Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
One minute we were moving through Pittsburgh traffic, and the next Dre was turning onto a private road that climbed into the hillside, the lights of the city spreading below us in gold and white.
I sat forward before I could help it, my attention moving from the view to the matte-black gate ahead, then to the stone columns, cameras, and keypad tucked discreetly beside the drive.
“Oh.”
Dre glanced over. “That good or bad?”
“I’m still deciding.”
His mouth curved as he lowered the window and entered a code without looking down. His fingers apparently knew the numbers well enough to work without him, and a few seconds later the gates opened.
The road carried us higher between trees beginning to turn for fall.
Pittsburgh appeared in pieces through the branches, close enough to recognize and far enough to feel removed, and when the gate closed behind us, something in my shoulders loosened before I realized I had been carrying tension there.
Wealth was obviously part of what surrounded me. So was privacy, but underneath both I understood the necessity of protection. Dre couldn't simply choose a pretty neighborhood and expect the world to leave him alone because he asked nicely.
The house appeared at the end of the drive, all glass, stone, dark wood, and warm light cut into the hillside.
I had no idea what I expected from Andre Jones’s home, but apparently some part of me had prepared for an expensive bachelor advertisement.
Framed jerseys. Trophies in every room. Furniture selected by somebody who had been instructed to make everything masculine, impressive, and difficult to sit on.
Instead, when we stepped inside from the garage, I found warmth.
Dark floors stretched beneath soft lighting.
Black art filled the walls in a way that looked collected rather than purchased by the square foot.
Faces. Movement. Bronze, deep blue, gold.
One large piece near the living room showed a body caught somewhere between motion and rest, and I stood in front of it long enough for Dre to notice.
“You like that one?”
“I do.”
“Found the artist in Atlanta a few years ago.”
I looked toward him. “You found the artist?”
“You sound surprised.”
“I am adjusting several assumptions tonight.”
He laughed and took my coat.
Beyond us, the living room opened toward enormous windows that gave Pittsburgh back to him through glass and trees.
The house was unquestionably rich, from the land to the view to a kitchen that seemed to contain more stone than some museums, but what struck me most was how little Dre appeared to need any of it to make a statement.
Twenty-two-year-old Dre would have loved the proof.
The gate. The house. The kind of view that could answer every person who had ever underestimated him without him saying a word.
He had wanted the league, the tunnel, the noise, his name reaching beyond AWU and the Hill and every small expectation the world had tried to place around him.
I had loved that Dre. God help me, I really had.
But the man beside me already knew he had arrived. He hung my coat in a closet large enough to embarrass the storage unit I once paid for in New York, then touched the small of my back like bringing me into this part of his life did not require ceremony.
“This is where you live all the time?” I asked.
“Most days.”
“Most days?”
“I travel.”
“Do not be intentionally dry with me, Andre.”
His laugh followed me into the kitchen.
A woman in a black chef’s coat stood at the stove transferring something into a ceramic serving dish. She was pretty, brown-skinned, with locs pinned high and the easy composure of somebody who had probably watched wealthy people behave strangely in kitchens long enough to become immune.
“Dinner is ready whenever you are,” she said.
“Appreciate you, Tasha.”
Her eyes came to me, warm and professional. “Good evening.”
“Hi.”
Tasha disappeared through a side doorway, and Dre caught whatever had crossed my face.
“She comes a couple times a week,” he said. “Before you make a face.”
“I did not make a face.”
“You made at least three.”
“I am simply receiving new information.”
“She meal preps. Sometimes dinner if I know I’ll be home.”
“And here I was thinking you invited me over to impress me with your air fryer.”
“I have one.”
“Of course you do.”
“And it works hard.”
My laugh came before I could stop it, and his smile told me the sound had been exactly what he wanted.
“You want to shower before we eat?”
The question shouldn't have felt intimate after everything we'd already done, yet being inside his home changed it.
The Nocturne had belonged to Crown Weekend, old hunger, memory, and emotions neither one of us had known how to contain.
This was his actual life. His kitchen. His art.
His Monday night. Tasha had left dinner warm because he had planned for me to be here before he even knew whether I would call.
“I should.”
“Come on.”
His bedroom sat at the end of a hallway behind double doors, and I stopped after walking inside.
Dre kept going before he realized I was no longer beside him. “What?”
I looked from the massive bed to the fireplace, windows, and half-open closet glowing softly beyond another door. “This is excessive.”
“It’s a bedroom.”
“This is a department.”
He leaned against the dresser, looking far too relaxed for a man standing in a room that could have had its own mailing address. “You want something to change into, or you planning to eat in work clothes?”
“I need clothes.”
He disappeared into the closet and returned with enough fabric to suggest I had requested emergency housing instead of something comfortable.
“Dre.”
“What?”
“Do you own anything intended for humans under six feet? I am barely over five feet tall.”
“You want my clothes or not?”
“I want clothes. Not shelter.”
He laughed, went back into the closet, and returned with an old black Forge T-shirt. The cotton looked soft from years of washing and the yellow-and-white lettering had begun cracking across the chest.
“This might work.”
I took it from him. “Still enormous.”
“It’ll fit like a dress.”
“You sound like you already pictured that.”
“I did.”
He said it without a trace of shame, and warmth touched my face before I could stop it.
“Bathroom’s through there,” he said. “Towels are out. Use whatever you need.”
