“You dumb shit bastard,” I snapped. “I don’t need your money. I have my own money.”
“Not as much as I have.”
He sounded like a spoiled little boy grasping for a leg up. I glanced down to his tiny dick still hung over his pants.
“Put your dick away.” I injected pity in my voice. “How you ever thought that little bit of twig and berries would satisfy my girl, I don’t know.
”
His eyes went reptilian, slitted, and a growl rumbled in his throat. He’s used to being the one with all the power. I had a tenuous hold on my temper. The illusion of flippancy cracked the longer I was around that asshole. The longer I had to look into his fucking blue eyes, his entitlement and superiority still bleeding through jail scrubs. I prowled over, crowding him until he was forced to the porce- lain behind him. With a handful of the rough scrubs gathered in my fist, I brought his chest to mine, slamming him into the urinal. His head banged against the wall with a satisfying thud.
“Don’t think that all your money and power and fucking hotels will protect you from me if you ever touch her again,” I said through my teeth.
The façade of his false calm cracked at the ferocity in my voice, and I saw his fear.
"And you sent me a note asking if Bristol was your queen or mine,” I continued. “I came to answer your question.”
I ran him through with a look, and slammed the wadded up, half-destroyed note against his chest.
“She’s mine.”
The sound of the door opening downstairs jars me back to the present and the comfort of my home. I banish all thoughts of Parker, and brace for the rush of seeing Bristol safe and unharmed. I’d like to make a GIF of the moment when she walks into my bedroom. Just replay these few seconds over and over again.
Bristol is wearing almost no makeup. Her hair streams loose down her back, dark and wild and streaked with copper. Her clothes are simple—white tank top, leather jacket, and ripped-knee jeans. She looks so much like the girl I picked up at the airport that day, the one I kissed on top of the world and chased into the tide. In her eyes, though, the color of smelted silver, something tried by fire, I see a woman who would walk through flames for me. Someone who would sacrifice anything to protect me.
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.