Grip Trilogy Box Set - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,128

else, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

“You know, through the years, I’ve given you space to sow your oats, so to speak, but I need to settle down. You’ve been groomed for me, Bristol, since we were kids. I’m ready for this to happen.”

“You’re crazy, and I don’t want to see you again, Parker.”

“And I want to see you for the rest of my life.” He crooks stiff lips into a one-cornered smile. “Is that what they call an impasse?”

“No, an impasse is when there is no apparent solution.” I channel all my frustration into my words. “I have a solution. Leave me alone. It’s something stupid our parents dreamt up. Let it go.”

Through the tinted window I see that we’re already in my drive- way. My cottage is my refuge. I need to get inside, lick my wounds from the disagreement with Grip, and shower Parker’s touch away from my body.

“This is over,” I tell him. “Don’t call me again. Our families will, of course, remain close, but we don’t have to. I don’t want to.”

“You don’t decide how this ends, Bristol.” A fiery tongue of rage licks through the cold eyes. “I do.”

I nod to Clairmont, who opens the door and holds my luggage. I take the bag from him, not wanting him or Parker anywhere near my front door.

“Either you address the rumors in the press,” I tell Parker, who watches me stonily from the back seat. “Or I’ll do it. That’s the only end you can control.”

I don’t look back as I make my way up the cottage drive, but I know he’s still there and he’s still watching. He won’t let this go.

My cottage, though empty and completely quiet, welcomes me home like a friend. This place is all mine, from the decorations I personally chose to the plants I potted myself. Of all the things I’ve accomplished, my home is one of the things that makes me most proud.

I drag the luggage back to my bedroom and collapse onto the bed I didn’t get the chance to make before I left for Dubai. The last few hours land on me like bricks. I don’t even bother stripping away my clothes, but crawl in just as I am, under the fluffy duvet. I toe my boots off under the covers, leaving the shoes in the bed with me.

I have no idea how Parker will retaliate. That nefarious brain of his is hatching a plan to either trap me or to make me suffer for defying him. Not wanting him, not grasping the privilege of his desire is, in his mind, my gravest infraction. If he had an inkling of my feelings for Grip, that would add insult so egregious to an injury so deep, I have no idea how he would retaliate. But I know it would be swift and unreasonable.

On top of that, the full implications of Grip firing me unravel the last of my fraying composure. I’ll have no place in his life. He wants us to “go our separate ways.”

Separate?

When I’ve felt more connected to him than to anyone else? Even when I was spitting mad over Tessa, I felt his guilt and his regret. I felt how it tore him up that I left and gave no sign we would ever make good on the promise of the week we shared. Wanting him, pushing him away, watching him with other women, knowing I could stop it but too afraid to try. What I want more than anything, I deny myself. I deny him.

I sit up in bed, longing for all I have left of that week we shared. I open the drawer housing all my vibrators and sex toys, reaching to the very back until I touch a key. I carefully unlock the bottom drawer and pull out the worn leather volume of poetry a boy gave a girl years ago, a guarantee of his affections. The page corners are dog-eared, and the margins are filled with notes written in a brusque, masculine hand. I trace the bold strokes of Grip’s handwriting, the audacious hope in his g’s and p’s, the impatience of the I’s he took no time to dot and his hastily half-crossed t’s.

I flip the page to a poem so familiar I could almost recite it backward, Neruda’s “Sonnett LXXXI.” In one of my favorite lines, the poet tells his love that already she is his, and implores her to rest with her dream inside his dream.