Page 174 of The Sweetest Return

“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.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

By halftime, the Sentinels were up by enough for the analysts to start talking like somebody needed to call the family and make arrangements. I turned the volume down before they pissed me off for real and became aware again of Imani tucked into my side.

She had folded her legs beneath herself, my Forge shirt stretching over her thighs while one hand rested near my ribs. Every few minutes her bracelet brushed my shirt, and something about how comfortable she looked in a place nobody else got much access to did more to me than I wanted to admit.

I had spent most of Sunday and half of Monday wondering whether I had lost her before I ever got her back. Then she called, came downstairs, climbed into my truck, and walked through my front door.

Now she was in my shirt, on my couch, watching football beside me like ordinary nights might be something we could have.

The word mine came to me too quickly.

I knew better than to treat Imani Bennett like something possession could keep. She had already proven she would leave anybody who made her feel smaller, even if going hurt like hell. I respected that more at thirty than I had been capable of at twenty-two.

Still, mine sat in my chest differently now. Mine because I knew her. Mine because I chose her. Mine because some part of me had spent eight years remembering what my pride had tried to survive without.

She lifted her head slightly.

“Is it hard watching them out there?”

My body tightened before I could hide it.

“Truthfully?”

“Yes.”

I looked toward the television. “Yeah. It hurts like hell. Especially when they’re losing.”

Her hand went still against me.

“I miss the tunnel sometimes,” I admitted. “The crowd. That feeling right before a snap when your whole body knows it’s about to do something bigger than whatever fear you brought onto the field. I ain't gon’ lie and act like I don't miss that.”

“You don’t have to.”

“But that ain’t what gets me the most.”

“What is?”

“Seeing it and not being able to help.” I rubbed my jaw and nodded toward the screen. “I know what they’re missing. I know why the back ain’t seeing that cut and when the line is late. I can see what the defense keeps baiting them into, and I’m sitting here on a couch.”

The words stayed between us.

I had accepted most of what happened to my body. At least I thought I had. I built businesses, made money, bought a house behind gates, and learned how to enter rooms where nobody cared what my forty time used to be. I had a life after football because I refused to spend the rest of mine begging the world to call me by yesterday’s name.

But accepting that something was over did not mean it stopped reaching for you.