Page 58 of The Sweetest Return

Fine as fuck.

“Excuse me?”

His mouth curved. “You been looking around this Yard like the whole place is a campaign brief.”

“It might be.”

“I know.”

I stared at him. “You know?”

“You always did that.” He nodded toward the crowd. “Clocked who was looking, who was pretending not to look, what they reached for first, what made their face change. Then you figured out how to make people want what you already understood.”

Warmth moved through my chest.

Eight years. An NFL career. A life I had mostly watched through screens. And he still remembered that part of me. Not just my face or my body or the way I used to love him, but the way my mind worked when something caught hold of it.

“I didn’t know you paid that much attention.”

His smile deepened. “You were hard to ignore.”

“That sounds like a compliment.”

“It is.”

“Some things don’t change.”

Sometimes they got much better.

Daylight gave me information last night’s dim room had withheld. The faint lines at the corners of his eyes. The small mark near his jaw I did not remember. The richer maturity in his face. His eyes once he removed his sunglasses, still dark and direct enough to make my breath remember him before I gave it permission. His body was no longer built only for football, but nothing about that made him less powerful. He looked like a man who had been forced to rebuild and had made something solid out of what survived.

He looked good. More than good.

Camille cleared her throat beside me, and I remembered she and Noelle existed.

His eyes moved over me once before returning to my face. And as if he had read my mind, he said, “You look good in daylight too.”

My stomach dropped. “Thank you.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

His eyes warmed. “Still humble.”

“Always.”

Noelle made a small sound that might have been a laugh. Camille, for once in her life, chose mercy.

“We’re going to get food,” she said.

I turned to her. “We are?”

“You are currently useless to us.” She looked at Dre, then back at me. “Find us when you remember community.”

“Camille.”

“Love you.” She kissed the air near my cheek and hooked her arm through Noelle’s.