Page 4 of The Sweetest Return

“Bad lie.”

He came back with a warm cloth without me asking. I opened my thighs for him, and he cleaned me gently, his touch soft enough to make my chest tighten.

“You sore?”

“A little tender. That’s it.”

His mouth curved. “I knew it.”

“You ask too many questions.”

“You talk too much.”

“And yet here you are.”

“Yeah.”

The way he said it made me look at him. The joke and grin were gone. It was just Dre.

He tossed the cloth toward the hamper, climbed back into bed, and pulled me onto his chest. I went willingly. My cheek settled over his heart while one of his hands moved along my back. My leg slid between his, and he shifted automatically to make room for me.

This might have been my favorite part.

After all the filthy things we could say to each other, after his mouth had been everywhere and his dick had just been inside me, there was still this. His warm body beneath mine. The quiet. The easy way we fit when nobody else was around to expect anything from us.

I could lie right here forever.

That scared me because with Dre, forever never sounded ridiculous.

I could picture his shoes beside mine. Sunday dinners with both our families. Him stealing food off my plate after ordering more than enough for himself. Me sitting in stadiums pretending my stomach did not turn every time somebody hit him too hard.

I wanted that life.

I just did not know if I wanted the one everyone had already started building around it.

Lately, every conversation about our future began with Dre, even when people did not mean for it to.

Where would he be drafted? Which teams needed a running back? Would he go first round? What city might we end up in?

We.

His mother talked about visiting wherever we landed. My friends joked about good seats when I became an NFL girlfriend. Even my parents had started asking questions about which cities had strong marketing opportunities, like where I began my career depended on where somebody sent Dre.

Nobody meant harm.

That almost made it harder.

For months, whenever anyone asked what I planned to do after graduation, I gave answers that sounded practical but left room for Dre’s future to become the deciding factor. I said I was keeping my options open. I said I could do marketing anywhere. I said we would figure it out after the draft.

Before Dre, I knew how to talk about what I wanted. Luxury branding. Campaign strategy. Rooms where the right story could change what people believed they were allowed to desire. New York, because New York felt like proof that my life could get bigger if I was brave enough to take up space in it.

Then I loved him, and somehow love started softening my answers before he ever asked me to.

That was the part I hated most.

He had not asked me to reduce myself.

Then Tiffany came.