Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
By halftime, the Sentinels were up by enough for the analysts to start talking like somebody needed to call the family and make arrangements. I turned the volume down before they pissed me off for real and became aware again of Imani tucked into my side.
She had folded her legs beneath herself, my Forge shirt stretching over her thighs while one hand rested near my ribs. Every few minutes her bracelet brushed my shirt, and something about how comfortable she looked in a place nobody else got much access to did more to me than I wanted to admit.
I had spent most of Sunday and half of Monday wondering whether I had lost her before I ever got her back. Then she called, came downstairs, climbed into my truck, and walked through my front door.
Now she was in my shirt, on my couch, watching football beside me like ordinary nights might be something we could have.
The word mine came to me too quickly.
I knew better than to treat Imani Bennett like something possession could keep. She had already proven she would leave anybody who made her feel smaller, even if going hurt like hell. I respected that more at thirty than I had been capable of at twenty-two.
Still, mine sat in my chest differently now. Mine because I knew her. Mine because I chose her. Mine because some part of me had spent eight years remembering what my pride had tried to survive without.
She lifted her head slightly.
“Is it hard watching them out there?”
My body tightened before I could hide it.
“Truthfully?”
“Yes.”
I looked toward the television. “Yeah. It hurts like hell. Especially when they’re losing.”
Her hand went still against me.
“I miss the tunnel sometimes,” I admitted. “The crowd. That feeling right before a snap when your whole body knows it’s about to do something bigger than whatever fear you brought onto the field. I ain't gon’ lie and act like I don't miss that.”
“You don’t have to.”
“But that ain’t what gets me the most.”
“What is?”
“Seeing it and not being able to help.” I rubbed my jaw and nodded toward the screen. “I know what they’re missing. I know why the back ain’t seeing that cut and when the line is late. I can see what the defense keeps baiting them into, and I’m sitting here on a couch.”
The words stayed between us.
I had accepted most of what happened to my body.
At least I thought I had. I built businesses, made money, bought a house behind gates, and learned how to enter rooms where nobody cared what my forty time used to be.
I had a life after football because I refused to spend the rest of mine begging the world to call me by yesterday’s name.
But accepting that something was over did not mean it stopped reaching for you.
Imani sat up enough to look at me.
“You could help them.”
My eyes came to hers.
“I don’t mean out there playing,” she said. “I know that part is different. But you could help them, Dre. I can tell by how you watch. You’re not done with football. You’re done playing it.”
For a few seconds, I didn't have a damn thing to say.
Coach Wallace had said something close. Pops had been pushing around the edges of it. Marcus probably heard it every time I tried to explain why Apex wasn't right for me.
Hearing it from Imani was different.
Maybe because this was the woman who had known me before anybody cared what I could do with a football. Maybe because she was sitting in my house wearing an old Forge shirt while saying something that made my future feel less like an attempt to replace what I had lost.
The thought didn't feel like mourning when it came from her.
It felt like a door.
“You make shit sound simple.”
“No, I don't.” Her mouth curved slightly. “I make it sound possible. There’s a difference.”
A smile pulled at mine despite the pressure still sitting in my chest. “You been back in Pittsburgh five minutes and already telling me what to do with my life.”
“I’m talented.”
“You are.”
I meant it too much for the words to remain a joke.
She heard me.
Instead of answering, Imani shifted until she was straddling my lap, then slid both arms around my shoulders and tucked her face near my neck. My hands went naturally to her waist, but for a while that was all either of us did.
She held me.
And I let her.
My house had always been quiet, which was part of why I bought it.
The gate kept cameras, strangers, reporters, and everybody else's expectations outside, and for years I had mistaken the privacy for peace.
Nobody saw me limp on a bad day unless I invited them in.
Nobody asked when I was coming back or studied my face whenever the Forge played like they expected to catch grief hiding there.
But once the businesses closed for the night and the calls stopped, all that protection left me alone inside a lot of space.
I stayed busy because busy gave my hands something to do. Dealerships. Restaurants. Jones Outdoor. Contracts, payroll, property, decisions. People needed answers from me and I understood how to be useful in those places.
Home was where useful ran out.
With Imani curled into me while football flickered silently across the television, I understood that quiet and peace were not the same thing. Peace was somebody sitting close enough to see the part of me that still missed the field and not looking away because the answer wasn't neat.
Her palm moved over my chest.
“You okay?” she whispered.
I looked at the screen once before meeting her eyes. “No.”
