Still (Grip Book 2)(73)

"Yes, ma'am. Anything."

"Remember what I said the first day we met." Her voice is a thin thread  strained to the point of snapping. "Don't waste one minute."

Before I can respond, she hangs up. I hold the phone for a few extra  seconds, still pressed to my ear like she might share more wisdom. I  finally slip it into my pocket, not pulled from my stupor until I feel  something wet on my toe.

"Nina, baby." I scoop her up and rest her on my hip. "Don't eat Daddy's feet."

I walk down the stairs to find Bristol. We've been in this house for  less than a year, but it felt like home immediately-Bristol made sure of  that. She insisted on decorating it herself, thus me going gray trying  to read Japanese instructions for something that could have been  delivered fully assembled. I'm too rich for this shit.

She's in her office, wearing a frown, ripped-knee jeans, a paper-thin  ankle-length cardigan, and a tank top that simply says PERSIST. It's  tight and strains over her swollen breasts and belly. She massages her  side, eyes glued to the screen of her laptop.

"Hey." I put Nina on the floor, lift Bristol from her seat, take her spot, and then pull her back down to sit on my lap.

"Hey." She turns her head, looking around until she spots Nina, who has taken her post on the floor with Elmo.

Mrs. O'Malley said not to waste a minute, and I won't. Before Bristol  can say another word, I grab her chin and pull her face around to me,  delving between her lips, caressing the soft hair escaping from her  topknot. She kisses me back, hunger sparking between us like a flare.  She turns to face me, splitting her thighs over mine, straddling me with  our unborn child sandwiched between our torsos. The kiss slows then  stills until she tucks her head under my chin and slides her hand under  my T-shirt, caressing the muscles of my stomach.         

     



 

"What was that for?" she asks huskily, looking up with a smile, her eyes the same silver as Nina's. "Not that I'm complaining."

"Mrs. O'Malley's husband died," I tell her without any lead-up. "I just got off the phone with her."

"Oh my God." Bristol sits back, one hand going to her chest. "Is she . . . how was she?"

"Devastated."

"I would be inconsolable." Bristol looks at me, her eyes softening and  saddening in empathy. "We'll send flowers and make sure to visit her  when we're back in the city."

"That's what I told her." I watch for her reaction to my next statement. "She says we can have the apartment."

"What?" Bristol's head pops up, her eyes widening. "We can?"

"Yeah, if we want it."

"We want it!" Bristol bends her brows with a sudden thought. "We'll have to set up a nursery there, too."

"Yeah, about the nursery-I'm not assembling any more furniture. That shit's in German or something."

"Shit! Shit! Shit!"

Bristol's narrowed eyes shift from me to our daughter clapping and  happily cussing on the floor. My wife pokes a finger in my chest.

"Marlon James, you better fix her."

It takes the rest of the day to reprogram Nina, and I'm still not  convinced she won't say "shit" at inopportune times. I'm plating steaks  from the grill for dinner when I realize it's been a while since I heard  any sounds from Bristol's office. She's negotiating a new deal for  Jimmi, a Vegas residency, and it's been more complicated than she  anticipated. Kai's in another Broadway show, and Rhyson wants Bristol to  set up a Prodigy office in New York. I have to keep an eye on her  because she acts like she's not seven months pregnant.

When she's not in the office, I check the nursery because that's where  she seemed to always be when it was almost time for Nina to come. We  don't know gender, don't know names-we'll figure it out when the baby  gets here. With our first pregnancy, we knew too much. We even knew that  our baby wouldn't make it. We decided with Nina to take whatever came,  and we're doing it again with this one.

As I expected, Bristol's in the nursery, but not setting things up or  preparing for Baby Question Mark's arrival. She's sitting in the glider,  where she'll nurse this baby the way she did Nina. In her lap is a box I  haven't seen in years.

Zoe's memory box.

We only held Zoe for a day, but I think about her all the time. She  lives on in our hearts, but also in the three people who received her  organs.

Bristol looks up, eyes as wide and wounded as the day we lost our baby girl.

"I miss her." She shakes her head and bites her lip. "I think I always will."

