Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Idon’t want our time to end yet.”
Dre said it after pulling beneath The Nocturne’s awning, one hand still on the wheel, his purple-and-gold AWU jacket open over the white T-shirt beneath it. His voice was calm. Almost too calm for what the sentence did to me.
I turned fully toward him.
Outside the windshield, people moved beneath the awning in clusters of purple, gold, laughter, and Saturday night plans.
The valet stand was busy. A group of alumni lingered near the entrance, still talking about AWU’s win over Banneker State like their commentary had personally secured those last seven points.
The day should have worn me out completely.
My feet hurt, my throat felt a little raw from yelling, and I had eaten enough stadium food to need water, vegetables, prayer, and possibly a formal apology to my digestive system.
But Dre wanted more time.
So did I.
The realization settled without the panic I expected.
Maybe because the day had already done something to me.
I had watched him inside the place that made him, seen the way AWU still reached for him with both hands.
Former coaches, current players, alumni, children in jerseys, older men who looked at him with pride, women who looked at him with recognition, people who knew what he had been and still cared about what he was becoming.
He belonged to that school in a way fame had not erased.
And all day, he kept coming back to me.
After every handshake. Every picture. Every interruption.
Every conversation that pulled him into the public version of himself, Dre’s eyes found mine again.
In the stands, he leaned close to explain a defensive adjustment in my ear, his voice low enough that I suspected education had stopped being his only objective.
When the interception nearly cost him his balance, I grabbed his arm before I thought about it, and he looked at my hand like the touch had gone somewhere deeper than his sleeve.
“You almost fell,” I’d said.
“I got excited.”
“You are too grown to be falling over football.”
“Blasphemy.”
I had laughed until my eyes watered.
That was what stayed with me now. Dre laughing beside me.
Dre watching the young running back wearing twenty-two like legacy had walked past him in shoulder pads.
Dre going quiet when Coach Wallace said the Forge hadn’t been the same without him and hinted that maybe the game still had a place for him, even if it was not the one he used to occupy.
The Royal Sound had nearly taken the stadium apart at halftime, turning T.I.
’s “Let Em Know” into brass, drums, attitude, and enough bass to make the alumni forget their knees and the students lose their whole minds.
Dre had stood beside me with his head tilted, smiling at the way the band made something brand-new feel like it already belonged to AWU.
I watched his hand tap against his thigh, watched him take in the students dancing and yelling around us, and my mind did what it always did when something shifted in front of me.
It tried to name it. Retired player. Alumnus.
Maybe coach. None of those labels held all of him.
Dre was beside me instead of on the field, and for the first time I could see that as a life instead of a loss.
And now he was beside me, wanting the night not to end.
“What?” I asked, though I’d heard him perfectly.
“Come up to my suite.”
My eyebrows rose.
Dre laughed softly. “I’m not trying anything.”
“That sounds exactly like something a man says before trying something.”
“We’ll order food,” he said. “Watch something. Talk.”
We both smiled because the lie had manners.
“We’ve been together all day,” I said.
“And I still want more time with you.”
That moved through me soft first, then lower. Dre had spent the whole day being careful with me, opening doors, making room, keeping his hand where he could touch without taking. Somehow his restraint had become its own kind of pressure, and my body had been answering him since the stadium.
His scent in the truck.
His mouth brushing my knuckles like he did not care who saw.
Now we were parked outside The Nocturne, close enough to leave with sense and close enough to ruin it.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Yes.”
I lied beautifully.
Food was absolutely not what I wanted, but it gave us both something respectable to pretend this was about.
His eyes darkened like he heard the thought anyway.
“For food,” I said.
His mouth tilted. “For food.”
The way he repeated it made my thighs press together.
Dre noticed.
His hand crossed the console and settled on my thigh, warm through my jeans. He didn’t slide it higher. Didn’t squeeze. Didn’t do anything a man couldn’t explain if he needed to.
My pussy still answered like his fingers had already found bare skin.
A slow pulse. A little swell. Heat gathering in a place that remembered him too well to behave.
His eyes dropped to my lap, then lifted to mine.
