Grip Trilogy Box Set - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,283

Try me and see.”

I gulp back a river of profanity. The thought of this man using me to provoke Grip unleashes a rage that I leave boiling in my belly. I can’t very well talk Grip down if I’m standing on the ledge beside him, ready to jump.

“Grip, please let him go,” I say, finding matching concern in Dr. Hammond’s eyes across Grip’s arm, a stiff bridge from his body to Ford’s neck.

As abruptly as he grabbed him, Grip releases Ford.

“Get him out of here,” Dr. Hammond tells me, watching as Ford coughs a little, adjusts his suit, and walks back to the group of admirers security is holding back. When I see the outrage on their faces, I realize just how ugly this could have gotten. Grip’s fans and Dr. Hammond’s students and followers study the smaller group of supporters who showed up to demonstrate solidarity with Ford. This has the potential of a bomb poised to blow, and I need to get Grip out of blast range.

I drag him through the door and down the sidewalk. My feet hurt in the high-heeled boots, but I ignore the discomfort, covering as much ground as possible at a bruising pace.

“Bris.” Grip tugs on my hand, trying to slow me down. “Babe, hold up.”

I ignore him and keep moving, as much to give myself something else to focus on as to actually get away from that scene.

“I said stop.”

Grip pulls us up short, stronger and able to stop me when he wants to. He lifts my chin, forcing me to look at him. We’ve been practically running in the freezing cold. Exerted, we watch each other through frosted-air breaths. He scans my face under the streetlights, impervious to the steady stream of people trickling past, a few of them wearing questions about Grip’s identity on their faces. It’s times like these I wish he was just mine, wish the whole world didn’t feel they had a right to be in our lives.

Actually, I pretty much feel like that all the time.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Am I okay?” My voice spikes with incredulity. “You’re the one who just choked a white supremacist in a roomful of white supremacists, but yeah, I’m just dandy, Grip. What the hell?”

“I did not choke him. I firmly held him against the wall. The limp dick bastard could have gotten loose at any point if he’d tried hard enough.”

“And why do you think he didn’t try?” I demand. “Why do you think he held back his security? Why’d he grin like a maniac the whole time? You played right into his hands.”

“Fuck this.” He tries to start walking, but I grab his elbow.

“No, listen to me. You’re there for a debate on people of color and mass incarceration and you do something like that? You know what you’re up against. You have everything he thinks you don’t deserve. He wants to discredit you, and you opened the door to let him. You have to be wiser than that.”

“Wiser?” Anger forces a plume of breath out to freeze in the air. “So now you’re telling me how to be a Black man in America? Like I haven’t negotiated this shit my whole life?”

“Oh, is that how it’s gonna be?” Hurt crowds my heart in my chest until it’s just a small thing barely beating. “I don’t get to tell you things like this? Why? Is it a Black thing and I wouldn’t understand?”

“This isn’t going to a good place.” He runs both hands over his head and down his face. “Let’s get home.”

“No, I want to know.” I tuck my hands, like blocks of ice, into the pockets of my cashmere coat. “Are there things that are off limits with us? When we have kids, will it be ‘our’ community and ‘our’ causes and ‘our’ struggle, and Mommy just gets to watch? Is that what you envision for me? Another family where I don’t quite fit?”

Tears blur his face in front of me.

“Because I’ve done that.” I swallow the painful lump searing my throat. “If that’s how it’s going to be, tell me now. I want to be prepared if you don’t want what I thought you did—something that doesn’t have barriers or boundaries. I would never be disrespectful, you know that, but don’t . . .”

I look down at the cracks in the sidewalk, wondering if some- where inside I’m cracking, too.

“Just don’t leave me out,” I whisper. “Don’t make me feel like there are parts of