Chapter 15 #2
At the game. Inside the Crown Club. Walking through the stadium with Dre’s hand against my back. Returning to The Nocturne together. Laughing like our past had never broken anything.
Looking close enough for strangers to start writing our next chapter before either of us had discussed the first page.
The comments were exactly what I feared.
Some sweet.
Some nostalgic.
Some far too familiar.
People asked whether we were back together as if we had missed a deadline for issuing a statement.
Then Aubrey’s name appeared.
Of course it did.
Wasn’t he just with Aubrey Carter?
He and Aubrey were cute though.
Aubrey has that soft pretty. Imani looks expensive. Different lanes.
So did he dump Aubrey for his college sweetheart?
Messy if the timeline overlaps.
My stomach turned.
Nothing had overlapped. Dre told me they wanted different futures. He admitted he had stayed longer than he should have. Told me she was not me without pretending that made how he handled their relationship entirely fair.
Strangers did not care about nuance when speculation gave them something to chew.
And the comparison disgusted me.
Not because I feared Aubrey Carter. I mean, she was pretty. Soft pretty face. Trendy clothes. The kind of woman cameras liked.
She also did not hold a candle to me, and I was not humble enough to lie about that, even in my own mind.
Then Dre’s voice moved through my memory, low and rough against my mouth.
No one in this whole world serves me pussy like you do, Mani.
For one private, petty second, I let that sit exactly where those comments had tried to put doubt.
Aubrey had nothing on me.
The thought was ugly, human, and honest enough that I could not pretend it hadn't crossed my mind.
I had woken beside a man I still loved and opened my phone to strangers comparing me with another Black woman before I had even brushed my teeth.
Some corner of my pride lifted its chin with Dre's words still warm in my body.
He had wanted me. Missed me. Compared what we’d had to everything that came after and come back with an answer that made me feel powerful in a way I would never admit out loud.
So I gave myself that quiet victory. I let it feel good too. For a minute.
Then the grown woman in me entered the room.
Aubrey had not done anything to me.
She had loved a man who couldn't love her the way she deserved, and if what Dre told me was true, she had spent too long trying to earn a version of him that was never fully available to her.
That did not make her less than me. It meant Dre had hurt her.
There was a difference.
I could privately enjoy knowing nobody had replaced what existed between us without pretending another woman deserved to be embarrassed for failing at something that had never been hers to win.
And honestly, that was the part strangers never understood.
Aubrey and I were not competing. Dre had already answered the question everybody online seemed desperate to ask. What frightened me was what happened after the answer.
My name reduced to a place in Andre Jones’s timeline.
The college sweetheart.
The woman he came back to.
The original.
The upgrade.
A body beside his in a photograph.
I had spent years making sure Imani Elise Bennett belonged to herself.
Woman. Executive. Daughter. Sister. Friend. A whole person with her own work, choices, mistakes, desires, and history.
I was not prepared to wake beside Andre Jones and feel strangers reaching for ownership of me again.
So I moved quietly.
Unfastened his diamonds and placed them on his nightstand.
Found my clothes.
Dressed.
Before leaving, I stood beside the bed.
Dre slept deeply, one arm stretched across the space where I had been. His mouth was slightly open. The sheet sat low at his waist, and one hand rested palm-up against the mattress like even asleep he expected me to still be there.
I wanted to touch him.
Wake him.
Ask what came next.
I wanted to climb back beneath his arm and let him answer every question my fear had started asking without permission.
Instead, fear made the decision before courage had fully opened its eyes.
I left.
That was the part I had been avoiding all morning. I did not regret needing space. I regretted how I took it.
Work helped, but only enough to keep me upright.
A knock sounded against my door before I could fall any farther into myself, and Cleo entered before permission fully formed.
She wore a black wrap dress, red frames, red lipstick, and copper locs swept over one shoulder, looking like every publicist I had ever respected and distrusted in equal measure.