The silence in the truck changed, full of everything we were not saying because saying it would make the next decision too easy.
“What you want, Mani?”
The bass in his voice went straight to my pussy.
I held his stare. “Something good to eat.”
My mind went filthy before I could stop it.
Dre feeding me that big chocolate dick with the same patience he used for everything else when it came to my body.
His thumb moved once against my thigh. Barely anything. Enough to make me inhale.
“I’ll make sure it’s good,” he said. “Trust me on that.”
That was the problem.
I did trust him.
I trusted Dre to take his time. To watch my face. To remember what made my breath catch and learn what time had changed. I trusted him to make it so good I would forget every reasonable argument I had carried into that truck.
Thursday, I had needed a whole room between us just to survive him. Now his hand was on my thigh, his eyes were on my mouth, and some part of me had already followed him upstairs.
I looked toward the hotel doors.
Then back at him.
“Let’s go upstairs to your suite.”
The presidential suite was something else.
My suite was beautiful. The Nocturne did not seem interested in doing anything halfway.
But Dre’s suite made mine feel like the hotel had patted me on the head and told me I was cute for trying.
His had dark wood, amber light, brass fixtures, thick rugs, furniture deep enough to disappear into, and windows that gave downtown Pittsburgh the kind of view people paid too much money to pretend belonged to them.
Dre opened the door and stepped aside for me, his hand resting briefly at my lower back as I walked in. After the way that hand had behaved in the truck, even that little touch made my body remember too much.
“This is excessive,” I said.
He took my coat from my shoulders. “You like it.”
“I did not say that.”
“You looked at the couch like you wanted to take it home with you.”
My attention betrayed me by going right back to the enormous sectional. “It is a beautiful couch.”
His laugh followed me farther into the room, low and easy, and I smiled because I had been hearing that sound more and more all day.
The public version of Dre had spent Crown Weekend shaking hands, taking pictures, answering questions, and moving through crowds like being wanted was something he had learned how to survive.
This Dre dropped his phone beside a room-service tablet, loosened the watch on his wrist, and looked at me like having me in his suite at the end of the night was a problem he had every intention of enjoying.
“What you want to eat?”
I looked at him.
“For dinner,” he added, mouth tilting.
“Something real. With vegetables. And sauce. And bread.”
“Good bread?”
“Obviously.”
His smile deepened, but he did not drag the conversation out. He ordered like food was the entire reason we were upstairs, then set the tablet aside and gave me a look that made the suite feel smaller.
“You can shower if you want,” he said. “Food’ll take a minute.”
“I can go downstairs and shower in my own room.”
“You can.” His eyes stayed on mine. “But you won’t come back.”
The accuracy irritated me.
“I don’t have anything to wear.”
Dre disappeared into the bedroom and returned with a robe. Thick. White. Absurdly soft even before I touched it.
I stared at it. “This is not yours.”
“It belongs to the suite.”
“It looks like it belongs to a woman who owns a yacht.”
“Then pretend.”
I took it from him, and his fingers brushed mine during the handoff.
Neither of us moved for a second.
“I’m still not trying anything,” he said.
“You keep saying that.”
“You keep looking at me like you don’t believe it.”
“I don’t.”
His mouth curved. “I’m being good, Imani.”
“Right now,” I added.
The heat that entered his eyes made me regret and appreciate myself at the same time.
“Right now,” he repeated.
I went into the bathroom before I started making decisions while wearing boots that had carried me through an entire football game.
The shower was luxury layered over luxury.
Black marble, glass, towels thick enough to qualify as bedding, and water pressure that suggested somebody had asked women what they needed and actually listened.
I stood beneath the spray long enough to wash away stadium heat, tailgate smoke, makeup, perfume, and the last bit of composure still pretending to belong to me.
It did not help.
I dried slowly, more nervous than I wanted to admit.
The robe swallowed me whole, falling past my knees and wrapping around me like The Nocturne had mistaken me for somebody’s wealthy widow. I tied it tight anyway, then reached for the hotel lotion because nerves were one thing, but ash was where I drew the line.