"Of course, we always will." I go to my knees beside her to study the  items in the box on her lap-Zoe's tiny handprints and footprints, the  lock of her hair, pictures of our family and friends holding her, joy  and heartache evident in every shot, the purple feather that hung on her  door.

"She's a part of us," I finally say after we caress all of our memories. "As much as Nina is and as much as this one will be."

"Yeah." Bristol nods and tears trickle down her face.

"Dwell in possibility, baby," I whisper against her belly.

Bristol lifts my chin until I meet her eyes.

"Dwell in possibility, baby," she says to me, her eyes tender, loving, secure.

"Do you think it's a boy or a girl?" I ask.

"A boy, definitely."

"Definitely?" I cock a brow at her apparent clairvoyance. "How would you know?"

"I just have a feeling." She shrugs and runs her hand over my head as I  lay my lips to her belly. I push the tank top up to see her stomach,  hoping for a kick or some signal that our baby is active and healthy.  Bristol's beautiful pregnant. She thinks I say that to make her feel  better, but I love how her body blossoms, her breasts full and heavy,  her skin glowing.

"Ask me when your belly is full like the moon, and our love has  stretched your body with my child," I say, quoting the vows we took  years ago. "Leaving your skin, once flawless, now silvered, traced,  scarred."

I look up, meeting her eyes, swimming again with tears, and I caress the  faint striations at her waist, on her skin-from Zoe, from Nina, from  this baby she's carrying now.

"I will worship you," I remind her, taking her hand and tracing the  letters tattooed beneath her wedding band, linking our fingers, showing  her the ink beneath mine.         

     



 

"Still?" she asks with a watery smile.

"Yeah." Always. Evermore. Even after. "Still."





Author's Note





STILL is fiction, but the difficult issues raised in FLOW, GRIP and  STILL are fact. Many ask if the story Grip tells about Khalief Browder,  an innocent young man who spent years behind bars without trial or  conviction and who eventually

took his own life, is true.

It is.



Thank you so much for going on Grip & Bristol's journey. I hope you enjoyed it and consider leaving an honest review.



Rhyson and Kai have three books of their own,

The Soul Series!

Read on for the FIRST THREE CHAPTERS of

Book 1, My Soul to Keep!





Chapter One - Kai



Mama has been dying all day.

ALS is a stealthy thief. It stole Mama's wide, crooked-tooth smile and  left her face a plane of twitches and jerks. That funny snap, snap she'd  do with her fingers before she started making a fresh batch of  biscuits? That saucy little pop and sway of her hips when she raced  around the house on Sunday mornings, late for church? ALS snatched those  long ago. Now, Mama's fingers lie limp at her sides on the bed sheets,  the complete stillness startling and sad.

ALS is a slow assassin and it's been killing my mama for five years.

But I only realize now that the sound of her breath-barely a wheeze breezing past her lips-is the sound of her dying today.

"Mama?"

I bundle up a question and a plea into that one word and pray for an  answer to either. I'm asking if she's still here. I'm begging her to  stay. Oh, I hear that thin, labored breath. I feel that thready pulse,  faintly thrumming through the vellumed skin of her wrist. I know she's  alive, but is she still here? I've sensed her soul wrestling with her  body all week, trying to break free for the promise of Heaven that keeps  Mama going on her hardest days.

The Hospice workers trickle in and out of Mama's small, orderly bedroom,  keeping her as comfortable as a woman slowly choking on her own breath  can be. They don't know if she can hear me. They only know that she can  no longer respond. I am left waiting for the battle to end and for her  soul to escape its bodily misery. Mama has endured this last stretch of a  race I wouldn't wish on anyone.

I confess there were times I longed for this day. Longed for it to all  be over, not just for Mama but for me too. I know it's selfish, but  things have been so hard. So different from before. Most of my life, I  have been at the center of Mama's world. Dance classes, cheerleading,  gymnastics, and vocal lessons-I did them all. Our life was a flurry of  activity, shuffling between the small diner downstairs Mama owns with  Aunt Ruthie and any number of things I was involved in. Mama dedicated a  good part of her life and energy to making sure when my big break came,  I'd be ready. But the big break is in my heart. And even though months  ago, with the last few words Mama could actually speak, she assured me  she was ready, I know I am not.