Grip Trilogy Box Set - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,358

into my spine, but I don’t care. He rains kisses over my shoulders, suckling my breasts, fingers invading my hair and caressing my scalp.

“Thank you, Bris. God, I’ve missed you so much. I love you,” he whispers over my lips, sending his tongue in to taste me. “I can’t stop touching you. I thought I might lose . . .”

His voice breaks. He buries his head in my neck, and I feel his tears mingling with the sweat sheening my body. He reaches up, looking at me with wet eyes, and brushes away the tears I didn’t realize were streaming over my cheeks, too.

“We made it.” He smiles at me, eyes tender. “I told you we could survive anything together.”

He never doubted us. When I wasn’t sure I could make it, when I couldn’t find my way out of the darkness entombing me, he came for me.

“Don’t ever tell me not to save you,” I say, tears rolling between my naked breasts and over the gold that binds our hearts together. “You saved me, Grip. You came for me.”

He looks at me curiously, like it’s something he can’t believe I’m surprised by, like he wonders if I’m still figuring it out. He bends to lick at my tears and lifts the wild hair from my eyes, the look he rests on me devoted and sure.

“I’ll always come for you, Bristol.”

He said it after eight years of waiting for me. He said it when he came to LA after our fight. He’s said it in a million ways with and without words. He says it with his heart, and I have to believe him because when I was at my lowest and thought all was lost, he found me in hell and brought me home.

Quote

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul -And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops at all.”

Emily Dickinson

Epilogue

Grip

“WHY DO I let her talk me into this shit?” I mumble, staring at the instructions I thought were in English, but may as well be Greek.

“Shit!”

I turn horrified eyes on my eighteen-month-old daughter’s cherubic face. She’s triumphant because she said a word.

A really bad one.

I squat down to the floor where she’s playing with the Sesame Street app on her iPad.

“We don’t say that word, Nina,” I tell her gently, running a hand over the dark coils of hair springing with life and health. Bristol takes such pride in finally figuring out how to do our daughter’s hair. Jade, of all people, who wore cornrows to the prom, helped her, Jade and YouTube—and my mama, and Shon. Apparently, it takes a village to do Nina’s hair.

“Shit!” Nina says again, her delighted eyes startlingly silver against the copper of her skin.

“No, baby.” My panic rises. The kid can’t say “dog,” but manages to say “shit” twice in ten seconds. “Bad word.”

“Shit!”

“Dammit,” I say under my breath. “Bristol’s gonna kill me.”

“Dammit,” Nina parrots absently, her attention already back on Sesame Street.

This is bad. I’m devising how to make this not my fault when my cell phone rings. Splitting a look between the directions I won’t understand without Rosetta Stone and the toddler I’m corrupting, I glance at the screen.

“Mrs. O’Malley, hi.” Pleased to hear from her, I slide my back down the newly painted wall to sit on the floor. “Happy belated birthday. I hope you got the flowers we sent.”

“Yes.” The one word comes over the line faintly but carries her distress. “I . . . thank you. It was sweet.”

“Is everything okay?” I frown, wondering what could have the usually upbeat owner of our place in New York upset.

“No, I . . .” Her voice collapses, and her pain reaches across the miles. “He’s gone, Marlon. Oh, God. Patrick’s gone.”

For long seconds, her tears, the sound of her grief, shreds me. I’m at a loss, searching for the right words to say, but if Bristol goes first, there won’t be any right words. The whole world will be inadequate if I lose her. I won’t insult Mrs. O’Malley with my platitudes. I respect her devastation, letting her weep for a few seconds until she can speak again.

“It was peaceful,” she finally says, her voice still not strong, but clearer. “I knew it would happen soon, but I wasn’t ready.”

How can you ever be ready to lose the love of your life? The question, even theoretically, accelerates my breath and pricks my heart in sympathy for her and in resignation that one day,