When Prince showed up at her house again that very same night, Alyssa almost didn’t want to believe it. And when she realized that he wasn’t alone, she almost shut the door in his face. In fact, she would have done just that if he hadn’t stuck his foot between the door and the jamb, effectively preventing her from shutting him and the trouble he carried with him out of her life.
“Alyssa, please!”
“You’ve got to be shitting me, Prince—”
“Please, you have to help me!”
Alyssa wanted nothing more than to tell him she didn’t “have” to do anything, thank you very much, but something in his voice stopped her cold. It was laced with alarm and panic more intense than she had ever heard.
He must have caught her uncertainty, because he caught her gaze and held it, his green eyes burning with his cry for help.
“Please,” he said again.
Alyssa thought of her dad, who had saved Bennie Lenday’s life even though he must be one of the most horrible human beings on Earth. She sighed heavily.
“Fine,” she said, already regretting it. “Bring him in.”
Prince almost collapsed in relief. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.
Alyssa shook her head and opened the door wider.
The man was probably somewhere in his early thirties. At least, that’s what Alyssa could discern once she had finally managed to clean all the blood off his face. She could see there was a fresh face underneath the blood and the bruises, and Alyssa’s heart broke for him. Still, it was nothing compared to how she felt when she cut open his blood-soaked T-shirt and saw what was alarming Prince so much.
The man’s torso was a triumph of fresh bruises, cuts, and abrasions. He was breathing funny, and it didn’t take her long to assess that he had more than a few broken ribs.
She looked up at Prince. “He needs a hospital,” she said.
Prince was shaking his head even before she had finished her sentence. “I can’t bring him to a hospital; they won’t treat us.”
Alyssa frowned. “How did my dad do it?”
“He treated us privately.”
“You mean illegally.”
Prince shrugged.
Alyssa sighed. “I don’t have that kind of access to Pinebrook’s hospital.”
“I know,” Prince said. “That’s why I’m telling you we can’t bring him there.”
Alyssa’s brain was working a mile a minute. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll need warm water and bandages.”
Prince acted immediately.
“Stay with him,” Alyssa told him when he returned with what she had asked.
“Where are you going?” he asked, alarmed.
“To ransack my father’s medical supplies.”
He relaxed a little when he realized she was not going to run out on them.
In her father’s cabinets, Alyssa found an oxygen tank, needles, syringes, and anesthesia. She figured they would work much better than whiskey once she reset the bones that could be reset.
Still, without the full arsenal of a hospital’s supplies at her disposal, it was slow-going work. Eventually, however, the man was resting more or less peacefully on the couch, with an oxygen mask to make the effort of breathing a little easier.
Alyssa brought everything to the kitchen and began to wash the blood off her hands. It wasn’t long before she felt Prince’s presence behind her—close, so close.
He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. His fingers were warm on her skin.
“Thank you,” he said, softly and heartedly.
Alyssa finished washing her hands and wiped them on a towel. She turned around slowly. Prince was really too close for comfort, but she refrained from saying anything about it.
Instead, she said, “What happened to him?”
“Are you sure he’s going to be fine?” Prince asked.
“Eventually,” Alyssa replied after a moment. “I don’t think either of his lungs were punctured.”
They were silent for a long, long moment.
“What happened to him, Prince?” Alyssa asked again.
His handsome features darkened. “I don’t think you’d want to know.”
“I want to know,” she said. “After treating him, I deserve to know.”
Prince stared at her for a while, uncertain. Eventually, he nodded. “He was in a fight.”
Alyssa blinked. “That’s it?” she said. “That’s what you didn’t want to tell me?”
“No, you don’t understand,” Prince said. “I don’t mean a brawl. I mean a fight.”
Alyssa frowned. Then, slowly, comprehension finally began to dawn on her. “You mean, like…an organized fight? Like some assholes do with dogs?”
Prince nodded. “Yeah. Like with dogs.”
Alyssa’s insides went cold. She had heard rumors about the Devil’s Fighters and their ring of organized underground fighting, but they were the only rumors about the gang that had remained just that—rumors. Nobody was sure that ring actually existed.
“So it’s true, then,” she said, horrified. “Your club has a fighting ring.”
“Rings,” Prince corrected, almost automatically.
Alyssa’s eyes widened. “How many?” she asked before she could stop herself. “How widespread?”
Prince shook his head. “I can’t tell you that; you’re safer not knowing.”
Alyssa snorted. “Believe me, after today, I feel anything but safe.”
“You’re not in any trouble for helping Rick out there,” Prince reassured. “No one’ll be pissed off about it.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t talking about that.”
Prince frowned, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. “What were you talking about, then?”
Alyssa shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Prince hesitated, obviously torn between investigating and letting it go. He proved to be wiser than Alyssa would have given him credit for by choosing the latter—for the time being.
“He’s my best friend, you know?” he said, busying himself with preparing coffee. He didn’t bother to ask whether Alyssa wanted some, and she didn’t bother to tell him that she would rather have tea; it was obvious that he needed something to do as much as she did, something to channel the tension into. “He’s a good man.”
Alyssa arched an eyebrow. “Is he, now?”
Prince sighed. “Yes, Alyssa. Not all of us are monsters, especially those who fight in the rings. We’re just honorary members because of our competitor’s status.”
Alyssa looked up sharply and stopped brushing the bowl they had filled with warm water. “Wait, what?”
Prince didn’t turn around from where he was watching the coffee brew. “You heard me.”
“You’re a fighter?”
“I sure as hell am no vice president.”
Alyssa was speechless. She had come up with countless different scenarios to justify Prince’s role within the gang, but she sure as hell had never pictured him as a competitor in their fighting ring. Rings, as he had so promptly pointed out.
