Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
The suite door shut behind me, and for the first time since I stepped onto AWU’s Yard that morning, nobody was saying my name.
The Nocturne’s Presidential Suite took up the corner of the top floor, all dark wood, brass fixtures, soft rugs, and a view of Pittsburgh that made the city look calmer than it ever actually was.
My jacket came off first.
Then my shoes.
My left knee had opinions about the day, but nothing loud enough to stop me from getting through the night.
Not after the Yard. Not after Imani. Not after sitting beside her in folding chairs with her thigh close to mine, smelling her perfume in the breeze, watching her eyes catch sunlight every time she laughed and then go serious when she thought I was leaving something unsaid.
I should have been thinking about the award.
Instead, I kept thinking about her.
I wrapped my knee, started the compression unit, and sat on the edge of the bed with my phone in my hand.
No missed emergencies.
That alone felt like a blessing.
Before I left for Crown Weekend, my managers had all promised they would give me a few days unless something major happened.
Deja and Chuck at Jones Motor Group swore the dealership would survive without me stepping into every service issue like the building might collapse if I didn’t personally check the paperwork.
Avery at North & Vine told me the restaurant could make it through a fall weekend without me asking three times about reservations and the short rib.
Darnell at Jones Outdoor sent one text that said, Your daddy already stopped by and told us what we did wrong. You are no longer needed.
I had laughed when I read it.
Then stared at the message longer than necessary because the truth was sitting right there being rude.
My businesses could run without me standing over them every second.
They were supposed to. That was the point of hiring good people and letting them do what I paid them to do. Still, for a man who had spent most of his life knowing exactly where he was supposed to be every hour of the day, letting other people hold things down did not always come easy.
Today, I was grateful for it.
My mind had been useless for anything that was not Imani Bennett.
The gala should have had more of me by now.
The award.
Apex.
Sunday Prime wanted an answer soon and had made the kind of offer most retired players would have accepted before the agent finished saying the number.
Good money. Big platform. Smart transition.
Sit in a studio, talk football, smile when somebody yelled a bad take loud enough to go viral, and let everybody call it the next phase of my life.
Yesterday, it had felt important. After lunch with Imani, it felt farther away.
Not gone. Just less loud.
Everything felt less loud after sitting beside her in those folding chairs, eating sandwiches and fries like eight years had not put whole lives between us.
That should have bothered me. It did a little. Mostly, it made me want to see her again.
I leaned back on my hands and looked toward the window while the compression unit tightened around my knee. All afternoon, pieces of her kept coming back without asking permission.
Her legs close to mine beneath that alumni tent.
Her shoulder brushing my arm because the chairs were too close and neither one of us moved them.
Her perfume coming off her skin every time the breeze shifted.
Those deep-brown eyes catching sunlight when she laughed, then going soft and cautious when I said something that reached her.
That mouth.
The way it pouted a little when she was pretending not to be irritated. The way it broke open into that smile when she forgot to protect herself from joy.
Her skin had glowed on the Yard, brown and warm beneath the October sun, with that little shimmer women put on and acted like men weren’t supposed to notice.
I noticed. The braids that slipped loose near her cheek.
The gold at her ears. The jeans that fit her like they had been made by somebody with a personal problem against my peace.
Lord.
My dick had been hard in too many public places for a man who knew better.
The donor tent. The photo area. Standing beside her while Taylor barked orders like Crown Weekend would fall apart if she blinked.
Sitting with her while she picked fries from the tray and acted like she didn’t know I remembered what she liked.
I spent half the afternoon trying not to stare too long and the other half trying not to let people see what staring was doing to me.
The wanting was easy to understand.
Imani had always been fine enough to make a nigga stupid.
The problem was everything else.
She had moved toward chairs without saying one word about my knee. Let me sit without turning it into care. Asked questions that made room without pushing. Laughed at old mess like we had not once loved each other hard enough to leave bruises under the skin.
I had liked listening to her.
That was the part I had not expected to hit so hard.
At twenty-two, I loved her.
No question.
At thirty, I liked the woman sitting beside me too.
The compression unit released with a low hiss, and I unwrapped my knee before standing. The shower was already warming by the time I crossed the suite, but I stopped at the mirror over the sink and looked at myself for a second.
Tomorrow night, AWU would put me in front of a room full of people and give me the Crown Legacy Award.
