by Paula Cox
Alyssa decided that she would forget all about Prince Wheeler once and for all. And maybe he would always be there in a corner of her mind and heart, but she would be smart enough to never acknowledge his presence again; she simply couldn’t allow him to dictate the way she lived her life.
Try as she might, every time she met a man Alyssa ended up comparing him to Prince. It infuriated her. What did he have that was so special anyway? He might have been her perfect companion once, but he had long since proven himself to be unworthy of her tears. Prince had long since proven that he didn’t care about Alyssa, so why should Alyssa care about him? Why should she still give him any consideration at all?
Never again, she decided. She would get him out of her head once and for all, one way or another. Sooner or later.
Chapter Four
If she thought thinking about her parents’ death was painful, seeing them with her own eyes was inescapably, indescribably worse. Irrationally, Alyssa had been expecting to be faced with horribly disfigured bodies from the horrific car accident that had taken her parents’ lives. Instead, the reconstruction work had been flawless and her parents looked almost peaceful.
“They look like they’re sleeping,” she said, unable to tear her gaze away from a sight she had thought she wouldn’t have to see for many years yet.
Mr. Shank, a middle-aged, African-American man whose bulky frame was at odds with the near-supernatural dexterity of his hands, gave her a proud smile. He took her words as a compliment, but Alyssa had mot meant it as such. It seemed grotesque to her that her parents would look so at peace when she knew their deaths had been so premature. It seemed strange to her that the resting expression on their faces would be so at odds with the tumult in her heart.
They looked peaceful, but it felt to Alyssa like her own peace was lost forever.
From then on, it was all downhill—or as downhill as it could be given the circumstances. She lost track of time, as she figured out all the details of the funeral with Mr. Shank and his associates. After all, she figured, it was impossible to even begin to comprehend mundane concepts such as time when planning your parents’ burial ceremony. Picking out the caskets was the hardest part, but it still wasn’t nearly as hard as actually seeing her parents’ bodies. As peaceful as they had appeared, that was still the worst, and Alyssa figured if she could survive that without having a nervous breakdown in front of near-strangers, she could survive anything.
And she really did. She didn’t know how she did it, but the day went by and at the end of it she was still standing. The funeral would be the next day in the early afternoon, and Alyssa felt anything but ready—personally and spiritually. She had taken care of all concrete details, but she had no clue where to begin to prepare herself.
She had politely declined Lynn’s offer to come stay with her for the evening. She may not know much about preparation for the funeral of one’s own parents, but she knew she had to do it alone.
Presently, she sat at the kitchen’s table eating cheerios out of the most anonymous bowl she could find in the cabinets; she didn’t want any more reminders of what life in the house had been before…well, before.
Could I be any more pathetic? she thought as she stared blankly into space.
Then again, she figured, if she ever had to be pathetic in her life, this was probably the time. After all, she did have a perfectly valid excuse. Not for the first time in her life, Alyssa wished she had not been an only child. Having a sibling would have made this awful time of her life so much easier to bear. She wouldn’t have had to go through this crippling loss alone. She wouldn’t have had to deal with all the awful practical details by herself. She could have shared this burden.
But there was no sibling, no one to bear the cross with, and wasting time wishing it were otherwise surely didn’t help matters.
A knock at the door interrupted her gloomy reverie. With a sigh, Alyssa stood and stretched, surprised at the kinks she could suddenly feel in her neck and back. So that’s where all the tension went.
She took her time walking to the front door, all the while trying to decide whether she was really annoyed at Lynn’s intrusion. After all, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to go through this “night before” experience alone.
But when she opened the door, it wasn’t Lynn who was standing there, waiting for her on the porch. It was someone she never wanted to see again.
Alyssa felt her insides grow cold and her whole body tense up like it hadn’t done even throughout her recent ordeal. It was moments before she could finally find her voice.
“What do you want?” she all but hissed through gritted teeth.
The man seemed unfazed by her unmasked hostility. He offered her a nod in greeting and a sympathetic smile that never reached his dark eyes.
Dark eyes, dark soul. Alyssa had read that somewhere, sometime, and she had never paid much attention to the words until now, when they bubbled unbidden to the surface of her mind. It was superstitious mumbo-jumbo, of course, but it fit this man and his nature perfectly.
“I came to offer my condolences—also condolences on behalf of the club.”
Alyssa’s jaw clenched so fiercely that she could almost hear her teeth screech. “I don’t need your condolences,” she said, her voice as steely as she could make it. “Or your club’s.”
“What about Prince Wheeler’s condolences?”
Alyssa’s heart skipped a beat. She did not reply; she didn’t have anything to say to this monster at her door. Wordlessly, she made to close the front door back in his face, but he quickly stuck his boot-clad foot between the door and the jamb.
