Page 246 of The Sweetest Return

But here, with Dre’s wedding band warm against mine and the ring he’d chosen for me throwing light every time our hands moved, I was also Mrs. Jones.

The diamond still made me pause.

Eight carats. Emerald cut. D color. Internally flawless. Sourced through Antwerp, cut by a master stonecutter Saint Aurelia trusted only with the pieces that had to be exact, then set in platinum with hidden pavé and the kind of precision that made even our master jeweler go quiet for a second.

It was the clearest diamond I had ever seen.

Not just because of the stone, though the stone was breathtaking. It was the care. The intention. The fact that Dre had gone to the house I was helping build and asked them to make something worthy of the life he wanted to build with me.

When the world found out Andre Jones had chosen Saint Aurelia for my ring, bridal inquiries nearly broke Cleo’s inbox by lunchtime.

Dre had only shrugged when I told him he had caused a luxury-house problem.

“You deserved a Jones problem,” he’d said.

Some mornings, I could say Mrs. Jones without pausing.

On AWU’s campus, with his ring against mine, his hand holding mine where everybody could see, and that diamond catching the October light like it had been made to speak for both of us, I still had to let the word settle.

I liked it more than my old fear would have allowed.

“You good?” Dre asked, leaning down so his voice brushed my ear.

“I’m good.”

“You sure? You got quiet.”

“I’m thinking.”

“That’s usually my line.”

“I learned from the best.”

He gave me a look, and I smiled because I still loved getting on his nerves.

He looked good enough to be distracting, which was especially unfair on his old campus. Dark jeans cut perfectly over low-profile sneakers, a white T-shirt with the kind of weight cheaper cotton never held, a custom purple AWU jacket with leather trim, his beard full, diamond stud in his ear, and that quiet confidence that had matured into something deeper than swagger. People still saw the former star first. I understood why. Dre had been impossible to ignore even before the world learned his name.

But this year, more people called him Coach than Dre.

Every time it happened, something in his face shifted.

Like the life he had chosen was starting to choose him back.

“Coach Jones!”

Dre turned before I did.

Coach Wallace crossed the walkway with a thick binder under one arm and a cup of coffee in the other. He was older than he had been when Dre wore number twenty-two for the Kings, his beard more gray now, his shoulders a little heavier beneath his purple AWU windbreaker, but the man still had the same eyes. Direct. Assessing. Impossible to charm when football was involved.

Dre shook his hand, then pulled him into a quick hug.

“Coach.”

“Look at you,” Coach Wallace said, stepping back to study him. “Back on campus with a whistle of your own now.”

Dre smiled. “Don’t start.”

“I’m absolutely starting. I spent four years telling you to stop coaching from the huddle, and now somebody’s paying you for it.”