Page 245 of The Sweetest Return

Her eyes searched mine, wet and wide and beautiful.

“I love you too,” she whispered.

I pulled her against me and closed my eyes.

For a minute, we held each other in the firelight with the game muted behind us, my heart beating hard against hers, both of us letting the words find somewhere to live.

When her mouth found mine again, the kiss moved slower this time, deeper and certain.

I carried her to the rug in front of the fireplace, careful with my knee without making the moment fragile. She smiled when I laid her down, braids spilling around her, blush-pink nails touching my face like she knew every thought I was trying not to overmanage.

“Taking care of me?” she asked.

“Always.”

Her eyes softened.

Then she reached for the hem of my shirt and pulled it over her head.

Firelight moved over her skin. Brown and warm. Diamonds still in her ears. Anklet at her ankle. White toes curling against the rug when my palm slid up her thigh. Her navel ring caught the fire for half a second before my mouth found the soft skin beneath it.

I lowered myself over her and kissed her again.

Tonight did not need proving. We loved each other in front of the fire with football muted behind us and tomorrow waiting on the other side of the room.

Tomorrow, I would call Coach Price.

Tomorrow, everything would start changing.

Tonight, I held on to Imani and let myself believe we knew how to change with it.

IMANI

AWU Homecoming greeted us with music, smoke from the grills, purple and gold everywhere, and memories I no longer needed to outrun.

The campus was loud before noon. Alumni tents lined the green, music spilled from speakers near the student center, and the Royal Sound Marching Collective was warming up somewhere near the stadium. Women moved past in boots, silk scarves, and AWU sweatshirts cut in ways the bookstore had definitely not intended. Men found each other by old jersey numbers and stories about what they used to do on the field.

Somewhere near the Greek plots, a crowd erupted over a stroll I couldn’t see, followed by a bark loud enough to make three older men near us straighten automatically before remembering their knees had grown up too.

Two freshmen hurried past us arguing over whose Story & Place interview had gone better, one waving a recorder in the air like she had evidence. Near Century Walk, students sat beneath the bronze panels eating from foil trays while an older alumnus leaned into their conversation to correct something none of them had asked him.

I smiled.

AWU was still doing what it had always done. Letting one generation tell its stories while another decided what to carry forward.

Beside me, my husband moved through all of it with his hand locked around mine.

That word still got me sometimes.

Husband.

Andre Malik Jones was my husband.

Professionally, I was still Imani Bennett, Chief Brand and Growth Officer of Saint Aurelia, the woman whose signature sat on contracts in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Paris.

The Meridian collection had sold out twice, The Nocturne preview had become one of our most requested private events, and Saint Aurelia had quietly become the house a growing number of Forge players and their wives and girlfriends called when they wanted something serious. Engagement rings. Anniversary stones. Custom pieces after a championship or a new contract. More than a few of the women came to us on their own too, buying diamonds because they wanted them and could.

Cleo had stopped asking whether I could travel because we both knew the answer.