“Wait!” he cried. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have said that. It was uncalled for.”
“Your presence here is uncalled for,” Alyssa said, her eyes glaring daggers into his hard features.
He gave her a half-grin that chilled her to the bone. “You haven’t lost your spunk. I like you.”
“Lucky me,” she muttered audibly. She straightened up to her full height. “What do you want?”
“I just told you.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “I accept your condolences. Now please, leave my property and never come back.”
His dark eyes watched her intently. “You really hate us, girl, don’t you?”
“I’m not a girl anymore,” Alyssa said, meeting his gaze straight on. “And yes, I really hate you.”
He didn’t say anything for the longest time and merely continued to watch her, as if he were looking for something. Eventually, he nodded. “I guess that’s fair enough,” he finally said. “Still, we’ll be at your parents’ funeral tomorrow. I came to let you know we don’t mean to stir any trouble, so don’t be scared when to see us. We just want to pay our respects.”
Hell, no. Alyssa had to physically bite down on her tongue in order to keep herself from telling him exactly where he and his friends could shove their respects.
“I don’t want you there,” she said once she felt she had regained enough self-control.
“The club, or Prince?”
Alyssa could actually feel herself fuming. How dare he speak to her about Prince? How dare he even utter his name in her presence after what he and his “club” did to him? To them?
“Any of you,” she clarified. “Tomorrow, I don’t even want to know you exist.”
“Sorry, girlie,” the man said, “it’s not up you. Your father was always good to us. He never cared who we were; he always patched us up when we showed up bleeding at his hospital. We just want to honor a friend’s memory.”
“My father was no friend of yours,” Alyssa said, horrified that the man was even suggesting it. “He was a doctor who took his duties seriously, that’s all.”
“Whatever the case, we’ll be there to say goodbye.”
“No, you won’t.” She couldn’t care less about this man and his club, or about the power they held over Pinebrook and too many of its people. “Contrary what you seem to believe, it is up t
o me. They’re my parents, and I’m the one who gets to decide who’s going to be there and who isn’t. If I so much as see a horn in the vicinity, I’m going to call the cops.”
The man’s grin widened infuriatingly. “And have them do what? Arrest us? Remove us? Good luck with that.”
Alyssa could feel her rage escalating. It was a well-known fact that half of the police force in Pinebrook was on this man’s payroll. Even after eight years, Alyssa had not forgotten about that; she didn’t think she could ever forget. But she couldn’t bring herself to care. This scumbag and his following would not be at her parents’ funeral, even if it had to be the last thing Alyssa ever did.
“I don’t care what I have to do,” she said, voicing her thoughts, “you will not be there.”
The man’s eyes flashed dangerously. For a moment, Alyssa thought she had gone too far, and she was afraid. It was one thing to decide not to let those bastards intimidate her; it was another matter entirely to ignore the danger they represented.
However, the man’s thunderous expression vanished as quickly as it had appeared—which, if possibly, actually alarmed Alyssa more.
“Whatever you say, girlie,” he said. “I’ll leave you to it. Again, I’m very sorry for your loss. Your father was a good man, and your mother was an exquisite woman.”
Alyssa didn’t care to investigate on what he meant exactly when he used the term “exquisite.” She nodded jerkily and closed the door as soon as he finally removed his foot. She watched him walk off her porch and to a Harley-Davidson parked in the driveway. Her eyes zeroed-in on the stylized drawing of a red Satan on the back of his leather vest. (How he could stand to wear anything leather in this heat was beyond her.)
Benedict “Bennie” Lenday was otherwise known as the president of Pinebrook’s very own motorcycle club, the Devil’s Fighters. There was no one on Earth that Alyssa hated more than Bennie and everything that he represented. He didn’t look all that dangerous, with his clean-shaven face and angular features, and his body at over forty years of age still could pass for that of a model. But he was the most dangerous man Alyssa had ever come across, and the most dangerous man in all of Pinebrook’s territory.
By the time she returned to the kitchen, Alyssa was shaking. She dunked the half-full bowl of cereal in the sink, all traces of appetite gone and forgotten.
She knew her father had only been doing his job and answering his call, but she couldn’t help but resent him a little for putting her in this situation. Wasn’t it bad enough that she had to face her parents’ funeral tomorrow? Now she would have to fight off gang members, too? Why did her dad have to treat the fuckers?
She knew why, of course. Alyssa didn’t work with humans; she was a veterinarian, but it was still close enough to know exactly why her dad hadn’t turned his back on the wounded men the MC had brought him.
