by Kate Stewart
“You’re not as . . .” He withdraws his hand. “Ready for me as I would have hoped.”
“I can get myself ready, if you like.” I barb the smile before I give it to him. “It’ll be like old times.”
I’m not the only one holding back my true feelings. Despite the calm veneer, I see barely restrained rage in Parker’s eyes. I’m just waiting for him to take it out on me.
“The whole world is laughing at me, Bristol.”
“They aren’t.”
“To the world, you played me with that thug of yours.”
I don’t defend Grip. That would only make him angrier.
“I asked you to tell the press, Parker. I wasn’t cheating on you, and you know it. Now let’s get this over with.” Urgency to free Grip, to clear his name, rides me. “Tell me what you want. I’m on my knees here. You want head? You want to fuck me in the ass? You want to invite a couple friends? I don’t care, just tell me you’ll clear his name and do it as soon as humanly possible.”
Though I have my doubts about Parker’s humanity.
“God, all that loyalty and fire. That was supposed to be mine, too.” Parker runs a finger down my cheek, smiling when I flinch. “You think I’ll make this simple for him? For you? No, he needs to be humiliated the way I was. Everyone has to know.”
A cesspool of dread stands in my belly.
“Just tell me what I have to do, and give me the assurances I need that you’ll get him out as soon possible.”
“So impatient.” He pushes my hair back from my face, his touch lingering at my neck with deceptive gentleness. “You and I leave for the Amalfi Coast tomorrow.”
“All right.” I have no idea why this is necessary, but I also can’t care anymore. I just need to get Grip free.
“We’ll fuck on my yacht, out on the upper deck.”
My acquiescence freezes on my lips, horror seeping slowly into every fiber of my body.
“The upper deck?”
“Yes, the same reporter who leaked the Vegas pictures is standing by.” His frigid smile is an icy warning. “The whole world will know that you may be with him, but you’re on vacation fucking me. More importantly, he’ll know.”
I don’t know if I can do it. For a moment, my will wavers.
"Do you think I've done my worst, Bristol?" Parker’s smile is a sutured curve, a jagged row of stitches stretching over a wound. "Oh, it could get worse for him. What if there's a body somewhere connected to these drug deals of his? What if his DNA can be matched to any number of crimes? He could be put away for life, if I try just a little harder."
I think of Grip behind bars, possibly for years, life in ruins because he loved me.
“So tomorrow?” I pull my dress up over my shoulders, forcing the words past the heart trapped and bleeding in my throat. "What time?"
“I’ll pick you up at two.”
“I’ll be ready.”
I start to get up from my knees, but he grabs my elbow and turns me back to face him.
“One more thing, Bristol.”
He jerks me into him, his mouth rough and cruel, and his teeth sharp on the tender swell of my bottom lip. My own blood rushes into my mouth. He flattens his hand to my chest, and my heart tattoos fear into his palm. A smile slashes his face before he snatches the chain from my neck.
“You really should have let me buy you this necklace.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Bristol
“THE LAWYERS ARE working on it, but we keep hitting a wall.” Rhyson shakes his head, dismay darkening his gray eyes to slate. “It’s the weekend, so that’s part of it, but these guys can usually break through anything. Even getting this private meeting room was near impossible, and usually a good bribe can pull that off easily. Some high ups must be monitoring your case really closely.”
He splits a careful glance between me and Grip, who faces us from the other side of the table, dressed in royal blue scrubs with LA County jail emblazoned on the back. It’s incongruous. Awful and incongruous to see my brilliant poet in this garb. This man whose record is cleaner than mine when so many things where he grew up could have left smudges on him. That was the thing his mother was most proud of, and because of me, that’s gone.
Grip has been uncharacteristically quiet. Anger dulls the eyes usually lit with humor, intelligence. For me—desire, love.
“My mom’s coming?” he asks, not acknowledging Rhyson’s comment at all. “She knows to come here, right?”
Rhyson and I exchange a concerned look.
“Yeah, Gep made sure she knows we got this room. Did you hear me, Marlon?” Rhyson presses. “We keep running into walls, but we’re working on it.”
