Grip Trilogy Box Set

I walk to the door and give him one last sad, disgusted glance, saying what I’m fully prepared to accept may be my last words to him ever.

“Turns out you’re the problem.”

Chapter 18

Bristol

I’M in the kitchen when Grip comes home. I bought a cookbook, and it openly mocks me from the counter, its pages a reminder of my culinary failings. Occasionally I have these domestic urges. They typically pass, but ever since we moved into this beautiful place that has never been anything but a home since the O’Malleys drafted their first designs, the urges are harder to ignore—to buy fresh flowers for the kitchen from the stand up the street, to try cooking pan-roasted chicken with lemon garlic green beans.

That’s why I’m in the kitchen asking myself how the hell to make lemon garlic sauce when Grip comes home. It’s crazy that I know him so well, but I allowed Angie Black and Jade and others to get under my skin, to play on my unreasonable insecurities. And I do know him. I know how his steps sound at two in the morning when he’s been at the studio laboring over a track and drags himself through the front door, or when Dr. Hammond says something that rocked him to the core, rearranges the way he thought about life. Those days his steps eat up the hardwood floor, eager to find me and share. Today’s steps stutter, like someone lost and looking. They pause, wait. They’re not sure.

He’s on the couch when I enter the living room, head in his hands and elbows on his knees. On bare, silent feet, I pad over to him. He doesn’t look up until I rest a hand on his head, caress the tight muscles in his neck.

“Hey.” He manages a bend of his lips, almost a smile, but his eyes are defeated.

I instantly want to make whatever it is better, and my fix-it instinct springs into action. He pulls me down onto the couch to straddle his lap. Many days I don’t leave the house because it’s also my office, but today I met with Charm about Grip’s book deal. The Stella McCartney dress I wore to her office inches up my bare legs as I settle over him. His hands are on me right away, caressing my calves and feet, venturing over my thighs, reacquainting himself with the shape of my back through the thin silk. He greets my body the way he typically does, but there is nothing typical about his expression as he lays claim to me one limb at a time.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” I back the question up with kisses feathered over his jaw.

He surprises me, grabbing me by the neck and pulling me into his lips forcefully. He kisses me, a greedy plundering of my mouth, consuming me with both hands. His kisses spill down my chin, a delicious mess. I hate to stop this but I know him too well and love him too much to be an escape hatch.

“Hey,” I say against his lips, scooting back from the stiffening length of him. “This is all very nice, but I asked you a question. What’s wrong?”

He stares into my eyes, and I see hurt there. Someone hurt him. My teeth clamp down. My nails cut half-moons into my palms. All I want is a name, a name I’ll find a way to erase. He leaves kisses in the hair curling at my temple from the heat of the kitchen. I just caress his jaw, giving him room to tell me what happened.

“Iz and I talked about the Artists as Activists panel.” He shakes his head, a fraudulent laugh escaping. “I assumed he’d be on my side, that we believed the same things.”

I already know, but I still ask.

“Believe the same things about what?”

At my question, a shadow passes over his face, like the sun playing hide and seek with the clouds. In an instant, he goes from telling me to protecting me.

“It’s nothing.” He shrugs and pulls me back down to lock my crotch over his. I resist, forcing resolve into my look and my voice.

“Tell me.”

He sighs and licks his lips before speaking.

“Iz doesn’t think we should be together,” he finally says. “He doesn’t believe in us.”

Doesn’t believe in us.

I don’t think Grip realizes how telling the phrase is, how much the professor’s opinion has come to mean to him. In a relatively short time, Dr. Hammond has become much more than Grip’s temporary professor. Grip moved here for the social justice maven with the brilliant mind, but he’s become friends with the man. He respects Dr. Hammond as much as I’ve seen him respect anyone ever. He may not say it, may not even be able to put into words how deeply injured he feels, but it’s there.

“And to think I was about to donate to his community bail program.” Grip shakes his head, disgust written plainly on his face.

I stiffen against his chest, pushing a chunk of hair behind my ear and processing what he’s saying. On our flight back to New York, Grip showed me the preliminary plan for Dr. Hammond’s program. His eyes lit up, passion and purpose humming through every cell of his body. I can’t get that image of him out of my head, and his friend Matty is there in my mind’s eye, too—the one who sat in jail for months because he didn’t have money for bail, the one who hadn’t really done anything wrong. For him, I have a name and a face, but how many men are in that position and worse? Men we don’t know are suffering, and nobody is saying their names.

“But now you won’t?” I ask. “Because Dr. Hammond doesn’t approve of us, of me, you won’t work with him?”

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A scowl etches Grip’s expression.

“Hell no I’m not working with him.” The words fly from his mouth like hornets, swift and stinging. “Why am I even here? I uprooted my life, had you uproot yours, to chase a small-minded man. I feel like a fool.”

I understand his disappointment, but I can’t say I agree fully with his assessment. I’ve known Grip a long time and he’s breathed his convictions since the day I met him, but I’ve never seen him the way he has been these last few months. There is a focus and determination all encircling this incredible sense of purpose, like he under- stands what he was made for. I don’t want him to lose that because of me. Besides, his mother felt the same way about us not too long ago, but her heart has changed; why can’t we give the professor’s heart the chance to change, too?