Free Double Dare (Devil's Fighters MC Book 3) by Evelyn Glass

out of the ring. So we’d best meet halfway.”
     
    Xavier stared at her, long and hard. Eventually, he smiled. “You’re impossible, you know that?”
     
    “Look who’s talking.”
     
    He reached out to grab the arm of her chair and pulled her to him. He met her halfway, kissing her deeply, his other hand cupping the back of her head.
     
    Alyssa leaned into his touch and gave in to the kiss. There was a voice in her head that told her these may be the last kisses they would ever share. She silenced it quickly, unwilling to let her mind go there; if she gave in to those thoughts, despair would quickly follow. And despair was something she simply couldn’t afford at the moment.
     
    They kissed on Lynn’s porch for a very long time, and eventually they all went off to their day ahead. Lynn went to her diner. Xavier drove Alyssa back to Greg’s bar to retrieve her car and then, much to Alyssa’s chagrin, he went to train for the fight. Alyssa climbed into her rental vehicle and drove back to a house that soon would not belong to her any longer.
     
    To say that she was at peace would have been an exaggeration, but she did feel better about things. Much as she didn’t like to admit it, Xavier really did seem confident that he had an actual chance of winning this fight. Alyssa allowed herself a few precious moments in which she entertained the idea that he might win, and that this nightmare would soon be over, and that they would all be free. She didn’t linger too much on that blissful image, however, for fear that it might go up in a puff of smoke.
     
    She didn’t quite know what had possessed her to declare that she would go and see the fight with her own eyes. The idea alone terrified her. She didn’t want to see Xavier get hurt, God forbid even killed. But she figured if he was ready to take that risk, then she could swallow her own fears and be there for him. Whatever happened, he didn’t deserve to go through it alone.
     
    Alyssa’s hold around the steering wheel tightened as her body was once again taut with tension. It seemed tension was her permanent state of living now. Her muscles were constantly tight, her neck was constantly rigid. Her heart felt like it had not stopped galloping within her chest ever since she had gotten the news of her parents’ death. She was just so tired of all this.
     
    She thought of Bennie Lenday and of the way he and his gang ran this town. She thought of the power the Devil’s Fighters held over everything and everyone in Pinebrook, even over those honest people who had nothing to do with them. Indirectly, everything that happened and did not happen in Pinebrook was a consequence of their actions and decisions. Alyssa felt the familiar hatred mount dangerously in her chest. It wasn’t fair. She wished she could see them destroyed, but she knew that project was bigger than her. Right now, her priority had to be Xavier and getting him out of that nightmare of a life. She hoped, however, that one day the reign of the Devil’s Fighters would end.
     
    Alyssa shook her head. Bennie Lenday and his gang surely did not deserve to be in her head so often and for so long, but she just couldn’t help it. They had taken everything from her, and she would always hate them in a way that she had never hated anything or anyone else. Pure, burning, all-consuming hatred.
     
    She took a deep breath and willed herself to remain calm and focused, knowing that was the only way she would ever get through all this.
     
    When she reached her parents’ house, a red Fiesta was parked outside. Alyssa frowned and parked her own vehicle behind it in the driveway. She climbed out and walked up to the house. To her absolute surprise, sitting on the swing on the front porch, waiting for her, was Anna.
     

 
     
     
    CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    Anna was about the last person Alyssa would have expected to see in Pinebrook. Ever. Anna was Vancouver through and through, not in the sense that she was from