She shuddered as the unwelcome thought that one of those men might have been Prince entered her mind.
Here I go again, she thought, as she stomped angrily to the living room and let herself flop down onto the couch, thinking about him when I have no business doing so. She wondered if the Devil’s Fighters paying respects to her father had been Prince’s idea. She wondered if perhaps it had been him who had sent Bennie Lenday to her house that evening.
But no, she reflected after a moment. That could not be the case. Nobody can make Benedict Lenday do anything, and even if that somebody did exist, it certainly isn’t Prince.
Alyssa sighed heavily and ran her hands down her face. She felt drained and on edge all at the same time. She craved sleep, but she also feared the nightmares that might await there. So, she simply sat and let her mind wander, unable to muster up enough strength to stop the thoughts from chasing each other and bouncing off the walls of her skull like a cruel ping-pong game. And after the thoughts, uninvited and yet not unpredictable, came the memories; no matter how much she tried to kid herself, Alyssa wasn’t done with them in the same way that she wasn’t done with Prince Wheeler.
Chapter Five
“I’m not coming with you.”
“Of course you’re not, silly. It’s girls’ night.”
“No, I mean to college. To New York. I’m not coming with you.”
Alyssa stared in disbelief at the boy who had promised her everything. One moment she was savoring a cappuccino and the tangible hope that everything was finally about to change for the better and the world was finally going to show her its good colors, and the next the world was turning gray again.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, and even to her own ears her voice sounded too calm, too quiet.
Across the table by the large window in the Glaudins’ diner, Prince shifted in his seat. He looked uncomfortable, but not nearly as miserable as Alyssa would expect him to look after dropping such a bombshell.
“You heard me,” he said, attempting a hard voice.
The try to cover up his feelings with a distant act made Alyssa’s blood boil even hotter.
“Yes, I heard you,” she hissed. “And I can’t believe what I heard. What do you mean, you’re not coming?”
Prince looked up at her. There was some sort of pain in his green eyes that she couldn’t give a name to and also a determination she had not expected. Was he really that dedicated to leaving her?
He opened his mouth and looked on the verge of saying something, but then he shook his head and stood.
“I’m just not coming,” he said.
With that, he all but ran out of the diner.
Alyssa reacted instantly. She hurriedly threw a few bills on the table, not even looking at what they were and too taken up in the situation to resent him for leaving her to pay for breakfast on top of it all, and dashed after him.
She caught up with him halfway up the street.
“Wait!” she cried. “Prince!” She hurried her pace, and finally she was close enough to him that she could reach out and grab his arm, effectively stopping him from running further away from her.
He turned around, and for a moment she thought she saw a flicker of something else on his handsome features. It was gone in an instant, however, and Alyssa decided she had imagined it.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she all but yelled in his face. “You can’t drop a bomb like that and then run out on me!”
Prince threw an uncomfortable look around. “People are watching,” he said quietly.
“Let them,” Alyssa said, shooting a glare at the passersby who were indeed glancing curiously in their direction. “I don’t care.”
“Well, I do.”
“Well, I’m not feeling very sympathetic towards your feelings at the moment.”
For a few moments they stood unmoving in the middle of the sidewalk, having their own private stare-down.
Finally, Alyssa said, “You owe me an explanation.” Her tone was much calmer, but her stomach was in knots. Just what the hell was going on?
Prince sighed heavily. “I guess I do,” he said. “But let’s not do it here.”
Alyssa nodded. She agreed that the middle of the road was no place to have a conversation of any kind, let alone one as important as this.
Twenty minutes later, they were back at her house. It was blissfully empty, being the middle of a summer day. Her dad was at the hospital and her mom was at the primary school’s summer camp along with the other teachers—and Alyssa knew she could yell as much as she wanted, if need be.
She sat on the swing on the front porch and looked at Prince expectantly. Hesitantly, he sat down beside her. She had lost count of the times they would sit just like this on the soft cushions, enjoying the outside air—but then again, they had never sat like this. Not with this heaviness between them.
“What’s going on, Prince?” she eventually demanded.
Alyssa’s heart was beating a mile a minute. What could have possibly changed in the span of twelve hours? The previous night, Prince had been as excited as ever about their plans of escaping
Pinebrook together. They were both twenty-two years old, and it was about time. Alyssa had been accepted to the prestigious Corner University of Veterinary Medicine in Ithaca, New York, shortly after she had sent in her application before graduating from high school. She had put it off in order for Prince to have enough money to move with her and attend community college. It was their dream to escape Pinebrook together, and God knew Prince needed it even more than she did.
Now, four years down the road, after much hard work on both parts, the time had finally come. They would leave in September. Or so Alyssa had thought until today.