I stepped past him and stopped.
“Andre.”
He looked at me.
“Thank you.”
Something gentled in his expression. “You ain’t got to thank me for being careful with you.”
I had no idea what to do with that, so I took myself into the bathroom before my face volunteered information I was not prepared to discuss.
The shower was excessive too, because apparently water pressure was where wealthy men finally abandoned restraint.
I washed the day from my skin and let the steam loosen the last bit of tension behind my ribs.
By the time I returned to the kitchen in his T-shirt, bare legs, and my braids gathered off my neck, Tasha was gone and Dre stood at the table arranging plates.
He had changed into black lounge pants and a white T-shirt that fit his chest and arms in a way that made the back of my mouth warm.
His gaze went down my body, paused at the hem of the shirt, and returned to my face.
“Yeah.”
I folded my arms. “Yeah what?”
“That one works.”
“It better. Your other clothes were trying to kidnap me.”
He laughed and pulled out my chair.
Dinner was roast chicken with lemon-herb sauce, broccolini, whipped sweet potatoes, rice pilaf, and salad with pears, walnuts, and blue cheese. Beautiful food without acting too precious to be eaten.
“You always eat like this on Mondays?”
“When Tasha likes me.”
“And when she doesn’t?”
“Grilled chicken and judgment.”
“That sounds fair.”
“She been with me since my third year with the Forge. Says I used to eat like a twelve-year-old with direct deposit.”
I covered my mouth around a laugh. “Used to?”
“Watch yourself.”
We ate while the pregame show moved quietly on the television, and for the first time since I had opened Instagram Sunday morning, nothing inside me felt like it needed to run. The conversation did not fix everything between us, nor did either of us ask it to. We simply sat at his table and talked.
I told him more about Saint Aurelia, including the parts I did not package into presentations.
I told him why taking what I had learned at Tiffany and YSL and using it for a Black luxury house felt personal in a way I had not expected.
Saint Aurelia already knew how to make beautiful things.
I wanted more Black women with money, taste, and the freedom to buy themselves whatever they wanted to know the house belonged in the same conversation as every European name they'd been taught to covet.
Dre listened. Really listened, asking questions that made it obvious he wasn't merely waiting for his turn to speak.
He told me about Sunday brunch at his parents’ house, Kayla asking where I was before anybody else found the nerve, Danielle being all up in the mix, and his father telling him to put legs under love.
“He said that?”
Dre’s mouth twitched. “In front of my mother, who immediately reminded him you are not a trophy.”
“I like your mother.”
“She likes you too much.”
“There is no such thing.”
“She still mad at me from 2018 on your behalf.”
My eyes dropped to my plate. His family had loved me once, and the knowledge sat somewhere tender enough that I didn't trust myself to poke at it.
Dre saw me grow quiet and gave me the grace of reaching for the sauce instead of an explanation.
The game started while we were still finishing dinner. The Forge were playing the Baltimore Sentinels, and somewhere between clearing plates and carrying wine into the living room, Dre mentioned that he had turned Apex down.
I stopped.
“You said no?”
“Yeah.”
“Just like that?”
“Wasn’t for me.”
I studied him as he settled into the couch.
Young Dre would have wanted the lights. The cameras.
The chair with his name on it. He would have heard national platform and thought proof that the dream had survived in another form.
The man in front of me had apparently looked at everything other people assumed he should want and decided the bright thing wasn't necessarily the right thing.
“You’re different.”
His attention shifted from the television. “From what?”
“From who you were.”
Something guarded moved behind his eyes.
“I loved who you were,” I said before he could hear criticism where I did not mean any. “I loved that hungry version of you who wanted everything and believed he could earn it. Even when you were arrogant, aggravating, and entirely too pleased with yourself.”
His mouth curved. “That sounded like several compliments disguised as insults.”
“They fit you.”
“Keep going then.”
I smiled before letting the humor fade. “But this version of you feels settled in yourself differently. You don’t need everything to look like victory for it to matter.”
His gaze stayed on mine before dropping toward his wine.
“That took some losing.”
My chest tightened. “I know.”
He nodded once, and neither of us forced the conversation farther than it needed to go.
When we moved to the couch, I sat close enough that the next time Dre lifted his arm, I slipped beneath it without either of us making the gesture important by commenting on it.
The game got ugly quickly.
The Sentinels’ quarterback picked the Forge apart, and their offense kept dying near midfield.
Dre's body changed beside me in ways most people probably would not have noticed.
His jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed on every missed block and poorly timed cut.
He shifted once as though the instinct to stand had reached his muscles before his mind reminded him where he was.
“Stop running into the teeth of it,” he muttered. “They walking that safety down late every damn time.”
I followed his gaze. “You saw that before the snap?”
“Yeah.”
The Forge did almost exactly what he'd warned against on the next drive and lost four yards.
His mouth tightened.
I smiled into my glass.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You laughing at me?”
“No.”
“Bad lie.”
“I like how you watch.”
His eyes came to me.
“I’ve been told it’s irritating.”
“It probably is if somebody thinks you’re only complaining.” I looked at the screen again. “You’re not. You have answers.”
The shift in his expression was small, but I saw it.
He studied me for a long second before saying quietly, “Thank you for seeing me, Imani.”
The words settled somewhere much deeper than I was prepared for.
I swallowed and looked back at the game.
For once, I let them stay there without trying to explain what they had done to me.