Grip (Grip, #1)

by Kennedy Ryan

“I love him,” she whispers. “He’ll have to leave me, because I love him, and I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to let go.”

Her disgust and anger trip over each other to get to me.

She loves the wrong man so hard that even when he hurts her, she can’t turn it off.

All God’s children, red and yellow, black and white get on your mama’s nerves.

Every time I’m near her I want to pour accelerant all over my anger so it burns us both to ash.

I don’t have to scan the room or search the crowd. She’s the compass in every room. I always seem to know exactly where she is.

“You take everything to another level,” I say softly into the mic, unable to look away from the promise of storm in her cloud-gray eyes. “You’re the hardest working, most committed person I know. Your passion for my work has been evident since the day we met. Tonight wouldn’t be tonight without you.”

“Ma, in your stories, why my imaginary kids always gotta have nappy heads?”

“I want you so much it scares me,” I say in a rush before my fear stops me. “The way I feel about you terrifies me.” I train my eyes on his Jordans because I can’t look at him. “I’m afraid you’ll cheat on me, take advantage of me, and that I won’t know how to stop wanting you. I’m afraid I’ll settle for less than I deserve because I’d take whatever you’d give me.”

First I wash you.” He steps back, sweeping a smoldering look over my nearly naked body, his desire stroking me like a physical hand. “Then I fuck you.”

He may be the only man I can trust with a heart like mine.

“You were made for me.”

“God, what are you doing to me?” Making you more mine every time.

“You’re everything I wanted before I even knew what I was getting.”

“You wanted me, you got me.” I kiss him one more time, branding him mine as surely as I’m branded his. “Be careful what you wish for.”

He thought I watched him before. Now that he’s mine, now that we’re together, it’s even worse. He rivets me, and it doesn’t scare me anymore. Maybe I do love him too much and don’t have boundaries. I don’t care. This love is the stuff of magic, of fantasy, but so raw and real I can touch it. I can taste it. If for some reason I fall, how many can say they soared this high?

“I see nothing but you in the future. No one but you. You know that.”

I want to spend the rest of my life feeling this way, like I’m only half alive when she isn’t here. There’s nowhere she could go I wouldn’t chase her.

She tucks her head into the curve of my neck, her breaths short and sharp as she recites from “Sonnet LXXXI”, telling me I’m already hers, to rest with my dream inside her dream, that we are joined by forever itself, and that we’ll travel the shadows together.

“You alone are my dream,” she says, adapting the quote, tears in the eyes she refuses to pull away from me. “And I alone am yours.”

I HAVE AN eye for the extraordinary. I can spot something special a mile away. That’s how I knew the day I met the man onstage that he was something special. I just had no idea how much he would change my life. Had no idea I would love him this way. I certainly didn’t have any idea he would feel the same.

A storm could come, the winds will blow The rain can wash away But what we have will stand forever, to last another day. The world can rail, their weapons clatter Let them wage their wars But peace I’ve found, and all that matters Everything here in your arms.” “Wow,” Bristol whispers, eyes wide, mouth softened into a smile. “That isn’t Neruda, is it? Who wrote that?” I tip up her chin and lay my lips against hers. No need to tell her yet that it could be part of my wedding vows. “Just something I’m working on.”