Last year, Dr. Waverly had received it after four decades of teaching students who went on to run companies, classrooms, nonprofits, hospitals, and half the city’s quiet power.
The year before that, it had gone to a judge who built a legal clinic on campus with her own money before she ever let the alumni board put her name on a plaque.
It was not some little thanks for being famous award.
That was why I had tried not to think too hard about it.
AWU could have honored me for football years ago. They had done that plenty. Jersey displays. Hall of fame talk. Videos where I ran through holes big enough to make old linemen lie and say they could still block like that. This was different.
This award said I had done something after the cheering stopped.
Built something.
Carried the school’s name well.
Made them proud in a way that had nothing to do with yards after contact.
AWU had always measured legacy a little differently. Who did your work feed? Who did it employ? Who had something useful because you had been here? A name on a building was nice. Leaving something people could actually use meant more.
I was grateful for that.
I was also uncomfortable as hell.
Then I thought about Imani being in that room when they called my name.
Of course this would be the year.
Every Crown Weekend I had come back, some part of me had looked for her.
In lobbies. At receptions. In the background of group photos people posted after midnight.
I stopped saying it out loud after a while because a man could only sound pathetic so many different ways before he needed to keep the rest to himself.
Now she was here. The year I was being honored. The year I was supposed to stand in front of people and talk about legacy like the woman who knew the young version of me would not be sitting somewhere close enough to hear every word.
That put pressure in places I could not name without becoming emotional.
Made the award feel less like a plaque and more like a mirror.
Made me want to get through the speech and find her afterward, because last night I had told her I needed to apologize and she had looked at me like she knew exactly where we could go to have that conversation.
The Nocturne.
Her suite.
Behind a door.
My jaw tightened again just thinking about it.
I turned on the shower and stepped under the hot water before my body could start arguing with me about what we were not doing before the gala.
It argued anyway.
Imani in purple silk last night, my name peeking from the tattoo over her heart.
Imani on the Yard today, laughing at me like she still had access to places nobody else had reached.
Imani sitting close enough for me to smell her, her thigh near mine, her eyes on my face like she could still tell when I was leaving things unsaid.
That woman had been in front of me less than twenty-four hours, and somehow Apex, the Forge, the businesses, the award, all of it had started moving around her instead of the other way around.
That could make a man stupid.
I knew better now. Wanting somebody did not mean I had earned access to her, an apology did not become forgiveness just because I meant it, and chemistry could make bad decisions feel spiritual if I let it.
But I also knew what I felt when her body shuddered under my hand at her back.
I knew what I saw in her eyes when I said I had looked for her every year.
I knew that when she told me she had almost not come, some part of me wanted to thank God and curse time in the same breath.
The tux waited in the garment bag when I came out from the shower.
Black. Tailored right. White shirt. Black bow tie.
Deep-purple pocket square because AWU would have found a way to haunt me if I showed up without school color somewhere.
I fastened my watch last, the one Pops gave me after my final full season, back when none of us knew it would be my final full season.
For a moment, I looked at it and heard his voice.
You more than what they clap for, son.
I had not believed him then. I was starting to.
My phone buzzed on the dresser while I adjusted my cuffs.
Malcolm: You coming downstairs for drinks or you up there daydreaming about your girl?
I smiled.
Me: Hush, nigga.
His response came fast.
Malcolm: That award speech about to be terrible.
Me: Worry about Camille.
The dots appeared, disappeared, then appeared again.
Malcolm: Worry about your own woman.
I stared at that longer than I needed to.
Then typed the truth.
Me: Don’t have one.
He answered immediately.
Malcolm: Yet.
I laughed under my breath and put the phone away.
My own woman.
Too much.
Too soon.
Also not something my mind rejected quickly enough for me to trust myself.
I checked myself in the mirror once more.
I looked good. No reason to lie just because I was alone.
The man looking back at me was not the same boy AWU had crowned beside Imani years ago. Not the same running back people had once sworn would play until his body forgot how to quit. Not the same man who sat in meetings with Apex pretending he knew exactly what he wanted next.
I did not have every answer, and for once, that did not make me feel lost.
Tonight, I had an award to accept, a room to survive, and a woman in that room who had already reminded me what it felt like to want too much and still have enough sense to wait.
Mostly.
I grabbed my room key and headed for the elevator.
I was ready to see her again.