Grip Trilogy Box Set - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,38

intimate it feels.

“Okay. I promise not to freak out unless they leave us up here much longer.”

“And if we are up here much longer?”

“Then I can’t make any promises.” She runs an anxious hand through her hair. “I’m not scared of heights in general. I can go up elevators and stuff. This is the only thing left from my old fear. Being in an open ride like this and suspended over the ground. I just can’t stop thinking that I could fall so easily.”

The more she talks about it, the more the color vacates her cheeks and her breath chops up again.

“Okay, let’s distract you until we get moving again.” I roam my brain for something to take her mind off the imagined fall to our death. “What’s the weirdest place you ever had sex?”

Yep. The girl I’m supposed to be not trying to screw, and that’s the question that comes to mind. Live by the dick, die by the dick, I guess. No going back now, so I just wait for her response like it’s not a moronic question.

“Um, how do you know I’ve had sex before?” Her eyes and her grin collaborate to tease me. “Maybe I’m a virgin.”

“Weren’t you the girl who screamed ‘I like dick’ at the top of her lungs last night on the dance floor?” I throw my head back and guffaw, in honor of Jimmi and her word-challenged self.

“Oh my God.” Pink washes over her high cheekbones. “I can’t believe I did that. It was the Grey Goose talking.”

“And warned me that you were horny like you might pounce on me if I got too close.” My laugh dies down to a smile, even though this conversation is making my jeans tight.

“Okay, you can stop humiliating me now.” She’s only half-joking but twists her mouth to the side. “Coat check.”

“What?” Is the height going to her head already? “What’s coat check?”

“That’s the weirdest place I ever had sex. It was at my debutante ball, and—”

“You were a debutante?”

“Don’t ask. My mother’s doing.” She sighs and offers a wry smile. “But my date and I snuck into the coat check closet and did it. I had on this huge white dress and he was struggling to find the condom and the heel on my shoe …”

She waves her hand dismissively and grins. “I guess you had to be there.”

That would have been awkward.

“I think I get the picture,” I say. “Your turn.”

She sobers in a few seconds, and her mouth gradually flattens into a soft line.

“What’s your greatest regret?” she asks softly.

“You’re kidding, right?” I turn my knees in, pressing my back against the side of the cart so I can see her squarely. “I ask you a funny sex question, and you go for the jugular with this?”

“You didn’t place any prerequisites on it.”

“I didn’t know I was dealing with a sadist, or I would have.”

“Well, you didn’t.” She smiles a little, her eyes softening. “Greatest regret, and you have to be honest. Not something stupid like never seeing The Goonies.”

“God, of course I’ve seen The Goonies.” I run a hand over my face, scouring all the regrets crowding my past to find the one that’s the worst. And once I have it, I’m not sure I want to be honest with her. If I am, it means I have to be honest with myself, too.

“Okay.” I cross my arms over my chest, tipping my head back to contemplate the stars in the darkening sky. “I was like, twelve years old.”

“Is this gonna count?” She drops a skeptical look on me. “That’s pretty young for regrets.”

“Not where I come from,” I say softly. I unfocus my eyes, looking back through the years until I find that day on the playground. “This cop stopped me and my cousin Jade.”

“For what?”

“For . . .nothing.” I shrug. “It isn’t like what you’re used to. They didn’t need a reason. And this was in the nineties, so drugs were huge in our neighborhood. And kids our age were slinging on the play- grounds. So, we didn’t think anything of it.”

“What happened?”

“He searched me, and of course, found nothing. I was a good kid.” A staccato laugh comes quick and short. “I watched movies, went to school, and wrote poetry. Not exactly a gangbanger in the making. My mom made sure I kept my head down and kept moving. You didn’t have to find trouble in my neighborhood. It found you.”

I glance over my shoulder at the ground,