Double Dare (Devil's Fighters MC Book 3) by Evelyn Glass Read Free Book Online Page B

killer. “How do you know?”
     
    “I know ,” Xavier said. He walked up to her and took her hands in his. His green eyes were ablaze. “I have too much to lose, too much to live for. I have you , Aly. I’m not going to lose. I can’t lose.”
     
    Alyssa was already shaking her head before he had finished the sentence. She could feel tears forming in her eyes, and she did her best not to let them fall. “Please, don’t do this,” she begged, her voice breaking despite her best efforts. “I can’t lose you.” Again , she added quietly in her mind.
     
    She had lost Xavier once, all those years ago when she had left for college and he had not followed. Now that they had found each other, the thought of losing him again and in such a definite way made her physically ill.
     
    “You won’t.” Xavier reached up with one hand and cupped her cheek. “I promise you, Aly. You won’t lose me.”
     
    Alyssa leaned into his touch. She smiled sadly. “You can’t promise me that, Xavier,” she said quietly. “No one can.” My parents couldn’t, either.
     
    Suddenly it was all too much. The pain from the loss of her parents was still a searing, living thing inside of her, and the devastation brought on by all that she had learned tonight was overwhelming.
     
    “I can’t do this,” she said, choking on her own voice. She pulled away from him.
     
    Xavier frowned worriedly. “You can’t do what?”
     
    “I can’t stay here and listen to this.”
     
    Before Xavier had the chance to stop her or say anything else, Alyssa pushed past him. She all but marched through the house, snatching the car keys off the hook on the wall by the entrance without even slowing down. She slammed the door on Xavier and all of his words.
     

 
     
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    Halfway to the bar, it finally occurred to Alyssa that she had just stormed out of her own house. She quickly decided that she didn’t care, and that she needed a drink more than she needed to act rationally.
     
    Greg Marchant’s bar had an improbable name—The Hollow-Horned Moose—but inside it was just your regular joint—smoky interiors, dimmed lights, old wooden furniture, a beat-up pool table, and a juke box in even worse condition.
     
    She had not been here since she had come back to Pinebrook, and Marchant, a middle-aged man with still more black than gray in his hair, watched her in surprise as she walked in and approached the counter.
     
    “Alyssa Kelley,” the man greeted. “I haven’t seen you in a decade. How are you?”
     
    Marchant wasn’t Alyssa’s favorite person in town, but he didn’t rank amongst those she hated the most, either.
     
    She nodded in greeting and settled on a bar stool. “Fine, thanks,” she said curtly. Remembering a shred of manners, she added, “And how have you been?”
     
    “Can’t complain,” Greg said. “What can I get you?”
     
    If anything, Marchant was a man of few words, which at that moment Alyssa could appreciate immensely.
     
    “A beer, please.”
     
    Alyssa didn’t stop at one beer, and after the second one she switched to Jack Daniel’s, because she loved clichés when it came to drinking, even cheap ones. And the more she drank, the more frustrated she got. Her head was spinning, and it had more to do with what Xavier had told her than with her current alcohol intake.
     
    She could not believe what was happening. While precarious, their situation had been somewhat stable. In the space of two days, everything had been upturned. She was getting sick of it. Life had been dealing her unexpected, horrible hands for almost two months now. It was blow after blow after blow, and she had yet to process any of it. She had not had time to deal with the loss of her parents. She had not had time to let her getting reacquainted with Xavier really sink in. She had not had time to digest the truth about why he had turned his back on her eight years ago. She had not had time to deal with her hatred