“Any idea what’s behind it all?” Grip asks the question of Rhyson, but his eyes rest on me. “Why I was set up in the first place?”
With a look, Rhyson and I silently agree to tell him.
“We think it may be Parker.” I clear my throat and drop my eyes to the imitation wood of the table. “So, it’s probably my fault.”
“Not your fault, Bristol,” Rhyson says quickly. “But I do agree that Parker is the only person with motivation and power enough to throw up the kind of road blocks the lawyers keep encountering.”
“They won’t make any headway.” I run a trembling hand through my hair.
“How would you know that, Bristol?” Grip’s question, his voice so hard it hurts my ears. “You sound really certain.”
“I mean, I’m guessing.” I shrug one shoulder, toying with the bangles on my wrist “If it’s Parker, he’ll have thought of everything.”
“I bet he has.” Grip’s eyes rest so heavily on me I feel them even though I’m still not looking at him. I tuck my swollen bottom lip in my mouth, hoping he won’t notice.
“Well, we’re not giving up. Gep’s calling in favors with all his old fed contacts. See what we can find.” Rhyson glances at his watch. “I gotta run. Luke’s got a session he needs me to sit in on, but the lawyers will keep working.”
He stands and crooks a grin at us.
“Besides, I assume you guys want a few minutes alone.” He tips his head toward the cameras in the corner of the ceiling. “Don’t give ’em too much of a show.”
I glance at Grip, but there’s no answering smile. No acknowledgment of Rhyson’s joke. He stands, and they do that man hug thing, pounding on each other’s backs.
“I’m gonna get you out of here,” Rhyson says. “I’m sorry you’re not out already.”
“Not your fault, man.” Grip fist pounds Rhyson before taking his seat, his eyes latching on to me again. “Thanks for all you’re doing.”
“Bye, sis.” Rhyson drops a kiss on my hair. “Stay out of trouble. Let me handle this Parker shit.”
I nod but focus on the hands in my lap. I’m usually an excellent liar, but the dilemma with Parker has stripped all my guard away, and I don’t trust my own subterfuge to hold under their sharp eyes.
Once Rhyson leaves, I’m not sure what to do with myself or with Grip. I lay my hand on the table, in hopes that he’ll reach for it, but he doesn’t. He’s quiet and intent, dissecting me with his stare.
“What?” I hazard a glance up to meet his eyes. “Why are you so quiet? You’re angry. I understand. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me.”
He doesn’t reply, but the expressive curve of his mouth is stiff as wax. He slumps in his seat and links his hands behind his head, the muscles of his arms flexing.
“Say something.” I gnaw at my bottom lip. “I promise I’m going to fix this.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his closed fist. Slowly, his eyes never leaving my face, he opens his fist and drops a delicate gold chain on the table.
“Did you lose that, Bristol?”
My hand flies to my throat. I know the necklace isn’t there. Parker took it from me last night, and now Grip has it. I can’t assemble these pieces into anything that makes sense.
That son of a bitch.
“Oh, it came with my breakfast this morning.” He slides a slip of paper across the table to me. “Along with this.”
Your queen or mine?
Parker’s scrawled words may as well be carved into my skin. That’s how much they hurt, how badly Grip reading them hurts. I must be bleeding subcutaneously. Just under my skin, I’m hemorrhaging pride and self-respect.
“I can explain.” I look from the damning note, the gilded evidence glimmering against the cheap wood. “Parker and I, we aren’t—”
“I know you aren’t cheating, so don’t even bother explaining that,” Grip says. “We’re so far beyond that. What does he want? Besides for me to know he’s using me to get to you?”
How much should I tell him? I have no idea.
“Don’t think about lying to me.” His glance peels my skin back, and any lie I would tell him crumbles under that stare.
I have to tell him everything. I wanted to do this on my own because I knew Grip and Rhyson would try to stop me. Of course, they would. It’s insanity to even consider what Parker has proposed. It’s demeaning and soul-destroying.
