“If you and Grip were together, he’d be faithful.”
“You think so. He thinks so.” I laugh harshly. “But I’m not so sure. What makes me so special?”
“What makes you so special?” Rhyson leans over and gently pushes the hair out of my eyes. “How much time do you have, little sister?”
“We’re twins, idiot,” I hiccup through the last of my tears. “Once and for all, I’m not your little sister.”
“Well, I came out first.”
He pulls me into a hug. My throat swells with heat, emotion closing the passageway and making it hard to swallow, to breathe. I’ve longed to talk like this with my brother for years. And no matter how much business we did, it never became this personal. This vulnerable. I fight it back. I pull away.
“I’m sure at some point Mother thought she was special, too, but I flew back to New York and caught our father fucking one of his clients upstairs while our mother listened in the foyer,” I say in a rush. “She didn’t feel special that night when I was mopping her up off the floor, drunk and miserable. She feels things so deeply she has to make you think she feels nothing to protect herself.”
“And that’s what you’re doing?” Rhyson’s question comes softly but harshly. “Denying to Marlon that you feel anything when you feel everything? Is that why you’re dating Parker?”
“God, you really don’t know me if you think I’m actually dating Parker,” I say, my response flat.
“You’re not dating Parker?” A baffled frown settles between
Rhyson’s brows. “I knew it! What the hell, Bris?”
“If I won’t be with Grip, he should be with someone like Qwest.” I swallow the hurt even linking their names in the same sentence does to me. “And he wouldn’t even try as long as he thought I was . . . possible. So, I let him, along with the entire known world, think that I was dating Parker when the media reported it.”
“But he . . . didn’t he . . .” Discomfort tightens Rhyson’s words. “Him leaving your house that morning, that was—”
“Oh, no. I slept with him. That happened.” I shrug. “I guess. He says I did.”
A loaded silence stretches between us as Rhyson processes that information.
“You don’t remember?”
“I was taking a page out of Mother’s playbook, numbing with vodka so I didn’t feel.” My heart twists like a knife in my chest as Grip’s cutting words before he left for New York come back to haunt me. “That kind of backfired.”
“Wait. Let me get this straight.” Anger bunches the muscle along Rhyson’s jaw. “Did Parker take advantage of you? Like sleep with you while you were—”
“I can’t, Rhyson,” I say so softly I’m not sure he heard me. “He says I was willing. I just don’t remember much.”
“He says you were . . .” Rhyson narrows the rage in his eyes to slits. “That motherfucker.”
“That motherfucker,” I agree with a little laugh, even though it isn’t funny at all to wake up and have no memory of having sex with someone. “I mean, I’ve let that go. You need to let it go, too. It won’t accomplish anything.”
“You say you aren’t dating Parker,” Rhyson finally says after he’s composed himself some. “Does Parker know that?”
“Kind of.” I laugh at the expression on Rhyson’s face. “I’ve tried to tell him. He insists that I’m going to marry him one day and we’re going to rule the world.”
“Asshole,” Rhyson mutters. “Exactly.”
“You should be careful of him, Bristol. All that power and money make him dangerous.”
“No, thinking he’s God’s gift is what makes him dangerous, but I’ve got it under control.”
“What does that mean?”
“Meaning it was convenient for me to let him play this little fantasy out in public so Grip would finally move on.” I toy with a loose string on the sleeve of my blouse and bite my bottom lip. “Thinking I’m with Parker moved him on to Qwest, but I’ve told Parker. He hasn’t accepted it fully yet, but he’ll tell the media the truth soon.”
“If you really think Grip is over you that fast, then you don’t know him.”
For a moment, hope flares inside me. Hope that maybe I didn’t completely burn the bridge between Grip and me. But it’s a bridge I’ll never cross anyway, so what’s the use?