Liar (Devil's Fighters MC Book 1) (7 page)

CHAPTER NINE

When Xavier 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, Xavier—”

“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.”

Xavier 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 Xavier 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 Xavier. “He needs a hospital,” she said.

Xavier 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.”

Xavier shrugged.

Alyssa sighed. “I don’t have that kind of access to Pinebrook’s hospital.”

“I know,” Xavier 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.”

Xavier 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 Xavier’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. Xavier 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?” Xavier 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, Xavier?” 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.”

Xavier 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,” Xavier 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?”

Xavier 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,” Xavier corrected, almost automatically.

Alyssa’s eyes widened. “How many?” she asked before she could stop herself. “How widespread?”

Xavier 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,” Xavier reassured. “No one’ll be pissed off about it.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t talking about that.”

Xavier frowned, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. “What were you talking about, then?”

Alyssa shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Xavier 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?”

Xavier 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?”

Xavier 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 Xavier’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, Xavier 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?’”

Xavier 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?”

Xavier 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 Xavier curse behind her. “Aly, wait!”

She rounded on him as soon as she hurried after her. “
Don’t
call me Aly!”

“Okay,” Xavier 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, Xavier 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?”

Xavier 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?” Xavier 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. Xavier, 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, Xavier 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.