Grip Trilogy Box Set - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,47

verse over a tight beat.”

–Brown Sugar

Prologue

BRISTOL

Eight Years Ago, After Spring Break—New York

I FEEL LIKE A FOOL.

Like those foolish girls who fall for the tricks of beautiful men. Men who keep women on the side. Men who cheat and don’t think twice about lying. I’m usually an excellent judge of character, but I was blinded by a charismatic smile and gorgeous body. By a brilliant mind and a silver tongue. So starved for attention, I mistook Grip’s attention for kindness. Something I could count on. Something I could believe in. I forgot I can only count on myself. Only believe in myself. But now I remember. His girlfriend screaming on the front lawn jarred my memory.

“Cheating asshole,” I mutter, rolling my mammoth Louis Vuitton suitcase through the front door of my parents’ New York home.

My classes at Columbia don’t start back up for another two days, so I’ll hang here until I have to be back in the city. My apartment is cold and lonely. I glance around our foyer, checker-boarded with black-and-white tiles, and up the wide staircase. This crypt of a house is pretty cold and lonely, too. After the last week in LA, surrounded by Rhyson’s friends, I feel the isolation more profoundly.

At least there’s an elevator here. Because dragging this huge suit- case up the steps is not my idea of fun after a five-hour flight. I’m headed around the corner to the elevator when a sound above draws my eyes up the stairs again.

A moan?

I listen more closely, despite my suspicion that I shouldn’t.

Grunting and cries of what sounds like intense pleasure.

“Well, well, well.” I laugh despite the crappy day I’ve had. “At least somebody’s getting some, even though it’s my parents. Ew.”

I’m not actually disgusted. I think I’m . . . happy. Happy that after all these years of thinking my parents didn’t even want or love each other, they thought I wouldn’t be home and are upstairs happily fucking in their glorious middle age. I’d always assumed their marriage was more of a business partnership than anything else, with Rhyson and me the two-for-one requisite heirs of a powerful arranged alliance. But it seems they do want each other. It makes my heart just a little lighter.

That’s saying something considering I stayed in the bathroom crying until the flight attendant forced me out for takeoff. Over that . . .chocolate charm lothario. That cheat. That . . . liar. My eyes are still a little puffy, a situation I need to remedy before Mother’s sharp glance starts probing. I’ll already have to endure an interrogation about how Rhyson is doing in Los Angeles. They haven’t seen my twin brother since that fateful day in court when he emancipated. They’ve talked to him even less than I have over the last few years.

“Oh, God! Yes. Yes!”

They’re getting louder and more fervent. Okay, this is getting awkward. They obviously don’t think anyone else is home, or they wouldn’t be quite so uninhibited. I’ll just slip into my room and come out later.

Someone walks through the front door behind me just as the elevator opens. Maybe Bertie, our housekeeper?

It’s my mother. Oh my God.

Every auburn hair in place, her face as smooth and lineless as it has been the last twenty-one years. She sets her Celine bag on the table by the front door.

“Bristol, welcome home.” She walks forward, her gait even and confident, so similar to mine it’s like watching myself move. She air kisses, an insubstantial affection that falls short of my cheek. “I want to hear all about your trip, of course.”

“Of course.”

I mentally scramble for a way to get her out before the couple upstairs starts grunting and moaning again. Is it Dad? I can’t even convince myself that my father is not upstairs fucking another woman. There’s no other logical explanation.

“Mother, I want to tell you everything.” I leave my suitcase by the elevator and walk to the front door. “Let’s go grab coffee. That little place up the street. Pano’s?”

“Coffee?” Mother has a way of injecting tiny amounts of scorn into just about anything, including the little laugh she offers at my suggestion. “You just got here. I just walked in the door. Why would we—”

“Fuck, yes!” The exclamation comes from upstairs.

Mother freezes and whatever drops of scorn she was poised to deliver congeal on her painted lips. Her eyes slowly climb the staircase before they return to meet mine. She looks as self-assured as she ever has, but there’s a