by Kate Stewart
I’m seated on the edge of the bed, legs spread and straining against my jeans. Bristol walks over slowly, her eyes holding mine above me. I trace her features with my eyes and imprint her on my heart. The slant of her cheek. The slash of her brows. The full curve of her mouth, now unsteady with emotion.
“Grip.” She climbs onto my lap, knees on either side of me, head buried in my neck. “Oh, God. I’m so glad you’re okay.”
I slide my hands under her jacket, needing her warmth, her flesh and bones.
“Bris.” I clench my eyes closed, relief flooding through me. “You’re the one I was concerned about. You’re okay. He didn’t . . . God, if he had . . .”
I can’t even finish the sentence, can’t even complete the thought. Today isn’t for my rage, and that’s all those thoughts lead to.
She pulls back, tear-clumped lashes spiking around her bright eyes.
“It would have killed me to give myself to him.”
“I know that, baby.” My palms at her back flatten the soft curves of her breasts against my chest.
“But I would have done it if I had to,” she whispers. “For you, I would have done it and lived with the consequences.”
I know that, too.
“I have something that belongs to you, Bris.”
I scoot her back only far enough to reach into the pocket of my jeans and extract a black velvet jewelry bag. She looks from the bag to my face, pressing her lips together, drawing and exhaling a deep breath. I fasten the necklace in the front and turn it until the gold barrel hangs just above her breasts. I flip it over, and for the hundredth time since my mom dropped it off from the jewelry repair shop, read the inscription.
My heart broke loose on the wind.
This necklace affirms what I always knew. Even in our years apart, that day carved itself into her heart. It inhabited her memory as surely as she occupied mine. There isn’t a scrap of me she can’t have or doesn’t already own. And my mother can condemn it, others can question it, but I’m so damn proud to be hers, and so humbled that she is mine. The world can go to hell with their opinions and notions of what fits and what doesn’t. My heart is in Bristol's grip, my happiness in her hands.
“Thank you,” she whispers shakily.
“My mom got it repaired.” She stiffens against my chest.
“She did?” She lowers her lashes, shielding her eyes. “She was at my house when everything went down."
“I know.” A laugh forces its way past my lips. "Once she knew the plan, nobody was keeping her away.”
“She and I kind of had a moment at my place.” A small smile touches Bristol’s lips. “It was just a look, but I think it was a good moment. I know it won't happen overnight, but I think maybe she'll come around.”
A little laugh slips from her, but I know it hurts her that my mother doesn’t want us together. As tough as she wants me to think she is, I know it hurts her that during the scandal with Qwest, so many people came out saying we shouldn’t be together.
“Bris, look at me.” I wait for her to comply so she’s looking into my eyes and I can look into hers. “My mom will come around. She’s already starting to, but there's something you should know. Something I want you to believe."
I frame her face between my hands and tenderly run a thumb over her mouth.
"You’re the most important thing in my life,” I tell her. “I would leave everyone for you.”
Her tiny gasp tells me that on some level she didn’t realize that. The line of her mouth wavers. Her brows knit and tears slip over her cheeks. She presses her forehead to mine, and her shoulders shake. She folds her arms between us against my chest and surrenders to the emotion she’s been fighting, maybe for years. I roll my palms over her arms and back, wanting to send my love through her pores, giving her no choice but to believe down to her bones that she’s the most important thing in my life.
“Grip.” She sniffs and swipes tears from her cheeks. “No one’s ever . . . that means the world to me.”
She bites her lip to suppress emotion, but it does no good. Emotion suffuses the air around us, reaches inside and clutches my heart. Head lowered, she touches the gold links Parker tried to chain her with, and chews the corner of her lip. “Grip, if it didn’t work, if I’d had to—”
“I would have loved you just as much.” I tip her chin up and force her to look into my eyes and see the truth of it. To see the irrevocable nature of my love for her. “I would never have let you go.”
She nods, sniffing and smiling.
“I’m still mad at you.” With a teary laugh, trying to lighten the moment, she loops her arms over my shoulders and strokes the back of my neck.
“Really?” I frown and cock my head. “You don’t look mad to me.”
“How do I look?” A grin tips her mouth.
“Like you wanna fuck me.”
Her eyes widen and she scoots forward, pressing herself into me.
“That, too.” She laughs. “But I’m still mad at you for telling my mother and your mother.”
"I have a feeling I can persuade you to forgive me."
I fit my hands to her waist, flipping her back onto the bed to brace myself over her. With one finger, she traces my mouth, my cheekbones, my eyebrows.
God, her touch feels so good.
My lips are just shy of hers, and we swap breaths and promises. I study her face like an artist, painting each feature—her eyes, her lips, her cheeks—with love. She leans up, touching her lips to mine, and the stress, anxiety, indignity of the last few days disintegrates. She’s powerful enough to shrink the world down to this moment, down to a circle no wider than her arms around me. The circumference of her and me. So powerful, but her eyes, if you know what you’re looking for, can’t hide her secret vulnerability.
