Grip Trilogy Box Set - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,29

glance.

“Me?” My harsh laugh bounces off the Jeep’s interior. “He’s the one.”

“You know he’s just hurt, Bristol.”

“He’s hurt?” I turn in my seat to face him, the seatbelt cutting into my chest. “He’s the one who left five years ago. He’s the one who acted like I was a nuisance every time I reached out. And then I come out here on my spring break, just to have him work the whole time. I swear he’s using it as an excuse not to deal with me.”

“He does have actual work,” Grip inserts.

“And he’s the one hurt?” I power on. “The hell.” “You can’t control him, Bristol.”

“Contr . . .you’re on his side.” Even though Rhyson is Grip’s best friend and I’ve only known him a day, I feel betrayed. “You think I’m trying to control my brother? I’m trying to help him fulfill his dreams.”

“No, they’re not his dreams.” Grip shakes his head adamantly, eyes trained ahead. “Not right now. They’re your dreams for him. The same way your parents worked him to death doing their dreams. It feels the same to him.”

“It isn’t the same.” I say it even though what he says makes sense. I don’t want to accept it. He takes my pause as the chance to speak some more.

“Think about it.” Grip’s voice gentles, and the look he sends me from behind the wheel gentles, too. “Their priorities weren’t straight. They seemed more concerned with the career than with him. When you take the reins like you did back there, it makes him think that you’re just like them, especially your mom.”

I let that set in for a second, let it sink through my pores and trickle down to my heart. It hurts because, though I love my mother and have done all I could to please her, she’s a hard-nosed bitch.

Am I?

“You’re not like her,” Grip says softly, as if he read my mind. “At least not the way he described her to me. You’re not that.”

I turn my head and look out the window so he won’t see my lip trembling or the tears quivering on my lashes. It feels like I keep hiding from him when he seems to see everything.

“Maybe I am,” I whisper. “I just . . .he’s so talented. I will never believe he’s supposed to be some hack who just writes for other people.”

I whip my head around, eyes wide. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Grip laughs, the cocky smirk firmly in place. “I already know I got the goods. It’s just a matter of time and the right opportunity before I’m on somebody’s stage.”

His smirk disappears when he glances at me.

“For me and for Rhyson. I actually am on your side in this. I believe he should be doing his own music, too, and he will. But he has to come to it for himself.”

I bite my thumbnail and shake my head, turning my eyes back to the traffic crawling by.

“How do you guys live with this traffic?” I ask, needing to dispel some of the heaviness in the car.

“Like New York’s much better?”

“True. But you don’t have to drive in New York.”

“Well, it sounds like you may have to endure it with the rest of us soon.” We’re sitting still, jammed in a tight line of vehicles, so he looks at me fully, a question in his eyes before he asks it. “Were you serious about moving here when you graduate?”

I nod and swallow my nerves as I wonder if he’s asking for Rhyson or if he might have a personal interest in my relocating to the West Coast.

“That’s the plan.” A self-deprecating smile wrings my lips. “The ridiculous plan based on Rhyson doing something he has no intention of doing. You must think I’m crazy, huh?”

“It is crazy.”

My heartbeat stumbles. I know it’s farfetched. I know it’s irrational to stake my entire college career, my future, on the dreams Rhyson isn’t even dreaming, but to hear Grip affirm my lunacy chafes. Then his lips, which are a contradiction of soft and sculpted, curve into something especially for me. A smile just for me. When he turns to look at me, it warms his dark eyes.

“And I don’t know what Rhyson did to deserve you,” he says.

9

BRISTOL

I’M NOT SURE I like this club.

Another scantily dressed woman walks over to the booth and passes Grip a slip of paper, presumably with her number on it.

That might have something to do with why I don’t like this club. And it’s ridiculous.