Page 78 of The Sweetest Return

“Yes.”

“You ain’t doing this because you think I’m tired of waiting?”

“No.”

“Because you think I’m going somewhere if you don’t?”

Her expression changed immediately. “No.”

“Aight.” I moved closer and touched her cheek. “Then why?”

She looked down for a second before bringing those big brown eyes back to mine.

“Because I love you, and I want my first time to be with you.”

That shut up every slick thing I might have said.

Football had given me attention before I was old enough to understand what attention could take from a man if he started confusing it with affection. Girls liked athletes. Some liked the idea of being with one even more. I wasn’t innocent, and I wasn’t about to stand there and pretend I had been waiting for Imani because I didn’t know what to do with a woman’s body.

I knew.

But Imani wasn’t some girl I wanted to add to a list I didn’t even care enough to keep.

She was Imani.

Mine in the way a twenty-one-year-old man thought he understood forever. She argued with me, prayed for me, studied beside me, fussed when I didn’t ice a sore muscle fast enough, and looked at me like she saw more than shoulder pads and a forty time. She had given me parts of herself slowly, carefully, because trust mattered to her.

Now she was standing in my room, asking me to be the man she trusted.

Even at twenty-one, I understood enough to know what she was placing in my hands.

“I love you too.”

“I know.”

I smiled. “Cocky.”

“You like it.”

“I do.”

Some of the nerves left her face when she smiled, so I kissed her again.

We had been dancing in the living room before that, some playlist I’d spent entirely too much time putting together playing low through the apartment. I had cleaned before she came over too. Actually cleaned. Shoes put away, empty bottles gone, bathroom wiped down twice because Malcolm used it and I did not trust that nigga’s standards.

Imani had a way of making me want my shit together even when she wasn’t asking me to do anything.

We made it halfway down the hall before my hip caught the little table outside my room.

She laughed into my mouth. “Smooth.”

“Be quiet.”

“You should know where your own furniture is.”

“You distracting me.”

“That sounds personal.”