Chapter 11 #3
“You did that on purpose,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“At least you’re honest.”
“I needed you to stop worrying about my knee.”
A laugh slipped out of me, soft and uneven. “So your solution was making me cum before breakfast?”
His silence lasted half a second too long.
Then his voice dropped. “It worked.”
My thighs pressed together again. “Dre.”
“I’m not teasing you.”
“You absolutely are.”
“Nah.” His tone stayed warm, but something serious moved beneath it. “If I was teasing you, you’d know. I’m saying it worked because you let me take care of you for a minute.”
My chest went quiet.
“I’m in bed, naked and embarrassed,” I said. “I’m not sure that counts as care.”
“You embarrassed because you wanted it.”
“I am embarrassed because you remember entirely too much.”
“I remember you.”
That shut me up.
Dre let the quiet sit there without rushing to fill it, and I could hear the faint shift of him breathing, the soft drag of fabric on his end, the distance between our hotel rooms doing absolutely nothing to make the moment less intimate.
We were in separate beds, under separate sheets, and somehow I felt closer to him than I had while standing in a ballroom full of applause.
Desire was one thing. Dre making my body cum from memory and voice alone was another. But the quiet after, the careful space he gave me to gather myself without making me feel like I needed to hide, slid under my skin in a different way.
“What did you really call me for?” I asked.
“To hear your voice.”
My chest softened before I could stop it.
“And?”
“And because I want you with me today.”
The words were simple, but they moved through me anyway.
“With you where?”
“The game.”
I stared toward the ceiling. “We’re all going.”
“That ain’t what I asked.”
I knew it wasn’t.
“You mean with you.”
“Yeah.”
“Just us?”
“Just us.”
My fingers tightened around the phone. Yesterday, that invitation might have sent me into ten different questions. Who would see us? What would people assume? How many pictures would be online before kickoff? Those things still existed, but they were no longer the first things my mind reached for.
The first thing was Dre’s voice saying, I remember you.
Then the quiet after he made me cum.
Then the fact that he had asked if I was okay before allowing himself even a second of satisfaction.
Then the number.
The number he had kept because once upon a time, he told me if I ever needed him, I should call. Apparently Andre Jones meant things for a long damn time.
I needed to be very honest with myself. There was no universe where I was telling that man no. Not after he had woken me up from eight years away and reminded my body, my pride, and my heart that he still knew how to find me.
“What time?” I asked.
“Meet me downstairs at eleven-thirty.”
“You sound very sure I’m going.”
“You want to?”
No assumption.
Just the question.
I smiled against the phone. “I do.”
“Then come with me.”
The way he said it did something to me. An invitation with heat in it. A hand extended. A space opened beside him, waiting on me to decide whether I was brave enough to step into it.
“People are going to look at us,” I said.
“They probably will.”
“And take pictures.”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t want one football game turning into some story about us before we even know what this is.”
“I don’t either.”
His answer came immediately, and that quieted the old fear before it could get much farther.
“I’m not asking you to announce anything,” he continued. “I want to go to the game with you. Sit beside you. Spend the day with you. That’s it.”
That sounded almost simple.
Maybe it could be.
And maybe part of what I needed to learn this time was that other people noticing my life did not mean they got to decide what happened inside it.
“I’ll go.”
“With me?”
I smiled. “Yes, Andre. With you.”
“Good.”
That single word moved through me warm and low.
“You are entirely too pleased.”
“You going to the game with me after letting me make you cum before breakfast. Yeah, Mani. I’m pleased.”
My mouth fell open. There was no way he could see my face, but somehow I still felt caught.
“You know what—”
His laugh came through the phone, low and satisfied, but still not cruel.
Dre could be arrogant. Dre could tease. Dre could absolutely get on my nerves before nine in the morning.
But he had not turned my softness into something to hold over me.
He sounded happy. Happy that I wanted him.
Happy that I was going with him. Happy that, for once, neither of us had run from the obvious.
“That was not funny,” I said.
“It was a little funny.”
“Goodbye.”
“Nah, wait.”
His laughter faded, but I could still hear it in his breathing. Another sound came through his end, a vibration or alert, and then his tone changed.
“Damn.”
“What?”
“I got another call I need to take.”
“Business?”
A short pause came before he answered. “Something I need to handle.”
I heard enough in his voice to know not to press.
“Okay.”
“Eleven-thirty.”
“I heard you.”
“Get some more sleep.”
“You’re the one who woke me up.”
“And I’d do it again.”
My lips curved. “Clearly.”
“Mani.”
“What?”
The softness in his voice returned. “I’m glad you answered.”
I closed my eyes.
There he was again, getting underneath everything.
“I am too.”
Neither of us said anything for a second, and I took a breath because if I let the silence stretch too long, I might say something neither of us was ready to hold before noon.
“I’m hanging up now.”
“See you downstairs.”
“Bye, Dre.”
“Bye, baby.”
The call ended before I could decide what to do with that.
I stared at the screen for a few seconds, my heart still caught on the last word.
Baby.
Warm.
Familiar.
Still sitting with me after the line went quiet.
I saved the number.
Dre.
No emoji. No joke after it. Just his name.
Then I lay there with the phone resting against my chest, the sheets twisted around my waist, my skin still alive from everything his voice had done to me. My room was quiet again. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that let a woman hear herself clearly.
And what I heard was not confusion.
That should have scared me more than it did.
My eyes landed on another thread.
Damien.
The softness in me shifted, but the guilt did not swallow me the way it might have yesterday.
Whatever had been thinning between us before I came home was finally done.
I had sent the words I should have sent sooner and stopped leaving the door cracked.
He had been good to me. I could honor that without pretending there was still something between us to save.
Especially not from this bed while my fingers were still damp from another man’s memory.
Not from the wreckage of Dre making me cum before breakfast and then asking me, gently, if I was okay.
The clock read 8:31.
I had three hours before Dre wanted me downstairs.
And God help me, I wanted to be there.
Before Dre, football had been something other people got emotional about on Saturdays. Dating him had taught me enough to follow a game, yell at a bad block, and understand why a running back sometimes needed half a second of patience more than another burst of speed.
Today would be different.
He would not be on the field while I watched from the stands.
He would be sitting beside me on purpose, after asking for me.
After keeping my number. After remembering my body with enough tenderness to make pleasure feel like a conversation we had started years ago and somehow still knew how to continue.
A fresh pulse moved between my thighs.
I laughed under my breath and covered my face.
“Girl.”
Three hours was plenty of time to shower, get dressed, fix my face, and pretend I was not walking downstairs to meet a man who had just made my whole body answer him through a phone.
Probably not enough time to stop thinking about what Andre Jones’s mouth was going to do the next time we were alone.