Page 60 of The Sweetest Return

The photographer began arranging people near the banner. Featured alumni, committee members, old friends, football alumni, business owners, campus favorites, the ones everybody still called by nicknames nobody outside AWU understood. Somebody behind us argued about whether he graduated in 2017 or 2018 with enough conviction to make me worry about AWU’s records department. Two women near the front hugged, stepped back, screamed over each other’s shoes, then hugged again like they had not been standing three feet apart the whole time.

Taylor lifted her clipboard. “Imani, little to your left.”

I shifted backward, and my heel caught a dip in the grass.

Dre’s hand closed around my waist before I could correct myself.

My body knew who had me before I looked. His grip stopped my momentum without yanking me, one broad palm warm against my side through the thin fabric. It should have been nothing. A quick catch. A reflex. The kind of touch anybody could explain away in public.

My body did not care about the explanation.

My nipples tightened against my top, and my pussy gave one slow, embarrassing pulse, swelling with attention like his hand had landed somewhere far less innocent.

My breath tried to change.

I refused to let it embarrass me in front of God, alumni, and Taylor’s clipboard.

“You good?” he asked.

“Yes.”

My voice sounded normal. I considered that an accomplishment.

I looked down at his hand, then at him. Dre followed my gaze, but he did not move it immediately.

Memory came with the contact. Those hands fixing things around my first apartment because he never understood why my roommates and I were willing to live with a cabinet hinge hanging loose. Grease across his knuckles after working on the Hellcat. His palms on my hips.

His fingers between my thighs, patient and sure, teaching me the difference between almost and there. Showing me where my body kept secrets I hadn’t known how to ask for yet. The first time he made me squirt, he looked at me like he had discovered something sacred and filthy at the same time, and then had the nerve to smile like he planned to spend the rest of his life doing it again.

My breath slipped.

“Mani.”

My name came out low enough for only me, and my nipples tightened harder against my top.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“I already know that.”

I could hear Jabari right now, talking about, “What I say?”

His thumb moved once at my waist. Barely. Still enough to make my pussy pulse like the touch had landed somewhere else.

A few feet away, Taylor said something to the photographer. Somebody behind us laughed. I felt eyes on us, people collecting little pieces of a story they had no business touching.

For once, I did not care fast enough.

Dre’s gaze dropped to my mouth, then lifted again.

“You want me to move my hand?”

I should have said yes.

Instead, I held his stare. “Do you want to?”

His jaw tightened.

“Hell no.”