporarily.”
“So? All the more reason to act, and to act quickly.”
“Why? It’s not like I can be with her.”
“Why not?”
Prince looked at his friend as if he had just suffered a blow to the head. “You know why. The club wouldn’t take it well if I got myself a serious relationship.”
Rick took a hearty sip of his beer. “We’re not slaves, dude.”
“Aren’t we?”
Rick froze. He seemed to think about it for a very long time. Then, finally, he shook his head. “No,” he said firmly. “I refuse. They can’t take that away from us too.”
Prince sighed. Rick was particularly touchy on this subject; he was gay and had been rejected by everyone he had ever known for it. Joining the Devil’s Fighters had delivered the fatal blow to his ever having a chance to express his sexuality—the club would kill him if they ever found out.
“Look, Rick, I wish things were different, but we both know how it works,” Prince said, trying to reason. He tried not to think too much about the fact that he was really mostly trying to convince himself. “Bennie wants us to focus solely on the fights. A woman would be a distraction.”
Rick gave him the ghost of a smirk. “I read somewhere that sex before an athletic effort can actually improve the performance.
Prince rolled his eyes. “Where did you read that?”
“Health Magazine.”
He couldn’t help but grin in amusement. “Dude.”
Rick shrugged. “What can I say, you can take the player out of the game…” He winked. “So what happened with your girl? Did she ask for a relationship and you turned her down?”
“No.” Surprisingly, no. Alyssa had not asked him for something he couldn’t give her. Or rather, she had, but there was nothing romantic about it. If he had to be honest, Prince was a little disappointed.
“Then what’s the trouble?”
Prince hesitated. He looked around and discovered it was only the two of them in the bar now. Greg didn’t seem to be in a hurry to close up though, and he appeared content as he read a book while sitting at a table in one corner—far enough away that he was almost certainly out of earshot.
Nonetheless, Prince lowered his voice further as he said, “She says she came back to get me out.”
Rick almost choked on his beer. He fumbled with the glass before he finally managed to put it safely back down on the counter. His hazel eyes were wide. “What?” he hissed. There was an appalled look on his still-bruised face.
“Yep.” Prince looked down at his empty glass and fervently wished it was full. He resisted the temptation to ask for more.
“What did you say?”
“I told her to stay out of it and go back to Canada.” Prince cringed at his own words.
Rick whistled softly and toasted him with his glass. “Nice going.”
Prince huffed. “Well, what was I supposed to say? ‘Sure, go ahead, get yourself killed for me?’”
“You’re so melodramatic. Are you sure you’re not gay?”
Prince glared at him. “You know I’m right.”
“Maybe,” Rick conceded.
And yet it wasn’t enough of a concession to Prince. “What do you mean, maybe?”
“I’m just saying, maybe your girl’s got a plan.”
“She’s not my girl,” Prince corrected quickly. Too quickly. What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he allow himself to even go into hypotheticals? “And whatever her plan is, provided that she even has one, I don’t wanna hear it.”
“Why not? It could be your way out.”
“I don’t want a way out!” Prince cringed at the loud sound of his voice then and immediately dropped it back to a near-whisper. “I don’t want a way out,” he repeated. “Not if it comes at the cost of someone else’s life.”
Rick stared intently at him. “What makes you so sure that it’s gonna end that badly? She seems smart. I’m sure she thought things through.”
“Whatever she has thought up, it just can’t be good enough. She doesn’t know Bennie or the club. He’s paid her a visit already.”
Rick scowled in sudden concern. “Bennie’s been to see her?”
“Yes. Almost as soon as she got back to town for her parents’ funeral, too. He knew she’s my weakness.” The admission came easy and unbidden, and Prince decided to ignore it—just as he decided to ignore the grin that flashed across Rick’s lips. “He told her to stay away from me, or else. In a nutshell.”
His hand had curled into a tight fist, so much so that his knuckles had gone white. The thought of Bennie threatening Alyssa still filled him with a rage so fierce that it was almost blinding.
“That’s not good,” Rick admitted.
“So you see now?” Prince said. “She’s already on his radar. I have to push her away.”
Rick nodded. It was clear that his friend didn’t like it, but then again neither did Prince. Still, they both knew how things worked.
They stayed at the bar for only a few minutes longer after that. Prince had known many long nights over the past eight years, and yet this one felt like one of the longest. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t unplug his mind and get Alyssa out of his head. He thought about her all the way home, and he continued to think about her while he got cleaned up and took care of his cuts and bruises. He was still thinking about her by the time he finally went to bed.
Knowing that he wouldn’t get far in his mission to think about something else, Prince gave in and let his mind wander.