Her arms tightened.
I closed my eyes and let myself take the comfort without pretending it made me weak.
“But I’m better than I was.”
When I opened my eyes again, whatever Imani saw on my face softened hers.
Then she kissed me.
The first touch of her mouth was tender, like she had heard what I said and didn't need to turn it into a solution.
My hands stayed at her back while the kiss deepened, and I let it remain soft until she shifted her hips over me and my dick answered before the rest of me could pretend we were only comforting each other.
A groan left my chest.
“Mani.”
Her mouth came back harder.
One palm rubbed across my low cut before settling at the back of my neck, and I slid my hands beneath the Forge shirt, taking in warm skin and the curve of her waist. She shivered when my fingers spread there.
Saturday had been different. A hotel suite, old hunger, eight years breaking open in the same room.
This was my home. My couch. My shirt on her body after she had listened to me admit something I usually kept buried beneath money and work.
I wanted her for the same reason I had wanted her Saturday, but there was something else beneath the heat now. Relief, maybe. Trust. The knowledge that Imani had seen a part of me that wasn't impressive and had moved closer instead of away.
I eased the shirt higher and put my mouth on her breast. The cool metal of her nipple ring touched my tongue, and the sound she made tightened my grip on her hips.
Her body began moving over mine.
I knew that rhythm.
Time had changed her. She was softer in places, more confident everywhere, and there were things about this grown woman's body I was still learning. But I knew when Imani wanted more before she asked for it.
“Dre.”
I sucked harder.
Her hand moved toward my waistband.
I caught her wrist. “Baby.”
She looked at me. “What?”
“You don’t have to.”
Her mouth curved slowly. “I know.”
Then she freed her hand from mine and slid it inside my pants anyway.
The first wrap of those soft fingers around my dick erased whatever argument I had prepared.
“Fuck.”
She looked down between us, then back at my face while she stroked me.
“Dre.”
“What?”
“You’re leaking.”
My head dropped against the couch for a second. “Yeah. I know.”
Her thumb moved slowly over the head.
“I want to taste it.”
My eyes came back to hers.
There was nothing hesitant in her face.
The television kept throwing football highlights across the room, but I stopped seeing any of it as Imani slid from my lap and settled between my legs.
She eased my pants down enough to free me, and my dick came up hard against my stomach.
Her eyes darkened.
“Damn.”
A rough laugh tried to leave me when her fingers wrapped around me again.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you hungry.”
“I am.”
Then her tongue touched the tip.
My entire body jerked.
She smiled before doing it again, slower this time, circling the head and dragging her tongue over the slit until my thighs tightened beneath her hands.
“You taste so good,” she whispered.
“Mani.”
“So damn good.”
Then she took more of me.
My head fell back, one hand going instinctively toward the back of hers before I remembered the braids. I spread my fingers against them instead and let the pressure sit there while her mouth worked me slow and wet.
Every time she lifted, she looked at me.
Every time she came down again, she took more.
“Fuck.”
That was about all the language I had left.
Imani smiled around the head of my dick like she knew it too.
When she finally pulled off, her lips were wet and her eyes looked dangerous.
“My pussy wanted to taste it too.”
My stomach tightened. “Baby.”
She climbed over me before I fully recovered, the shirt riding high around her hips. There was nothing beneath it, and the first hot brush of her pussy over the head of my dick nearly wiped my name from my own memory.
“Imani.”
Her voice trembled, but her eyes stayed right on mine. “My pussy says it tastes real good, Dre.”
“Fuck.”
She took the head, lifted off, then sank down a little farther.
My hands closed around her thighs.
“Quit playing.”
Her mouth curved. “You don’t sound convincing.”
“Mani.”
She sank onto me.
My breath left hard as her body opened around mine.
Her forehead touched mine, and for a few seconds neither of us moved. I felt every pulse of her pussy around me, every breath warming my mouth, every inch of the woman who had once felt so familiar I thought there could never be a world without her.
Then she rolled her hips.
I held her and let her set the rhythm.
She rode me slowly at first, my shirt moving over her body while her mouth opened on every deeper stroke. When I started meeting her from beneath, those soft sounds got louder.
I couldn't take my eyes off her.
She didn't look away either.
The house, the game, the city beyond the glass, every night I had filled with work because I didn't know what else to do with the silence, all of it disappeared beneath Imani breathing my name against my mouth.
I held her tighter.
And for once, the quiet had something good in it.