Bristol has always watched me. I know because I was watching her, too. I observed her for years like an anthropologist untangling the mysteries of a new tribe. There’s something in her eyes when she watches me that isn’t there for anyone else. I was never sure what it was. Now I know. It’s a passion so wild there are no borders. A limitless, loving fealty beyond what I could deserve. Not my music, not my money, not fame, or anything I dreamed would satisfy comes close to what I feel when she looks at me like that.
She feathers kisses over my lips, down my neck. We start slow and tender, but every touch, every long, lush stroke of our tongues together tosses kindling on this kiss until we’re grunting and hungry.
She pulls back, seducing me with her eyes, and reaches down to my waist. Her fingers tease the waistband of my jeans before pushing the sweater over my head. She kisses my neck and shoulders, all the while undoing my belt and sliding my jeans and briefs over my hips.
She peels off her leather jacket and tugs the tank top over her head, sharing herself with me in erotic inches. Her breasts, tipped with plump nipples, come into view.
I ghost my palms over her nipples until they tauten into ripe berries. I squeeze them between my fingers and massage the fullness of her breasts until her breath labors and her head tips back, exposing the creamy column of her throat. I trace the fragile framework of her ribs, gliding my hands down to her hips. I tug the panties down, and palm her center. My fingers tuck into the hot, silky slit, running up and down until she’s dripping wet.
“Oh, she missed me.” I grin and invade her with two fingers.
Bristol's breath catches in her throat, and she squeezes her top lip between her teeth.
“Did you just personify my pussy?” She laughs in between hitched breaths.
“I am a writer." I dot kisses under her chin and any reachable skin. "Take it as a sign of respect.”
“I’ll take this.” She grabs my bone-hard, stretched-out dick. “As a sign of respect.”
Her hand clamps and slides over me, thumbing the wet tip. Our eyes connect, and humor falls away, leaving the intensity that always rears between us. I’m working between her legs, and she’s working between mine. She drags
air in, gasping, churning her hips, fucking my fingers. I suck one berry-tipped breast, watching color blossom over her neck and cheeks.
“Oh, God.” Her back arches off the bed, sheets knotted in one fist. “Yes, Grip.”
Her hold tightens on me, her fingers dropping to roll my balls in her palms.
“This pretty pussy.” I gather her wrists in my hand over her head and ease her knee back to her chest, opening her up. “It’s mine, right?”
“Yes. God, yes.” With dry sobs, she strains up to my lips, leaving kisses wherever she can. “You know it’s yours. Please take it. Just take it.”
Her submission, her admission unleashes an unquenchable thirst, an inexhaustible hunger. I need some part of her in my mouth. I bite down on her shoulder and push inside, my breath hissing between my lips at the wet, tight fit. She meets every thrust, and we are fervent, fevered. Pleasure excruciating. Twined together, her heel digging into my ass, my arm hooked under her knee, urging her open to the compulsion of my body pistoning into hers. I cannot possibly in this life be deep enough inside her. I want so much more than her body. She has thieved my soul, and I need to feel the reciprocity, the exchange. To know I’ve pilfered her and taken everything that she would offer and anything she meant to hold. Because that’s what she’s done to me.
I loose her wrists to grab her ass, angling her. Both legs wrap around my back, and she works her hips up eager to meet every hard thrust. I sit up, bringing her with me, and she hooks her ankles behind me.
“Ride, Bris.”
Her eyes, possessive, there’s no doubt I’m hers. Her hands, urgent and everywhere at once. Our breaths heave raggedly between our lips. Our bodies are lock and key, and we’re transfixed on each other. Inseparable. Insoluble. I seize her tongue, pulling her in, sucking her, wringing every drop of sweetness from the kiss. She whimpers, her hands clawing at my shoulders, my neck, scraping over my scalp.
“I love you." Her words drop hot in my ear with her breasts flattened to my chest and her thighs clenching at my hips. She tightens her pussy around my cock, a deliberate, hungry grasp and release.
"Bris.” My eyes roll back. I'm at the mercy of those muscles. "I love you, too."
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. She pants, sitting up straighter, leveraging herself with one arm behind her on the bed, changing the angle, deepening the penetration. In the lamp's light, I see her head flung back in abandon, her muscles straining with the unrelenting ferocity, the rigor of our bodies.
“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.”
It is a pledge of persistence, hidden in the poems I sent her. It’s a vow that she won’t ever give up on us. Knowing she held the poetry in her heart when she wouldn't even consider me, when I wasn’t even sure there was any hope, undoes me.
“Bristol, oh God."
I touch my forehead to hers, twisting my fingers into the damp hair at her neck. Pressed together, our heartbeats ricocheting, the universe tips, a dazzling lurching. A spectacular axis spinning beyond my restraint, just beyond my control. I once threatened to make her come with my words, but as the stars go blindingly bright and then dark behind my eyes, I realize she’s the one who did it.
Epilogue
Bristol
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.