He had not expected her to ever come back into his life, and he certainly had not expected her to come back like this—with the grace of a feather and the force of an erupting volcano. Try as he might to move on, he had never quite stopped thinking about her over the years. He had fantasized about her. He had tried to imagine what it would feel like to be inside of her and have her clenching around him. Now that he knew, she had become like a drug. He dreamed about her at night, and when he did, he woke up with the mother of all morning woods. She was intoxicating, and it wasn’t just about her body.
It was about her mind, too. Her beautiful, sharp mind. It was about the fierceness that sparkled in her blue eyes. It was about the killer confidence she had in herself and—God only knew why—in him. Prince could tell that Alyssa really believed he could be saved. But he knew better.
Of all the things he may have expected to hear about her returning to Pinebrook even after her parents had been put to rest, never in a million years would he have imagined her to be there to be a hero. He wasn’t going to let her put her plan into action, of course—whatever her plan was. Because he was pretty sure that, despite her determination, Alyssa still had no idea how to go about her intentions. There was no way she had a clue on how to go around Bennie Lenday and the Devil’s Fighters.
Prince knew one thing that Alyssa didn’t: It couldn’t be done. He had learned that much over the years. He had seen what happened to those who tried to defy the club or ignored their warnings. It wasn’t pretty. In fact, there had been a couple of “punishments” that still kept him awake at night. He wasn’t going to let that happen to Alyssa.
He took a deep breath. His mind was spinning. It had been eight years, and even though their connection was still obviously very strong, he had to admit that he didn’t know her. They had both grown into very different persons than what they used to be, and he didn’t know this Alyssa any better than she knew this him. She may not have a clue about how to go around the motorcycle gang that ruled their hometown, but in turn, Prince didn’t have a clue about how to convince her to let it go. He didn’t know how to get into her head and persuade her to follow his advice and just leave.
Because although he didn’t know her that well anymore, he still knew her enough to know that his little outburst from tonight would not be enough to push her in the direction of safety. Alyssa would not give up that easily, and he both loved and hated her a little for it. She was always his number one cheerleader, and it looked like that—at least—had not changed.
But it would have to. Prince knew he didn’t deserve to be thought of as someone who had any quality in him. He had tried very hard to stay the same person he was when he first started fighting, but it just wasn’t realistic to think that it could be done. This life changed him. It brought on the kind of darkness that stuck to him like the Louisiana heat and got under his skin—and it would stay there.
The darkness that had gotten a hold of Prince over the past eight years never left him. It was with him every day. It was his constant and most faithful companion. Over time, he had learned to accept it. He had learned that resisting the darkness only brought it on stronger and meaner. He had learned that he simply could not be the same person. He couldn’t be the boy he had been when he had first started out.
Over the years, Prince had learned that if he was to have any chance at survival he would have to shed himself. And so he did. He left pieces behind little by little, taking them off and then forgetting about them—or trying to. They would come back—sometimes. They would try to find him again, but they never stuck; they would slip away, overthrown by the darkness.
Prince had tried to find light in this life, too. There had to be light, somewhere. He had found it in Rick, who was a good man, and in a few others whose souls weren’t as black as those of the actual members of the Devil’s Fighters. But that light was never enough to keep the darkness at bay. The more time passed, the more Prince found himself turn to stone. He was incapable of some of the emotions that had been his everyday companions once, so long ago that he had almost forgotten.
He had thought he would also be incapable of love, but Alyssa had proven him wrong on that one. He hated that. He had hoped he would not be able to love, because love was simply not an option for a Devil’s Fighter—actual member or otherwise. Benedict “Bennie” Lenday demanded full focus, especially from his actual fighters, the men who stepped into the rings. He didn’t tolerate any distractions.
And Alyssa was the mother of all distractions. She had only been back two weeks and already Prince couldn’t think of anything or anyone else. It was all about her. He knew he couldn’t have that, but he couldn’t help it. He had wanted her for eight years. He had longed for her. He had dreamed about her coming back someday.
Now that she was back, Prince didn’t know how to deal. He had seen it all in eight years. He had seen so much that he had become arrogant enough to believe that he would now be able to deal with anything that life threw at him. But he had not been prepared for Alyssa. She was a blessing, and she was a curse. She was everything that Prince wanted and that he couldn’t have. She was his dream and, in a way, his nightmare. She was his friend, and she was his nemesis.
She was everything. She had always been everything.
But things were different now—horribly different. Prince couldn’t allow her to be the center of his world like she used to be. He couldn’t allow her to have any role in his life.
He would find a way. Just as it had happened before, he didn’t have a choice—it was either push away the woman he loved or watch people get hurt. Story of his life.