Grip Trilogy Box Set - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,108

is an alcoholic?” Disbelief, horror, smudge the clear gray of Rhyson’s eyes. “How could I not know all of this?”

“Like I said, you weren’t around.” A wry grin tilts my mouth. “And you were already running from us. As if you needed more reason to stay away. I didn’t want to tell you now that you’re finally trying with our parents. I didn’t think any of this would endear us to you.”

“I don’t know what to say.” Rhyson pushes his fingers through his unruly hair. “What to think. It’s like there was this whole world going on that I knew nothing about. Our parents. The cheating. Mom’s drinking.”

He gives me a direct look that probes for anything else I might be hiding.

“You and Grip. What does all of this have to do with the two of you?”

I lean my temple against the cool glass and don’t respond. I don’t want to talk about this with him. We go years without talking about anything but music and business and shit that doesn’t matter, and he wants to go excavating my brain while our first release rockets up the charts.

“Grip isn’t our father.” Rhyson turns my chin with his finger until I have to meet his eyes. “And you’re definitely not our mother.”

“Aren’t I?” I shake my head, lowering my eyes to hide anything else from him. “You don’t believe that. You know how alike we are.”

“Not in the ways that count,” Rhyson says. “I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t trust you when you first came back into my life. I thought she could manipulate you. You know that.”

“So did she. That’s why she didn’t completely lose her mind when I left New York to come here. She thought she could get to you through me.”

Rhyson’s jaw becomes granite.

“I know that.” He looks at me, his eyes losing some of their stoniness. “But she couldn’t. She didn’t. You’re not her.”

“She’s a foolish woman who feels too much for a man who doesn’t feel enough for her, and she can’t make herself walk away.” A hollow laugh grates in my throat. “And I’d be just like her.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’re not.”

“I am,” I fire back, holding his eyes by sheer will. “You have me pegged so wrong, Rhyson. You always have.”

“What? I . . .” He dips his head to get a better look at my face. “What do you mean?”

“You think I’m this hard ass who doesn’t care.”

My voice wobbles, dammit. I swallow as much of the years-old weakness as I can before continuing.

“That isn’t me.” The words barely make it out, singed by the hot tears in my throat. “I’m the girl who cares too much. When you and our parents walked away from each other, who fought for our family? Who actually cared that we weren’t a family?”

“Well—”

“Me, Rhyson.” I dig my finger into my chest, pressing my point. “And when we didn’t see each other, literally for years, who took the first step? Reached out? Called? Came here to see you?”

“Bristol, I—”

“That’s right. Me.” I can’t hold back the tears that leak over my cheeks. “Who was the idiot who hadn’t had a real conversation with you in years, but chose her college major based on your dreams? Bet the whole farm that you’d let me back into your life if I could help your career?”

“You did,” he says softly.

“Don’t you see? Can none of you see how much I care?” A sob breaks into my words. “How damn starved I am? For anything from you, from Mom, Dad.”

“From Grip?”

His question slices into the quiet like a knife through butter.

Softly. Smoothly, but it still cuts.

“It didn’t even take a week with him,” I whisper, sniffing and letting the tears roll over my chin, down my neck, and into my collar unchecked. “I knew I was in trouble after three days.”

A chuckle at my own expense vibrates in my chest.

“Maybe less. Two days.” I shrug. “We talked about everything that first night. There was nothing off limits. We were so different, but I’d never felt so . . . connected to anyone.”

“I guess I was working on that project, huh?” Guilt floods Rhyson’s eyes.

“That was the excuse you gave, yeah.” I give him a knowing look. “We both know you were avoiding me. You had no idea if I was legit. You didn’t know what to make of me after all those years apart. You always thought, and rightly so, that I was too much like Mother.”

“I’m