Grip Trilogy Box Set - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,270

me and not realize that losing Bristol would crush me?

“You still think she’s a trophy or a phase I’ll grow out of, don’t you?” I lean forward to study her face in case it tells me something different than her words do.

She just looks at me, the damn right so clear on her face, she doesn’t bother voicing it. I reach into the pocket of my leather jacket.

“Does this look like a phase to you?” I open my palm, exposing the large square canary yellow diamond I picked up before I went to the set of Luke’s show. Jade glares at the ring like the lights bouncing off the facets taunt her.

“You really doing this?” she grits out. “Wait’ll Aunt Mittie sees that.”

“Oh, she saw it.” I slip the ring back into the safety of my pocket. “When she helped me pick it out. Now all she talks about is swirl grandbabies.”

“You’re gonna have kids with her?” Disgust wrinkles the smooth surface of Jade’s face.

Now she’s pissing me the hell off.

“Yeah, I’m gonna have kids with her,” I snap. “As many as she’ll give me. And fuck you for making it sound like some kind of violation. I found somebody I love and want to spend the rest of my life with.”

“Oh, everybody says forever in the beginning.”

“We’ve been through this before, Jade. It is forever with us.”

Jade rolls her eyes and shoves the Raiders cap over her cornrows, resignation wrestling with protest in her expression.

“Listen to me.” I take both her hands in mine and look at her until she looks back at me. “I will choose her over you.”

Her lashes drop and blink several times, a frown drawing her brows together.

“And if you can’t get over this bigoted shit, you won’t be in our lives.”

Her eyes fly to my face, widen and then narrow.

“I love you, Jade. You know that, but you need to understand something: anyone who wants to hurt Bristol has to go through me to get to her.”

I pause meaningfully before finishing.

“And they will not get to her,” I warn. “Keep showing your ass when she comes around, and you won’t be around. I’m not tolerating the toxic.”

An unexpected smile quirks her mouth. She reaches into the pocket of her baggy jeans for lip balm and slides the stick over her lips.

“Alliteration,” she murmurs.

“What?” I exhale a frustrated breath. “Are you hearing me?”

“Yeah, ‘tolerating the toxic’—it’s alliteration.” Her smile reminisces. “You came home one day from school. We were in like the sixth grade or something. You learned alliteration that day and couldn’t stop talking about it, giving me examples, making me come up with some. You were the smartest boy I knew.”

She shakes her head, something close to pride creeping into her eyes.

“You still are. Even on that panel, you stood out. You’re the best of us, Grip, and I wanted you . . .”

Her rueful sigh says it: she wanted what she thinks is best for me, namely, for me to choose a black woman. I hook an elbow around her neck, pulling her into me.

“You know what?” I touch our heads together. “Even though I dated all over the place, every ethnicity, I think somewhere in the back of my mind I thought I would settle down with someone just like Ma. Maybe I assumed that meant she’d be black. I never gave it much thought, but that’s not what it meant. Bris is strong and deter- mined and loyal and as ride or die as they come, just like Ma. I didn’t see this coming, but she is exactly what I need.”

I kiss Jade’s forehead and stand, looking down at her. “I’m not giving her up, J,” I tell her. “Not even for you.”

She doesn’t reply, but fixes her eyes on the floor, offering no more words. I don’t wait for her to say anything, just head out the door. My words should be the last because they’re the only ones that count.

Chapter 17

Grip

“THIS IS REMARKABLE, IZ.” I study the proposal in front of me, so excited my foot is bouncing and I can practically feel my blood zooming through my veins. I saw an early draft, and talked Bris to death about it on the plane back to New York, but the final version is even better.

“I want in,” I say decisively.

“What do you mean?” Iz glances up from the stack of papers he’s grading in his office. “Want in on what?”

“I want to invest in this program,” I say.