And I have every intention of doing it and whatever it takes to get Grip out of here and his name cleared.
“Parker was at my house when I got home last night.”
He flattens his hands on the table. His fingers twitch, but there’s no other indication that he hears. That my words might infuriate him.
“He . . . he admitted that he did this. That he has at least one high-ranking judge, probably more, in his pocket. This case isn’t going anywhere unless he says so.”
“Again I ask, what does he want?”
There’s no curiosity behind the question. He already knows and just wants to hear me say it.
“He wants what he’s always wanted.” I force myself to look at him. “He wants me.”
“He wants you to marry him?” Grip asks dispassionately.
“No, he says he’d never marry me now that I’ve ‘soiled myself publicly with you.’”
“Well, at least there’s that.” The tight line of Grip’s mouth loosens just a little. “So then what?”
“He wants to take me to the Amalfi Coast today.”
All pretense that he doesn’t care, that he knows everything, disappears. Urgency charges the stale air in the small visiting room.
“Today?” he demands. “What’s his plan?”
“We’ll have . . .” The word sits so foul, queued up and rotting on my tongue. I press my lips together against emotion and tears so I can go on. “Sex, we’ll have sex on the upper deck of his yacht.” I push the words up my throat, as heavy as a boulder up a hill. “And the reporter who leaked the Vegas pictures will leak pictures of us . . . together.”
“Fuck!” He bangs the table, the sound echoing like a clanging cymbal. It rattles my teeth. “You won’t.”
I keep my head lowered. I figure it isn’t a good time to remind him he isn’t the boss of me. We have so little time before I have to go, and I don’t want to spend it arguing about something that, in my mind, is done. Is happening.
“Look at me, Bristol.”
I clutch my conviction and raise my eyes to his.
“You are not doing this. Not for me.” He does take my hand then, both of them between his, and squeezes. “We’ll find another way.”
“No, we won’t. You don’t know him.”
These dull concrete walls are closing in on me, and the thought of Grip in here even another day traps my breath in my chest. Panic crushes me from the inside out.
“There isn’t another way.” I lift his hands to my lips, kissing his knuckles, his thumb, turning his hand and leaving a dry sob in the palm of his hand. “He’s made sure of that. If there was a way, Rhyson would have found it by now.”
“I won’t let you do this.”
“You can’t stop me.” I pull my hands clear of his, my resolve weakening the longer I touch him. The thought of anyone else touching me the way these hands did, with love and reverence, turns my stomach. “I told you. I warned you that I’m not like other girls.”
My laugh leaves traces of poison on my lips.
“I don’t have those limits.” One tear at a time scalds my cheeks. “I’d do anything for you. It sounds romantic until it crosses your lines, huh? Until it goes too far.”
I look at him, my smile ironic.
“Are you afraid, that like Parker, you won’t want me either, after I’ve ‘soiled’ myself with him?”
“I’m afraid it would destroy something in you that I can’t ever get back,” he says earnestly.
I haven’t admitted it even to myself, but so am I.
“If that happens,” I say, dropping my eyes to my lap. “Whatever’s left is yours.”
“Don’t, Bris.” He crosses around the table, sits on the corner, and pulls me to stand between his legs, his hands running up my arms. “I’ll stay. If we can’t get me out of this, I’ll stay.”
“That’s ridiculous. Oh my God. Don’t even . . .”
I drop my head to his shoulder, horrified he’d even entertain sacrificing his career or years of his life for something he didn’t do. That he would do that to spare me this indignity.
“I would never let you do that for me,” I say, my breath hiccupping in my chest.
“Now you know how I feel.” He bends his brows over the torture in his eyes. “You think you’re the only one who loves without limits?”
“That makes no sense, Grip.”
“Like it made sense for me to wait around for years while you figured out you loved me.” His mouth pulls into a warped smile. “But who did that? This guy.”
A breathy laugh breaks through my tears.
“I love you,” I whisper, stepping back and giving up the warm safety of his arms. “There’s nothing . . . nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
The vestiges of his smile fall away. He runs his thumb over my lips, tugging at the flesh I know to be red and swollen.
