Grip Trilogy Box Set - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,110

“Does Parker know that?”

“Kind of.” I laugh at the expression on Rhyson’s face. “I’ve tried to tell him. He insists that I’m going to marry him one day and we’re going to rule the world.”

“Asshole,” Rhyson mutters. “Exactly.”

“You should be careful of him, Bristol. All that power and money make him dangerous.”

“No, thinking he’s God’s gift is what makes him dangerous, but I’ve got it under control.”

“What does that mean?”

“Meaning it was convenient for me to let him play this little fantasy out in public so Grip would finally move on.” I toy with a loose string on the sleeve of my blouse and bite my bottom lip. “Thinking I’m with Parker moved him on to Qwest, but I’ve told Parker. He hasn’t accepted it fully yet, but he’ll tell the media the truth soon.”

“If you really think Grip is over you that fast, then you don’t know him.”

For a moment, hope flares inside me. Hope that maybe I didn’t completely burn the bridge between Grip and me. But it’s a bridge I’ll never cross anyway, so what’s the use?

“He has the right to know the truth.” Rhyson’s worried eyes hold mine. “To know how you feel.”

“The right?” I scoff. “They’re my feelings, and I choose not to act on them, so what good does it do for him to know?”

“So what? You just watch him fall harder for Qwest? Give him to someone else?” Rhyson’s voice is so full of disappointment and disapproval I almost flinch. “You’re braver than that, Bristol. You’re the most fearless person I know. And you let the threat of something keep you from what you really want?”

“You don’t understand what—”

“I do,” Rhyson cuts in. “It’s the same kind of bullshit that kept Kai from being with me. Allowing her past and the mistakes her parents made to dictate her future. Imagine if she’d just given up? Not taken a chance on me? She had every reason not to.”

He takes both my hands in his, squeezing as he looks at me, through me.

“We wouldn’t be married. She wouldn’t be pregnant.” A bleakness enters his eyes. “The prospect of spending the rest of my life without her would destroy me. Why would you choose that?”

“You think I’m fearless?” The words get hung up on the tears flooding my throat. “I’m not. I’m scared shitless, Rhyson. I care so much about the people I love. I’d do anything for them. If I let myself. . . have Grip, there would be no boundaries. Do you understand what I’m saying? What if I end up like our mother? A strong woman whose man is her Achilles’ heel? A drunken fool who takes whatever scraps he leaves and shares him to have whatever he’ll give her?”

“You would never allow—”

“Neither would she, but she does.” I shake my head. “I’ve seen it. How weak she is for him. She kept it from us for years because she’s ashamed.”

“All I know is the very thought of Kai with anyone else drives me insane,” Rhyson says. “And we may not be typical twins, but I do know we’re alike in that way. Actually having to watch her be with someone else, to see her fall for someone else and know that I allowed that to happen? I would be miserable, and so would you.”

Images of Grip holding Qwest’s hand and of them out in New York laughing and kissing twist around my mind, squeezing like a boa constrictor. My imagination fills in the dark gaps of what they’re like in bed together. Of how she runs her hands over his broad chest, over the whipcord muscles of his arms and legs. How she strokes him, takes him in her mouth, takes him in her body. Of her satisfying him in a way I never will. She knows him now in a way I don’t. They’ve passed secrets between their bodies.

The unrelenting flow of images floods my mind, torturing me. Rhyson thinks I would be miserable?

Oh, God, I already am.

Chapter 16

GRIP

POETRY HAS LONG BEEN a habit and a comfort for me. Ever since I was a kid, I would recite my favorite poems when I was afraid, nervous, excited.

Sad.

The words pull me into a rhythm. Something set and predictable, yet brimming with the potential to break wild and free.

In my favorite poem “Poetry”, Neruda said he wheeled with the stars and that his heart broke loose on the wind. It seems particularly appropriate tonight because I do feel as if, with my debut