Page 207 of The Sweetest Return

“I need a running backs coach,” he said. “Somebody those men respect. Somebody who understands the room, the pressure, the body, the fear, the ego, all of it. Somebody who can tell a young back the truth without breaking him.”

I looked at Imani.

She was watching me now. Face soft. Thoughtful. Not pushing. The same woman who had rubbed my back while I watched the Forge lose. The same woman who had listened when I said it hurt like hell because I wanted to help.

The same woman who had seen me in the quiet and stayed.

“What would it look like?” I asked.

Coach exhaled like he had been waiting for the question.

“We talk when you’re back. Facility. Private. You, me, front office. No media. No announcements. We see if it fits.”

If it fits.

Football had fit my body once until it didn’t. Maybe this could fit the man left after.

“I’ll come in,” I said.

Imani’s eyes warmed.

“When?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“That fast?”

“You called.”

Coach laughed low. “Yeah, I did.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good. And Andre?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t have to prove you still belong around the game. You do.”

The line went quiet before I could answer that.

Pittsburgh appeared beneath us, lights scattered against the dark, the rivers catching gold in broken lines.

For a minute, I only held the phone.

Imani reached for me. Her fingers slid through mine, and I held on while the plane lowered toward home.

For the first time since my body left the game before my heart was ready, football did not feel like something calling me backward.

It felt like it might be asking what I could build next.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“So what I’m hearing,” Camille said, “is Andre Jones chartered you across the country, put you in a luxury hotel by the water, kept his hands off your work, and somehow you are still sitting here looking like YSL sold out of their newest bag.”

I stirred my soup and wished I had ordered something I could stab.

“That is not what I said.”