Chapter 26 #2
The smile faded, but she didn’t look scared. She looked ready. She pulled her legs from my lap and turned toward me, the shirt sliding higher on her thighs.
I wanted to put my hand there.
I kept it to myself.
“I want to take the job,” I said.
She drew a breath.
“I know.”
Of course she did.
“I want that room,” I said. “I want those backs. I want to see if what I know still matters somewhere besides me yelling at the TV.”
Her eyes softened.
“I don’t want Apex. Maybe later. Maybe never. But I don’t want to sit in a studio talking about what other men should have done. I want the work.”
“Then you should do it.”
“You say that easy.”
“I’m saying it clearly. There’s a difference.”
I looked at her.
She waited.
“I’m afraid of losing you.”
Her eyes filled before she blinked.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” Her voice softened. “More than I did yesterday.”
Something in me shifted.
“What happened yesterday?”
She looked down at our hands.
“Bari told me something.”
My body went still.
“He told me he went to see you after I left. Back then.”
I stared at her.
“Tee let him in,” she said quietly. “He said you were sitting on the floor by your bed. That the apartment was dark. That you had been drinking.”
My throat closed.
“Mani.”
“I didn’t know.” Her eyes came back to mine, shiny and aching. “All this time, I thought you let me leave because some part of you had already made peace with it. Because football was coming and the draft was coming and maybe losing me was just one more thing you had decided you could survive.”
I could barely breathe around the memory.
That room.
That bottle.
That draft hat on the floor.
The future sitting in front of me like a blessing I did not know how to want without her.
“I didn’t make peace with it,” I said.
“I know that now.”
Silence settled between us, but this time it did not feel like distance. It felt like the two of us standing on opposite sides of the same old wound, finally seeing how deep it had gone.
“I should have told you,” I said.
“You were twenty-two.”
“That don’t excuse it.”
“No,” she whispered. “But I understand more than I did.”
I dragged a hand over my jaw and looked toward the fire before my face gave away too much.
“It won’t be simple, Mani,” I said. “If I take this job, the hours are ugly. Road games. Facility days. Film. Practice. Times football takes more than either of us likes. And your work is growing too. Malibu wasn’t a one-time thing.
The Nocturne, Laila, whatever comes next for Saint Aurelia.
You’re going to be everywhere you’re supposed to be. ”
“I know.”
“I’m proud of that.”
“I know that too.”
“But it scares me.”
Her lips parted.
I rubbed both hands over my thighs, then made myself look at her. “Last time our lives got big at the same time, you left.”
Pain moved across her face.
I hated putting it there.
Still said it.
“I know why now. I know you had to choose yourself. I know I was proud and quiet and young, and I made letting you go look like I had less to lose than I did.” My voice dropped.
“But I lost you, Mani. I don’t know if I can let football take parts of my life again and not be scared that one day you’ll decide loving me costs too much. ”
She took my hand before I could reach for her face.
“I used to be afraid being with you meant losing myself,” she said.
I held still.
“Not because you asked me to disappear. You didn’t. But everything around you was so loud, and I was young. I didn’t know how to stand beside the life coming for you without becoming part of the scenery.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
My thumb moved against it.
“But I don’t feel that way now,” she said. “Now I think being with you is helping me find parts of myself I left behind too. The soft parts. The brave parts. The part that can want a man this much and still want my work. My name. My life.” Her voice trembled. “Loving you doesn’t make me less mine.”
My throat got tight as hell.
“Mani.”
“We’re going to be too busy sometimes,” she said. “You’ll have road games. I’ll have fittings and previews. There will be weekends where we’re not in the same city and nights when one of us falls asleep before the other can call.”
“That sounds terrible.”
She laughed through the tears. “It does. But we spent eight years apart and still found our way here. Andre, we can manage a weekend or two.”
I looked at her, and my shoulders dropped before I told them to. Damn, I had been braced for the old answer without even knowing it.
“We can’t keep treating distance like proof that love is failing,” she said. “Sometimes distance is work. A flight. A game. A meeting that runs late. We have to stop letting twenty-two-year-old fear explain grown-people circumstances.”
I closed my eyes for a second.
“I don’t want to make you small.”
“You don’t.”
“I don’t want football to swallow us.”
“Then we don’t let it.”
“I don’t want to wake up one day and realize we’ve been missing each other politely for months.”
“Then we get impolite about missing each other.”
A laugh broke out of me, low and rough.
“That your plan?”
“That’s my first draft.”
I slid my hand around the back of her neck and brought her forehead to mine.
“We talk,” she whispered. “We plan. We tell the truth before resentment gets dressed. And when it gets hard, we remember we already know what silence costs.”
The truth settled in me slowly, deep enough to move with. I kissed her.
Soft at first. My mouth on hers, my hand against her cheek, the fire warming the room while football moved without sound on the screen. Then deeper, because relief had heat under it and Imani was in my shirt, on my couch, telling me love did not have to shrink either one of us.
She climbed into my lap, knees on either side of my hips, and I held her like something in me had finally been answered.
“I love you,” I said.
Her eyes searched mine, wet and wide and beautiful.
“I love you too,” she whispered.
I pulled her against me and closed my eyes.
For a minute, we held each other in the firelight with the game muted behind us, my heart beating hard against hers, both of us letting the words find somewhere to live.
When her mouth found mine again, the kiss moved slower this time, deeper and certain.
I carried her to the rug in front of the fireplace, careful with my knee without making the moment fragile. She smiled when I laid her down, braids spilling around her, blush-pink nails touching my face like she knew every thought I was trying not to overmanage.
“Taking care of me?” she asked.
“Always.”
Her eyes softened.
Then she reached for the hem of my shirt and pulled it over her head.
Firelight moved over her skin. Brown and warm. Diamonds still in her ears. Anklet at her ankle. White toes curling against the rug when my palm slid up her thigh. Her navel ring caught the fire for half a second before my mouth found the soft skin beneath it.
I lowered myself over her and kissed her again.
Tonight did not need proving. We loved each other in front of the fire with football muted behind us and tomorrow waiting on the other side of the room.
Tomorrow, I would call Coach Price.
Tomorrow, everything would start changing.
Tonight, I held on to Imani and let myself believe we knew how to change with it.