“He did this?” There’s brimstone in Grip’s demand, fire in his glare.
“It doesn’t matter.” I pull away from his hand, embarrassed that Grip’s seeing the results of Parker’s rough kiss. It’s a dim reflection of what he’ll do to me later, I’m sure. “I need to go.”
“The thought of him touching you . . .” Grip swallows, his voice falling into a dark abyss. “Of him hurting you, kills me, Bris. That I can’t protect you, it kills me.”
There’s blood thirst in his eyes, and I have no doubt if Parker were in this room he’d be dead. But he isn’t here. He’s out there wreaking havoc on our lives, and I have the means to stop him.
“I need to go.”
He catches my elbow, his touch firm and gentle. In his outstretched palm he holds the gold necklace.
“Don’t forget this.” He proffers it to me.
“Keep it ’til I get you out of here.” His handsome face wavers as tears fill my eyes but don’t fall. “If you still want me . . . after, I’ll take it back.”
I glance up at the camera in the corner before leaning in to lay my lips against his, pouring everything into that brief contact. When my lips would cling to his, I force myself away and out the door without looking back. Tears blur everything ahead of me, and I slam into someone right outside the door in the hall.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble to the person I almost ran down. “Oh, Ms. James, excuse me. I wasn’t . . . watching.”
“How is he?” She skips past my apology, looking over my shoulder to the closed door.
“He’ll be better when he’s out of here.” I brush the useless tears away, reaffirming my commitment to this course.
“This is some bullshit.” Ms. James’s righteous anger shines from her dark eyes. “My boy has never done drugs, much less would be carrying enough to sell.”
Her mouth pulls into an unexpected grin.
“A little dro every once in a while, yes, but slanging �
�caine? No way.”
“I know. We all know. It’s a set up, but we’re getting to the bottom of it. I promise you he’ll be out soon.”
“A set up?” Her question is a rapier pressed to my neck, a threat to draw blood if she doesn’t get answers. “Who set my boy up?”
“My ex-boyfriend.” I face her head on, knowing this will only add to the myriad other reasons she has to dislike me and want me away from her son.
“You ain’t been nothing but trouble to him,” she says harshly, tears liquefying the chocolate eyes. “I knew it. I knew him being with someone like you would only mean trouble.”
“You were right.”
“First the traffic stop and turning my son’s community against him.”
“I wouldn’t say they turned against him,” I disagree carefully.
“Calling Marlon a sellout?” Her head tips, her brows lift. “Saying he disrespected black women when he chose you over Qwest? That ain’t turning against where you come from?”
Every one of her accusations is a tiny arrow that finds its mark.
“I’m sorry.” I force myself to meet her eyes. “Not for being white or for being with Grip, but that being with me brought this on, but I’m going to fix it.”
“The damage has been done. My son’s record—”
“Will be cleared.”
I look at her. I feel so hard right now inside. I’m marbleizing my heart to get through this ordeal with Parker. I do that to protect myself, but I crack the shell long enough to say what I need to say more gently.
“Ms. James, I’m going to do whatever it takes to get him out, to fix this,” I say. “But when he’s out, I’m still going to be with him, if he wants me. All the things you love about him, I love about him. He isn’t a sellout because he loves me. And I’m not just after him for whatever you think the novelty is. We love each other.”
I dredge up a smile and hope she doesn’t notice the tears I can’t seem to clear from my eyes.
“I need to go, but he wants to see you, and our ‘favor’ only extends so far. He won’t have much more time to visit.”
Even with her looking at me as if I’ve committed a crime or personally put her son here, I want to ask her for a hug. For a touch that tells me I can go through with this. That as abhorrent as it will be taking Parker into my body, having him leave his filthy fingerprints on my soul, that it will be worth it. That Grip is worth it. I want that from her because she’s the one who taught him that sacrifice is the essence of love. She’s the only one who would love him as much as I do and would do anything for him, too. I see it in her fierce eyes, in her warrior stance.