Nina followed with her tablet.
“Please tell me you’ve eaten,” Cleo said.
“That is not the tone of a woman asking about lunch.”
“It is not.”
I sat straighter. “How bad?”
“Depends on whether you consider Laila Hart bad.”
My brows lifted.
Nina looked like she had been holding the secret in her mouth for fifteen minutes.
“Marisol wants the bracelet?”
Cleo smiled. “And the pear drops. Next month in Los Angeles. Private honors dinner before the Ellington Arts Gala.”
For one second, Dre moved to the edge of my thoughts where all my unfinished things were waiting.
Then work took over.
Laila Hart was an actress, producer, fragrance founder, newly divorced headline magnet, and living proof that reinvention photographed beautifully when the right woman wore the right thing at the right time.
Saint Aurelia could not buy that kind of visibility.
We could mishandle it, though.
“What do we think?”
Cleo crossed one leg over the other. “Give Marisol options. Bracelet. Pear drops. Maybe the cuff, depending on wardrobe.”
Nina pressed her mouth together.
I saw the thought.
“Say it.”
She glanced toward Cleo. “The bracelet should lead. Laila is already the story. We don't need to decorate the whole paragraph.”
Cleo pointed at her. “Now why would you say something sensible when I was having fun?”
I laughed. “Because she’s right.”
Cleo sighed dramatically. “Fine. Bracelet first. Pear drops if the neckline gives us room.”
“No necklace.”
“No necklace.”
“Laila has worn every major house. We don't out-shout Cartier or Bulgari. We make one Saint Aurelia piece feel inevitable.”
Cleo's expression sharpened with interest. “That I can pitch.”
“Invite,” I corrected.
She tilted her head.
“This house has too much history to chase anybody, even Laila Hart. We’re honored, but careful. Interested, never thirsty. Marisol gets access because she understands image. Laila gets the piece because the moment makes sense.”
Cleo nodded slowly.
Nina typed.
“Saint Aurelia doesn't chase placement,” I continued. “We protect the house, the client, and the story.”
“That sounds like a quote,” Nina murmured.
“Don't make me sound like a plaque.”
Cleo laughed. “Too late.”
The meeting moved from there. Wardrobe. Lighting. Story. Whether Laila’s team wanted power, softness, reinvention, or all three.
By the end, the bracelet would lead. Pear drops only if wardrobe supported them.
Cleo would make Marisol feel chosen without making Saint Aurelia sound overeager.
Nina would build the styling language. Operations had time for insurance, shipping, and handoff protocols before anybody had reason to panic.
Cleo stood.
“I’m going downstairs before PR starts calling this once-in-a-lifetime and making me itch.”
“It is major,” Nina said.
“Major opportunities still need paperwork.”
“Take Nina with you,” I said.
Nina looked up. “Me?”
“Yes. This is how you learn the difference between preparation and panic.”
Cleo grinned. “Come on, baby brand genius.”
Nina followed her out looking excited enough to remind me of every room I had once entered while trying not to show how badly I wanted somebody to trust me.
The door closed.
My office became quiet again.
The founder still watched me from her frame. Campaign boards covered the wall. Diamonds caught light at my wrist.
And Dre’s name still waited on my phone.
The competence I had wrapped around myself all morning loosened.
I missed him.
That was the truth beneath every ignored call.
I missed his arm around my waist. The peace on his face while he slept. The way he looked at me when he thought I wasn't paying attention.
And yes, I missed his mouth too because I was human and there was no reason to start lying now. His mouth, his hands, his voice, his body moving with mine like the filth and the feeling had always known exactly where to find each other.
But desire wasn't the reason I finally picked up the phone.
Dre had asked me to talk to him.
The younger version of me had spent too much time hoping he would somehow understand what I refused to say.
I could not ask grown Dre to communicate differently while repeating my own old habits.
I wrapped my hand around the phone and exhaled.
“Girl.”
Then I called him.