“I think this is the best song he’s ever written,” Rhyson says to me as Grip sets up “Bruise” for the listening audience.
“You may be right about that.” I lean close to the baby cradled to my brother’s chest. “What do you think, Aria? Is it his best? Is that god-daddy’s best song?”
My niece squeals, and Rhyson and I look at each other with wide eyes in case it disrupts Grip’s performance.
“Here.” Kai sticks a pacifier into her daughter’s little mouth. “Figures you two would get her riled up.”
Rhyson holds his daughter in one arm, and pulls Kai close to him with the other. The contentment on his face squeezes my heart in the best possible way. After all the tumult that marked the first part of his journey, private and public, he somehow managed to make a normal life for himself. As normal as being a rock star married to another rock star can be. Though, intercepting the look Rhys and Kai exchange over Aria’s dark curly hair, I’m not sure there’s anything “normal” about a love that deep.
Glad I’m not the only one drowning. Grip once told me the capacity I have to love could be my greatest strength. Over the last few weeks, I’ve come to believe him. Especially when that love is for the right man, a man who wouldn’t exploit a heart like mine. He never ceases to amaze me with all the ways he proves he’s exactly the one for me.
“So you may have seen some footage of me a few months ago during a ‘routine’ stop,” Grip says from stage, a slight smile on those full lips I love so much. “It got just a little bit of coverage.”
The audience laughs, but there is an underlying tension in the room. The whole night feels like that, as if it’s on the verge of going wrong, though so far everything has gone right. Given Grip’s complicated history with LAPD, the organizers of this event weren’t sure he’d accept their invitation to perform at the Black and Blue Ball, held to promote better relations between communities of color and law enforcement. Maybe that’s why they sent his cousin Greg to ask. With “Bruise” so closely reflecting the message of the event, Grip didn’t hesitate to accept.
“I grew up in the part of the world that gave rise to the Watts riots and Rodney King. I was five years old when Rodney King was beaten.” He gives a quick laugh. “I barely knew my name, but I knew his. He was a cautionary tale for us, and our mothers made sure we knew.”
He grabs a stool and props himself there before going on.
“Even with all that, I thought police officers were dope.” He disarms the crowd with a bright smile. “They had flashing blue lights and sirens. What could be cooler than that?”
The crowd laughs a little, some offer smiles. A few expressions remain tense because some people aren’t sure where he’s headed or what he’ll say. Which side of the black/blue line he’ll land on, and if he’ll come down like a hammer.
“That footage showed me getting stopped in the neighborhood where I grew up. Some wondered if I would do this show tonight.” He looks out at the crowd, eyes dark and earnest. “I had to. I have to. If I judge all officers by the actions of one, how is that any different than them profiling us? Than them expecting the same thing from all of us because of what they encountered with one? We can’t give up on each other. We have to keep trying and keep trying and keep trying. Because the alternative is unacceptable. Assuming the worst only divides us more.”
Grip clings to the mic as if it’s grounding him.
“There are good cops and bad, there are innocent dudes getting stopped, and there are criminals. I know my life has been saved more than once by someone in uniform. It isn’t easy, but it’s worth it.”
He laughs, shaking his head.
“The best way to tear down the walls that divide us is to meet someone, to know someone on the other side of that wall,” he says. “Cops were a ‘they,’ a ‘them’ until my cousin Greg became one. White people were a ‘they,’ a ‘them’ until I went to school with them. Until one of them became my best friend.”
Grip turns his head toward stage left where he knows I always stand, his eyes tangling with mine.
“Until I fell in love with one of them,” he says softly.
My hea
rt contracts. I blink at the tears he inspires in me all the time. With his words, with his hands, his kisses. He has so many weapons at his disposal to break me down, every one more effective than the last.
I look out over the crowd, faces of every shade and walk of life, and wonder if they’ll understand, if they’ll hear what I heard from the moment Rhyson played “Bruise” in our meeting months ago. We’ll see. Grip signals the drummer to drop the beat.
“This one’s called ‘Bruise,’” he says softly.
Am I all of your fears, wrapped in black skin,
Driving something foreign, windows with black tint
Handcuffed on the side of the road,
second home for black men
Like we don’t have a home
that we trying to get back to when
PoPo pulls me over with no infractions,
Under the speed limit, seat belt even fastened,
Turned on Rosecrans when two cruisers collapsed in
Barking orders, yeah, this that Cali harassment
Guns drawn,
neighbors looking from front lawns and windows
I know cops got it hard,
don’t wanna make a wife a widow
But they act like I ain’t paying taxes,
like your boy ain’t a citizen
They think I’m riding filthy,
like I’m guilty pleading innocence.
They say it's ‘Protect & Serve’, but check my word
Sunny skies, ghetto birds overhead stress your nerves,
They say if you ain’t doin’ wrong, you got nothin’ to fear,
But the people sayin’ that, they can’t be livin’ here . . .
We all BRUISE,
It’s that black and blue
A dream deferred,
Nightmare come true
In another man’s shoes,