“But why?” she cried, dumbfounded.
Finally, Prince turned around. He shrugged. “Why not?”
Alyssa looked at him incredulously. “I can think of at least twenty different reasons why not off the top of my head.”
He smiled, amused. “It’s not all bad.”
“‘It’s not all bad?’” Alyssa repeated, astonished. “Are you fucking kidding me? Do you want to go back to the living room and take another look at your friend and then tell me that ‘it’s not all bad?’”
Prince cringed visibly. “It’s good money…” he tried weakly.
“Oh my God,” Alyssa said, incredulous. She forgot all about the bowl. She turned off the water in the sink and wiped her hands dry. “Are you nuts? Did you know this is what you were going to do when you decided to join?”
Prince had the good grace to look embarrassed. “I did.”
Alyssa stared at him. She just couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. It was one thing for him to have grown into a different person than the one Alyssa used to know, but this was just ridiculous; there had to be a limit to the amount of nonsense one could spew in under sixty seconds.
“And you joined anyway?”
“What choice did I have?”
The words hit her like a sucker punch. “You had a choice, you bastard,” she spat out before she could stop herself. Unable to look at him any longer, she turned on her heels and strode back to the living room.
“Shit,” she heard Prince curse behind her. “Aly, wait!”
She rounded on him as soon as she hurried after her. “Don’t call me Aly!”
“Okay,” Prince said quickly, trying to placate her. “I’m sorry. Look, I didn’t mean it like that. You don’t know—”
“What?” Alyssa cut him off angrily.
On the couch, Rick moaned, maybe disturbed by the raised voices. Alyssa bit her lip and strode back to the kitchen, Prince once again chasing after her. Once they were both inside, she closed the door behind them.
“What is it that I don’t know?” she demanded, keeping her voice as low as she could allow herself when all she wanted to do was scream in his face.
“You don’t know why I did it.”
Alyssa folded her arms defensively across her chest. “Did you or did you not leave me to go be a competitor in a gang’s illegal fighting rings?”
Prince swallowed visibly. “I did.”
“Well, that’s all I need to know,” she said. “I don’t care why you did it. I don’t care what came over you.”
“Really?” Prince said. There was something in his eyes now, a sudden glint that Alyssa didn’t have a name for.
“Really,” she said.
He stepped closer. “You don’t care why I did it?”
“I don’t care why you did it,” she said, her anger dissipating and morphing into something she couldn’t define.
Something was happening, she could feel it. The air in the room was crackling with electricity, but Alyssa did not dare to acknowledge it. Prince, meanwhile, was getting closer and closer. His eyes were looking deep into hers, refusing to let go. Alyssa felt shivers run down her spine.
“You don’t care about me?” he said, his voice soft and dangerous, a danger completely different from the kind that rang, for example, in Bennie Lenday’s voice.
Alyssa swallowed hard. Her throat and mouth were suddenly dry. “I don’t care about you,” she said.
Finally, Prince stopped. He was only a couple of inches away from her face. His eyes were greener than she had ever seen them and darker than she could ever have imagined.
“Liar,” he said.
“What?” she said weakly.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“You care about me.”
“I don’t.”
“You’re in love with me.”
Alyssa took a step back. “I’m not.”
Prince’s hand shot out, lightning-fast. He grabbed her arm and tugged her closer.
“You’re hurting me,” Alyssa said, even though it wasn’t really true. Still, his grip was scorching on the bare skin of her arm.
“You’re in love with me,” Prince said. “I can feel it. I can see it. I know you are.”
“You left me.”
“I’m here now.”
“You left me.”
“So did you.”
Alyssa froze. She felt shell shocked. It was as if a bolt of lightning had struck her. She had never once seen it that way. She wasn’t sure she saw it that way even now, but it was hard to argue with Prince’s touch on her skin and his eyes looking at her like that.
She thought about something, anything to say now, but no words came to mind or, for that matter, to her tongue.
As it turned out, however, she didn’t need any. Prince pulled her even closer—impossibly so—and kissed her. Alyssa’s brain, usually so sharp and rational, short-circuited on her. There was a small voice in some corner of her head telling her that this could not happen, that it was a bad idea, that it was a disaster. That voice died down quickly, as soon as Prince’s tongue was in her mouth.
He didn’t taste like coming home. Theirs wasn’t the kiss of two long-lost lovers finding each other again. It was a kiss of pent-up emotions, of unspoken words, and of unexpressed feelings. It was a kiss between two virtual strangers, and that made it all the more intense.
Prince let go of her wrist, his arm going to encircle her waist instead, his other hand coming up to grab a fistful of her raven-black hair as he deepened the kiss. Alyssa responded immediately. She grabbed at the front of his T-shirt—still stained with his friend’s blood—with both hands and held on for dear life. She probably should have let go, but she couldn’t bring herself to.
It felt as though her whole body was on fire, wracked with an all-consuming, electric energy that she had no other choices but to let out. She didn’t even notice they were moving until her back hit the door of the fridge—hard. Their hands roamed all over each other’s bodies, tugging at garments, touching skin, and grabbing flesh. It was as though they were trying to melt into each other.
Alyssa didn’t fight it; she couldn’t have, even if she had wanted to—and if she were to be completely honest with herself, she really didn’t want to.
Eventually, they emerged for a breath. They were both panting, and Prince’s green eyes had gone dark with something entirely different than his dark past.
“Fuck,” he said, breathing heavily. “I want you, Aly.”
“Don’t call me Aly,” she said automatically, but with no heat to it. “I want you, too.”
It was all they needed. Once their mutual desire was finally expressed out loud, all taboos were lost. Alyssa pulled Prince to her, and he didn’t fight her. She didn’t fight herself, either.